French Kiss

"French Kiss" is a Cold War tale from France of birth, growth and death of a huge U.S. Air Force base as relived through the heretofore dormant memories and voices of both the occupier and the occupied. Tens of thousands of American GIs passed through Dèols-Châteauroux Air Station during the sixteen years that it was the largest U.S. Air Force supply base in Europe. Hundreds of hours of interviews and long forgotten photos provide for the first time a unique blend of voices seldom if ever heard. French citizens describe what it was like to have foreign troops roaming the streets of their city. The Americans recount what it was like to be viewed with initial distrust and suspicion, if not outright hatred, fueled by a local communist anti-American propaganda machine under the direct control of the Kremlin. When the end came and the base was padlocked, it was our reluctant friend and ally Charles de Gaulle who administered the coup de grâce and NATO vanished from France. Although "French Kiss" is uniquely a French and American story, this saga is also a microcosm of what was experienced by the 120 million American men and women who served in the military during the Cold War, 27 million of them overseas. Considering the suspicions, jealousies, bigotry, and crass opportunism inherent whenever one foreign power occupies another, "French Kiss" pieces together an improbable love story.

Steve Bassett was born, raised and educated in New Jersey, and although far removed during a career as a multiple award-winning journalist, he has always been proud of the sobriquet Jersey Guy. He has been legally blind for almost a decade but hasn't let this slow him down. Polish on his mother's side and Montenegrin on his father's, with grandparents who spoke little or no English, his early outlook was ethnic and suspicious. As a natural iconoclast, he joined the dwindling number of itinerant newsmen roaming the countryside in search of, well just about everything. Sadly, their breed has vanished into the digital ether. Bassett's targets were not selected simply by sticking pins in a map. There had to be a sense of the bizarre.First there was The Long Branch Daily Record on the New Jersey shore. Mobsters loved the place. It was one of their favorite watering holes. A mafia soldier was gunned down not far from the paper. Great fun for a cub reporter. Curiosity got the better of him with his next choice the Pekin Daily Times located in central Illinois. Now a respected newspaper, it had once been the official voice of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920's. Pekin had saved its bacon during the Depression by tacitly approving two time-honored money makers, prostitution and gambling, earning an eight-page spread in Life.Next it was the Salt Lake Tribune. The Pulitzer Prize winner was then, and still is, considered one of the best dailies west of the Rockies. Bassett's coverage of the invective laden contract talks between the United Mine Workers and the three copper mining giants led to his recruitment by the Associated Press. Bassett's series for the AP in Phoenix uncovered the widespread abuses inherent in the Government's Barcero program for Mexican contract workers. The series exposed working and housing conditions that transformed workers into virtual slave laborers forced to buy at company stores, live in squalid housing and pay illegally collected unemployment taxes that went into the pocket of their bosses. The series led to Bassett's promotion and transfer to the San Francisco bureau where as an Urban Affairs investigative reporter he covered the Black Panthers, anti-war protests, the radical takeover and closure of San Francisco State University, the deadly "People's Park" demonstrations at U.C. Berkeley, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Bassett's five-part series on the Wah Ching gained national attention by exposing the Chinese youth gang as the violent instrument of Chinatown's criminal bosses. Then came CBS television news in Los Angeles, where he rose through the ranks to become producer of KNXT's Evening News, the highest rated late-night news program in the nation's second-largest media market. After a four-year stint with KFMB-TV, the CBS station in San Diego, he returned to Los Angeles as the Executive Producer of Metromedia's KNXT's award-winning news program, Metro News. AWARDS: -Three Emmy Awards for his investigative documentaries.-The prestigious Medallion Award presented by the California Bar Association for "Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice." -Honored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as Executive Producer for Metro News, the top independent news program in 1979. Bassett currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico with his wife Darlene Chandler Bassett. Contact Steve on his website: stevebassettworld.com.