Ben Fong-Torres’ office bears all the markings of his life as a walking, talking rock ‘n’ roll encyclopedia. A wall of CDs stacked top to bottom, arranged alphabetically, stands adjacent to a wall of books. Scattered around are rock ephemera: vintage radio microphones, musical instruments, lanyards, framed records.

His corner work area opens up to a postcard-perfect view of San Francisco, from a high perch between Noe Valley and the Castro, but it’s the artifacts in his office that are truly impressive. Each reveals a link to the Bay Area. There’s framed Tower of Power album art with the famous Oakland Tribune tower (Fong-Torres was a Tribune paperboy). On another wall is a painting of the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, created by Grace Slick. Mingling with artists like Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and the Who is a long-haired Ben Fong-Torres. He didn’t attend, he insists, but appreciates that Slick included him anyway.

很明显，他作为作家，电台DJ，记者（包括作为编年史的作家和广播专栏作家的任期）和Lunar New Year Parade主持人的遗产。但是他辞去了这样一个事实，即他将永远与卡梅隆·克劳（Cameron Crowe）的半自传式电影有关。在其中，演员特里·陈（Terry Chen）扮演的方塔雷斯（Fong-Torres）是一位滚动的石音乐编辑，他在巡回演出中指导了一名15岁的记者骑shot弹枪。

在2000年的电影中，陈（Chen）用响亮的聚酯衬衫和头盔头发影响了一个令人愉悦的举止，并用“ Craaazy”打断了思想（Fong-Torres偶尔认为他偶尔会这样做，但不如电影所描绘的那么多）。他的全名在电影中多次说出，确保电影观众知道“本·本”的电话和重要性。方。托雷斯。”

“It is so strange that this one movie that was not a commercial success just continues on, because it still gets played on various cable channels and on airplanes,” Fong-Torres said.

But he has a chance to reclaim his true persona now that he’s the subject of a new documentary, “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres.” The film peels back the layers of a man who grew up in his parents’ restaurants in Oakland’s Chinatown and Hayward (and Texas, where his dad dragged him to open a restaurant in Amarillo) before heading across the Bay Bridge to attend San Francisco State University. He became city editor of the college newspaper, the Gater, and fell into the student countercultural movement before landing at Rolling Stone as its first music editor.

The film is directed, written and produced by Bay Area filmmaker and journalist Suzanne Kai, and will make its Northern California debut on Oct. 10 at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

Kai knew Fong-Torres back in the early 1970s. As a reporter at KRON-TV, she was part of a burgeoning Asian American media contingent that included David Louie, Gordon Lew, Christopher Chow and Fong-Torres. Later, she saw him hosting Q&As and community benefits, and speaking as an authority on music panels and in documentaries.

“I said, ‘Ben you’re in everyone else’s rock ‘n’ roll documentary; why don’t you have one?’ ” recalled Kai. “And he said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ ”

More than a standard rock ‘n’ roll biopic, “Like a Rolling Stone” serves as an Asian American immigration story. It follows Fong-Torres’ path from Oakland to San Francisco State to KSAN radio, where he worked the weekend DJ shift. It documents his journey to a series of small publications before landing at Rolling Stone, Parade magazine, radio trade publication Gavin, and his five-time Emmy-winning gig co-hosting KTVU’s Chinese New Year parade. It’s a story of a man finding and asserting his voice and identity through a unique intersection of radio, community, family and rock ‘n’ roll.

方托雷斯（Fong-Torres）仅11年就在滚石薪水上，但他的地标采访了Grateful Dead，Ray Charles，The Doors，Marvin Gaye，Stevie Wonder，Diane Keaton，Steve Martin，Elton，Elton John和其他人在名望的悬崖（通常是在坩埚中）。他在正确的时间在正确的位置，并且像面试官一样敏锐的观察者。他哄骗了他的臣民的脆弱性，帮助将出版物推动到1960年代后期和70年代必须阅读的状态。

方托雷斯（Fong-Torres）认为他的中国遗产和独特的姓氏，帮助与高素质的艺术家打破冰块，并认为当他手头出现在门口时，他们感觉到了亲属关系。

“When I met these people, we were suddenly bound by the fact that we were different,” he said. “They were performers, artists or a traveling band. So with me walking in, and the fact that I’m Asian, just adds to that otherness. I felt like there was definitely a bond due to my being what I am.”

