11/13/03

LC031113

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

An icon of television and motion pictures goes up in smoke and,
with it, half a century worth of dreams and memories.

Debra Early>> Such a wonderful life. I mean, other people
looked. My family looked. It's been very fun. A lot of good
things happened that were so good I don't want to let go.
That's what's wrong. I don't want to go, but I have to accept
it. It's out of our control.

Val>> And then, Russell Crowe's new epic movie hits the
theaters with great expectation, but what do the Film Week
critics have to say? We'll find out.

All this and a preview of Arnold's big day straight ahead on
tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Hello, I'm Val Zavala. For more than half a century,
it's been a landmark of the television and motion picture
business, but now it's mostly in ashes. It's the Big Sky Movie
Ranch and it is one more casualty of the wildfires that raced
across southern California. Even if you've never heard of the
Big Sky Movie Ranch, chances are you've seen it. But as Philip
Bruce reports, the ranch and a big piece of film business in
Simi Valley have gone up in smoke.

Philip Bruce>> You've seen this place countless times, but
probably never knew it, and that's just the way Hollywood wanted
it. For half a century, the Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley has
been a major star because it could play just about anything.
But now this seven thousand acres of beautiful vistas that
poured into a thousand cameras have been reduced to scorched
earth and Debra Early wonders if the life she's known and loved
here perished forever in the ashes.

Debra Early>> I feel sorry for a lot of my neighbors. They
lost a lot of their animals. A lot of people have lost their
lives. There are many of us that just live off the land and we
don't have other jobs. It's just what we generate here and a
lot of us have lost that.

Philip Bruce>> Her house survived, but her son's didn't. This
is all that's left of it, a centuries-old cookhouse that once
served a generation of cowboys and roughnecks back in the day
when the ranch was owned by J. Paul Getty. It was a Ventura
County landmark. The son got out with the clothes on his back
and a pair of house slippers, nothing more. As a giant wall of
flames raced toward them, the Earlys were on their own. No
firemen or water-dropping aircraft in sight and no tools to beat
back the fire.

Debra Early>> Our friend had loaned us a water truck and I had
wet down our house and the surrounding area and wet down the
creek. Then I was worried about my dogs catching on fire or
breathing the smoke, so I loaded them in our horse trailer and I
took them down to the bottom of the canyon. Then I came back up
and I was going to water down the rest of the house and the yard
area and the creek and someone had stolen our water truck in the
midst of the fire at three in the morning. So then I just stood
there and cried. I felt lost because we had no water pressure,
no one here to even tell us what to do.

Philip Bruce>> And you had no firemen for a long time?

Debra Early>> No. It was just so over-extended. I can't say
anything negative about the fire department because I know a lot
of the guys. If they could have been there to help me, they
would have, I know.

Philip Bruce>> Debra Early has lived on this land more than
half of her life working alongside her husband, Don. They don't
own the ranch, but they've managed it for the past twenty-seven
years, making a living running cattle and a few farm animals and
overseeing the many movie and television shoots that have made
this place a Hollywood legend. But all of that went up in smoke
the day of the fire and it was the worst one that anyone here
has ever seen.

Don Early>> This fire was fast and the wind just pushed it
right through. The others kind of burned kind of slow and, if
you were out walking through here, you could step over the fire
line. But this just came really fast. I've never seen it burn
so fast. Actually, mostly the wind pushed it.

Philip Bruce>> The flames roared across the barn and through
the corrals. The Earlys had to open the gates and let the
animals run to save them. The horses and the sheep got away and
finally came back, but about forty head of cattle are still
missing. Debra says in those final seconds she looked back at
the mountains to the northwest where the fire was closing in and
saw what she describes as a boiling tidal wave of flames.

Debra Early>> When it jumped the huge mountain near our bridge,
it just came over and it was like at least half the size of the
mountain, the flames over the hill and the ashes blowing. It
was very scary. That scared me the most.

