Following
Directed by	Christopher Nolan
Produced by	Emma Thomas Jeremy Theobald Peter Broderick
Written by	Christopher Nolan
Starring	Jeremy Theobald Alex Haw Lucy Russell John Nolan
Music by	David Julyan
Cinematography	Christopher Nolan
Editing by	Gareth Heal Christopher Nolan
Studio	Syncopy Films Next Wave Films
Distributed by	Zeitgeist Films (US) Momentum Pictures (UK)
Release date(s)	12 September 1998 (Toronto International Film Festival) 2 April 1999 (New York City) 5 November 1999 (UK)
Running time	69 min (1:09)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$6,000[1]
Box office	$48,482

Following is a 1998 British neo-noir film written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It tells the story of a young man who follows strangers around the streets of London and is drawn into a criminal underworld when he fails to keep his distance.

His debut film, it was designed to be as inexpensive as possible to make: scenes were heavily rehearsed so that just one or two takes were needed, thus economising on 16 mm film stock, the production's greatest expense, and for which Nolan was paying from his salary. Without expensive professional lighting equipment, Nolan mostly used available light. Apart from providing the script and direction, Nolan also did the photography, editing and production himself. The film has an unusual, non-linear plot structure which has been a feature in several of Nolan's films.

Synopsis[link]

A struggling, unemployed young writer (credited as "The Young Man") takes to following strangers around the streets of London, ostensibly to find inspiration for his first novel. Initially, he sets strict rules for himself regarding whom he should follow and for how long, but soon discards them as he focuses on a well-groomed, handsome man in a dark suit. The man in the suit, having noticed he is being followed, quickly confronts the Young Man and introduces himself as "Cobb". Cobb reveals that he is a serial burglar and invites The Young Man to accompany him on various burglaries. The material gains from these crimes seem to be of secondary importance to Cobb, who takes pleasure in rifling through the personal items in his targets' flats, and doing things such as drinking their wine. He explains that his true passion is using the shock of robbery and violation of property to make his victims re-examine their lives. He sums up his attitude thus: "You take it away, and show them what they had."

The young man is thrilled by Cobb's lifestyle. He attempts break-ins of his own, as Cobb encourages and guides him. At Cobb's suggestion, he alters his appearance, cutting his hair short and wearing a dark suit. The young man assumes the name "Daniel Lloyd" based on the credit card Cobb gives to him and begins to pursue a relationship with a blonde woman whose flat he and Cobb burglarized. The blonde turns out to be the girlfriend of a small-time gangster (known only as the "Bald Guy") whom she broke up with after he murdered a man in her flat. Soon, the blonde confides that the Bald Guy is blackmailing her with incriminating photographs. The Young Man breaks into the Bald Guy's safe, but is caught in the act by an unidentified man. The Young Man bludgeons the man with a claw hammer and flees with the Bald Guy's money and photos. Upon returning to his flat, he finds that the photos are innocuous modeling shots.

Confronting the blonde, the Young Man learns that she and Cobb have been working together to manipulate him into mimicking Cobb's burglary methods. Cobb had recently discovered a murdered woman's body during one of his burglaries, and is attempting to deflect suspicion from himself by making it appear as though multiple burglars share his MO.

The Young Man leaves to turn himself in to the police. The blonde reports her success to Cobb, who then reveals that he actually works for the Bald Guy. The story about the murdered woman was part of a plot to deceive both the blonde and the Young Man: The blonde has been blackmailing the Bald Guy with evidence from the murder he committed in her flat, and he wants her murdered in such a way that it cannot be connected to him. Cobb bludgeons the blonde to death with the same claw hammer that the Young Man used during the burglary of the Bald Guy's safe and leaves it at the scene. The police, checking out the Young Man's story, find the blonde murdered and the claw hammer with his finger prints on it. The Young Man is implicated for all of Cobb's crimes, along with the murder of the blonde woman. Meanwhile, Cobb vanishes into a crowd.

