The Architect of our Generation

Alan Swyer
September 2023

My first encounter with Franklin Israel as a grown-up was uncomfortable. I had just arrived at a gathering at a Hollywood Hills cottage when I spotted him holding court in the living room. Catching sight of me, all his charm and ebullience vanished instantly. Excusing himself from the people around him, he drifted toward me.

“I-I didn’t know you were on this coast,” he mumbled.

“Likewise,” I responded.

The two of us had a brief chat about what brought each of us to California – he was an architect occasionally moonlighting as a set designer for films; I was writing screenplays with the hope some day of directing. Then Frank ended the conversation by suggesting perfunctorily that the two of us should meet for lunch one day.

That exchange would likely have been forgotten had we not bumped into each other again ten days later at a museum screening of Louis Malle’s “Le Feu Follet.” Once more I saw Frank surrounded by people straining to hear his every word. But at the sight of me, he seemed to cringe. Then once again he extricated himself and headed in my direction.

“We have to stop meeting this way,” he said with mock playfulness.

After a bit of chit-chat, lip service was again given to a rendezvous for lunch.

Given that a commute from one part of LA to another can easily take over an hour, it’s no surprise that people can go months, or even years, without crossing paths. Yet less than two weeks later Frank and I bumped into each other at a restaurant called Musso & Frank’s with the same result. Instead of perpetuating the awkwardness, I insisted that we actually set a time and place for the threatened lunch.

In the hope of keeping things low-key, I arrived early at a small Italian place walking distance from my writing office, then commandeered a corner table. Franklin walked in a few minutes later, looking ill-at-ease. After putting down his shoulder bag and taking off his jacket, he studied me for a moment, then sat and spoke.

“There’s something about me,” he began haltingly, “that you should know.”

Seeing how uneasy he was, I held up a hand. “Time out.”

“W-why?”

“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, we knew maybe before you knew, even though we didn’t really know what it was.”’

“T-that I’m gay?”

I nodded.

“But how could you –?”

“Promise you won’t get upset?”

Frank braced himself, then nodded.

“You were a sissy.” I said as gently as I could

Frank studied me for a long moment, then laughed. “I still am.”

This was the eighties, a time far less open and enlightened, especially for people like us who hailed from blue-collar New Jersey. After taking a breath, Frank spoke about how strange it was for the two of us to be 3,000 miles away from home, pursuing the paths we’d chosen. Then suddenly he grew reflective.

“You were different,” he said softly.

“Different how?”

“You never picked on me.”

“Why would I?”

“Everyone else did.”

“And they’re probably still there.”

Frank shrugged, then proceeded to fill me in his life since graduating from high school a year ahead of me. He’d gone off to college with a vague notion of studying philosophy. Then, under the influence of Louis Kahn, he fell in love with architecture. After getting his Master’s, his life changed when he was awarded the Rome Prize, enabling him to spend two years in Italy.

Despite his mother’s hope that he would join a firm on the East Coast, an offer from UCLA enabled Frank to begin life anew Southern California. Away from parental pressure and expectations, he was able to indulge his three loves: architecture, movies, and teaching.

“And now,” I said, “you’re the architect of our generation.”

“I wish,” said Frank with a sigh.

“Seems to me you’re getting there.”

Frank shrugged. “How about you?”

I explained how, after a couple of years of college, my life took an unexpected turn when, with little money, zero connections, and only a modest command of the language, I decided to move to France. Somehow I talked my way into a job writing the Paris section of a proposed guide book for students, which set me up as the only impoverished young American with an expense account and a mandate to explore everything imaginable. Then, having wangled an expiring ticket on the S.S. France, I met a young French woman returning from doing summer stock in New England. Her family, with whom I got along far better than I ever did with my own, all but adopted me, insisting that I speak exclusively French.

“I love it!” exclaimed Frank.

“It gets crazier,” I said. Living in a place without a shower, I tried unsuccessfully to join the Paris university basketball team, then wound up instead on their boxing squad. Whereas up until then I knew only Marie-Christine and her family, I immediately acquired fifteen friends, while also reinforcing the need to become fluent in French if I wanted to keep from getting hurt. Best of all, that entitled me to a swim and shower every day but Sunday.

“So where did movies come in?” wondered Frank.

