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11/08/05
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
A recall election on a local level. The school board members behind this massive structure may soon be out of a job.
Jennifer Beall>> Why has it become a priority that they are in a beautiful building while our kids are down here in trailers on these campuses?
Val Zavala>> And then, Los Angeles isn't just a movie location. It's a star. How the city became a character in some of Hollywood's classic films.
Fred MacMurray>> "It was one of those California Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago."
Val Zavala>> 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>> Two years ago, Californians voted to recall then Governor Gray Davis and elected new Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now a group of parents in southern Orange County is looking to do the same thing, but with a school board, recalling all seven of them. At issue is this thirty year old administration building and what's being built to replace it, a facility some are calling "the Taj Mahal of administration buildings".
When construction began along the 5 Freeway in San Juan Capistrano, many parents like Kevin Murphy wondered what was going in. He heard it would be the new administration building for the Capistrano Unified School District. He just never dreamed it would look like this. What is the reaction when you bring people here and they see this for the first time?
Kevin Murphy>> You know, most people in our area don't even know that that's what this is and, when we tell them, their mouths drop. They're completely shocked, as I was when I realized what they were planning on doing.
Hena Cuevas>> The brand new building will have a hundred twenty thousand square feet of office space at a cost of thirty-five million dollars. Murphy says that money should have been spent on renovating schools instead.
Kevin Murphy>> Anytime you're willing to spend thirty-five million dollars on a building yourself, by the time we're done in interest payments, it will be close to sixty million dollars. Instead of the kids here in town, I find it ridiculous.
Hena Cuevas>> So he and other parents decided to take a radical step and recall the entire school board, all seven of them.
Kevin Murphy>> We hear so much about budgetary problems and this and that. How could they find thirty-five million dollars to spend on themselves when Governor Schwarzenegger will tell you we have no money, we don't have this? It makes no sense at all.
Hena Cuevas>> In a way, it was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who gave them the idea. Murphy says he was inspired by the 2003 recall election that ousted then Governor Gray Davis.
Kevin Murphy>> I'll be honest. Probably five years ago, none of us would have ever thought of this (laughter), but since Arnold was able to do it and was successful and, you know, we've heard those stories, we realized that if we work hard, there would be an ability to pull it off.
Hena Cuevas>> So they took their message to the people.
>> "They're building a thirty-five million dollar administration building."
>> "Oh, my goodness."
>> "You can see it from the top right over there."
>> "Oh, Capistrano?"
Hena Cuevas>> Their goal? To gather more than a hundred forty thousand signatures required for a special election.
>> "So you print, sign, address, you can abbreviate your city, and then just keep lifting. You'll be number four."
Kevin Murphy>> And the reaction we've got on the street has been phenomenal. I'd be willing to say that ninety-five percent of the people have said this is great. In fact, a lot of comments I get is "What took so long?" (laughter).
Marlene Draper>> The building is simply a good financial move. It is something that we need to do for the long term of this school district.
Hena Cuevas>> Marlene Draper is the President of the school board and has served on it for seventeen years. Why wasn't that money used to improve the schools?
Marlene Draper>> If you look at the figure of thirty-five million, yes, it's expensive. Homes are expensive. Land is expensive. But as compared to forty-eight million we just spent this summer and seven hundred and twenty-four million over fifteen years, I think it really shows that our district and our board of trustees truly put students first.
Hena Cuevas>> Part of the problem, says Draper, is district operations are spread out and they needed to find a place where everybody would fit in.
Marlene Draper>> It was a very good business decision. It brought all of our employees from the five locations into one center. We needed to consolidate and we feel it is a very, very good long-term decision for the school district.
Hena Cuevas>> The school board owns the building, but they also lease a couple of buildings along this very busy office park and that is one of the reasons why they're arguing for the construction of a new facility. Employees have to be moving from one building to the other and there is concern because this is a very busy road.