Philip Bruce>> The fire also raced across the back side of the
ranch across a hillside dotted with some old California oaks and
this is where the flames raked a place known to millions of
people around the world. What is this we're looking at?

Debra Early>> This is the hill that Laura runs down in the
opening credits of "Little House on the Prairie".

Philip Bruce>> An enduring piece of television Americana made
famous by a show that's never left the air for the past thirty
years. Now it's just another victim of the flames and so are
more familiar places here for Michael Landon's "Little House on
the Prairie".

Debra Early>> This is the Ingalls' homestead. This is where
the Ingalls' home stood. The little post up there is where the
outhouse was and this was the Ingalls' barn.

Philip Bruce>> The buildings were exact replicas. The
originals went away after the series stopped production.

Debra Early>> This was the Ingalls' homestead. This was the
front door. There's been a lot of people that loved the show.
It's not even just everyday people, you know, that were fans of
the show. It's actually people that work in the film industry.
We have seen them come up this road and they're on the way to
their actual set and they'll go, "Stop the van, stop the van."
You'll see men and women all wanting to run down the same hill
that Laura ran down.

Philip Bruce>> It's easy to think of what's been lost here in
purely material terms, things like the storage shed loaded with
old movie props. Remarkably, Debra found some looters
scavenging the shed for souvenirs even before the fire was out,
but they didn't get the old makeup table from "Little House".

Debra Early>> It's over here laying on the other side of this
canyon off to the side.

Philip Bruce>> The human side of this story is what's happened
to the Earlys, a working couple of modest means who've now had
their livelihood snatched away. The rich investors who owned
the ranch won't lose a penny, but Debra Early fears that she and
her husband won't be so lucky.

Debra Early>> Next year or so, it's going to be very hard for
us to rebuild. There's even a possibility that we won't be
here.

Philip Bruce>> Why would you not be here?

Debra Early>> The owners are looking for new management, which
is typical with ownership change and being here as long as we've
been here. But it's kind of a double whammy now, you know.
Usually when you want to quit something, you want to quit on a
positive note, not on a negative. That's how we always train
our animals. You always quit on the positive. This is all
negative.

Philip Bruce>> The only patch of green in sight has been the
golf course next door. It weathered the fire because of
sprinklers. But in this barren moonscape of a ranch, there are
a few signs of hope and recovery. Some sprigs of life offering
nature's promise that everything will be all right eventually.
Debra only hopes that she and her family will survive long
enough to see it.

Debra Early>> Such a wonderful life. I mean, other people
looked. My family looked. It's been very fun. I've had a lot
of good things happen. It's been so good that I don't want to
let go. That's what's wrong. I don't want to go, but it's out
of our control. Just like the fire was out of our control.

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Val>> Next Monday, Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as
Governor after an historic recall campaign swept him into office
and ousted Governor Gray Davis. The biggest challenge facing
Schwarzenegger is putting California's fiscal house in order.
It's a challenge that may put him between a rock and a hard
place. I spoke with veteran political analyst, Allan
Hoffenblum, about what we can expect from Schwarzenegger during
his first few months in office and what his choices so far tell
us about his approach to governing. Allan Hoffenblum, political
analyst, thank you for taking time here at Duke's again to talk
with us.

Allan Hoffenblum>> Good to be here, Val.

Val>> Arnold Schwarzenegger will be sworn in to office on
Monday. What do you think will be the primary challenge within
his first thirty days of office?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Oh, he has so many. We can almost put them
in line. Of course, the biggest challenge is the fiscal crisis
facing California and the budget deficit that's here.

Val>> It looks like it's $10 billion dollars, according to the
paper?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Well, you know, we'll probably have to wait
to hear from his new Finance Director to find out what these
numbers are. But one of first acts as Governor, he's going to
call a special session of the state legislature. In fact, he'll
probably call several simultaneously because a special session
can only address a specific subject, but you can call
simultaneous at the same time.

Val>> So a special session to address all sorts of topics, the
deficit number one.

Allan Hoffenblum>> The deficit, and controversial follow-
through to repeal the driver's license for illegal immigrants --

Val>> -- which he has no choice. He's got to do that?