Paris, I explained, is paradise for what the French call cinephiles. Between the revival houses and the Cinematheques, I had a nonstop feast of films old, new, and exotic. That led me to make a 16 milometer short, an experience that put an emphatic end to my mother’s hope that I would become a doctor.

“Sounds like our mothers have a lot in common.”

“Too much.”

Frank chuckled. “Let’s do this again,” he insisted. “Soon. And often.”

What had been little more than a passing acquaintanceship in New Jersey blossomed into a friendship over the weeks, months, and years that followed. Since we both discovered food with actual taste once away from our mother’s kitchens, the two of us availed ourselves of LA’s ethnic diversity: Persian, Thai, Oaxacan, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Lebanese, and Korean.

Sometimes we would discuss the similarities between Frank’s world, architecture, and mine, film. Both dealt with the awkward and ever-shifting balance between economics and art. Additionally, both were team sports, since architecture required a contractor, sub-contractors, and workers galore, while filming needed a cast and crew, plus specialists in post-production. Other times we would dwell on the icons we admired: Rudolph Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra for Frank; Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, and Billy Wilder for me.

Occasionally the conversation turned personal. For Frank, that usually involved grumbling about incessant calls from his mother, who rubbed it in that her friends’ children – and his high school classmates – were becoming parents.

“What is it with Jewish mothers?” he asked me at a Korean place known for barbecued duck. I responded with a joke. “At the inauguration of the first Jewish woman to be elected President, a reporter asks her mother how she feels about her daughter’s achievement. Proudly,
Mrs. Lieberfarb replies, ‘Her brother is a doctor!’”

After nearly choking with laughter, Frank grew serious. “What about you two? Kids likely one day?”

“We haven’t gone public yet, but Ronni’s pregnant.”

“Mazel tov!” gushed Frank. “Can I be an almost-uncle?”

More common ground was added when I joined the Screenwriting Faculty at the American Film Institute. That led to conversations about whether creativity could actually be taught. My take was that I was a mentor, not a magician. I couldn’t make someone a writer, but I could help somebody become a better writer. Frank said that was also the case with aspiring architects.

Over Oaxacan food one Saturday, I asked him if he had thought about, or developed, a credo, aspirational or otherwise. “At risk of sounding highfalutin,” Frank began after a moment of pondering, “I’d like to bridge the gap between individual buildings and their urban context. And to turn interior spaces into cities within – with the variety, color, and surprise you’d find in LA, or New York, or Rome.” He dipped a tortilla chip into some salsa, then asked, “How about you?”

“I guess I’d like to make American character-driven films, but with the freedom and irreverence of the French New Wave.”

Frank nodded.  “Think we’ll get there?”

“That we’re out here, doing what we’re doing, means we’ve got a chance.”

An increase in recognition allowed Frank to focus less on set design and more on buildings, both residential and commercial – many of which were for movie people or production companies. That enabled me to live vicariously through his creative process.

Whether envisioning a house in Bel Air, re-imagining a restaurant called Palette, or designing offices for Propaganda Films, it was fascinating to witness the ups and downs from a project’s inception on through the back-and-forth over ideas and funds, then the accommodations, adjustments, and compromises due to interactions with owners, contractors, and building inspectors.

“See?” I said to Frank as his career accelerated. “You are becoming the architect of our generation.”

That yielded a shrug.

All the while, Frank continued to monitor my experiences – good and not-so-good – in the movie biz. Initially that involved an early rock & roll biopic, then a comedic vehicle for Richard Pryor. But his interest soared when I joined my activist side to my professional life by persuading first the Presiding Judge of Juvenile, then the Chief Probation Officer, to assist me in the creation of the Los Angeles County Teen Court. Procuring funding from Group W Westinghouse, who financed the TV pilot I went on to produce, I set up a system in which first-time juvenile offenders could elect to face a jury of their peers. Our hope, beyond making for interesting viewing, was that it would keep youthful criminality from escalating. Never did we guess or predict that in the years that followed that Teen Court would benefit scores of young people, while functioning in more and more locations.

Even as his reputation grew, and with it the demand for his services, Frank continued to monitor my wife’s pregnancy. And when our son was born, a present from him arrived immediately.

A year later, when Frank’s still young career was honored at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, on opening night he broke off a conversation with Frank Gehry to welcome Ronni and me when we showed up with our infant son in a Snugglie.

