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10/27/05
Vicki Curry>> Tonight on Life and Times --
Aids activists have a new fight on their hands and this time it's against a different enemy.
Miki Rizzo>> But this drug is so addictive, it is so strong and this disease of addiction is so cunning, baffling and powerful that it just holds on to these people and won't let go until it's done.
Vicki Curry>> And then, two Oscar-winning actors try a comic turn and the masked swordsman tries to settle down, but will our FilmWeek critics buy in?
These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.
Announcer>> 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.
Hena Cuevas>> It's called Ice, Crank, the White Lady. They're just basically street names for crystal meth, a powerful drug that can be made using the most basic household ingredients such as ammonia and nail polish remover. It's been a popular gay party drug for over a decade now, but experts are noticing an alarming trend. As the number of crystal meth users increases, so are the rates of HIV infections and there are some who believe this is no coincidence.
As night falls over West Hollywood where restaurants and clubs cater to the gay community, a party atmosphere fills the air. But there is another kind of partying away from the public eye that is threatening this community. Gay men using methamphetamine, or crystal meth, to get high.
Mike Rizzo>> I call crystal meth the perfect gay drug.
Hena Cuevas>> Mike Rizzo is the Director of Alternatives in Silver Lake. He says it's the only drug rehabilitation center in the country catering to the gay community.
Mike Rizzo>> I'd say about eighty percent of our clients are meth addicts and that certainly is an increase.
Hena Cuevas>> What is the appeal of crystal meth?
Mike Rizzo>> Meth hits the pleasure principles in the brain, so that's the first appealing thing. The second thing is that it lasts a very long time. You could stay up from it probably anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours on one bump, which is like a line of crystal meth. And if you continue to use, you can be on a three, four or five day run. When I was out there, I actually knew somebody that was up for fifteen days.
Gaetano Vaccaro>> It's difficult to really estimate the prevalence of methamphetamine use in the gay community.
Hena Cuevas>> According to researcher, Gaetano Vaccaro, of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, crystal meth not only lowers inhibitions, but also increases the sex drive, a combination that is proving to be very dangerous.
Gaetano Vaccaro>> It affects the part of the brain that's really important for judgment, so the use of that drug in particular corresponds to a lot of high-risk behaviors of all types. Now for the gay male, it's usually more high-risk sexual behaviors.
Hena Cuevas>> Meth is a clear to white crystalline substance that can be easily made using household ingredients like ammonia and battery acid. This video of a raid in the Inland Empire shows how this kitchen was used as a laboratory.
Gaetano Vaccaro>> It's a cheap drug. Cheap to make, cheap to find, cheap to buy, so relatively speaking, it's unique in that sense that it's very accessible.
Hena Cuevas>> Crystal meth can be smoked, snorted or injected and became a popular gay party drug in the west coast over ten years ago. It made its way into the east coast party scene in the late 1990's. Because it has been here longer, Los Angeles has become the place to come if you're interested in getting over your crystal meth addiction. Four months ago, thirty-one year old Stephen Whipple came to Los Angeles from New York to get help with his addiction to meth.
Stephen Whipple>> It gives you this sense of wholeness, like it completes you.
Hena Cuevas>> He was in a long-term relationship with his partner of eight years, but he says something was missing.
Stephen Whipple>> Kind of like a -- I hate to say this -- like a bored housewife. That's how I felt.
Hena Cuevas>> What he didn't know is that he was suffering from depression. Then one day at a party, he says a friend offered him a drug that promised to take all that sadness away.
Stephen Whipple>> There was something missing in my life and it kind of filled that circle. It filled that empty hole and I just felt more productive, I felt more social, I felt more -- I don't know. It made me feel complete for the first time, but really what it was was depression.
Hena Cuevas>> It wasn't long before he became a regular meth user. Then his friend invited him to a party.
