“It’s just that you don’t look like a logger.”Īll the other applicants had on authentic logging gear, or what they considered a logger might wear. When dad said that yes he was, the man apologized for ignoring him. A couple of hours had passed, and finally the assistant asked dad if he was there for an interview. Dad sat waiting, along with about 40 other men, while an assistant made his way around the room, talking with everyone, except my dad. And “a Gyppo logger,” my dad told me, “never wants to unionize.”Īfter the initial interview, my father, who was 35 years old at the time, was called by the casting director to come to a second interview at the Salishan Inn. The Stampers are “Gyppo,” or contract loggers. Kesey’s book is set around the Stamper family, a clan of stubborn and prideful loggers, struggling to survive, making a living amidst a determined, resentful town and other logging operations seeking to unionize. Author Ken Kesey’s novel, “Sometimes A Great Notion,” was being adapted to the screen and filmed along the Siletz River and parts of the Central Oregon Coast. It all started in July of 1970, when my dad drove from our small home town of Neotsu, Oregon, located just three miles north of Lincoln City, to Toledo, where, along with about 250 other men and women, he applied for a job as an extra in a movie. But that particular keepsake takes us to the end of the tale. We found folders stuffed with mementos from the Screen Actor’s Guild, and we even came across an empty bottle of “President’s Choice” Kentucky sippin’ whiskey. We talked for a couple of hours and pored over boxes of aged and faded photographs of the film crew and famous actors.
Recently, I sat down with him at his home in Florence Oregon, and I asked him to do some reminiscing about those days he spent working on the film. My family and I have a particular fondness for the story, as my father, Ron Bernard, actually played a part in the movie version. Sometimes a Great Notion (film) (Wikipedia) With the passing of Ken Kesey, many an Oregonian, along with admirers around the world, have taken to revisiting that famous story “Sometimes A Great Notion.” “ Up as far as Victoria and down as far as Eureka. Towns dependent on what they are able to wrest from the sea in front of them and from the mountains behind, trapped between both.” – Ken Kesey Sometimes A Great Notion and the Summer My Dad Was a Movie StarĪn Interview with Ron Bernard ~ by Denise Bernard
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