Cast[link]

• Jeremy Theobald as The Young Man
• Alex Haw as Cobb
• Lucy Russell as The Blonde
• John Nolan as The Policeman
• Dick Bradsell as The Bald Guy
• Gillian El-Kadi as Home Owner
• Jennifer Angel as Waitress
• Nicolas Carlotti as Barman
• Darren Ormandy as Accountant
• Guy Greenway as Heavy #1
• Tassos Stevens as Heavy #2
• Tristan Martin as Man at Bar
• Rebecca James as Woman at Bar
• Paul Mason as Home Owner's Friend
• David Bovill as Home Owner's Husband

Production[link]

Following was written, directed, filmed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan.^[2] It was filmed in London, on black-and-white 16mm film stock. Nolan used a non-linear plot structure for his movie, a device he again used in Memento, Batman Begins and The Prestige. This type of storytelling, he says, reflected the audience's inherent uncertainty about characters in film noir:

Following was written and planned to be as inexpensive to produce as possible, but Nolan has described the production of Following as "extreme", even for a low-budget shoot.^[2] With little money, limited equipment, and a cast and crew who were all in full-time employment on weekdays, the production took a full year to complete.^[2]

To conserve expensive film stock, every scene in the film was rehearsed extensively to ensure that the first or second take could be used in the final edit.^[2] Filming took place on Saturdays for three or four months, Nolan shot about fifteen minutes of footage each day. This time frame also moderated the cost of film-stock and allowed him to pay for it out of his salary.^[3] For the most part, Nolan filmed without professional film lighting equipment, largely employing available light. This was made easier by the decision to use 16 mm black and white film.^[3] He also used the homes of his friends and family as locations.^[2]

Reception[link]

Following received generally positive reviews. Its aggregate review score from Rottentomatoes.com is 76%.^[4]

Los Angeles Times reviewer Kevin Thomas was particularly impressed with the film, saying that it was a "taut and ingenious neo-noir" and that "as a psychological mystery it plays persuasively if not profoundly. Nolan relishes the sheer nastiness he keeps stirred up, unabated for 70 minutes."^[5] TV Guide called it "short, sharp and tough as nails",^[6] praising its fast-paced storytelling and 'tricky, triple-tiered flashback structure'.^[6] David Thompson of Sight and Sound commented that "Nolan shows a natural talent for a fluent handheld aesthetic."^[7]

However, Tony Rayns felt that the film's climax was uninspired, saying that "the generic pay off is a little disappointing after the edgy, character based scenes of exposition".^[8] Empire's Trevor Lewis questioned the skill of the film's inexperienced cast, saying that they "lack the dramatic ballast to compensate for [Nolan's] erratic plot elisions."^[9] In contrast, David Thompson was of the opinion that the "unfamiliar cast acquit themselves well in a simple naturalistic style."^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Following at the Internet Movie Database
• Following at AllRovi

James Purefoy
Purefoy as Mark Antony on the set of Rome
Born	James Brian Mark Purefoy (1964-06-03) 3 June 1964 (age 48) Taunton, Somerset, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1990–present
Spouse	Holly Aird (1996–2002)

James Brian Mark Purefoy^[1] (born 3 June 1964) is an English actor best known for portraying Mark Antony in the HBO series Rome.

Early life and work[link]

Purefoy was born in Taunton, Somerset.^[2] He was a boarder at Sherborne School, Sherborne, Dorset which he left with only one O-level. Later he went to night school and got 11 more, then took his A-levels.^[3] He worked at Yeovil District Hospital as a porter before studying acting at the British drama school the Central School of Speech and Drama, while trying to sell copies of the Socialist Worker in his spare time.^[3]

Career[link]

Purefoy's early professional roles included Romeo in Romeo and Juliet in Leatherhead, Walter in Mary Morgan at the Riverside Studios and Alan Strang in Equus on tour.

The RSC and other stage work[link]

Purefoy subsequently joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1988 and appeared in The Constant Couple, Macbeth, The Tempest, The Man Who Came to Dinner (Gene Saks, Barbican) and King Lear as Edgar.