Allan Hoffenblum>> He says he's going to do that, but he has to
get a majority vote out of the state legislature to make changes
on that.

Val>> But he made a political promise, so he's got to follow
through with that.

Allan Hoffenblum>> He'll follow through on that. He has to
rescind the vehicle license tax.

Val>> Also a campaign promise.

Allan Hoffenblum>> That's a campaign promise and he does not
need a vote of the state legislature to do that, so that he
could do right away. But he's going to have a responsibility to
be able to tell local governments when there's a shortfall as to
how the state is going to be able to make up for any losses,
particularly when it comes to fire safety and police. But he's
going to have an enormously busy job ahead of him and this is
going to be his first chance to become governor, act like a
governor and find out what type of leadership he's going to be
able to show there as the newly-elected governor and what type
of governing coalition he's going to do.

Val>> That's the interesting part. We can actually tell
already from the people and the key appointments that he's made
and the staff that he's put together. What can we tell about
his leadership from what he's put together so far?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Well, as far as the staff, I'd use the word
eclectic (laughter). It's pretty broad. But it's very
important to understand that, when Arnold Schwarzenegger went to
the Republican activists and Republican leaders in this state
and asked for their endorsement and he got the overall majority
of the elected Republican legislators and the Republican
leadership, he made no bones what his position was on the
environment and the social issues, that he was much more liberal
on those issues. But where he shared their opinion and where
his conservatism was was on fiscal issues. So the Republican
legislators went in knowing that he was going to, you know, hire
and he was going to have people on is staff that tend to be much
more liberal on the environment.

Val>> And he has a Santa Monica conservationist for the
environment, right?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Yes.

Val>> A lot of women on his staff?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Yes.

Val>> But still there are some key Republicans, or the majority
of the staff, what, seven out of nine are Republicans?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Well, if I didn't want to -- when it's
dealing with the budget, when it's dealing with business issues,
when it's dealing with fiscal policies, you're going to see a
lot of conservative Republicans. You're going to see a lot of
people from the former Pete Wilson administration, which is not
surprising. Remember, that was the last Republican governor,
you know, we've had and they do have experience. To go before
Pete Wilson, you have to go back to George Deukmejian and most
of those people are no longer interested in serving in
government (laughter). They're retired.

But the whole point, like the environmental issue, what's going
to be interesting on that, you know, when Pete Wilson was
governor at his peak had forty-one Republican members of the
Assembly, a majority. They now only have thirty-two. They lost
a significant number of seats over the past decade and one of
the reasons is they were losing all these coastal districts like
the Santa Barbara district that used to be represented by Brooks
Firestone, the South Bay, Manhattan Beach, Torrance district,
Long Beach district, several districts down in San Diego. The
Republicans held in the first part of the 1990's, but all lost
in 1996 and 1998.

Val>> Shifted to Democrats?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Shifted to Democrats. One of the things
that's going to be interesting is the Republicans next year
because most of those seats are now open -- just coincidentally
there's no incumbent because of term limits -- they're going to
be trying to take those seats back. So Arnold Schwarzenegger's
position on the environment could be very helpful for him to
pick up a significant number of new Republicans to come to
Sacramento --

Val>> -- coastal districts that are currently Democrat.

Allan Hoffenblum>> That are currently held by Democrats.

Val>> Now how has he done on the woman issue? Because he's got
it kind of hanging over his head, this investigation into the
groping allegations. At the same time, he's incorporating a lot
of very powerful women in his upper staff.

Allan Hoffenblum>> There's no doubt that Arnold Schwarzenegger
likes women. He's married to a very influential, powerful woman
and he is hiring several women. I mean, we're not talking about
token hiring here. We're talking about a governor's office
where his Chief of Staff is a woman.

Val>> The Chief of Staff is a woman?