Fong-Torres recalled the time Gaye offered him a joint. “I said, ‘Marvin, had I been from Time or Life magazine, would you have offered me a joint?’ He said, ‘No, I’d offer you a gimlet.’ ”

On the subject of drugs, Fong-Torres admits that during the mid-’60s he and his roommates smoked pot, especially when a new Beatles album came out. He tried acid once, he said. But despite easy access to mind-altering substances (remember that Hunter S. Thompson was a colleague), Fong-Torres wasn’t interested. He was focused on the editorial task at hand, and his colleagues, including Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, vouch for this as much in the film.

“When they said they were going to hang out at Jann and Jane’s, I knew what that meant,” Fong-Torres said, referring to after-work soirees. “I might go and hang out, but that didn’t mean I had to do much more than that.”

在音乐会和清醒的面试意味着他佤邦s a reliable witness to rock history in the making. And if a performer had an off night or the audience was losing interest, as the documentary shows happened with George Harrison, he’d call it out.

But his honesty and earnestness earned him respect. As Rolling Stone ascended to the status of a music industry bible, Fong-Torres’ words carried the weight of a prophet’s.

“Ben seems to have a good handle on all kinds of music. If he trashed us, we probably had it coming,” said Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, in the film.

Fong-Torres’ interview style germinated when he was a youth. As a Chinese American boy in glasses who moonlighted as a restaurant worker, he found it easier to let others talk rather than talk about himself. It’s a skill that he honed along the way as student body president at Oakland’s Westlake Junior High, and newspaper reporter/columnist and commissioner of assemblies at Oakland High School. He developed hard and soft skills that would lead to the newsroom and radio station positions he landed throughout his career.

“I blame my parents for everything, because my siblings and I were not really given the chance to be sociable — go to parties, hang out with other kids, do after-school activities, hobbies,” Fong-Torres said. “When I was able to be at a party, I found myself consciously asking questions because I felt I had nothing. What am I going to talk about, wrapping wontons? Dealing with a bad customer? Working late? I became the guy who kept the conversation going by asking the other person what they were thinking.”

凯（Kai）漫长而奇怪的旅行记录了方塔雷斯（Fong-Torres）的生活，花了12年。无论他走到哪里，她都跟随他，让胶带在汽车上滚动，与妻子戴安娜（Dianne）在他的家中滚动，与他一起走向差事，在他主持的事件中与他的摇滚明星当代人聚会。

Fong-Torres also allowed Kai access to his treasure trove of media — hours of cassette tape interviews, radio air checks and interview notepads.

In total, 120 interviews and meet-ups were conducted with Fong-Torres and some of his biggest fans: Ray Manzarek, Annie Leibowitz, Carlos Santana, Quincy Jones, Annie Sampson, David Freiberg and many more. Their interactions reveal just how much of an influence his byline was and continues to be.

“Many artists only wanted to be interviewed by Ben,” his former editorial assistant, Cynthia Bowman, says in the film. “That’s what gave us the access that we needed to make that magazine what it was. Jann was the boss, but Ben was the heart and soul of it.”

Fong-Torres speaks with a professorial tone, his timbre and timing guided by the radio DJs who kept him company at home and during long hours in the kitchen. His words come out in complete thoughts, neatly presented, with witty sidebar repartee and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it parentheticals.

克服她的主题抛光，专业的外观是凯接受的挑战。

“You can ask him questions and he will have the perfect answer,” said Kai. “But I wanted the Ben underneath the perfect answer. That’s why we had different ways of interviewing him, so I could catch him in a more relaxed way, so he’s not only in his professional voice. He allowed me to do that.”

As his writing and radio hours increased, so did interest in his surname. He has a framed collection of name misspellings (“Ben Fongue-Torres,” “Mr. Fang Doris”) pulled from envelopes, packages and letters. One inquiry in particular, sent from Lansing, Mich., stands out:

Please tell me frankly. Is Ben Fong-Torres

Filipino?
Chinese?
西班牙语？
Mexican?
A combination of any of the above

The Fong-Torres origin story itself is几乎famous.

