DOCSLIB.ORG

Meeting Divine: a “Hairspray” Story As Told by Jerry Stiller

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Meeting Divine: a “Hairspray” Story As Told by Jerry Stiller The Academy Follow We are The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and we champion the power of human imagination. Jul 27 · 6 min read Divine and Jerry Stiller in “Hairspray” (1988) Meeting Divine: A “Hairspray” Story As told by Jerry Stiller In honor of Hairspray’s 30th anniversary, the Academy hosted a reunion with the cast and crew, hosted by Barry Jenkins. Below is Jerry Stiller’s recollection of the relationships he built while working on the lm. In 1988, I was asked to play a role in Hairspray, which was lming in Baltimore, director John Waters’ hometown. Sonny Bono and Deborah Harry were also in the lm. I agreed to do Wilbur Turnblad, the husband of Divine. Pia Zadora played a ‘60s beatnik and Ricki Lake played my daughter. The word “crossover lm” was heard in the industry. The script had all the makings of a sleeper. John Waters introduced himself. He was then 41 years old. He joked about his pencil-thin mustache. “I think I saw it on some actor in a B- movie and decided to try it,” he told me. He was funny; I liked him. I’d chosen to be here, in a John Waters movie. It was like nothing I’d ever done. “You’ll have fun,” John said. “See you on the set.” I was getting into costume and makeup when I met Glenn Milstead, known as Divine, for the rst time. He too was getting ready to shoot our rst scene. He was wearing a housedress and adjusting his wig. “How’s Anne?” he said in a very soft, womanly voice. I knew immediately we’d be perfect together as husband and wife. Divine and Jerry Stiller in “Hairspray” (1988) “We’re ready to shoot,” someone said. The Hardy Har Joke Shop actually existed. It was in a blue-collar section of Baltimore and sold things like dribble glasses and cans of doggy-doo. That day, it had been commandeered for our shoot. I sensed this was one of Water’s favorite scenes. He conded that the Hardy Har owner had been told to stop selling snot. He hadn’t been given a reason. But the owner said he could get a fresh shipment if someone needed it right away. John put his hand up to his nostril as if to demonstrate. “Do you want to meet the guy?” Waters asked. “I’d rather not,” I said apologetically. “I always feel a little funny about meeting people I play.” “I understand, “ Waters replied. Divine, Ricki Lake and I squeezed tightly into a doorway as the last- minute lighting changes were made. The scene dealt with Divine and myself—mama and papa—describing the wonders of the whoopee cushion to our recalcitrant daughter, whose ambitions lay in other areas. Ricki Lake and Divine in “Hairspray” (1988) “Lock it up,” said Dave Iselin, the cinematographer. “Speed. Sound rolling. Action,” Waters said. One take was all John wanted. I thought I could do better, but John said he had everything he needed in a single take. The six-week shoot was fun. Lots of location shots around the city. Baltimoreans lined the streets awaiting Divine’s entrance. When we emerged from a trailer, the mostly blue-collar fans applauded. It was like a Hollywood movie, only on the other side of the tracks. When we wrapped, the cast and crew had a nal lunch together to celebrate. Divine and I sat next to each other. ”I can’t wait to meet Anne in New York,” he said. “We’ll have to get together,” I said. “I’m so nervous, “ Divine said. “I’m going to Salt Lake City tomorrow to do my act for the Mormons. I know they’re going to stone me.” “Not at all,” I reassured him. “They’ll want to laugh. If you have any problems just say you’re a friend of Donny and Marie.” “What do you mean ‘friend’? I’m one of them. Donny, Marie and Divine Osmond.” About a year later the lm was released, John asked me to do some publicity, so I shuttled to and from radio shows, touting Hairspray. I was invited to the press lunch for Divine at Spy magazine and when I arrived, the room was lled with people. At two separate tables sat Divine and John Waters. The tables were crammed with food: breads, salads and wine. Waters saw me and stood up and gave me a big hug. Divine, at his own table, sat there smiling. A ridge of blond hair circling his scalp gave him the appearance of a Trappist monk. My own hair had turned pink. It had not been dyed in a month and had oxidized. “What happened to your hair?” Waters asked. “It’s pink. It’s changing color as you watch it,” I said. A scene from “Hairspray” (1988) A couple of weeks later I was at my health club when a phone call came from producer Stanley Buchtal. “I’ve got some sad news, Jerry. Divine is dead.” Shocks of disbelief rippled through me. I saw Divine as a class person. The guy had nally found stardom, and had been rewarded unfairly. He had been in Los Angeles shooting an episode of Married With Children. Divine should have been celebrating his triumph and now, without warning, he was gone. I took the Amtrak to Baltimore for the evening wake. We passed through Philly before train pulled into Baltimore. Baltimore