Elsewhere, he has also appeared as Laertes in Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic (1991) Brian in William Gaminara's Back Up the Hearse and Let them Sniff the Flowers at the Hampstead Theatre (1992), Roland Maule in Noël Coward's Present Laughter at the Globe Theatre (1993), Biff in Death of a Salesman, alongside Ken Stott and Jude Law, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (1994), Tony in The Servant at the Birmingham Rep (1995). He returned to the RSC for Simon Callow's stage adaptation of the film classic, Les enfants du paradis at the Barbican. He also played Hugh de Morville in Paul Corcoran's Four Nights in Knaresborough at the Tricycle Theatre, (1999) and Loveless in Trevor Nunn's production of The Relapse at the National Theatre in 2001.

Between March and June 2011 he starred as Peter in Trevor Nunn's production of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, alongside Sheridan Smith and Sienna Miller, as part of the playwright Terence Rattigan's centenary year celebrations.^[4]

Film and television[link]

Purefoy at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival

He played James McCarthy, a young man accused of murdering his father, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," in Granada's The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. One of his notable roles was as Nicholas Jenkins in the eight-part miniseries A Dance to the Music of Time for Channel 4 in 1997. He played Edward, the Black Prince in the film A Knight's Tale, Rawdon Crawley in Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon, and Tom Bertram in the 1999 production of Mansfield Park.

He has played major roles in several television costume dramas, including Sharpe's Sword, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Prince and the Pauper, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Blackbeard: Terror at Sea, Beau Brummell: This Charming Man, The Tide of Life, Camelot and Rome.

[edit] Rome

He played Mark Antony in the HBO/BBC original television series, Rome. At the time there were rumours that at least one nude body in the show had been digitally enhanced. When his Wikipedia entry, which at that time referred to the rumours, was brought up in an interview with Alastair McKay, published in the January 2007 issue of Out magazine, Purefoy said, "I won't say whose it was, but there was a penis in the series that may have been slightly enhanced. But it wasn't mine. Mine's all mine."^[5]

[edit] The Philanthropist

He starred as Teddy Rist in the summer television series, The Philanthropist, which aired on NBC beginning on June 2009. His character is a billionaire playboy who decides to use his wealth and power to help others in need.

Lost roles[link]

Purefoy was screen tested for the role of James Bond in 1995 for GoldenEye,^[2] but ultimately lost the role to Pierce Brosnan. Throughout 2004 and 2005 Purefoy's name was rumoured as a possible candidate to replace Brosnan as agent 007 in future James Bond films.

Originally Purefoy was cast as V in V for Vendetta, but left six weeks into filming. Parts of the film contain (dubbed) scenes of Purefoy. Speculation suggested that his departure was due to an opportunity to play James Bond in the 2006 film Casino Royale.^[6] However, this news was proven false when Daniel Craig was announced as the new James Bond. In the commentary track of the A Knight's Tale special edition DVD, director Brian Helgeland stated his opinion that Purefoy would be the perfect choice to play the "next" James Bond, well before Purefoy was being considered for the Casino Royale role.

Producer William J. MacDonald announced that James Purefoy would play Simon Templar in a new TV series of The Saint. The new series was scheduled to start shooting in Berlin and Australia in April 2008.^[7] However, production ultimately did not occur and in August Purefoy was reported as negotiating with NBC to star in another series,^[8] The Philanthropist.

