10/14/04

LC041014

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Don't understand Proposition 64? You're not alone. It takes a
law degree to decipher this battle over lawsuits.

Jamie Court>> If Proposition 64 succeeds, public interest
groups can't stop the polluters, the cheaters, the privacy
violators.

Maryann Maloney>> Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently
endorsed the initiative and you know his action plan is jobs,
jobs, jobs.

Val>> And then, a husband takes up dancing, a woman takes the
stage and marionettes police the world. Quite a variety for our
FilmWeek critics.

It's all coming up 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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> This November's ballot is one of the longest in
California history. There are sixteen propositions that voters
will have to decide on and some of them take a law degree to
understand. Like Proposition 64. It deals with a certain kind
of lawsuit and asks the question who should be allowed to file
these lawsuits? David Okarski takes a closer look at
Proposition 64.

David Okarski>> The giant cigarette pack that Proposition 64
opponents put in front of Barney's Beanery is a symbol.

Jamie Court>> Tobacco companies have given a lot of money to
the proponent of the initiative in past years.

David Okarski>> Consumer advocate, Jamie Court, and his group,
ElectionWatchdog.org, say Proposition 64 is bad for your health.

Jamie Court>> The reason we're here today at Barney's, though,
is the spokesperson for the campaign is the owner of Barney's
and they're trying to sell this campaign as that it's all about
helping a restaurant owner sell an honest cup of chili without
getting bothered by lawyers.

David Okarski>> The law Proposition 64 would change is Chapter
17200 of the California Business Code, also called the Unfair
Competition Act. It's been on the books since 1933. If
Proposition 64 passes, people like you and me would have to show
we'd actually been hurt before we could sue a business for
unfair practices and we'd have to meet all the requirements for
a class action lawsuit. Public interest groups would have to
clear the same hurdle. Jamie Court says public interest groups
would no longer be able to use the Unfair Competition Act to sue
big businesses to bring about positive social change.

Jamie Court>> That law was used to stop Joe Camel from
advertising to children and, if Proposition 64 succeeds, those
types of cases won't succeed.

David Okarski>> Barney's owner is away this day, but Maryann
Maloney of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse says the same law that
stopped Joe Camel allows unscrupulous attorneys to shake down
small businesses for money.

Maryann Maloney>> Some of those examples could be an auto body
repair shop, for example, where a government agency, so that
they could use a permit to operate, but since it was not a
license, it was a technical violation and they were sued and
they were sent a letter that you pay me $5,000, $10,000, $20,000
now or we're going to litigate. Well, a small business can't do
that. They can't call up some high-powered attorney.

Jamie Court>> There has been lawsuit abuse. For instance, by a
law firm called the Trevor law firm which sent letters that they
could never back up with a court case and demanded from
unsuspecting business owner a settlement and they got it.

David Okarski>> The Proposition 64 campaign to protect small
businesses has the blessing of Governor Schwarzenegger and,
according to the Secretary of State's Cal-Access website, the
financial support of California car dealers, automobile
manufactures, Intel, Microsoft, Blue Cross-Blue Shield. The
list of big corporate contributors goes on to the tune of more
than eight million dollars. Are they that interested in
protecting small businesses?

Maryann Maloney>> Absolutely, because it is the small
businesses that are the fuel of California's economy. We are
the ones that create the jobs at the local level.

David Okarski>> At the same time, in early October, the No on
64 camp reported only $646,000 in contributions and, yes, it
came mostly from lawyers.

Jamie Court>> Lawyers are contributing because they want to
help the public interest groups stop an attack on the law, but
the response has been under-whelming.

Maryann Maloney>> It just makes one small change to a very
important law that will continue to protect California
consumers. However, by changing the one sentence that says an
attorney must show that there is a victim, that there is actual
harm, that there is actual damage, will now protect our
businesses from being a target from these types of lawsuits.