Film Festival producer George Udel and his artist wife Joan Erbe picked me up at the station and 25 minutes later were in the Ruck Funeral Home in Towson. The place was lled with people and decks of owers. Divine once said jokingly, “When I go, I want lots of owers. Give them in lieu of a donation to a worthy charity.” His request was granted. To left and right of the open casket were lines of oral arrangements. I walked to the casket and stood there a moment. Waters and his assistant, Pat Moran, came to me. We hugged and then looked at one another and said nothing. “I saw the picture the other night in New York,” I told Waters. “They told me you and Divine were there the night before.” “It’s a big hit,” Waters said. “Yeah. What a way to celebrate.” “I’m glad you came,” Waters said. “I had to. Where’s his mother?” “Right there,” Waters said, pointing to a gray-haired lady standing next to a man in a wheelchair. “That’s Glenn’s father,” John said. I went over to them. His father looked up and I shook his hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Milstead,” I said. “Jerry, he really liked you,” Divine’s mother said. “He said you were always there for him.” There were owers and balloons from Whoopi Goldberg, along with a note: “You get a good review and this is what you do?” From Married with Children came a message: “If you didn’t like the show, you should’ve just told us.” I took the Night Owl back to New York at 2:30am. Twelve hours later, Joe Grifasi and I were doing “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” at Symphony Space, an event honoring Cole Porter. The number went well. I did it for Divine. Portions of this story have been shared from Jerry Stiller’s autobiography “Married to Laughter” published by Simon & Schuster. Watch highlights an evening with the cast and crew of Hairspray, featuring writer-director John Waters, cast members Ricki Lake, Deborah Harry, Mink Stole, Clayton Prince, Pia Zadora and Colleen Fitzpatrick. Hosted by Oscar-winning writer-director Barry Jenkins..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Corneliailie
    See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289370357 Talk Shows Article · December 2006 DOI: 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00357-6 CITATIONS READS 24 4,774 1 author: Cornelia Ilie Malmö University 57 PUBLICATIONS 476 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Parenthetically Speaking: Parliamentary Parentheticals as Rhetorical Strategies View project All content following this page was uploaded by Cornelia Ilie on 09 December 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Provided for non-commercial research and educational use only. Not for reproduction or distribution or commercial use This article was originally published in the Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non- commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution’s website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial Ilie C (2006), Talk Shows. In: Keith Brown, (Editor-in-Chief) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, volume 12, pp. 489-494. Oxford: Elsevier. Talk Shows 489 Talk Shows C Ilie,O¨ rebro University, O¨ rebro, Sweden all-news radio programs, which were intended as ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd.
    [Show full text]
  • Configuring a Scatological Gaze in Trash Filmmaking Zoe Gross
    Excremental Ecstasy, Divine Defecation and Revolting Reception: Configuring a Scatological Gaze in Trash Filmmaking Zoe Gross Scatology, for all the sordid formidability the term evokes, is not an es- pecially novel or unusual theme, stylistic technique or descriptor in film or filmic reception. Shit happens – to emphasise both the banality and perva- siveness of the cliché itself – on multiple levels of textuality, manifesting it- self in both the content and aesthetic of cinematic texts, and the ways we respond to them. We often refer to “shit films,” using an excremental vo- cabulary redolent of detritus, malaise and uncleanliness to denote their otherness and “badness”. That is, films of questionable taste, aesthetics, or value, are frequently delineated and defined by the defecatory: we describe them as “trash”, “crap”, “filth”, “sewerage”, “shithouse”. When considering cinematic purviews such as the b-film, exploitation, and shock or trash filmmaking, whose narratives are so often played out on the site of the gro- tesque body, a screenscape spectacularly splattered with bodily excess and waste is de rigeur. Here, the scatological is both often on blatant dis- play – shit is ejected, consumed, smeared, slung – and underpining or tinc- turing form and style, imbuing the text with a “shitty” aesthetic. In these kinds of films – which, as their various appellations tend to suggest, are de- fined themselves by their association with marginality, excess and trash, the underground, and the illicit – the abject body and its excretia not only act as a dominant visual landscape, but provide a kind of somatic, faecal COLLOQUY text theory critique 18 (2009).
