02/24/05

LC050224

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

He wants to be Los Angeles's mayor for another four years. What
did James Hahn accomplish in his first four?

James Hahn>> Brand new developments, mixed housing and retail.
We have over a billion dollars of new development coming into
Hollywood because we brought gang crime down by sixty percent
over the last year.

Val>> And then, will it be a trip to "Neverland", a "Sideways"
glance, or a bout with a "Million Dollar Baby"? Our critics
share their picks in a special Oscar edition of FilmWeek.

All that and more 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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> He has faced some harsh criticism, but that isn't
stopping James Hahn from going for a second term as Los
Angeles's mayor. The question is, can he overcome a cloud of
ethics investigations, anger from the Black community and a
reputation for being -- well, to be blunt -- dull? David
Okarski takes a look at the political career of James Hahn.

David Okarski>> Los Angeles Mayor James Kenneth Hahn is showing
off the new police surveillance camera at Hollywood and
Cahuenga. He reminds reporters that, since he took office,
violent crime in the city has dropped eighteen percent.

James Hahn>> "Gang-related crime is down fifty-nine percent
here in Hollywood."

David Okarski>> When Life and Times asks to talk with him about
the election, his representative suggests we sit down at a new
restaurant a few blocks away to show off Hollywood's resurgence.

James Hahn>> The great Schwab's Restaurant here, brand new
developments, mixed housing and retail. We have over a billion
dollars in new development coming into Hollywood because we
brought gang crime down by sixty percent over the last year.

David Okarski>> Political scientist, Raphael Sonenshein, says
the mayor has always believed safe streets are good for
business.

Raphael Sonenshein>> The mayor makes the argument that public
safety is a pre-condition to economic success rather than the
other way around.

James Hahn>> I identify with the fact that kids can't play out
in their front yard or go to the park at night because of the
fear of crime. It motivates me to want to change that. I don't
think there's anything that is more important to your quality of
life than feeling safe.

David Okarski>> This message hits voters where they live and,
judging from Hahn's record, they like it.

Raphael Sonenshein>> Jim Hahn has won at least six consecutive
citywide elections which is, given the small number of people
who ever win a citywide election in Los Angeles, that's a pretty
formidable record.

David Okarski>> He started as City Controller, won four terms
as City Attorney and, four years ago, won his first term as
Mayor, but it wasn't easy and the road to reelection looks even
tougher. For one thing, Hahn may have alienated some Hollywood
and San Fernando Valley voters when he led the successful
campaign against secession, but there's a bigger reason.
Ongoing investigations into whether city officials illegally
tried to raise money for the anti-secession campaign. The cloud
hanging over Los Angeles City Hall involves allegations that key
people Mayor Hahn appointed tried to pressure businesses vying
for city contracts into making campaign contributions. No pay,
no play. Now several of those people have left and state and
federal authorities are investigating.

Raphael Sonenshein>> Citizen commissions of big departments
give out gigantic contracts and those people are not elected.
They're appointed officials. It's hard to know to whom they are
accountable.

David Okarski>> Mayor Hahn says he's always followed the rules.

James Hahn>> I've made some enemies along the way and
sometimes, you know, people obviously are going to go after the
guy at the top of the hill. I'm confident that I did nothing
wrong, but if somebody has, like I said, I don't have any
sympathy for them.

Raphael Sonenshein>> That's a problem of governance for the
whole city that ought to be addressed. This is, I think, a
serious and significant scandal separate from the question of
whether it's a Hahn scandal.

James Hahn>> And I wish people would, you know, wait for facts
before they make up their minds. I'm certainly interested in
getting those facts. I'm tired of waiting. I'd like to see
some resolution here.

David Okarski>> The mayor has proposed barring people who do
business with the city from contributing to political campaigns.
Pay for play or not, the people who gather to talk politics in
Lawrence Tolliver's barber shop down on Florence Boulevard have
a lot to say about James K. Hahn.

Lawrence Tolliver>> He was by here Saturday. I thought he was
very stiff before I met him. Surprisingly enough, believe it,
Los Angeles, he is not as stiff as you think he is.

