06/09/04

LC040609

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Some say it's a way of life in California, but are Mexican ID
cards paving the way for illegal immigration?

Martha Lara>> It is not an immigration document. It does not
give anyone immigration rights. It does not change the
immigration status or the lack of status of a Mexican living
here. It has nothing to do with immigration.

Val>> And then, a veteran journalist weighs in on whether
Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to be the next Ronald Reagan.

It's all next 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. We begin with yet another
controversy over documents for Mexican immigrants. First, as
you recall, there was the fight over driver's licenses. Now
there's a lesser-known controversy over Mexican ID cards. These
cards are issued by the Mexican government to Mexican nationals
here in California. Even someone here illegally can go to the
Mexican Consulate and get one. The cards are being accepted as
valid ID by businesses, banks and even the police. But as Toni
Guinyard tells us, critics say they are yet another step toward
sanctioning illegal immigration.

Toni Guinyard>> It's a scene repeated almost every day of the
week. Hundreds of people line up outside the Mexican Consulate
in Los Angeles and wait patiently. Their patience pays off in
the form of this little card. It's called the matricula
consular. It's referred to as a Mexican ID. The document is no
larger than a credit card, but in many ways, much more valuable
or costly depending on your perspective.

Martha Lara>> It is an ID, a Mexican ID, and it is used in lieu
of a passport. Residents, Mexican legal residents, and we have
them by the tens of thousands in Los Angeles, can travel to
Mexico just with their matricula consular. They don't have to
get a passport. They travel with their matricula. When they
come to the border, when they come to immigration, they say I'm
a Mexican citizen. Go right in. So this is false to think that
is for the undocumented. It is for any Mexican citizen.

Ira Mehlman>> Whether it's the government of Mexico or any
other government, they have a sovereign right to issue documents
to their citizens. I don't think anybody disputes that. But
the problem is that our government ought to decide what
documents they will and will not accept and it ought to be
decided based on what is in the interest of this country.

Toni Guinyard>> Ira Mehlman is an outspoken critic of the
matricula consular. He is a spokesperson for F.A.I.R., the
Federation for American Immigration Reform. Despite the group's
efforts, the card is gaining acceptance even after federal
officials questioned the card's use as a potential security
risk. It's a concern echoed by Mehlman.

Ira Mehlman>> The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have
already found people to be in possession of multiple cards,
multiple different identities. So in accepting these cards,
what we're doing possibly is ratifying somebody's false
identity. So we don't even really know who these people are.

Toni Guinyard>> He says his argument is with immigration
policy.

Ira Mehlman>> The matricula consular card is a document that
proves really one thing for certain, that the person holding the
card is in the United States illegally.

Martha Lara>> It is not an immigration document. It does not
give anyone immigration rights. It does not change the
immigration status or the lack of status of a Mexican living
here. It has nothing to do with immigration.

Toni Guinyard>> But it has a lot to do with business. An
increasing number of banks and financial institutions, state and
nationwide, recognize the card as a legal form of ID. By doing
so, they open their doors to a relatively untapped source of new
business. Every single person in line who applies for and
receives the ID card is a potential client.

Simply stated, the matricula consular is an ID card issued by a
Mexican Consulate. An average of four hundred to five hundred
of the applications for the card are processed here every day
and many of the people standing in line say they really need
this card for a variety of reasons.

Jorge Zuniga>> I want to be able to save my money in the bank.
You know, if you don't have like a bank account, many doors
close for you. You know, you have to buy money orders. You
know, it's a lot of hassle.

Toni Guinyard>> How do you pay your rent?

Jorge Zuniga>> Well, I pay cash.

Toni Guinyard>> How do you pay your bills?

Jorge Zuniga>> My bills, I have to buy money orders.

Toni Guinyard>> And with this card, what will you be able to
do?

Jorge Zuniga>> Well, I'll be able to, you know, have money,
save it in the bank, and I can write checks and probably open
credits.

Toni Guinyard>> And if he chooses, Zuniga will have the option
of using the matricula consular as an ID to purchase a private
health plan. Health Net is the first health plan provider in
the nation to accept the Mexican ID card.

Ana Andrade>> We think it makes perfect business sense.

Toni Guinyard>> Ana Andrade is Vice President of Latino
Business Programs for Health Net California.

Ana Andrade>> This is a private commercial health insurance
program, so anyone who wants to purchase health insurance can
call Health Net and obtain a policy. Typically, insurance
companies require a social security number to enroll. We have
decided to accept the matricula consular as another form of
identification. It is private health insurance. It is paid
for, so it is really not a burden on the taxpayers at all.

Toni Guinyard>> The matricula consular opens the door to Health
Net's network of more than four hundred hospitals and more than
four thousand pharmacies.

