In fact it was his cousin Bobby, and it turns out that the 62-year-old priest, head of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem, has been in some kind of trouble with the police more times than he can remember. In celebration of his cousin's efforts to promote social justice and racial equality, Demme, director of the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs, has made Cousin Bobby, a new documentary that was, for him, a labor of love.
When Demme, 48, was growing up on New York's Long Island, he idolized his older cousin, a St. Lawrence University football star. "He was the Tom Cruise of the family," says Demme. But the Demme and Castle clans drifted apart—until 1986, when Bobby, newly arrived in New York City, decided to track his cousins down. He called Robert Demme, Jonathan's father, who put him in touch with his cousins, Rick, a dude-ranch owner; Peter, a carpenter; and Jonathan (who lives in Nyack, N.Y., with wife Joanne Howard, an artist, daughter Ramona, 4, and son Brooklyn, 2). Castle knew Demme was a filmmaker but had never seen one of his movies.
At the same time, Demme, fresh from making Married to the Mob, was casting about for a documentary subject—one that would, as he says, "put a human face on the parts of [New York City] we see only on TV in a violent news bite." When Castle called, Demme went up to West 126th Street in Manhattan, where St. Mary's, small and beautiful, sits between two housing projects near the elevated train tracks. Says Demme: "I saw this guy who was just so passionate about the vital need for social change—a minister trying to accomplish things against incredible odds in this neighborhood." Demme had found his subject. For his part, Castle "was a little hesitant," he admits. "Why make a movie about me?" But he agreed, and the cousins began filming in May 1989, continuing whenever Demme could take a break from Lambs (in which Castle has a tiny walk-on role leaving a plane at the end of the film).
In the film, which Demme calls the "most overproduced home movie in the history of home movies," Jonathan follows the tireless Bobby on his daily rounds, asking questions and drawing out stories as Castle pounds away at the simple message that America needs to bridge the gap between rich and poor, white and black. "The slogan of [this] community goes, No justice, no peace," Castle says. "The people that are comfortable cannot expect to be comfortable at the expense of everyone else's suffering." Such rhetoric is familiar to anyone, like Demme, who came of age in the '60s, but cousin Bobby made it sound fresh and real. "Suddenly he does not seem anachronistic to me anymore," says Demme. "His voice seems vital, not only in this neighborhood but on a very real national level."
Yet Castle expends most of his energy at the local level, effecting change one repaired pothole at a time in St. Mary's predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood. He started a health center for AIDS patients across the street from St. Mary's, and a program to deliver mail to the homeless. "When any Hispanic people have any trouble, he is present," says Rafaela Moquete, the priest in charge of St. Mary's Latino parishioners. "He's there for the entire congregation." Says Castle: "I hope this movie is a piece of the struggle. I hope it speaks to white people. A lot of good white people who are sitting on the sidelines need to get involved."
Castle's involvement began during his childhood in Jersey City. The pastor of his family's church "sold me a great bill of goods, that I could be a [football] coach and still be a priest," he says. After college he went on to Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, graduating in 1955. In 1960 he took a job at St. John's Church in a Jersey City neighborhood that had a growing black population. He became active in the civil rights movement and was first arrested in 1963, when he and several members of the Congress of Racial Equality protested the hiring policy at a White Castle restaurant. (Bobby says the headline in the local paper read WHITE CASTLE ARRESTED AT WHITE CASTLE.) "He is definitely a legend in Jersey City," says Breeze Barrow, now a Black Panther there.
Castle stepped down from St. John's in 1969 to allow a black priest to fill his spot and, unable to find another job, moved his family—first wife Nancy and their four children—to Vermont, where he coached high school football, was part-time rector of two churches and helped run a general store. (He and Nancy split up in 1985. In 1987 he married his second wife, Kate, 55, an artist.) He moved to New York City in 1985, working with the mentally-ill homeless until he heard about the opening at St. Mary's six years ago. Charles Kelly, a member of St. Mary's who helps out in the church's soup kitchen, says that Castle "is the kind of person who has to speak the truth, no matter what. We need to hear that. Sometimes we can get complacent. Sometimes we can get used to the abandoned buildings."
Cousin Bobby, playing in one New York City theater (The New York Times called it "a moving and fully formed portrait") and on public television in Spain, has set Castle up for some ribbing in the neighborhood. He says he is retiring from the movies, but Demme isn't so sure. "I'd like his work to be part of my work," says the filmmaker (now making two documentaries about Haiti) of his long-lost cousin and newfound friend. After spending time with Castle, Demme says, "I'm a believer in small victories. For many years I sat on the sidelines complaining about things. [Now] I would rather channel that energy into tiny attempts to help things here and there. I agree with Cousin Bobby. I don't think we should give up."
ELIZABETH GLEICK
BRYAN ALEXANDER in New York City
- Contributors:
- Bryan Alexander.
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