Mexico City - 1969

I have yet to find anybody to understand my point that Artificial Intelligence is a stupid algorithm used (we hope) by an intelligent human.

While there are some who are hypercritical of Twitter/X I enjoy it because their algorithms have put me in touch with writers and others who write in Spanish and may be from Argentina, Mexico or Spain.

In one such tweet I saw a photograph of a movie house in Mexico City (the photograph was circa mid 50s) called the Chapultepec (below). It was on the corner of the fashionable Paseo de La Reforma bordering the Chapultepec Park (the grasshopper hill is the meaning of the word). 

In 1970 Rosemary and I had been married since Feb 1968 and we lived around the corner from the movie house on Herodoto Street. We wanted to see a film called The Music Lovers directed by Ken Russell, staring Richard Chamberlain (he played Tchaikovsky) and Glenda Jackson.

When we got there we were asked for our IDs. I was 27 and Rosemary was 25. I remember that Rosemary smiled and told me we could go back to our apartment to retrieve our IDs.

Some years later I photographed Richard Chamberlain in Vancouver. To break the ice I told him two stories. One was the one of The Music Lovers and the other as to why there is a famous brand of Havana cigars called Montecristo ( I smoked the Claro which cost 15 dollars in Vancouver for the foot long that it was). Cuban women rolled cigars leaves on their thighs while being read. Their fave novel was El Conde de Montecristo. Chamberlain was in the 1975 film.

The Montecristo Claros and two forestry barons

Richard Chamberlain - April 1998