Allan Hoffenblum>> The Chief of Staff is a woman, the number
one spot. His Cabinet Secretary is a woman. His Press
Secretary who he just hired a couple of days ago is a woman.
Margita Thompson who now is with CNN, but used to be with Dick
Riordan and used to be with Pete Wilson, a highly experienced
person. So not only is he hiring women, he's put them in very
important positions and these are very sharp, professional
women.

Val>> It will be very interesting to see how that balances out
with the investigations into the groping. I mean, will the two
cancel each other out? You know, do people care about the
groping thing anymore?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Those who do care did not vote for Arnold
Schwarzenegger in the first place (laughter). Not in any way
negating what the seriousness was and his early actions, that
which he apologized for.

Val>> But politically, it's not a big liability?

Allan Hoffenblum>> I don't think it's a big liability unless
someone files criminal charges and there's no indication that
someone is doing that.

Val>> Now we have all these different political diversities.
We have men, women, Republicans, Democrats, we have insiders and
outsiders. Is this going to create havoc and all sorts of
infighting with his staff? How is he going to manage all the
different points of view?

Allan Hoffenblum>> Well, I think most successful
administrations do have a dichotomy of views. You know, they
may speak with one voice, which is the guy on top, but they have
to bring in a multitude of different people. This is a very
diverse state.

Val>> I'm told that he really likes debate.

Allan Hoffenblum>> Yes. By the way, I've heard that from many
people who have dealt with him. The guy is somewhat of a policy
wonk, you know. He really is interested in public policy
issues. He has been for a long time. That's why he got
involved with this in the first place. He's not just there to
glad-hand and, you know, the trappings of a job. He really is
interested in public policy and has some strong views on public
policy issues, but I believe the main reason Arnold
Schwarzenegger was elected is that people are looking for a
leader.

I think the thing we're going to find within the first hundred
days, he's already proved that with those who said he's not an
ideologue across the board, that he was not just some right-wing
Republican reactionary, he's proved that that is not the case.
But now we're going to have to find out what type of leader he's
going to be and how effective he's going to be as the Chief
Executive of California, something where Gray Davis was totally
and utterly a failure.

Val>> And these first hundred days will tell a lot.

Allan Hoffenblum>> They will.

Val>> Allan Hoffenblum, always a pleasure to talk with you.
Thank you for your thoughts.

Allan Hoffenblum>> My pleasure.

Question: "Should Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger scrap
the car tax?"

>> I mean, personally, no, I don't want to pay triple the car
tax. Of course, I don't, but if it helps, you know, my
community, I'm all for it.

>> I don't know what Arnold Schwarzenegger's going to do now.
He's going to have to find some way to come up with the money.

>> My opinion of the car tax is that I would think that,
overall, it's an okay idea, but I think it needs to have more of
a gradual implementation. You know, kind of slowly increase the
car tax and not have it hit right away all at once.

>> I think it's a bit much. Use some imagination and let's try
to find it somewhere else.

>> We do need some kind of tax. I wish a bit more of it was
going to the DMV because I spent four hours there a couple of
weeks ago because they're understaffed. It's all very well for
Schwarzenegger to say we're taxed all the time, but this state
has a lot of uses for those taxes.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to Film Week on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is based on
the historical novels of Patrick O'Brien. It stars Russell
Crowe and it's titled "Master and Commander".

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Henry Sheehan, you've seen "Master and
Commander, the Far Side of the World". What did you think of
the performances and the film?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, Russell Crowe is a very charismatic
performer and, even if this is not his most in-depth
characterization, you know, he's still a riveting presence. I
have to say that nobody else, including Paul Bettany who plays
the ship's doctor, the best friend of the ship's captain, played
by Crowe, they don't really register much. That's because
director, Peter Weir, I suppose taking his hint from the novels,
had spent all his energy on hewing to the similitude on what it
must have been like for ships to tangle with each other during
the Napoleonic Wars.

To me, the great image in the film was a shot of a ship's cannon
going off in the fog and the flare coming out and being visible
much earlier than the cannon hitting the deck of the ship it was
firing at. That was very eerie and it really felt like it was
putting me back in another time.