    [Show full text]
  • This Could Be Your Culture--Junk Speech in a Time of Decadence
    University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 1996 This Could Be Your Culture--Junk Speech in a Time of Decadence Pierre Schlag University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, Law and Politics Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Citation Information Pierre Schlag, This Could Be Your Culture--Junk Speech in a Time of Decadence, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1801 (1996) (reviewing Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, The Death of Discourse (1996)), available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/692/. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1801 1995-1996 Provided by: William A. Wise Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Tue Jun 13 17:56:14 2017 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text.
    [Show full text]
  • SALLI NEWMAN (818) 618‐1551 (C) * (818) 955‐5711 (O) PRODUCER [email protected] ______
    SALLI NEWMAN (818) 618‐1551 (C) * (818) 955‐5711 (O) PRODUCER [email protected] ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ FEATURE FILMS “THE MAGIC OF BELLE ISLE” — Producer (Summer 2012 release) Firebrand Productions/Summer Magic Productions/Castle Rock Entertainment/Magnolia Pictures/Revelations Entertainment Director: Rob Reiner * Cast: Morgan Freeman and Virginia Madsen * Location: Upstate New York “ANOTHER HAPPY DAY” — Producer Mandalay Vision Director: Sam Levinson * Cast: Ellen Barkin, Demi Moore, Kate Bosworth, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Burstyn, George Kennedy, Jeffrey DeMunn, Ezra Miller * Location: Michigan * Sundance Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Sam Levinson “DAVID & GOLIATH” (Short) — Production Consultant Zaver Productions/Filmmakers Alliance Director: George Zaver * Cast: Billy Burke * Location: Los Angeles * Winner of Various Film Festival Awards including Best Short Film and Best First Time Director “MY ONE AND ONLY” — Consulting Producer Herrick Entertainment Director: Richard Loncraine * Cast: Renee Zellweger, Kevin Bacon, Chris Noth, Logan Lerman * Locations: Baltimore; New Mexico “D2: THE MIGHTY DUCKS” — Co‐Producer Avnet‐Kerner Company/Walt Disney Pictures Director: Sam Weisman * Cast: Emilio Estevez, Joshua Jackson * Locations: Los Angeles; Minneapolis “WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN” — Associate Producer Avnet‐Kerner Company/Touchstone Pictures Director: Luis Mandoki * Cast: Meg Ryan, Andy Garcia * Locations:
    [Show full text]
  • The Peel Deal / Movie Reviews
    PAGE 16 THE RETRIEVER WEEKLY FEATURES November 19, 1996 THE PEEL DEAL / MOVIE REVIEWS New on Video... Independence Day Is a Close Encounter of the Worst Kind Schwimmer Makes Some New Friends in The Pallbearer Jamie Peck Retriever Weekly Staff Writer Independence Day (* 1/2 out of four) Huge spaceships hover over important cities. Slithery aliens blow up national monuments. America gets together and launches a counter attack. What's not to like? As it turns out, a lot. Independence Day is one of the year's biggest File Photo overstuffed bores and very worst It's the end of the world as we know it when aliens attack United movies. States army camp in Independence Day. The movie is patterned like one that they're practically impossible to their $4 to see this movie? But it of those all-star 1970s disaster get interested in. all fits into the big picture, because flicks, and, at least, in its cast, it This is the kind of film where insult its viewers' intelligence is doesn't disappoint. It stars, to name someone punches out an alien after what Independence Day does best. a few, Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, seeing it for the first time, or WARN- We're supposed to root for the Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Judd ING! PLOT GIVEAWAY a virus is human characters here -- but John Doe / Touchstone Pictur Hirsch, Mary McDonnell, Robert downloaded from a laptop onto a they're so cardboard that you Mel Gibson hits the local airwaves to turn on his son's abductors in Ron Howard's Ransom.