Personal life[link]

Purefoy had an eleven-year relationship with actress Fay Ripley, after the two met at Brooklands Technical College in Weybridge, Surrey. Afterwards, Purefoy had a relationship with actress Holly Aird from 1996 to 2002. They had a son together, Joseph, who was born in 1997. He has been in a relationship with the art historian and television producer Jessica Adams since 2004. He is a supporter of Yeovil Town.^[9]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James Purefoy

• James Purefoy at the Internet Movie Database
• Home of the incomparable Mr. James Purefoy
• James Purefoy as Blackbeard
• James Purefoy as Beau Brummell
• Interview with James Purefoy, BBC Somerset, September 2005
• Interview with James Purefoy, BBC Somerset, January 2006
• Interview with James Purefoy, BBC Somerset, February 2007
• Interview in The Guardian, 6 January 2007
• Men's Vogue profile

Kevin Bacon
Bacon at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, on January 23, 2010.
Born	Kevin Norwood Bacon (1958-07-08) July 8, 1958 (age 53) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1978–present
Spouse	Kyra Sedgwick (1988–present; 2 children)
Website
http://www.baconbros.com/

Kevin Norwood Bacon^[1] (born July 8, 1958) is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Hollow Man, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Friday the 13th, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, and X-Men: First Class.

Bacon has won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, was nominated for an Emmy Award,^[2] and was named by The Guardian as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.^[3]

In 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[2]

Early life[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (December 2011)

Bacon, one of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes; 1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon (May 2, 1910 – October 14, 2005), was a well-respected architect and a prominent Philadelphian who had been Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for many years. At 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full scholarship to and attended the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University, a state-funded five-week arts program where he studied Theatre under Dr. Glory Van Scott, which helped solidify Bacon's passion for the arts.

Acting career[link]

Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York, where he appeared in a production at the Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor."^[4]

Bacon's debut in the fraternity comedy Animal House in 1978 did not lead to the fame for which he had hoped,^{[citation needed]} and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theater. He briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow (1979) and The Guiding Light (1980–81) in New York. He refused an offer of a television series based on Animal House to be filmed in California in order to remain close to the New York stage^{[citation needed]} . Some of his early stage work included Getting Out performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux which he did at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season.

In 1982, he won an Obie Award for his role in Forty Deuce, and soon after made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys, with then-unknowns Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. However, it was not until he portrayed Timothy Fenwick that same year in Barry Levinson's Diner – costarring Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly and Ellen Barkin – that he made an indelible impression on film critics and moviegoers alike.^{[citation needed]}

Bacon in 2007

Bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in Diner, Bacon starred in the 1984 box-office smash Footloose. Richard Corliss of TIME likened Footloose to the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause and the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals, commenting that the film includes "motifs on book burning, mid-life crisis, AWOL parents, fatal car crashes, drug enforcement, and Bible Belt vigilantism."^[5] To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a high school as a transfer student named "Ren McCormick" and studied teenagers before leaving in the middle of the day.^{[citation needed]} Bacon did earn strong reviews for Footloose,^[6] and he appeared on the cover of People magazine soon after its release.

Bacon's critical and box-office success lead to a period of typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in Diner and Footloose. Bacon would have difficulty shaking this on-screen image. For the next several years he chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own estimation, a career slump. In 1988, he starred in John Hughes' comedy She's Having a Baby and the following year he was in another comedy called The Big Picture.

In 1990, Bacon had two successful roles. He played a character who saved his town from under-the-earth "graboid" monsters in the comedy/horror film Tremors – a role that People found him "far too accomplished"^{[citation needed]} to play – and portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners.

Bacon's next project was to star opposite Elizabeth Perkins in He Said, She Said. Despite lukewarm reviews and low audience turnout, He Said, She Said was illuminating for Bacon. Required to play a character with sexist attitudes, he admitted that the role was not that large a stretch for him.

By 1991, Bacon began to give up the idea of playing leading men in big-budget films and to remake himself as a character actor. "The only way I was going to be able to work on 'A' projects with really 'A' directors was if I wasn't the guy who was starring", he confided to The New York Times writer Trip Gabriel. "You can't afford to set up a $40 million movie if you don't have your star."^[7]

He performed that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK. He went on to play a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men. Later that year he returned to the theater to play in Spike Heels, directed by Michael Greif.

Bacon receiving a Merit Award in April 2010

In 1994, Bacon earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in The River Wild opposite Meryl Streep. He described the film to Chase in Cosmopolitan as a "grueling shoot," in which "every one of us fell out of the boat at one point or another and had to be saved."