Jamie Court>> The only thing anyone could ever sue over is when
they've been injured and lost some money. Everything else goes
out the door or government prosecutors have to bring those
cases. And the Attorney General opposes Proposition 64 because
he says government prosecutors are over-burdened and can't bring
those cases.

David Okarski>> Nevertheless, Proposition 64 supporters say the
frivolous lawsuits and small business shakedowns have to stop.

Maryann Maloney>> It was initially set out to protect consumers
from unscrupulous businesses, so what's happened over time is
now we must protect our businesses from unscrupulous attorneys.

Jamie Court>> Trevor law firm lost their law license. The
solution to this problem of lawyers sending letters that they
can't back up in court is to go after the lawyers, not the good
laws. There is a whole host of laws in the state from civil
rights to environmental laws that are enforced with the Unfair
Competition Act and, if Proposition 64 succeeds, public interest
groups can't stop the polluters, the cheaters, the privacy
violators.

Maryann Maloney>> They are never sued under Chapter 17200.
They are sued under a specific type of law and it is not Chapter
17200.

David Okarski>> Which side to believe? That depends on who you
trust. David Okarski for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
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and Times".

Val>> He was a science professor in Canada with a knack for
talking to the camera. Since then, he became host of "The
Nature of Things". You know him. He's David Suzuki and he's
won numerous awards, written more than forty books and was
invited by the Dalai Lama to teach science to a group of Tibetan
monks. I asked him what it was like.

David Suzuki>> When I first got the letter asking if I would
go, I turned it down.

Val>> Why?

David Suzuki>> Because India in the winter is very badly
polluted and I just didn't want to go there. My daughters, when
they heard that I'd turned this down, they got mad as anything.
"Dad, this is crazy. What a privilege. What an opportunity."
They said, "You write back and you tell them that you're going
to go". I did, and one result was that my family got a private
audience with him for an hour and it was absolutely wonderful.
I mean, what an amazing human being.

Val>> So what did they want to know and what did they bring in
terms of their view of spirituality to the scientific world?

David Suzuki>> Well, of course, their whole thing is
interconnectedness. So the kind of thing that I was saying just
fit right on what they were saying. They talk about the
ultimate void and, you know, a lot of the stuff was way over my
head, but they're --

Val>> -- like nothingness and that kind of thing.

David Suzuki>> Exactly. But their idea that everything is one
is exactly what I'm saying. That you can't disconnect yourself.
We think that we're individual people walking around and, you
know, John Wayne is our great image, the rugged individualist.
But the reality is that we're all held together in a mesh of
air. Air doesn't stay within, you know, a little area that's
mine and yours. When the air goes out of my nose, it goes
straight up your nose. The air I'm breathing is coming from the
trees and it's coming from the animals and we're all imbedded in
a single matrix of air. That links us not only to each other,
but to the past. We're breathing air that was once in the body
of Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ. That air has molecules that
were in dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. So air is this
precious thing. I call it a sacred element that all creatures
share.

It's the same with water. You know, the first thing I learned
in grade school in Science was the water cycle. Water covers
seventy percent of the earth, evaporates, forms clouds, rains on
the land. Water cartwheels around the planet. You and I are at
least sixty percent water by weight. We're just a big blob of
water with enough organic thickening added so we don't dribble
away on the floor (laughter). But when you drink a glass of
water, is that Los Angeles water? Hell, no. That water is
evaporated from all of the oceans of the world, the canopies of
the Amazon, the prairies of Canada. So water is like air. It's
a substance that links us all together and whatever we do to the
water, guess what, we do directly to ourselves.

Val>> So Los Angeles smog will end up in India?

David Suzuki>> Of course.

Val>> Or Sweden?

David Suzuki>> Of course. There is an immense cloud that was
discovered by American pilots in the 1980's flying over India.
They discovered that one to two miles above the earth was an
immense cloud of soot. This cloud is about two miles deep.
It's as big as the Continental United States. It's almost as
big as the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. It's a
massive cloud that's now been studied for over a decade. They
call it the Asian Brown Cloud. It's deflecting about fifteen
percent of the sunlight hitting the earth there. You might say,
oh, well, that's good. You know, it will cool the planet. Uh-
uh, I'm sorry. It has a huge impact on the health of people
below it and on the animals and plants that are getting less
sunlight.