    [Show full text]
  • The Gay Revolution and the Pink Flamingos Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis
    Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Jiří Vrbas The Gay Revolution and the Pink Flamingos Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD. 2016 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ………………………………………………. 2 “I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.” (John Waters) Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD, for his help and for making me believe in this topic. I would also like to thank him and Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, BA, alike for their Gay Studies course. Knowledge acquired in their class provided the necessary background for this analysis. 3 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5 I. Being Gay in the Past .................................................................................................. 7 I.1. 18th Century Europe ................................................................................................ 7 I.2. The Early 20th Century USA .................................................................................. 9 I.3. The 1950s USA .................................................................................................... 14 II. Early Gay Rights Activism ....................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • John Waters (Writer/Director)
    John Waters (Writer/Director) Born in Baltimore, MD in 1946, John Waters was drawn to movies at an early age, particularly exploitation movies with lurid ad campaigns. He subscribed to Variety at the age of twelve, absorbing the magazine's factual information and its lexicon of insider lingo. This early education would prove useful as the future director began his career giving puppet shows for children's birthday parties. As a teen-ager, Waters began making 8-mm underground movies influenced by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Using Baltimore, which he fondly dubbed the "Hairdo Capitol of the World," as the setting for all his films, Waters assembled a cast of ensemble players, mostly native Baltimoreans and friends of long standing: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and Edith Massey. Waters also established lasting relationships with key production people, such as production designer Vincent Peranio, costume designer Van Smith, and casting director Pat Moran, helping to give his films that trademark Waters "look." Waters made his first film, an 8-mm short, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket in 1964, starring Mary Vivian Pearce. Waters followed with Roman Candles in 1966, the first of his films to star Divine and Mink Stole. In 1967, he made his first 16-mm film with Eat Your Makeup, the story of a deranged governess and her lover who kidnap fashion models and force them to model themselves to death. Mondo Trasho, Waters' first feature length film, was completed in 1969 despite the fact that the production ground to a halt when the director and two actors were arrested for "participating in a misdemeanor, to wit: indecent exposure." In 1970, Waters completed what he described as his first "celluloid atrocity," Multiple Maniacs.
    [Show full text]
  • Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies
    The Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT) https://jadt.commons.gc.cuny.edu "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies by Ryan Donovan The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 3 (Spring 2019) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center “We need a young girl who is—what shall we say—chubby/fat/big. But a healthy version of a fat girl, because she is dancing her ass off for two hours.” —Bernard Telsey, casting director[1] Introduction Casting director Craig Burns worked on Broadway’s Hairspray (2002) from its first workshops, and it remains his favorite production because of the opportunity to cast people who “weren’t normally considered for leads in a show, and now all of a sudden these girls are getting a chance because we need a fat girl. There was so much joy in that.”[2] Katrina Rose Dideriksen was one such woman given the chance to play Hairspray’s Tracy Turnblad on Broadway and on tour. She remembered feeling excited to play Tracy because she “is the ingénue, she wins the guy, she saves the day . she’s funny and she’s lovable and all those things, but in this very real-girl way.” Dideriksen then noticed a “weight clause” in her contract: “It was really this underlying pinch to realize that subconsciously I was being told I was still wrong for it, that there was something I had to fix. I don’t think they realized how hurtful, and how anti-Hairspray it really was for them to be like, ‘Lose 20 pounds.’”[3] Apart from a few roles (including Tracy), fat women are almost never cast in roles beyond the comedic sidekick or best friend in commercial theatre.
    [Show full text]
  • 'I'm SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL I CAN't STAND IT MYSELF': Female Trouble, Glamorous Abjection, and Divine's Transgressive Pe
    CUJAH MENU ‘I’M SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL I CAN’T STAND IT MYSELF’: Female Trouble, Glamorous Abjection, and Divine’s Transgressive Performance Paisley V. Sim Emerging from the economically depressed and culturally barren suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland in the early 1960s, director John Waters realizes flms that bridge a fascination with high and low culture – delving into the putrid realities of trash. Beginning with short experimental flms Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles (1966), and Eat Your Makeup (1968), the early flms of John Waters showcase the licentious, violent, debased and erotic imagination of a small community of self-identifed degenerates – the Dreamlanders. Working with a nominal budget and resources, Waters wrote, directed and produced flms to expose the fetid underbelly of abject American identities. His style came into full force in the early 1970s with his ‘Trash Trio’: Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), and Female Trouble (1974). At the heart of Waters’ cinematic achievements was his creation, muse, and star: Divine.1 Divine was “’created’ in the late sixties – by the King of Sleaze John Waters and Ugly-Expert [makeup artist] Van Smith – as the epitome of excess and vulgari- ty”2. Early performances presented audiences with a “vividly intricate web of shame, defance, abjection, trauma, glamour, and divinity that is responsible for the profoundly moving quality of Divine as a persona.”3 This persona and the garish aesthetic cultivated by Van Smith aforded Waters an ideal performative vehicle to explore a world of trash. Despite being met with a mix of critical condemnation and aversion which relegated these flms to the extreme periph- ery of the art world, this trio of flms laid the foundation for the cinematic body of work Waters went on to fesh out in the coming four decades.