Larry Mantle>> It says something, though, that that stood out
more than any of the acting performances.

Henry Sheehan>> I'm afraid, yes, it does say a lot.

Larry Mantle>> All right. Andy Klein, what did you think of
"Master and Commander"?

Andy Klein>> A respectful disagreement with Henry. Yes, Paul
Bettany kind of blends into the background, but he has to
because so much of the film is setting up the contrast between
these two characters that he can't be too charismatic and
distinctive. He has to be this opposition to Russell Crowe,
who's the big heroic figure, so he's playing basically a
nineteenth century geek and that's important to the dynamic of
the film. I found the film gripping from beginning to end,
loved all the characters' stuff and there are really only three
actions scenes and I didn't notice that until I went home and
counted them up.

Larry Mantle>> Our second film, "Anything But Love", is in the
same vein as classic MGM musicals.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Andy Klein, did "Anything But Love" work for
you?

Andy Klein>> It may be in the same vein as those musicals, but
it's a much weaker corpuscle in those veins. It's really an
attempt to bring back a genre that seems inconsistent with the
modern world and they work very hard at trying to reconcile
those problems. I'm not sure that those are what sunk the film
for me. For me, it was more that the actors were not that
charismatic. The production numbers are obviously kind of
threadbare because this is a reasonably low-budget film. There
just wasn't much snap. Andrew McCarthy was really the only
actor whose performance I bought altogether.

Larry Mantle>> Henry Sheehan, your thoughts on the movie?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, we talked about geeks in "Master and
Commander". As a movie geek, I kind of liked parts of this
movie. I don't disagree with anything that Andy said, but the
production design and some of the dialogue scenes and some of
the way the movie is shot really does capture what the MGM
musicals were about. I found that amusing, if nothing else.
It's true, as just as a film on its own, it doesn't really hold
up very well, but I still kind of enjoyed it as kind of an
insider's geeky bit of fun.

Larry Mantle>> And our final film is a documentary from
acclaimed filmmaker, Liz Garbus. The movie is "Girlhood".

[Film Clip]

Henry Sheehan>> This is just a remarkable film. You know,
documentarians have to be both lucky and talented enough to take
advantage of their luck and that's what happens when Liz Garbus
goes in to the Maryland Juvenile Justice system and hooks up
with these two girls, Megan and Shanae, and follows them from
their latest forays into a girl's prison, really, is what it is,
and out onto the streets where eventually they're paroled.

I don't want to give away what these girls did to get into
prison or what happens to them afterwards or what the prison is
like because all of those are surprising in their way and eye-
opening. But there's nothing more dramatic than lives in crisis
and Garbus really knows how to put that on film and she really
knows how to cut it all together. I found this a completely
enveloping experience.

Larry Mantle>> Andy Klein, you've seen "Girlhood" as well.

Andy Klein>> Yeah, I agree with Henry completely on this. One
thing that's interesting about it is that it's not a sort of
simpleminded one-note, oh, the system oppresses the girls. In
fact, it really is, I think, a very balanced view of the ways in
which the system can work and the ways in which the system
messes up totally. You can't predict as you're watching really
what's going to happen to these girls and it's very interesting,
the contrast, as we get toward the end of the film and see where
they're both going.

Larry Mantle>> Well, that's it for this week's edition of Film
Week on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC thanking
you for joining us. And also thanks to our critics this week,
Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com and Any Klein of City Beat and
Valley Beat. Please join us again next time for another edition
of Film Week on Life and Times.

Val>> And a reminder that you can hear a whole hour of Film
Week every Friday at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC Public Radio 89.3.
That's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Tomorrow on Life and Times, an American business tries to
hold on against cheap imports from China, but is it just a
matter of time before this Los Angeles manufacturer has to give
up the fight?

>> The difference between the first four months of 2002 and the
first four months of 2003, imports of wood bedrooms from China
has gone up sixty-seven percent in just that short period of
time, one year later.

Val>> That's tomorrow on Life and Times.