Val>> How come we hear more about the ozone hole than this?

David Suzuki>> Well, because it just hasn't been publicized
enough, I guess. They estimate that about seven hundred
thousand people are dying prematurely, babies and pregnant women
particularly, as a result of this soot cloud. But that number
may reach eight million people by the year 2020. So this is
serious stuff.

Val>> What does someone like the Dalai Lama say about human
beings' survival? Will we save ourselves? Will we not?

David Suzuki>> Well, I think that, being a Buddhist, he doesn't
have the sense that, oh, my God, the future of our species. His
whole thing right now is that we're not living in the way that
brings us happiness. We're not here to perpetuate our species
or dominate the planet. We're here as a result of evolution,
but our goal is to be happy.

Val>> Oh, so he doesn't have that Western drive to survive, to
perpetuate?

David Suzuki>> No, no, no. It's happiness and that happiness
is intimately connected to the health of other creatures that
are our biological relatives. You know, one thing that we don't
know -- the human genome project, this great scientific
achievement. Now it's been hyped as, once we know the genetic
sequence in the human genome, we'll be able to create drugs and
blah, blah, blah. Well, that's nonsense.

The big thing you discover is what? Now that we've sequenced
the human genome, guess what? Ninety-nine percent of our genes
are identical to the genes in a chimpanzee and a gorilla. Those
are our biological relatives. Those are our nearest relatives.
Surely you don't treat another species the way we do if they're
our relatives instead of looking at them as resources. Those
are our relatives. Right there, we ought to treat our relatives
in a more honorable way than the way that we're treating them.

I do want to mention something in talking to the Dalai Lama. We
did a study in Canada a few years ago and discovered that over
seventy percent of the people who are elected to office in
Ottawa come from two areas. They come from business or they
come from law. My bet is that that's the same in the United
States. We then took fifty politicians and gave them a very
simple test for how well they understood science and technology.
Simple ideas. Business people and lawyers scored absolutely
rock bottom. If they were in my genetics class, I'd have to
have a special class for the slow learners.

Val>> (Laughter) Remedial course.

David Suzuki>> So they're incompetent in terms of issues of
science or technology. Yes, we have the President saying, look,
we've got to go to Mars with a space probe. We've got to have
the missile defense -- it won't work, I'm sorry. And yet we
have the same President saying I don't believe what those
scientists are saying about global warming. We're not going to
-- what's going on here? The people we elect to office are
incapable of assessing the scientific instructions or
information they're getting. So they'll use science when it
suits them politically, but they'll deny the science when it's
something they don't like. I don't think that we can do that.

The most powerful force shaping our lives today is not politics
or economics. It's science. You think of the impact of the
birth control pill, of computers, of jet planes, of
telecommunications, of Xerox machines, for heaven's sake, of
space satellites, of antibiotics, of organ transplants, of
plastics. All of this stuff has happened within my lifetime and
have transformed our lives. Yet the people we elect to office
who are going to have to make decisions about global warming,
about research in outer space, about the peak oil and the fact
that we're going into a --

Val>> -- medical research.

David Suzuki>> -- are incompetent, so they make their decisions
for political reasons and that's frightening because politics --
how do you trump what science is telling us with just political
agendas?

Val>> David Suzuki, thank you so much for making us all a
little bit more knowledgeable about science. Thank you very
much for your time.

David Suzuki>> Thank you very much.

Val>> David Suzuki's latest book is called "Tree: A Life Story"
co-written with Wayne Grady. It takes a look at life around and
in a single tree over the course of five hundred years.

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

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

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. First up this week is a remake of a
very popular Japanese film, "Shall We Dance?" The American
version stars Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez and Susan Sarandon.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by film critics Lael
Loewenstein of Variety and F.X. Feeney of the L.A. Weekly.
Well, Lael, what did you think of "Shall We Dance?"