Ana Andrade>> We are offering our services to all residents of
California who want to have access to private health insurance.

Toni Guinyard>> Undocumented or not.

Ana Andrade>> The issue of documentation is not something that
we are focusing on with this decision. Our focus is to increase
access to care for a population that has a tremendous need.

Martha Lara>> Millions, and I'm speaking over $100 million
dollars, have come into the banks that these people were keeping
in their shoes or in their mattresses. I think that the health
area, Health Net, has seen the benefit that there's a market
there.

Ira Mehlman>> What we're doing is sending the message that we
really don't take our immigration laws very seriously, that if
you can somehow get into this country, whether it's sneaking
past the border patrol at the border or coming in on a Visa and
simply over-staying, we are going to tolerate that. In fact, in
many cases, we are going to reward you for having done it.

Toni Guinyard>> Many Mexican citizens choose to ignore this
scathing criticism and are arming themselves with birth
certificates and a secondary form of ID, two items needed to
apply for a matricula consular, the little card at the center of
a growing controversy.

Val>> There are dueling proposals regarding Mexican ID cards.
One is from the U.S. Treasury. It wants to prohibit banks from
accepting the cards. The financial industry has flooded the
Treasury Department with opposing comments. The other is from
Sacramento. It would require cities and counties to accept the
card as valid. This bill is on the Governor's desk. He has to
decide by October 12.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Philip Bruce>> The Democrats said he was just an actor and had
no business trying to be Governor of California, but we all know
how the story worked out for Ronald Reagan. The question is,
will Arnold Schwarzenegger be just as lucky? We came here to
the Reagan Library to put that question to a veteran journalist.
Lou Cannon covered Reagan from the early days all the way to the
White House. He has a new book about Reagan's rise to power and
we asked Lou to compare the two campaigns separated by nearly
forty years. Do you see any similarities to the Ronald Reagan
of that era and the Arnold Schwarzenegger of today?

Lou Cannon>> I see similarities, Phil, and I see differences.
The similarities are that both of them project a kind of energy
and optimism saying, well, we're going to be different than the
ordinary politician. Both of them -- and this is a point that I
think is important because how your peers feel about you is
important -- both of them are well-liked by the people they've
acted with, the people who directed them. That's why you've got
Rob Lowe, who we certainly know is a Republican out there for
Schwarzenegger. But I see big differences too.

The biggest difference is that Ronald Reagan had been, in a
sense, in politics all his life. He'd participated in a student
strike, even one of the leaders, as a college freshman. He'd
had all this experience in the Screen Actors Guild and he was,
even though the Democrats didn't realize it and made fun of him,
you know, as this guy who had been upstaged by a chimpanzee in
"Bedtime for Bonzo" and all that stuff. Ronald Reagan was in
fact politically experienced when he ran for Governor in 1966.
Mr. Schwarzenegger -- and this is not a rap on him, he may do
fine -- but he doesn't have the political background that Ronald
Reagan did at that time.

Philip Bruce>> And you write about the fact that the Democrats
back in Ronald Reagan's initial rise to power did greatly
underestimate him. Pat Brown, in particular, disregarded him
and they had to eat those words ultimately. But in that sense,
was it that political experience that Ronald Reagan had as
President of SAG and as an activist, did that help him overcome
those early misgivings or was it just the strength of his
personality?

Lou Cannon>> I don't think that the public really cared that
much then or frankly cares that much now about the political
experience. Ronald Reagan often said during the 1966 campaign
that the other guy has the experience. That's why I'm running.

>> "If you're asking the people of California to elect you as
the head of a corporation that has a four billion dollar annual
budget, what in your background would qualify you to head up
such a corporation as we have in this state?"

Ronald Reagan>> "Number one, it isn't a one-man operation.
Number two, I must tell you that I don't believe that just
holding public office is the only way by which you can get
experience for public office. If we are to place political
experience as the only criteria for making our decision, we have
in Sacramento men with eight years of political experience and I
think that's what's wrong with California."

Lou Cannon>> I think the political reporters, of which I was
one, and people in the news business and the politicians look at
this one way and I'm not sure that the public, then or now,
cares that much. They want to know what you're going to do. I
do think that Ronald Reagan had spelled out better than Mr.
Schwarzenegger has what his program and his platform is, but I
don't think that the public cared that much.

In fact, in California, you know, acting is a respectable
profession. It's one of our great industries. Nobody said it's
strange for George Romney when he was an auto magnate to be
running for Governor of Michigan. At the time Reagan ran,
George Murphy, who'd been a song and dance man and nowhere near
as much of an achiever in Hollywood as Reagan, was a Senator. I
don't know why anybody would think it's strange that we have an
actor in politics and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Philip Bruce>> You were out on the stump with Reagan in those
days, watched him, knew all about how he connected with the
people and what his demeanor was, that happy warrior thing he
had going for him. Is Arnold trying to be Reagan?