David Okarski>> This is the neighborhood where the mayor grew
up.

Eddie Ford>> Oh, yeah, I knew him personally. He used to go
over to the Victory Baptist Church every other Sunday.

David Okarski>> Hahn's middle name is Kenneth, after his late
father, who represented South Los Angeles for forty-five years
as a City Councilman and a ten-term County Supervisor. Kenny
Hahn was revered here for opening County government jobs to
African-Americans and for generally taking care of his
constituents.

Bobby Gantt>> I grew up with him. I have some pictures with
him as a kid.

David Okarski>> James Hahn has benefited from being Kenny's
son.

James Hahn>> When I got into public office, you know, they
said, well, if he's Kenny Hahn's son, we kind of knew where he's
coming from.

David Okarski>> Voters' loyalty to his late father helped Hahn
win the 2001 race for mayor, but at the start of his term,
consistent with his commitment to fight crime, he made a
decision that outraged many African-Americans who'd voted for
him.

James Hahn>> "I've informed the Police Commission President,
Rick Caruso, that I do not support Chief Parks' reappointment as
Chief of Police."

James Hahn>> When I made the decision that I couldn't support
Bernard Parks' bid for a second five years as police chief, I
knew that was going to cause a lot of problems for me in that
community and I was going to lose a lot of votes.

James Hahn>> "The chief and I have had real differences on
major issues."

James Hahn>> Nevertheless, I felt I had to do what was right
for this city, not necessarily what was in my political
interest, and I think that sets me apart from most of the people
in political life today.

David Okarski>> Few at the barber shop see it that way.

Ann Tolliver Binion>> I took it personal because I gave him my
vote because I thought he had a lot of his father in him. At
least, he had his name.

David Okarski>> Bernard Parks is now among eleven candidates
running against Hahn for mayor. William Bratton is the new
police chief and he's getting good marks even at Tolliver's.

Lawrence Tolliver>> I have no problem with Chief Bratton, but
it's the way that Hahn did it.

David Okarski>> The mayor can no longer count on his father's
legacy to win these votes. He's on the same footing as the rest
of the candidates.

Lawrence Tolliver>> You know, they all have their attributes
and I just have to see which one's going to be the best for me.

David Okarski>> Okay, so Hahn is not totally out of the
picture?

Lawrence Tolliver>> Well, he was before he came back. He was
gone, but he's slowly raising his hand a little bit out of the
grave. He ain't made it out of the grave yet, but maybe he
will. I don't know (laughter).

David Okarski>> Whether or not Mayor Hahn rises from the dead
at the barber shop, many critics already call him a zombie.
Here may be the harshest and most frequent accusation of all:
that you're boring. How does that make you feel?

James Hahn>> Well, you know, you are who you are.

David Okarski>> What's the best you can say about Jim Hahn?

Raphael Sonenshein>> That Jim Hahn knows the city government
and how it works and can get things done probably than anybody
in years in Los Angeles maybe since Tom Bradley.

David Okarski>> Here are the highlights of Hahn's four years as
mayor. He's expanded after-school programs, built low-income
housing, reduced pollution at the Port of Los Angeles and at the
Department of Water and Power. He's expanding Los Angeles
International Airport, he's spearheaded the fight for Prop 1A
which stopped the state from taking money that cities need for
basic services and, of course, he defeated Valley secession, got
a new police chief and there's a significant drop in crime.
What's the worst you can say about him?

Raphael Sonenshein>> I think Hahn's weakness is a low-key
personality that invites challenge.

David Okarski>> Or maybe, Professor Sonenshein suggests, James
Hahn's strength is his biggest weakness, his skill at the
insider game of government which may have spun out of control.
David Okarski for Life and Times.

Val>> Life and Times is profiling all five major candidates for
mayor. If you've missed any, you can go to our website where
you'll also find links to all the candidates' websites.

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".

Val>> Next month, a federal committee will come out with
recommendations as to which military bases across the country
should be closed, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't
waiting for their recommendations. Earlier this week, he was in
Southern California campaigning to keep the Los Angeles Air Base
open. Toni Guinyard goes there to find out what's so unusual
about this facility.