Lael Loewenstein>> It was a pretty big disappointment to me
compared to the 1996 Japanese film. This film just didn't work
as well. That film shares a similar story. This is about a
jaded lawyer who has been married for a long time and, through
the process of dance, he learns to express himself and find a
new ray in his life. The problem is, for me, Jennifer Lopez has
the sort of icy dance teacher with the fiery interior didn't
work in terms of her chemistry with Richard Gere. It was peanut
butter and mayonnaise. They just didn't go together.

And Susan Sarandon was lovely as the long-suffering wife, but I
felt what they needed was a marriage counselor, not some dance
lessons, to sort of revive their relationship. It was just a
disappointment particularly too because Gere is such a fine
dancer, as we saw in "Chicago". There's one bit of the film
where you see a scene from "The Bandwagon", that wonderful Fred
Astaire, Cyd Charisse musical, and it reminds you how much this
lacks. The dance here is cut up and full of close-ups and it
doesn't have the fluidity or beauty that a dance scene really
should have, so it was kind of a disappointment to me.

Larry Mantle>> Our second film this week shows the height of
irreverence. It's from the creators of "Southpark", both the
feature film and the television series. "Team America: World
Police" features marionettes in starring roles and just about
every group gets satirized.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Well, F.X. Feeney, I understand they edited out
much of the marionettes' sex for "Team America: World Police".
Did it still hold up?

F.X. Feeney>> (Laughter) Yeah, in fact the marionettes' sex
scene is actually one of the few pieces of the film that kept me
laughing when the rest of the movie kind of died around it. I
had every reason to really look forward to this film because I
loved "Southpark". You know, I liked the "Southpark" movie and,
you know, Trey Parker and the Southpark gang making a film with
marionettes is, in itself, a hilarious idea. The trailer and
the commercials all led me to go with great expectations, but
those expectations died out about fifteen minutes in.

On one hand, it's kind of uninhibited like, you know, it was
like incredibly negative Arab stereotypes, incredibly negative
gay stereotypes. Everything is so negative and it's like shock
value. I was thinking, okay, completely fearless and
uninhibited, but then it started to turn so obsessively around
these things. I'm going, gee, this is ceasing to be funny. I
was sort of feeling kind of co-opted except for when certain
stylistic things would come in, you know, like the marionettes'
sex scene or when the marionettes would dance. Anything
physical with the marionettes was usually extremely funny.
There is a lot of skewering of celebrities, a lot of skewering
of left-wingers like Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Tim --

Larry Mantle>> -- Sean Penn, who wasn't too happy about it.

F.X. Feeney>> Sean Penn. And, you know, it's interesting
because it was kind of a witless kind of attack on them.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Lael Loewenstein?

Lael Loewenstein>> I really disagree with F.X. For the most
part, I really enjoyed "Team America". At the outset, I think
it has to be said that this is one of the funniest movies I've
seen all year and for some time. It was absolutely ribald. I
laughed so hard that my stomach hurt. But I don't want to over-
inflate that aspect of the film because I think you really have
to see it to appreciate the humor. It was an equal opportunity
offender. It maligned both liberals and conservatives. You
know, there's something really sort of delightful about that.
On the other hand, I did find it a little bit disappointing,
almost irresponsible, in an election year to have a film that
doesn't really take a political stand that has such an
opportunity to say something more because it really sort of just
goes after everybody.

Larry Mantle>> Our third film this week is a period piece set
in Restoration England when tremendous changes were taking place
culturally as well as in the theater. Billy Crudup stars as an
actor who's finding his job transforming itself dramatically
with Clair Danes stepping in.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Lael, did you like "Stage Beauty"?