The main building is thirty years old and there isn't enough parking. Also, the needs of the growing school district have overwhelmed the central kitchen and warehouse. They would be expanded into the old office space. And Draper points out that, by owning the building, the district will save half a million dollars a year in rent for the outside places they've been forced to use.
Marlene Draper>> It is very similar to your home. Do you want to pay rent payments forever? Do you want to take that big risk and get a mortgage and purchase a home? We felt that owning the building was far more important and more prudent than leasing.
Jennifer Beall>> Why has it become a priority that they are in a beautiful building while our kids are down here in trailers on these campuses?
Hena Cuevas>> Recall supporter, Jennifer Beall, says if her children can attend school in an old portable, why can't the administrators?
Jennifer Beall>> You can see here that they haven't painted or maintained. There's trash all underneath here. Why do we have this fence hanging here? This is dangerous for our children. It's rusty on the edge.
Marlene Draper>> Old portables do not determine what happens in the classroom. The students are learning an amazing amount. Teachers are teaching. The quality of the education does not matter whether they're taught in a portable or within a main building.
Hena Cuevas>> On their website, CSUDrecall.com, the group sites example after example of dilapidated portables all around the district. Some of the portables that they have on the website show them being in some really bad conditions. Bad bathrooms, the water fountains. What's the situation with the portables?
Marlene Draper>> The recall shows pictures of portables that were actually removed this summer. We have had an ongoing plan within our school district to remove our older portables and we have been very successful in doing that.
Hena Cuevas>> As an example, Draper sites the removal of eight of the twelve portables at this elementary school. In 2003, the district bought this adjacent building and placed additional classrooms in there.
Marlene Draper>> The area here now during student off-time we'll come in and repave so the students can be able to utilize the area.
Hena Cuevas>> Doesn't it seem a little suspicious that there is a threat of a recall and then, all of a sudden, the portables are gone?
Marlene Draper>> Well, I could tell you that the plan was in place well over two years ago. Anyone within the recall can claim anything they want, but the truth is, we have a plan to get rid of old portables and this is a perfect example of that plan.
Hena Cuevas>> Recently, one of the high schools did get new two-story portables, but it's the new building that has everybody up in arms. The recall website even has a comparison of administration buildings from other districts, describing them as modest and sensible. It also has an artist's rendering of what the Capistrano one will look like. What does it say when your district is going to have the nicest administration building basically in the entire state?
Marlene Draper>> Well, first, it's not done. It's a concrete tilt-up building. The interior furnishings are going to be brought from our offices here. This table and our chairs will be brought. I cannot, by any means, believe that this is going to be the most lavish building at all in the state of California.
>> "Hi, have you signed our petition to recall the school board?"
Kevin Murphy>> After this, we'll turn in the signatures. Beginning in November, the registrar will certify them in thirty days and this board actually gets to pick the recall date, which will be kind of funny. I want to go to that meeting and see it.
Hena Cuevas>> Draper is aware of the irony of having to pick their own recall date, which will most likely be in March or April. Still, she's downplaying all the hoopla.
Marlene Draper>> We must remember that it's a concrete tilt-up building and very, very basic construction, moving the current furniture over and is not by any means an extravagant building.
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".
Val Zavala>> He is one of the most beloved actors in Hollywood, Alan Alda. But you may be surprised at what kind of childhood he had. In fact, Carl Reiner once told him "You're entitled to be a lot crazier than you are." Patt Morrison talked with Alan Alda about his new memoir that looks at his childhood and the ups and downs of show business.
Patt Morrison>> Alan Alda, thank you for joining us on Life and Times. The book, "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed". Is that the eleventh commandment of your life (laughter)?
Alan Alda>> (Laughter) It sounds like it's telling other people what to do. It's really a reminder to myself.
Patt Morrison>> So the metaphor is about Rhapsody, your black and white cocker spaniel?
Alan Alda>> Just a black cocker spaniel and gorgeous.
Patt Morrison>> I'm sorry. I was thinking of Checkers. Excuse me.