1927年，他的父亲冯夸克·尚（Fong Kwak Shang）从中国来到美国时，他通过菲律宾绕过《中国排斥法》，以1200美元的价格购买了带有“里卡多·托雷斯（Ricardo Torres）”的出生证明。他的母亲Soo Hoo Tui-Wing（美国被美国化为Connie fong-Torres）来自Angel Island。结婚结束后，1941年至1949年之间出生了五个冯 - 托雷斯（Fong-Torres）的孩子，其中包括他的年长兄弟姐妹巴里（Barry）和莎拉（Sarah）以及年轻的兄弟姐妹雪莉（Shirley）和伯顿（Burton）。

随着年龄的增长,他的雄心与发生冲突of his parents. Fong-Torres remembers two incidents: one, his father berating him for the length of his hair; the other, his mother’s reaction after he was given two hours of coveted Sunday airtime on KSFO. She wanted to know if his restaurant shift was covered. He threatened to leave and not come back, but never could, due to filial piety.

“I just stopped talking to them about my ambitions and what I was actually doing in school, or with jobs that I had by that time,” he said.

Today, at 76, he is the only surviving member of his family. He points out the most prized item in his office: a simple handmade collage of the family and extended relations taped to the window that faces the San Francisco skyline.

在电影中，方塔雷斯（Fong-Torres）对他的长兄弟巴里（Barry）进行了情感谈论，后者与高危青年合作，为旧金山的非营利组织（Norfort）。1972年，他在涉嫌与帮派有关的谋杀案中被杀，该谋杀案仍未解决。

当记者当时KRON-TV,凯回忆说the impact that Barry’s death had at the time. People were intimidated and afraid to speak out.

“It devastated his family and our community,” Kai said. “Barry was an innocent person trying to help kids. That tragedy shut down the Asian American movement for the time period.”

在接受《纪事报》采访时，冯 - 托雷斯（Fong-Torres）暂停了他的哥哥的主题。他的脸僵硬，嘴巴颤抖，泪流满面。

“I don’t know why it still happens 50 years later,” he said, with an air of frustration. “It makes me think of families losing their people. Whenever I see a story — whether it’s Afghanistan or Stockton — it hits me like a tragedy. I’ve gone through that loss and I expect to go through it for the rest of my life, so when it’s brought up, even though I’m trying to be distant and detached, you don’t get over it.”

The moment passes and he composes himself.

“Considering that I’m seen as a guy with a good sense of humor and I enjoy generating laughter as much as anybody, whenever certain subjects come up, then the faucet comes on,” Fong-Torres said. “There’s no explaining it. … There probably should be no need to explain it to anybody who has suffered a major loss.”

Along with his long-standing work in the Chinese American community, Fong-Torres remains best known as an ambassador of rock ‘n’ roll history, with firsthand knowledge of its most famous and notorious subjects.

Upcoming events around “Like a Rolling Stone” reflect his twin relationships with rock ‘n’ roll and Chinatown. After the Mill Valley Film Festival screening on Oct. 10, he plans to host a concert at Sweetwater Music Hall, featuring friends and acquaintances playing classic songs of his choosing with the Austin DeLone House Band. (The documentary is one of four films paired with concerts during the North Bay festival.)

On Oct. 30, the documentary gets another screening, this time for the Decibels Music Festival at the Great Star Theater, the last remaining movie theater in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

But before Fong-Torres can get too comfortable with any personal rebranding that the documentary might bring, a musical version of “Almost Famous” is on the horizon for Broadway, ensuring that another generation will equate Fong-Torres’ name with loud shirts and the “craaazy” catchphrase.

In the meantime, he’s OK with his current civilian status. He recalls a Super Bowl Sunday when Chen, the actor who played him in “Almost Famous,” paid him a visit. They went out for tacos on Valencia Street when suddenly they heard shrieking. Two women — one wearing a T-shirt with the fictional “Almost Famous” band Stillwater on it — came up to them gushing about the movie.

事实证明，他们比真实的人更热衷于与虚构的本方托雷斯合影。

“I just went on with my tacos,” Fong-Torres said.

“像滚石一样：本方托雷斯的生活和时代”：Mill Valley Film Festival. 5 p.m. Oct. 10. CineArts Sequoia, Mill Valley. $14-$16.50. Post-screening music show at Sweetwater Music Hall, 19 Corte Madera Ave, Mill Valley. $25-$30.www.mvff.com; Decibels Music Film Festival. 3 p.m. Oct. 30. $14 in advance; $15 at the door. Great Star Theater, 636 Jackson St., S.F.decibels2021.eventive.org