Though Frank cherished his adopted sun-drenched hometown, national acclaim brought with it commissions elsewhere as well. Taking on a hotel in New York for Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell in New York, plus a cathedral in London, meant that our get-togethers became fewer and farther between.

When we finally reconnected for lunch after a lengthy hiatus, Frank was hardly his irrepressible self. He seemed worried, weary, and worn, physically and emotionally.

“What’s going on?” I asked, making no effort to hide my concern.

“Sure you want to know?”

When I said yes, Frank explained that unlike his previous classes at UCLA, his current group of students were, in his words, “Dudsville.” Though he had tried every way imaginable to motivate and inspire them, his efforts brought only resentment. Frustrated, Frank went to the Dean, Richard Weinstein (who coincidentally lived in my neighborhood, where he was often seen reading the New York Review Of Books while begrudgingly walking his wife’s English Setter).

Unhappily, Frank informed Weinstein that for the first time he was inclined to hand out failing grades.

“Unacceptable,” Weinstein replied, suggesting that Frank should instead grade on a curve.

“This isn’t a course on grammar,” Frank protested, “where what matters are subjects and predicates. What if because of one of them a building collapses? Or a bridge?”

“You’re being melodramatic,” said Weinstein dismissively.

Searching for a resolution, Frank informed his students of their tentative grades, then suggested that they could raise them by doing work for extra credit.

Nevertheless, when he walked to his car later, he found a swastika painted on it. Then Weinstein informed him that despite Frank’s long history of volunteer work for minorities, the students – fifty percent of those failing were white – were accusing him of discrimination against Blacks, Latinos, women, and gays.

“No support from the university?” I asked Frank.

“Zilch. And the worst part?”

“What could be worse?”

“My mother. Want to guess her response?”

“I give up.”

“I told you to be a doctor!’”

As I shook my head, Frank sensed that there was something I wasn’t saying. “What?” he demanded.

“This is no way to treat the architect of our generation.”

“Not funny,” said Frank.

Though Frank was justly disheartened by the experience at UCLA, it was another campus at the University of California that buoyed his spirits when he was selected to design the Fine Arts Building at UC Riverside.

Then came a piece of news that was even more exciting. LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art announced what they called “Out of Order: Franklin D. Israel.” The proposed installation by, as they put it, “an esteemed Los Angeles designer,” was to constitute an “artist’s project”: taking the form of a composition of dynamic, angular spaces – walls, ceiling and floor planes,
seating areas – within a MOCA which would appear to emerge organically from the existing architecture but which will dramatically alter the character of the space.

“I know what you’re going to say,” said Frank as he joined me at an Ethiopian place on Pico Boulevard.

“Who me?” I joked.

“Even if I were the architect of our generation,” said Frank glumly, “I now have something that’s hit our generation.”

Suddenly I felt as though I’d taken a punch to the gut. “You mean –?

Frank nodded. “AIDS.”

In the time he had left, Frank was a study in bravery. While struggling, he did everything he could to educate others about living with the disease. In interviews, as well as in the catalog for his show at MOCA, he stated that one benefit of his illness was that it encouraged him to take greater risks in his creative endeavors.

At our last lunch together, Frank grew reflective for a moment, then chuckled. “I guess it’s the ultimate Jewish joke,” he said. “Dying, I’ve finally become a part of our generation’s cultural history.”

“Not finally,” I said. “You got there a while ago.”

Upon his death, in addition to encomiums from Frank Gehry and others, including Richard Weinstein, there were glowing obituaries, many of which called Frank the architect of his generation. I like to think he at last would have accepted that appellation. I also believe he would have been delighted to learn that my dream of directing came true, starting with a thriller, then on through music videos, plus documentaries about the criminal justice system, Eastern spirituality, boxing, and the Blues.

But what might have tickled him the most, given his great love of cities and visual arts, was that his almost-nephew Jonas went on to become, and not just in the eyes of his dad, the street muralist of his generation.

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Alan Swyer is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentaries have dealt with Eastern spirituality in the Western world, the criminal justice system, diabetes, boxing, and singer Billy Vera. In the realm of music, among his productions is an album of Ray Charles love songs. His novel ‘The Beard’ was recently published by Harvard Square Editions.