John Parson>> Los Angeles Air Force Base is very unusual in
that it doesn't have a runway. It doesn't have, you know,
hundreds of thousands of acres surrounding it like many bases
do. It's an office complex.

Toni Guinyard>> The Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo is
home to the Space and Missile System Center, home to ideas,
research and development of military defense projects. It's
also one of hundreds of military bases across the country that
could soon be shut down or have operations relocated as part of
the Base Realignment and Closure plan. It's a cost-cutting move
authorized by Congress aimed at streamlining military
operations.

John Parson>> We know that the military is going to be looking
at between twenty and twenty-five percent cuts in their bases
around the country. There are about 425 bases and that's a big
number that's going to be looked at. So we're not taking any
chances, making sure that our base stays here in the Los Angeles
area and in the city of El Segundo.

Toni Guinyard>> Redondo Beach City Councilman, John Parson,
serves on the Base Retention Task Force. He says the potential
economic impact of losing the base and the ripple effect on
local businesses within the aerospace industry is reason to go
on the offensive.

John Parson>> The Los Angeles Air Force Base, on an annual
basis, puts out between eight billion and ten billion dollars in
contracts.

Toni Guinyard>> It's a matter of dollars and cents, image and
economics, for Southern California's South Bay cities.

Gary Johnson>> We were just awarded a six million dollar
contract for the U.S. government to supply an exhaust nozzle for
a helicopter. The day after we were awarded that, we issued one
and a half million dollars worth of purchase orders to our
vendors.

Toni Guinyard>> Local?

Gary Johnson>> Local, all local. I mean, that just multiplies
itself, you know, across the board.

Toni Guinyard>> Ace Clearwater Enterprises is a manufacturing
company employing nearly two hundred workers.

Gary Johnson>> We supply a lot of things that end up being a
part of systems within the Los Angeles Air Force Base.
Satellite systems, launch systems. We don't have a direct
relationship other than the brain trust that is created by that
base. Quite frankly, if the base was to move or were to move
out of the state, it wouldn't put us out of business and we may
still be doing work indirectly for the base if it was somewhere
else. What I feel is one of the biggest attractions of that
base is the brain trust that it creates.

Toni Guinyard>> Johnson's perception of the potential economic
impact if the base closes is not as dire as it might be for
other companies, but he adds that there is another threat.
California's aerospace industry is already being targeted by
other states.

Gary Johnson>> It's Florida. They're here all the time trying
to get aerospace companies. Nevada, it's a nonstop thing trying
to attract companies to move and that's not an easy thing.

Jack Kyser>> Picture the 405 Freeway and you go, say, 14
Freeway, Palmdale, down to the 405 and then right around past El
Segundo and into Orange County. You go along that freeway and
you will find a whole array of suppliers to Los Angeles Air
Force Base and the aerospace corporations. We have been told
that, if the air force base activity moved to Colorado Springs,
a lot of these other businesses would follow.

John Parson>> For Los Angeles County and for the South Bay,
this is the preeminent area of space where it's all the way from
commercial space satellites to military space satellites to the
satellites that JPL and Caltech design and implement. This area
of Southern California is where all that brain power is and we
don't want that to start being decimated and picked apart piece
by piece because we'll lose it.

Toni Guinyard>> Base closures have been authorized four times
since 1988 and each time the Los Angeles Air Force Base has
survived.

Joe Aro>> We've determined that, in the case of the Los Angeles
Air Force Base, this is something worth working on together.

Toni Guinyard>> Joe Aro is Executive Director of the South Bay
Economic Development Partnership.

Joe Aro>> "Hi, John. Joe Aro returning your call."

Toni Guinyard>> These days, he finds himself working the
phones, sounding a rallying cry to protect the Los Angeles Air
Force Base.

Joe Aro>> "Yeah, why don't you do that? I've got somebody that
will get him down here."

Joe Aro>> We would lose not just the prestige of having the
base here, but the dollars would follow. I may be a little bit
of a cheerleader for the South Bay, but as far as I'm concerned,
when Pioneer 1 lifted into space and was the first orbiting
device that we put in space, the space program was created here
in the South Bay because Pioneer 1 was built in Redondo Beach by
TRW which is now Northrop Grumman.

