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Suzanne Joe Kai 's documentary on S.F. 's famed music journalist screens at Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Film Festival returns for its 44th season Oct. 7-17 with online and in-theater screenings of independent and world cinema, including "Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres," a standout documentary about a living legend in journalism that will carry particular resonance for Bay Area fans of music and cultural lore.
Fong-Torres, 76, who was born in Alameda to immigrants from China, spent much of his youth working at his family's Chinese restaurant in Oakland's Chinatown before he developed a knack for journalism at San Francisco State and became the first music editor at Rolling Stone magazine in the late '60s.
But it was during his boyhood that Fong-Torres developed a love for rock and roll - largely stimulated and quenched by the family's radio.
"Overall, I found radio and music entertaining as well as a lifeline to the American mainstream at a time when I was pretty much trapped in a Chinese family restaurant, along with my sister, Shirley, and brothers, Barry and Burton," Fong-Torres recounted. "Our escape was homework, reading and the radio. And that stuck with me."
Fong-Torres' love of radio endured well after his youth, making a lasting impression upon him that echoed into a frank writing style at Rolling Stone as well as a few stints in radio itself.
"I was always a fan of comedy, and so Top 40 had DJs who were jocular, or dis-jocular, and a couple of them came not as role models as much as friendly advisers," Fong-Torres said. "Gary Owens, who went on to 'Laugh-In' in Los Angeles, started in Oakland at KEWB. I lucked into a part-time job there when I was in high school, and he was there during a shift. We became friends, he left me some nice advice and we stayed friends through his entire life."
Fong-Torres also pointed to Russ "The Moose" Syracuse on KYA, another fixture of Bay Area radio, as an influence. "He did a free-form thing on Top 40 radio and got away with it and gave me inspiration."
Although the America of his youth was segregated with an animus toward people...