Lou Cannon>> Well, he says that he's a great admirer of Reagan
and that he liked that people loved the comparison. I think
there is a comparison, but there's a difference there too. You
know, Reagan didn't shrink from debates. Reagan was available
to the press every day. Reagan and Pat Brown, who didn't want
to debate in 1966 because his people didn't think he'd look good
on television, Reagan and Pat Brown had a joint appearance on
"Meet The Press" which was a very big show in those days.

It's big now, but there was no PBS, there was no internet. You
know, there was no cable, no CNN, you know, any of that stuff.
Reagan more than held his own. I mean, I think -- I use part of
that transcript in the book and Reagan did very well in this
thing. So I think that if Mr. Schwarzenegger wants to be like
Mr. Reagan, he's got to be willing to take a few chances.

Philip Bruce>> Well, getting elected is one thing, but serving
is another. You write about what Ronald Reagan encountered once
he got elected and confronted the Assembly, the old pros in
Sacramento. It was a different ballgame than he'd ever seen.

Lou Cannon>> Well, I'll use the line of his press secretary,
Lyn Nofziger, who said "We weren't only amateurs, we were novice
amateurs." Reagan had joked, you know, that we'd ask what kind
of governor you'd be. He said, "I never played a governor." I
show in the book, I think, that it was a more demanding role
than he realized and he made a lot of mistakes. The other side
of it, he was a very quick learner and he did look at things
somewhat differently. I'm not sure in retrospect that that
wasn't a help to him.

Philip Bruce>> Well, back then, the major power in Sacramento
was the powerful Speaker, Jesse Unruh. How did Reagan get along
with Unruh in the initial days?

Lou Cannon>> Well, Unruh didn't quite know what to make of
Reagan and politicians in general had a hard time with Ronald
Reagan because he would, in a private conversation like this
one, say the same things that he was saying out there in the
stump. Politicians, you know, weren't used to that. They
wanted a guy to loosen his tie and talk profanely and, you know,
"man to man". Most of the legislators were men in those days.
But I think that Unruh also saw that Reagan had a hold on
people. I mean, Unruh was a very, very smart and capable
person.

The interesting thing that happened in that first year -- and I
think it says a lot about both Reagan and Unruh -- was that
Reagan saw that he'd inherited a deficit. It was hair-curling.
It's not as bad as the situation is now, but it was very, very
bad. It was the worst it had ever been in California. Reagan,
two days into his governorship, says we have to have a tax
increase as part of our package and he made budget cuts. He
said let's do it now while they remember who's responsible,
which in his mind was Pat Brown.

Philip Bruce>> But it turned out to be a huge tax increase.

Lou Cannon>> It was a billion dollar tax increase. If you put
that in terms of 2003 dollars, that's more than five billion.
It was, at the time, the largest tax increase ever proposed by
any governor of any state. Now the interesting thing about
Reagan and Unruh was that the State Senate in those days was a
hard place to get a tax increase through as it is today.

Unruh got that tax package through the Senate by holding up
Senate bills and doing the kind of wonderful little games he
used to play so well. Unruh believed that Reagan would be
blamed by the public. Unruh wanted the tax increase on its
merits, but he thought that the public would hold Reagan liable.
But I think he underestimated how forgiving the public would be
of a tax increase if Ronald Reagan was the author.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> We used to call them movie previews, but now we call them
trailers. Where did that word come from? Well, it's an old
industry term that refers to the fact that the previews used to
follow, or trail, the main feature which was often a cliff-
hanger to be continued next week. Producing trailers has come a
long way since then. Now it's an art in itself. Vicki Curry
visited one of the top trailer-producing houses in Hollywood to
see first-hand the tricks of the trailer trade.

Vicki Curry>> It's as much a part of the movie-going experience
as the movie itself. The theaters call them "coming
attractions", although most everyone knows them as "trailers".
One of the biggest makers of trailers is The Ant Farm. It's
headed by Barbara Glazer and Mike Greenfeld and they designed
the trailers for hits like "Lord of the Rings", "Chicago", and
"Signs". You might think they're pretty simple to put together,
but making a successful trailer is an art form of its own.

Barbara Glazer>> We go through many different versions of a
trailer. You know, depending on the point of view you take, it
can be very many different things and all of those things are in
the movie, but what is the thing that you want to focus on?

Vicki Curry>> The marketing of a movie usually begins long
before the film is finished and The Ant Farm might work for over
a year on a trailer. The process is different for each project.
Sometimes they work from a completed picture. Other times they
create a mock trailer before footage has even been shot.