Toni Guinyard>> One of many companies that are part of the
aerospace industry that operates adjacent to or near the base.
But it's not just the potential loss of the military operations
that is cause for concern. Products developed for the military
like GPS navigation systems now found in cars or weather
satellites are now widely used by consumers. The technology
traces back to the type of technology envisioned at Los Angeles
Air Force Base Space and Missile System Center.

Joe Aro>> Without satellites, you don't have DirecTV. Without
satellites, you may not have some of your cell phone features.
You may not have your pagers. All those things that we now
couldn't live without.

Gary Johnson>> We had a tour of a bunch of high school students
a while back. They weren't all that enthusiastic about
manufacturing and aerospace and all of this. We had a kid say
to the guy that runs our machine shop, "Why do you want to do
that? It's a gritty, grimy, dirty job and I can't believe it."
Our machinist answered, "I make $72,000 a year. I have a high
school education and I have parts that I designed and built
sitting on the planet Mars." It's kind of cool.

Toni Guinyard>> Every example illustrating the economic impact
of the work being done is being used as a potential weapon to
protect the base from the Pentagon's hit list.

John Parson>> If you're on the list, you're pretty much at the
end game. So our effort is to make sure we don't get on the
list.

Toni Guinyard>> And staying off the list means, in part,
convincing elected officials and military brass that the base is
more than just a valuable piece of real estate waiting to be
developed.

Joe Aro>> The Los Angeles Air Force Base is a great prime piece
of real estate just as the American flag is just a piece of
cloth. There's a lot more to it than that. This is not just a
military installation. This is far more than that. We're
talking about research, we're talking about futures.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. This week we do something a little
differently. With Sunday's Academy Awards coming up, we hear
from our critics their choices for Best Actress, Best Actor and
Best Picture. We're joined this week by critics Peter Rainer,
past President of the National Society of Film Critics, and
Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Henry, who's your pick for
Best Actress in this coming Sunday's Academy Awards?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, I'm loading up on one movie this year,
but it's Hillary Swank in "Million Dollar Baby".

[Film Clip]

Henry Sheehan>> Well, in "Million Dollar Baby", Hillary Swank
doesn't seem to have that tough a job. She's playing a thirty-
one year old woman from the south who wants to be a boxer and
she's all bulked up for the part. But she gets an accent and
she's perky, so she seems to have a lot of gimmicks that she can
rely on. It's true that it's a very likable part and she has a
lot of stuff to do. She's effervescent and she's very up, but
there's a technical level on which she has to work very hard and
that is she has to pull a lot out of Frankie Dunn, the character
Eastwood is playing, because he doesn't want to have anything to
do with her.

In a way, she also has to pull a lot out of Eastwood's
performance without seeming to do anything. She has to act with
Eastwood in a very subtle way. She has to get that actor and
that character to do more than they want to, you know, without
kind of jumping all over the place and remaining loyal to her
character at the same time. So it's a very tricky part even
though it seems like just a very showy part. I admire all the
skill that really went into her performance.

Larry Mantle>> Peter, your choice for Best Actress?

Peter Rainer>> My choice for Best Actress was Annette Benning.

[Film Clip]

Peter Rainer>> I think she gives a terrific performance in this
movie because it's the kind of performance that is often under-
valued because it's a performance about a performance. She's
playing an actress, you know, sort of an English stage diva who
is very theatrical, but the performance itself isn't. It's very
fluid and intuitive and very much attuned to the cameras. Just
that because she's playing someone who is constantly on, who's
always in her own orbit as an empress of her own life, she
somehow -- you think that she doesn't really have any softer
tones, but she does.

That's what's amazing about Benning's performance is that she's
able to really give you a full range of emotions for a character
who, at least superficially, is someone who is just, you know,
kind of out there all the time. Nobody has a smile that has
more levels than Annette Benning. I mean, this movie is the
kind of, you know, curdled dry ice in that warm smile of hers.

Larry Mantle>> All right. Henry, who's your choice for Best
Actor among the nominees?