Stephen Whipple>> It was me and it was him and I said it's two o'clock in the afternoon. What type of party? It was a crystal sex party and the combination of crystal and sex is very popular and it's a strong combination.
Hena Cuevas>> Not a party at a club or a bar, but in somebody's apartment where there was sex with multiple partners which went on for days.
Stephen Whipple>> It takes away all inhibitions, you know, and group sex is a really big part of that. It's an extremely haphazard combination, but you don't even realize it at the time.
Hena Cuevas>> Rizzo says the internet is used as a way to hook up with other men also engaging in this same behavior.
Mike Rizzo>> What happens is that people can go on the internet, scroll these websites and these hook-up sites, find someone that they're attracted to, quick chat online and, you know, exchange of phone numbers and addresses and, within half an hour, you can be hooking up with someone. It's sort of like the fast food of sex these days.
Stephen Whipple>> A really popular phrase is "party" which is the drugs and "play" which is sex. Some websites no longer allow those words to be used because it was quite obvious that that's what it was being used for. But in some respects, now people write "do not" party and play, which really is like code for "I do, but I'm saying I do not" because we can't write that.
Hena Cuevas>> Once a week, Whipple meets with Rizzo, a recovered meth addict himself. Today they're talking about the one thing Whipple feared the most: becoming infected with HIV.
Stephen Whipple>> "The HIV diagnosis is really hard for me to like put into reality. Such a new thing for me, but it's really easy for me to like be in denial about it, to make it not part of my life because it hasn't been until right now."
Mike Rizzo>> "That's a direct result of your meth use."
Stephen Whipple>> "Absolutely. Two years ago, I started using crystal meth and I was HIV-negative. And it's two years later and now I'm recently diagnosed as HIV-positive."
Hena Cuevas>> And he's not alone. According to Quentin O'Brien, Mental Health Director of the Gay and Lesbian Center, in the last four years, about a third of those who tested positive for HIV also reported using meth.
Quentin O'Brien>> It's an association. Statistically you can't say that they are directly related, but clearly there's an association that we see there.
Hena Cuevas>> Since 2001, he says, the number of gay meth users overall nearly doubled. According to Rizzo, the drug makes the fear of getting HIV go away.
Mike Rizzo>> Someone that wouldn't normally engage in unsafe sex finds himself all of a sudden not really caring, you know. When someone doesn't put a condom on or someone, you know, engages in unsafe sex, it doesn't seem to be that fear of HIV infection. Sort of like almost, well, it can't happen to me.
Hena Cuevas>> And that's exactly what Whipple says happened to him.
Stephen Whipple>> I'm HIV-positive now because of it and somehow, even though I knew what I was doing, it never occurred to me that it could actually happen.
Hena Cuevas>> O'Brien and Vaccaro recognize the growing problem, so they're gathering city and community leaders to not only raise awareness of the growing use of crystal meth, but also to try and do something about it.
Quentin O'Brien>> Our starting point is that everyone understands that there is a problem and understands a lot of the complexity of the problem and then departs from that point and says what can we do about it.
Hena Cuevas>> After completing thirty days in rehab, Whipple had a relapse over Labor Day weekend. He says it wasn't hard to have a dealer find him.
Stephen Whipple>> I came to Los Angeles hoping that I could pretend to be naïve in a way like I don't know the drug scene here, so maybe it's not as bad or it's easy. I really was surprised how quickly it happened.
Hena Cuevas>> He says he's now back on track, but Rizzo understands just how difficult the road to recovery can be.
Mike Rizzo>> This drug is so addictive, it is so strong and this disease of addiction is so cunning, baffling and powerful that it just holds on to these people and won't let go until it's done.
Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.
Announcer>> 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".
Toni Guinyard>> If you're confused by all of the initiatives on the November 8 ballot, you aren't alone. One of the ballot measures you'll have to decide is Proposition 76. It would limit state spending and change school funding. For clarification on Proposition 76, we paid a visit to the Center for Governmental Studies and spoke with its president, Bob Stern.