Barbara Glazer>> We'll put together a submission of maybe
thirty scripts, different points of view of telling the story,
then take different approaches going from one character, going
from a different character, and the clients will then respond to
the copy. They'll say, oh, I like this script or I like this
piece of this script or this piece of that script. Can you go
back and give me something that combines it?

Mike Greenfeld>> A lot of times, what we'll find, though, when
we start cutting is that the script that we pick doesn't really
work for us and we'll re-write it while we're actually cutting
the trailer.

Vicki Curry>> It's the details that make the difference.
Music, graphics, narration and individual shots are all
carefully woven together to convey a picture story and mood.

Mike Greenfeld>> For me, the best kind of trailer is when you
can let the movie like go off and do its thing.

[Film Clip]

Mike Greenfeld>> A lot of times, however, you have to use
narration because, in a short amount of time in a trailer if you
have two and a half minutes, you can't waste time.

Barbara Glazer>> A lot of times, we actually re-write the
dialogue a little bit. We don't put words into someone's mouth
that are completely out of context with the movie if we can help
it. It does happen.

Vicki Curry>> Throughout the process, The Ant Farm can never
forget their one objective: to sell the movie.

Barbara Glazer>> We have to get those butts in those seats.
That's what's important to the marketing department of a studio.

Vicki Curry>> Part of selling a movie is attracting as wide an
audience as possible.

Barbara Glazer>> You absolutely try on a trailer to get
everybody, but if you have a core audience, you don't want to
lose them. So, you know, you don't want to pander to the masses
and lose your best audience. Perhaps you realize that you're a
shoo-in with older women on this movie. You don't have a
problem, but you're going to have to work a little harder to get
younger girls, so maybe you're going to amp that up by changing
the music, by your choice of shots.

[Film Clip]

Barbara Glazer>> What most people want to know is what is the
story of the movie and how is it going to make me feel?

Mike Greenfeld>> We did a trailer for "Catch Me If You Can",
which I thought was terrific and was really excited about that.
At the very beginning of the trailer, Leonardo DiCaprio says to
this girl who's a bank teller --

Leonardo DiCaprio>> "I'd like to take you out for a steak
dinner."

Mike Greenfeld>> And she starts to get excited and a nervous
twitter. It just, to me, when I saw that, I actually showed it
to my wife, she got the same nervous twitter, so I just knew
that that was a homerun scene.

Vicki Curry>> The scene is just to set the tone.

Mike Greenfeld>> Yeah, just to set the tone that it's going to
be fun and this is a movie star and he's really going to take
you places that you as a woman maybe want to go.

[Film Clip]

Mike Greenfeld>> As we get into the trailer, they take a
journey and they're going to discover this place where there's
going to be a great adventure.

[Film Clip]

Mike Greenfeld>> To me, there's a little humor in here because
it's not so serious. You know, it's "Peter Pan", for crying out
loud (laughter).

[Film Clip]

Mike Greenfeld>> The trailer will start to build and build, so
you have a moment of quiet before this guy realizes that they're
in big trouble. At the very end, we reveal this amazing shot at
the end, slow reveal just so that you can catch your breath and
say, wow, that looks pretty good. I think I'll go see that
film.

Vicki Curry>> (laughter) Yeah, is that a good moment to put at
the end of a trailer? Hey, what did you think about that? You
always hear the audience talking at the end of the trailers.

Mike Greenfeld>> Yeah. You never want to hear them say
"video".

Vicki Curry>> What the audience often says is that the trailers
give away the whole movie.

Barbara Glazer>> I think we all want not to give it away, but
at the end of the day, we have to get people in to see the
movie. So sometimes, we end up giving away more than we might
like ourselves because, for the marketing people, it's about
opening weekend.

Vicki Curry>> People also complain that there is something in
the trailer that hasn't made it to the movie.

Barbara Glazer>> It's not because we're trying to deceive
people. It's because we start the process before the movie is
locked and, quite honestly, movies come out in the theater and
I'm shocked. Oh, my God, they cut that out. I can't believe
it. I didn't even know they cut it out. Because what we start
with is a very long version of the movie. It's everything
that's been shot.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Despite their complaints, moviegoers still seem
to love trailers, so The Ant Farm will continue making their
miniature movies using all the tricks of the trade.

Barbara Glazer>> I think that the trailer is about evoking a
mood and giving you the promise of an experience and, if a
trailer delivers the promise of an experience and hopefully the
movie delivers that promise, then I don't think it's a problem.

[Film Clip]

Val>> The very first known trailer, by the way, was shown in
1912 and encouraged audiences to come back to see more of "The
Adventures of Kathlyn". 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>> On the next Life and Times, toxic treats. Are you
feeding your children candy tainted with lead?

>> Most of the candies that are testing high are testing high
at a level that will poison a child's blood with one candy.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.