His next film, Murder in the First, earned him the Broadcast Film Critic's Association Award in 1995, the same year that he starred in the blockbuster hit Apollo 13.

Bacon reverted to his trademark dark role once again in Sleepers in 1996. This role was in stark contrast to his appearance in the lighthearted romantic comedy, Picture Perfect the following year. Bacon again resurrected his oddball mystique that year as a mentally-challenged houseguest in Digging to China, and as a disc jockey corrupted by payola in Telling Lies in America. As the executive producer of 1998's Wild Things, Bacon reserved a supporting role for himself, and went on to star in Stir of Echoes (directed by David Koepp) in 1999, and in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man in 2000.

Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard depict a ménage à trois in their film, Where the Truth Lies. Bacon and director Atom Egoyan have condemned the MPAA ratings board decision to give the film their "NC-17" rating over the preferable "R". Bacon decried the decision, commenting: "I don't get it, when I see films (that) are extremely violent, extremely objectionable sometimes in terms of the roles that women play, slide by with an R, no problem, because the people happen to have more of their clothes on."^[8] Bacon was again acclaimed for a dark starring role playing an offending pedophile on parole in the 2004 film The Woodsman; he was nominated best actor receiving the Independent Spirit Award.

Bacon speaking before a premiere of Taking Chance in February 2009

He appeared in the HBO Films production of Taking Chance, a film based on a story of the same name written by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, an American 'Desert Storm' war veteran. The film premiered on HBO on February 21, 2009. Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie for his role.

On July 15, 2010, it was confirmed that Bacon would appear in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class.^[9] His character was mutant villain Sebastian Shaw.^[10]

In March 2012, Bacon was featured in a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, '8' — a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage — as Attorney Charles J. Cooper.^[11] The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.^[12][13]

Personal life[link]

Bacon has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988; they met on the set of the PBS version of Lanford Wilson's play Lemon Sky. He has said "The time I was hitting what I considered to be bottom was also the time I met my wife, our kids were born, good things were happening. And I was able to keep supporting myself; that always gave me strength."^[4]

Bacon and Sedgwick have starred together in Pyrates, Murder in the First, The Woodsman, and Loverboy. They have two children, Travis Sedgwick Bacon (born June 23, 1989 in Los Angeles, California) and Sosie Ruth Bacon (born March 15, 1992). The family resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Bacon has spoken out for the separation of church and state,^[14][15] and told The Times of London in 2005 that he did not "believe in God."^[16] However, he has also said that he is not anti-religion.^[17]

Bacon and Sedgwick appeared in will.i.am's video "It's a New Day", which was released following Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win.

Bacon and Sedgwick lost an undisclosed amount of money in the Ponzi scheme of infamous fraudulent investor Bernard Madoff.^[18][19]

Bacon and Sedgwick learned in 2011 via their appearance on the PBS TV show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates that he and Sedgwick are 10th cousins, once removed.^[20]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon[link]

Bacon is the subject of the trivia game titled Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, based on the idea that, due to his prolific screen career covering a diverse range of genres, any Hollywood actor can be linked to another in a handful of steps based on their associations with Bacon. The name of the game derives from the idea of six degrees of separation.

Though he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the charitable initiative SixDegrees.org, a social networking site intended to link people and charities to each other.^[21]

The measure of proximity to Bacon has been mathematically formalized as the Bacon Index and can be referenced at websites including Oracle Of Bacon which is in turn based upon Internet Movie Database data.

Music[link]

Kevin formed a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. The duo has released six albums.

Filmography[link]

Films[link]

Television[link]

Directing:

• The Closer (2006) (Episode: Serving the King: Part 2)
• The Closer (2007) (Episode: Blindsided)
• The Closer (2008) (Episode: Sudden Death)
• The Closer (2009) (Episode: Waivers of Extradition)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kevin Bacon

• Kevin Bacon at the Internet Movie Database
• Kevin Bacon at the Internet Broadway Database
• Kevin Bacon at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Kevin Bacon at AllRovi
• Works by or about Kevin Bacon in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Oracle of Bacon

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

Joe "Bebop" Carroll (November 25, 1919–February 1, 1981) was a jazz vocalist, known primarily for his work with Dizzy Gillespie between 1949 and 1953. His collaborations with Gillespie include the humorous songs "Swing Low Sweet Cadillac" and "Oo Bla Dee."