Bob Stern>> This is one of the four propositions the governor is supporting. He sponsored three and has one more. Of all the four propositions, 74, 75, 76 and 77, I think he cares most about 76. This is the one that will change the budgeting. I think the governor would say this is the one he wants. The interesting thing is that the polls are showing that this is the one that's doing the least well, so the governor has a real selling job to do.
Toni Guinyard>> What does it mean to vote for Proposition 76?
Bob Stern>> There are several things. The governor, first of all, calls it "live within our means", meaning that no more deficits. The opponents are calling it the "gubernatorial power grab", so you have these two contrasting campaigns. Now what the governor would say and why he supports it, he'd say, look, we are in a boom and bust time. Sometimes when we have all the money coming in, the legislature and the governor can't resist. They spend all this money and then they tie the hands of the state in the future, so the state has to continue paying for these things.
Plus, there's something called Proposition 98 that involved the schools and guarantees schools a certain percentage of funding. In boom years, the legislature has given the schools more money. The problem with Proposition 98, the governor says, is that money is guaranteed in the future, so we need to cut back on that. So what he is saying is, let's not have boom and bust. Let's have a steady flow so that we don't get into these huge deficit situations when the money doesn't come in.
Now another part of the proposition, though, says the governor, if the legislature does not agree with him on some cuts, and if the revenues are reduced, the governor, after giving the legislature forty-five days, can unilaterally cut state programs with his pen and nobody can override him. So that's where the power grab comes in. So we have "live within our means" and "power grab". Those are the two contrasting arguments for and against.
Now how are the voters going to decide? One thing the voters will do is they'll decide who is supporting and who is opposing? Who do I trust? So on the one side, you have the governor, you have the Chamber of Commerce, you have business groups supporting this. On the other side, you have labor, the Democrats, and some budgetary groups opposing it. So what the voters need to do is look at the pros and cons in the ballot pamphlet. You need to see who's supporting and opposing and not necessarily read every single line of the text, but get an idea.
Now the other interesting part is that the voters are being bombarded with television ads.
[Film Clip]
Bob Stern>> Both sides have about equal spending on this, so the voters will get to see who's supporting and who's opposing on the television ads, so they'll see both sides which I think is important.
[Film Clip]
Bob Stern>> But the bottom line is, the voters are going to have to do some homework on this. This is probably the most complicated of the eight measures on the ballot. In this election, the voters will be changing one initiative that they passed in 1988, which was Proposition 98, the school funding measure which guaranteed a certain percentage.
Toni Guinyard>> And that is why you're hearing all of the complaints from the teachers and teachers unions. We've already voted for this, we set how the state is funding education, and now the governor wants to rescind this.
Bob Stern>> That's right, but you know, in 1988, only fifty-two percent of the voters approved Proposition 98, so it was a small majority approving it. The governor is saying let's tweak it. Let's not repeal it. Let's tweak it. The teachers are saying you're not tweaking it. You're taking away billions of dollars of our money that's guaranteed to us and the governor is saying, look, we have a big state here. We need to take a look at all the programs. We can't guarantee you to have this funding every year. In boom times, we'll give you more money, but in bust times, we really need to cut back on everything including education.
Now one of the things that the teachers say, you know, we're forty-third in the country in terms of how much we spend on school funding and we need to be given more money, not less. The governor is saying, on the other hand, if this goes down, voters, look out for tax increases because tax increases will have to come if we can't balance our budget. We can't keep doing what we've been doing in the past, which is either borrowing from the future or taking from these special funds or running some deficits. We can't do that anymore. So the governor is saying, you know, you have a choice here. If you don't pass this, you're looking for tax increases.
Toni Guinyard>> So what do voters need to think about as they make this decision on Proposition 76?