    [Show full text]
  • Pink Flamingoes and the Culture of Trash
    --�·. : ··-·,----., ,•' ! \··I Sleaze queen Divine in Pink Flamingos. 808 THE TERRAINOF THE UNSPEAKABLE Pink Flamingos and the culture of trash DARREN TOFTS To me, bad rasre is whar enrertainmenc is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. John Waters 1 Theorizing crash culture presents cultural studies with some awk­ ward problems. The issue is not just che way crash culture rends co posicion irs audience with respect co gender and sexual policies. Ir is also chat rhe rerm is used both descriptively and normatively: ir designates a range of subcultural practices, but it also suggests a moral accirude , a cultural discourse on what is acceptable as representation - a discourse char emerged in overt confrontation wirh the guardians of high culture. In recent years the rerm has been used in rhe context of a continuing and increasingly sophisticated interest in che obscene, and also of a sustained intellectual inquiry inco rhe dynamics of populism and mass culture, and the conditions of production and consumption in post-industrial society. Within cultural studies there has been a rigorous critique of the ways in which crash culture has come co be understood, how it is used and by whom, and the ambiguous policical force it exerts within the domain of popular culture generally. Philip Brophy has distinguished between che rerm crash- ('all maccer of refuse ... all the material lefr over') and its erstwhile synonym, junk ('all rhe material injected, invited, avowed, support­ ed'), in cerms of their relation co the process of consumption (culture). Brophy's collaborative 'Trash and Junk Culture' exhibi­ tion of 19892 skilfully represented the extensive and hierarchical nature of crash culture, from the overtly visible (exploitation advertising, video nascies, pornograph�·) to che sublim�nal (body­ building and wresding magazines).
    [Show full text]
  • Automat Pictures “I Am Divine” March 15, 2013 Transcribed By: Word of Mouth (Rl)
    AUTOMAT PICTURES “I AM DIVINE” MARCH 15, 2013 TRANSCRIBED BY: WORD OF MOUTH (RL) [FILM CLIP] [01:00:06] VOICEOVER : It was a Hollywood gala in Charm City tonight as Baltimore’s politicians, movie stars and counter culture turned out en masse for world premiere of John Waters’ latest film Hairspray. [01:00:29] MINK STOLE : It was a very exciting night. There was a real charge in the air. People were liking the movie. [01:00:36] MALE : We were so excited about it and thrilled that we had accomplished it. DENNIS DERMODY : We thought this is it. This is the one that Divine has been working towards. MINK STOLE : He was there, he looked wonderful and he was so proud. [FILM CLIP] I Am Divine - 2 NEWS REPORTER : In one sentence, can you sum up this movie experience? DIVINE : This is Divine, yeah. It’s great. It’s the greatest night for me in a long time. I love every minute of it. [01:01:04] DENNIS DERMODY : Everybody was really high on it, and they thought this could open doors for John to make movies, for Divine. JOHN WATERS : After those years of struggling, all those years of working, all the years of horrible reviews and really mean stuff, to finally be accepted, he certainly would’ve wanted to continue what was just starting. MALE : He was such a gregarious big, healthy, pink piece of flesh, you just figured he’d go on forever. [01:01:34] SHOW OPENING TITLES I Am Divine - 3 [FILM CLIP] DIVINE : People like to laugh at sex.
    [Show full text]
  • Missing Them... "It’S Not Already Covered Under FMLA?!”
    FMLA By Karla Helbert MISSing them... "It’s not already covered under FMLA?!” I have yet to talk to a person about my Table of Contents upcoming trip to D.C. who has not re- sponded in a similar way. Expressions of · FMLA surprise, disbelief, and confusion have · News been the norm. These reactions are part · Kindness Project & Walks of my motivation for travelling to our nation's capital this February 2013 with · Birth & Death Days MISS CEO, Barry Kluger and Kelly Farley. · Donors These two bereaved fathers are the orig- inators of the Farley-Kluger Initiative to · Research amend the current Family Medical · Need for Sensitivity Leave Act (widely known as FMLA) to in- clude the death of a child as a covered · Poetry condition for taking the unpaid leave guaranteed by the Act. The current FM- LA allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (or to substitute accrued paid leave) with the security of knowing their jobs are protected when they return. The Act, created in 1993 as a major part of President Bill Clinton's first term agenda, allows leave to be taken in the event of the Submission Guidelines birth of a child, adoption, becoming a foster parent, to care for a spouse, son, daughter or a parent with a serious health condition, if the employee Want to contribute an article, poetry, him or herself has a serious health condition, and in the event that the news, artwork, or other content for need arises due to a spouse's, son's or daughter's active military duty.
    [Show full text]