He was known for an upbeat, energetic comedic style, often employing scat singing or vocalese. Carroll recorded three albums under his own name in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the best-known, and only one to have been released on CD, is 1962's The Man With The Happy Sound.

The 1947 Tadd Dameron song "A Be Bop Carroll" (recorded by Fats Navarro) is a Christmas song with a punning reference to Carroll.

Selected discography[link]

• Joe Carroll with the Ray Bryant Trio: Joe Carroll (Epic, 1956)

With Dizzy Gillespie

• Dee Gee Days: The Savoy Sessions (Savoy, 1951-52 [1976])
• Pleyel Concert 1953 (Vogue, 1953)
• Carnegie Hall Concert (Verve, 1961)

This article about a jazz singer from the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Paul Jacob (born 1960) is an activist, organizer, and advocate for legislative term limits, initiative & veto referendum rights, and limited government in the United States. He writes a weekly column for Townhall.com and his short radio commentary feature, "Common Sense," is syndicated by the Citizens In Charge Foundation on over 120 radio stations around the U.S. He has held positions with the Libertarian Party (United States), U.S. Term Limits, Americans for Limited Government, the Citizens In Charge Foundation and the Sam Adams Alliance.

Political philosophy[link]

Because Jacob emphasizes institutional and procedural reforms—most notable being ballot initiative and referendum rights and legislative term limits--his libertarian philosophy appears more centrist than either Left-libertarian or rightist. Though often writing from a background of cultural conservatism, his frequent criticisms of what he regards as Republican Party "excesses" distances his writing from that of most other columnists usually defined as "on the right". Examples of Jacob's views can be read in his columns on Townhall.com, as well as in his "Common Sense" commentaries. Frequent targets of his commentary include Republicans known for their pork barrel spending, such as Senator Ted Stevens, and both Democrats and Republicans who support campaign spending regulations, such as Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain. Paul Jacob has repeatedly argued that the McCain-Feingold law, and all similar campaign finance reform measures, are clear violations of the First Amendment.

Draft resistance[link]

Jacob first came to political prominence in the early 1980s as a draft registration resister. His crusade against forced military service and for the all-volunteer army was featured in Rolling Stone magazine.^[1] In 1985, after being convicted of violating the Selective Service Act, he served five and a half months in federal prison, longer than any American draft resister since the Vietnam War. During the trial, Congressman Ron Paul testified on his behalf.^[2]

Jacob's argument against the draft can be found in his brief essay titled "The Draft is Slavery,"^[3] originally published as one of several "afterwords" to J. Neil Schulman's science fiction novel The Rainbow Cadenza.

Support for Legislative Term Limits[link]

Primarily known as a leader of the term limits movement, Jacob ran U.S. Term Limits, the nation's most active term limits lobby, from its inception in 1992 until 1999, becoming the movement's leading voice. Jacob helped citizens in 23 states place limits on their congressional delegations, prompting columnist Robert Novak to call him "the most hated man in Washington."^{[citation needed]} But on May 22, 1995, those state-imposed congressional term limits, encompassing nearly half the U.S. Congress, were struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton. Today, 15 state legislatures, 36 governors and thousands of local officials, including those in nine of the country's ten largest cities, are under term limits. Jacob held several positions with U.S. Term Limits (including national director, senior fellow, and president), until resigning his board membership in early 2007.

Rise in the Libertarian Party[link]

Jacob served on the National Committee of the Libertarian Party and then in 1987 and 1988 as the party's national director. In 1988, he worked to put Ron Paul on the ballot for president as a Libertarian, winning ballot access in 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam.