Lael Loewenstein>> I did, Larry. I thought it was a gorgeous
and really lush period drama about an important moment in
theatrical history. Some of it may be fictionalized, but there
is some truth to it as well. Billy Crudup is just extraordinary
as Ted Kynaston, this actor who was the last of his kind. He
was, at the time during the Restoration, known as the most
beautiful, most beloved of actresses even though he was an
actor, of course, playing women on stage. Well, along comes
Clair Danes who really wants to act as well and King Charles II,
played by Rupert Everett, decides that he needs to spice up the
theater a little bit, so why not let women act? It's a
beautiful love story. It's very, very poignant.

Crudup gives such a staggering performance. There's one moment
in the film when he just breaks down because he realizes that
his whole world is crumbling around him. It just tore my heart.
It was quite beautiful. I thought it was a lovely, really
moving, beautiful film.

Larry Mantle>> F.X.?

F.X. Feeney>> Lael has taken the words right out of my mouth
because I think that a lot of what's really great about the film
is the atmosphere of the period which is fun in the same sense
that "Shakespeare in Love" was fun. It's almost like it's a
genre. It's like the 1600's and yet we're invited to, you know,
a guy's out of work. I mean, it's sort of a modern kind of
comedy-drama about a man who's sort of outlived his usefulness
to the time. Crudup is so great in playing a woman on stage.
You really see how it brought off. He pulls off the illusion
beautifully. Then when he has to transform himself to try and
adapt to new times -- I mean, so many of us are trying to adapt
to new times -- I think a lot of people can relate to it. He
really caught the flavor of that beautifully. It's a really
strong performance and a wonderful film.

Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, Jonathon Caouette's very
personal film, "Tarnation", which was a sensation at the
Sundance Film Festival, comes to us here in Southern California.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Tarnation", F.X. Feeney?

F.X. Feeney>> Well, the shock that got me in the door was the
idea that this movie cost only $280, that somebody made it on
their Mac. I thought, well, how good can it be? It turns out
to be really, you know, fundamentally a work of genius because
Jonathon Caouette took all his home movies, all these old
pictures of his mother. You know, he tells the story of his
mother, his mother who was wrongly institutionalized for mental
illness and then came out mentally ill and then had him. He had
to grow up in that circumstance, but he grew up with a video
camera because he was indulged, you know, by his grandparents in
a funny way.

So it's basically shot across, you know, upwards of twenty years
of a person's life and the he spun all this stuff together, all
these complex materials together, on his Mac and he made a
really gorgeous, really emotionally heartbreaking statement
about life. You feel, you know, the tragedy of life, the domino
effect of different choices that have infinity in a person's
life. He is a tremendous presence on film. Shots of him at age
twelve where he's acting out with makeup and stuff like that
sort of basically channeling his mother. It was so
extraordinary that you really feel, you know, in touch with live
talent. It's quite moving and you've got to see it.

Larry Mantle>> Lael?

Lael Loewenstein>> Completely agree. On so many levels, I
thought this was a very moving and also quite horrifying film in
many ways in terms of the treatment that Caouette's mother
endured over thirty years and over a hundred hospitalizations, I
think, for this alleged mental illness that she may have never
actually had. It's a beautiful valentine from the son to his
mother. It's also a kind of poignant look at the state of
mental health in the United States and the misunderstanding
about mental health. It also makes you think, my gosh, what if
this had happened, you know, twenty years later? There would
have been so many medications available for her. She could have
had such a different life. Also, the prescient and
precociousness of the eleven or twelve year old boy just staring
with the video camera filming himself and documenting his life.
That was really also very, very impressive. I really liked the
film.

Larry Mantle>> Well, thanks so much for joining us for another
edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3
KPCC joined by critics Lael Loewenstein of Variety and F.X.
Feeney of the L.A. Weekly. Please join us again next week for
another edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val>> And remember that you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek
every Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC Public Radio. And
that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Are they in it for laughs, for money or for fame? A look at the
people behind editorial cartoons.

>> We thought it would be great to parody Woody Guthrie, this
great, you know, serious political songwriter. What if he were
alive today and how juvenile our public discourse is. Let's
make a parody of it.

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