Henry Sheehan>> Clint Eastwood, who I think is well overdue for
an acting Oscar. He has a chance to get it this time. He
really represents the classic style of Hollywood acting which
doesn't say much, but your whole body speaks at least as much as
your voice. This is part of Eastwood's whole approach to
filmmaking. That's why there's a lot of medium shots in this
film more so than in other modern directors because he always
keeps the whole body in focus, not just the eyes or the head.
That's why he's able to get away with his characters not saying
too much because you always remember how eloquent Eastwood's
movies are because a gesture, a posture, a way a character stood
means so much. I think that applies to his performance here.

Larry Mantle>> Peter Rainer, who is your pick for Best Actor
this year?

Peter Rainer>> I thought the best performance by an actor was
Johnny Depp in "Finding Neverland".

[Film Clip]

Peter Rainer>> Johnny Depp has become an actor of tremendous
range. He's able to do very out-there performances like
"Pirates of the Caribbean" and then in "Finding Neverland" as
J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, he really goes against
everything that I would have expected him to do in this role.
He doesn't camp it up or do anything that would indicate that,
you know, he's trying to cue the audience as to what he's
thinking all the time.

It's an extremely subtle performance which gives you a sense of
how this man is himself really a child and that the reason he
connects up so well with this children's universe is because he
never really lost that part of himself. It sounds like a
cliché, but the way it's done by Depp, it just feels as if he's
so totally inhabited that that persona, that aspect, is who he
is, that it just sort of comes out naturally and unforced. It's
an extraordinarily difficult thing to do and pull off and I
think he does that.

Larry Mantle>> Well, Henry, "Million Dollar Baby" is two for
two in your pick so far. Does it take the Best Picture choice?

Henry Sheehan>> Yes, it gets the hat trick. This is classic
Hollywood filmmaking. Now a lot of people think classic means
you fall back on tradition, but with Eastwood it means you go
forward and you expand on tradition. Yes, it's a genre film, a
boxing film, but Eastwood brings changes on it. For example,
even though the characters are familiar types, the old broken
down trainer, the young up and coming boxer, the crusty old
friend of the trainer, they don't remain types in the movie.
After we meet them, those characters are quickly expanded into
individuals.

They have new problems that they have to face and they have to
come to resolutions of those that we can't possibly predict
before we see them reach them on their own. There's a whole
world we meet that we couldn't possibly expect to meet before we
see the picture and we go through emotional changes with those
characters that probably would change every time we see the
movie. It's a spontaneous event every time we see it.

Larry Mantle>> And Peter Rainer, you had two different choices
in the acting performances, yet a third film was your Best Film
of the year?

Peter Rainer>> "Sideways", I think, is my best movie of the
year.

[Film Clip]

Peter Rainer>> What I liked about "Sideways" is that it starts
out as a sort of, you know, buddy, on the road, middle-age
crisis kind of film and you go, okay, not another one of these.
But it very quickly morphs into something far more interesting
because it really gets into who these people are. Paul
Giamatti, you know, the sort of downcast, and Thomas Haden
Church who is the, you know, washed-up soap opera actor, and
Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. I mean, they all come together
in a way that's extraordinarily -- I don't know how else to
describe it -- humane. This is something that I think you don't
see very much in comedy any more, certainly Hollywood comedy.

The movie is about real people with real emotions experiencing
real things in the full range of what people go through. I
think that it's a deceptively deep movie because a lot of people
are going to think that, you know, just because of the
trappings, the genre, this is just a certain kind of movie when,
in fact, I think it's a great deal more. It has wonderful
performances, beautiful script. I was not a fan of Alexander
Payne's earlier movies so much, but in this one I think maybe it
was the wine but everybody seemed to really let it out.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another edition of
FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC
joined by critics Peter Rainer, the past President of the
National Society of Film Critics, and Henry Sheehan of
henrysheehan.com. Please join us again next week at this time
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 --

Neighbors hate them, developers love them. Should the city be
putting limits on retaining walls?

>> Not to be elitist, but really to protect our interests in
having the communities that still have mountains that are made
of dirt, of trees, that still have birds and animals, and not
solid concrete.

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