Bob Stern>> Well, the voters need to decide several things. One, how they feel about education, whether they agree with the education lobby that education should be preserved. That's number one. Number two, do they want to give the governor power to unilaterally cut budgets? Number three, do they like the situation the way it is today where, when we go into debt, we're borrowing lots of money and we have this boom and bust psychology? Number four, do we want to set aside some money for reserve funds? Proposition 76 puts money in reserve which will be used then when the economy goes south. We can tap into this reserve.
One of the big problems, the governor points out, is that, when we have the boom years, the legislature and the governor take all this money and spend it and they don't put it in reserves because there's so much pressure on them to spend the money. This proposition says set aside some money for reserves so that, in a bad year, we can tap those reserves, not have to raise taxes and not have to cut so much. So it's a balance.
I think the bottom line will be, though, will the voters want to trust the governor and believe that what he is doing is good, or are they trusting the education lobby and the Democrats saying we don't agree with that? In the past, the governor has been quite successful in getting the voters to vote for his propositions. The voters have trusted him. This year, however, what we're seeing is the governor's popularity is way down and the real question is whether he'll be able to continue with the trust that the voters have given him and will the voters go along with him again this year on his propositions? We won't know until the night of November 8.
Toni Guinyard>> Bob Stern, President of the Center for Governmental Studies, thank you so much for explaining Prop 76 to us and thanks for spending some time with Life and Times.
Bob Stern>> Always a pleasure.
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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film, "The Weather Man" stars Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine in a film directed by Gore Verbinski.
[Film Clip]
Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Lael Loewenstein of Variety and Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. Well, Lael, what did you think of "The Weather Man"?
Lael Loewenstein>> Well, Larry, I mostly liked "The Weather Man". It's the story of a guy, David Spritz, played by Nicolas Cage who's leading this kind of drab existence personally despite the fact that he's at the top of his career professionally. He's being considered for a national TV show, he is a local weather man in Chicago, and yet everybody on the street pelts him with fast food because I guess they're disappointed when he gets the weather wrong.
Meanwhile, he's trying to mend his relationship with his ex-wife, he's trying to reconcile with his children from whom he's a little bit estranged and he's trying to mend his relationship with his father, so he can't quite get ahead in his personal life even though, to everyone else, it seems like he's got everything going. There's a sort of Alexander Payne-like quality to this film, not quite as good as those kinds of films, but it's got a quirky sort of dark humor to it. I enjoyed it.
Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think?
Jean Oppenheimer>> I didn't like it as much as Lael did. To me, it was neither fiction or foul. I think I went in with incorrect expectations and that's my fault. I must have heard somebody say, oh, it was going to be like "American Beauty" and it wasn't at all. So my complaints are -- Michael Caine was wonderful. I thought Nicolas Cage was good. But to me, there was no explanation for why his life really was all messed up. I mean, there was nothing in terms of his background. There were a couple of scenes where he and his wife fought, in flashbacks I guess. But overall, he's a guy who really seems to mean well and he's trying hard, so it was sort of like, okay, so why? That's sort of how I felt about it.
Larry Mantle>> Spritz is his name?
Lael Loewenstein>> It was shortened from his father's name. His father was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and he's always trying to live up to his father's expectations and he never can.
Larry Mantle>> Spritz. A very funny name for a weather man (laughter).
Lael Loewenstein>> (Laughter) Yeah, it is.
Larry Mantle>> Next up, we have the character of Zorro returning to the screen again after about seven years or so. Antonio Banderas portrays him again. Catherine Zeta-Jones is his love interest in "The Legend of Zorro".
[Film Clip]
Larry Mantle>> Well, Banderas and Zeta-Jones are back. Jean, what did you think of "The Legend of Zorro"?
Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, I actually thought it was good. I liked it more than Lael did, so we're swapped on some of these films. It was nonstop action. The first one had a lot more story to it and a lot more down time in terms of relationships. Once again, it stars Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom I could just look at forever. I think she's so pretty. But it was nonstop action. It was, you know, something that I think kids would like. There were a lot of young kids in the audience and they seemed to respond to it. It's just an adventure story. There's nothing great about it, but I ended up enjoying it and thinking that it was, you know, rather well-done and the stunts were quite amazing.
Larry Mantle>> The first one was quite witty, I thought. Was there similar wit in this one?
Jean Oppenheimer>> I would say not as witty, though they tried. So I don't think it's as good as the first one was, but I definitely think that, as its successor, it merits some attention.
Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Lael?
Lael Loewenstein>> Well, it may be the nostalgia of my romantic memory, but I enjoyed the first one much more. I thought there was a lot more action in the first one, a lot more swashbuckling and, even though it's been seven years, I kept comparing this one to that one because that one was so terrific in that it was like a revival of this old swashbuckling genre. Banderas was terrific as this masked hero and Zeta-Jones was just a revelation. I mean, Michael Douglas was said to have fallen in love with her just while watching the film.
Larry Mantle>> Understandable.
Lael Loewenstein>> Right. So this one, to me, was very convoluted. The plot sort of fell apart in a lot of places. They have a kid and actually it's a whole other dynamic. It starts off with this silly contrivance of having to force the couple apart because you can't have them be together in the movie. So they're forced apart and then we have to get them together towards the end of the film. There were plot problems I had. I thought the action sequences were great and fun to watch, but I could have used a little more of them actually, and I didn't think it was nearly as witty or entertaining as the first one.
Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, the romantic comedy, "Prime", starring Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep in a film directed by Ben Younger.
[Film Clip]
Larry Mantle>> So, Lael, what did you think of "Prime"?
Lael Loewenstein>> Well, I liked half of "Prime" a lot. In the second half, I was a little mixed on it. Uma Thurman is a late thirty-something divorcee who is in therapy and, unbeknownst to her, she's dating the son of her therapist who's played by Meryl Streep. What I liked about the film, I think is summed up by two words: Meryl Streep. I thought she was absolutely terrific. I hadn't seen her in this comedy mode for probably ten or twelve years and, even though the character is a Jewish therapist who's very broad, she plays her with some really smart kind of internal mechanisms that, you know, I forgot how really smart she is as an actor because you always think of her reactions and she really gets, I thought, into the character.
So the first half to me was very funny, very delightful, very witty. Then once Streep reveals what she has discovered, that she knows that her patient is dating her son, the movie starts to devolve for me. It doesn't really have anywhere else to go, so that's when it started to lose its momentum for me.
Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Jean?
Jean Oppenheimer>> I don't think it had much momentum to begin with. I think Uma Thurman actually was excellent in here. It's a bittersweet comedy and a lot of it is quite dramatic because she's going through a lot of emotional stuff in her life and I thought she did very well. Meryl Streep, I always love, but to me, she plays the part a bit stereotypical. Now she was supposed to. That's the part. It's a fairly broad comedy. She wasn't exactly, but it was just a little bit more extreme than I think, you know, I felt it should have been.
It's an acceptable mainstream comedy. It's interesting. The two relationships, Meryl Streep as the therapist and Uma Thurman as the patient, and Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep's son who's fourteen years her junior, which is one of the things of the movie. The main relationship really is the one between the two women. So I just want to say this film is sort of more of a chick flick than a date movie.
Larry Mantle>> Okay. And they make a lot of the fourteen year age difference?
Jean Oppenheimer>> Oh, yes, because it's actually a huge thing. At the beginning, Meryl Streep is saying, "So what? So what? Enjoy it." Then when it turns out to be her son, another story.
Larry Mantle>> That does it for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC inviting you to join me tomorrow morning at eleven for a full hour of FilmWeek on Air Talk on 89.3. Thanks for our critics as well, Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and, joining us from Variety, Lael Loewenstein. Please join us again next time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.
Announcer>> 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.
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