Citizens in Charge & Citizens in Charge Foundation[link]

In 2001, Jacob started Citizens In Charge, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group dedicated to protecting the voter initiative process where it exists and expanding it to more states and localities. Between 2002 and 2004, CIC worked closely with Let Minnesota Vote in an unsuccessful effort to bring statewide initiative & referendum to Minnesota. CIC provided much of the funding for voter issue education in the state’s 2002 legislative elections, through direct mail, television ads and radio spots. In those elections, five incumbent state senators were defeated by pro-initiative challengers, but the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party retained control of the state senate and continued to block a vote of the people on statewide initiative. CIC also led a 2004 lobbying effort against restrictions on the initiative in Florida, working with the Florida Initiative League and later with Hands Off Florida. In 2005, Citizens In Charge was instrumental in blocking a number of proposed legislative restrictions to the initiative process in Nevada. Jacob serves as president of the organization.

Jacob is also founder and president of the Citizens In Charge Foundation, which works to educate the public, opinion leaders, and elected officials on the initiative and referendum process. The Foundation currently produces his radio and internet commentary program Common Sense.

The Sam Adams Alliance[link]

Jacob was a senior advisor at the Sam Adams Alliance from 2007-2008. Paul acted as a spokesperson for Sam Adams, and the Alliance produced his daily Common Sense.

2007 Indictment in Oklahoma[link]

Ballot Initiative Petition Drive[link]

In 2005 and 2006, Jacob worked with an Oklahoma group, Oklahomans in Action, to place on the ballot an initiative, Stop Overspending, which is one of several measures run in different states known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TaBOR. Among the paid petitioners used were some that had come to Oklahoma from other states to work on the drive. On October 2, 2007, Jacob was formally indicted in Oklahoma on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the state on the matter of hiring out-of-state petitioners. Jacob claims the petition's organizers had sought, and received, approval for this from the Oklahoma Secretary of State.^[4] A conviction would have carried a maximum fine of $25,000, and the maximum jail sentence of ten years in prison. Jacob was indicted with two others in the case, and each pleaded not guilty.^[5] A website—FreePaulJacob.com—was put up in Jacob's defense.^[6]

Criticism of Indictment[link]

The indictment drew criticism from around the state and all over the country for being politically motivated. 2008 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader referred to the laws such as the one Jacob was charged with breaking as “Jim Crow laws,” adding, “We’ve seen this before against African Americans.^[7] The Wall Street Journal editorialized against the prosecution twice, calling it "bizarre"^[8][9], and Steve Forbes asked the question "Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?".^[10]

Law Struck Down and Charges Dropped[link]

On December 18, 2008 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the underlying Oklahoma law that barred out of state petition circulators, noting that it was in violation of the First Amendment .^[11] Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson appealed the decision on behalf of Secretary of State Susan Savage. On January 21, 2009 the Tenth Circuit court denied the state's appeal, effectively ending the case.^[12] The Attorney General's office dismissed the charges against Jacob and the other defendants, with Edmondson saying "The statute under which these defendants were charged has been declared unconstitutional, and the appellate process is complete...The statute is no longer enforceable."^[13] On January 22, 2009, Jacob released the following statement in response to the charges being dropped:^[14]

"Today is a great day for justice, for freedom of speech and the right to petition one’s government. It is a great day for Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson, and me—now known as the Oklahoma Three.

The charges brought against us by the attorney general have now been dismissed. They should never have been brought in the first place. We did not break the law and, as we all now know, the law itself is unconstitutional.

Our prosecution has sadly had a chilling effect on Oklahomans, who want to reform their government and to hold it accountable through the petition process. My goal throughout this ordeal has been to encourage Oklahomans and Americans everywhere not to let their rights be eroded through fear and intimidation. Today we have won a victory.

But the battle to protect citizen rights is far from over."

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Sam Adams Alliance
• Common Sense with Paul Jacob
• Citizens In Charge Foundation
• The Free Paul Jacob Website
• Paul Jacob, Townhall columnist
• Hero of the Day, column by Steve Stephens