Alan Alda>> (Laughter) A natural mistake. I was eight years old. My dog died and my father thought it would be helpful, so he thought he'd make it better and said, "Well, maybe we should have the dog stuffed." I didn't know what he meant. He said, "You know, we'll take it to a taxidermist and you'll always be able to keep the dog." The trouble was, when it came back from the taxidermist, it was horrifying. The expression on his face was ferocious. It looked like he was going to leap at you and bite your face.
I realized in that moment that you can't do anything about death. You can't fix it by stuffing the dead person (laughter). You're not going to keep them around that way. Then as I got older, I began to realize there were a whole lot of other things that I needed to learn to do so that I wouldn't be stuffing a lot of other kinds of dogs, you know.
You know, like hanging on to an idea longer than the idea is useful to me is like stuffing a dog. It doesn't get me to the unexpectedness of change and allowing uncertainty. The more I've done that, the more I've come closer to being the person that I wanted to be all along. That's what the story is about. It's about that. It's not about the jobs I've had.
Patt Morrison>> Now the opening line of your book, I think, is better than "Call me Ishmael" in "Moby Dick". "My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that." That's a pretty gripping way to start a story about yourself.
Alan Alda>> Well, my poor mother, unfortunately, was schizophrenic and paranoid. She thought that I was trying to kill her, she thought people were spying on her all the time and she had hallucinations. She saw the devil.
Patt Morrison>> So you had a mother with mental illness and a father who was on the stage.
Alan Alda>> Wait, aren't they the same thing (laughter)?
Patt Morrison>> (Laughter) And the sum was greater than the total of the parts.
Alan Alda>> Yeah.
Patt Morrison>> You grew up as a mascot to burlesque queens. All of this really shaped much of your life.
Alan Alda>> It must have.
Patt Morrison>> What happened in your household was that you kept secrets even while performing publicly on stage.
Alan Alda>> You know, there was a lot of extra pressure about having a mentally ill mother because, in those days -- it's very hard for people today to understand this. You did not talk about it. We didn't even talk about it in the family.
Patt Morrison>> And then, you had, to say the least, an unusual upbringing with strippers taking their clothes off in front of you and flinging them just a few feet away from your feet.
Alan Alda>> That's right, yeah. I'm watching this erotic dancing. My mother and father were kind of naïve. I think most people were then. They didn't think that this three year old really knew what was going on. They didn't think I noticed these naked ladies. You know, you do notice (laughter). It's not something that just passes by like a bus. I was taking it all in. It kind of swamps you, you know. It's a lot to get at that age.
Patt Morrison>> You grew up in a show business environment, but it took you a while to get back to show business.
Alan Alda>> Well, I kept getting dragged out every once in a while. When I was six months old, they brought me onstage in a schoolroom sketch. When I was three years old, the comedians, as a joke on another comic, stuck me in a safe onstage so that I could surprise him when he broke open the safe. Then when I was nine years old, my father took me to the Hollywood Cantina. We did "Who's on First", the Abbott & Costello's sketch. So I was getting in there and I was doing -- my father, even after he became a movie star, he kept -- the real friends of the family, people who came over every Sunday, were comics and strippers and chorus girls and we --
Patt Morrison>> -- after church, of course.
Alan Alda>> (Laughter) Yeah. My father would barbecue a lot of meat and they'd get together and they'd perform sketches, old burlesque sketches, and they'd let me play in them with them. I was nine years old. Then we'd stretch out on the living room rug and shoot craps. I mean, it was a very nice childhood.
Patt Morrison>> What is this compulsion to make people laugh? Even when you were dying in Chile, you did it. You tried to make the doctors laugh.
Alan Alda>> Yeah, I couldn't help it.
Patt Morrison>> What compels you?
Alan Alda>> It must come from standing in the wings watching burlesque comics. Everything was funny to them. I mean, nothing was not fair game to be funny and I admired that. I loved it. And in Chile, when the doctor said to me -- I mean, I was in enormous pain. About this much of my -- do you need to widen out? -- this much of my intestines was dying or dead and the rest of me was going to be dead in a couple of hours. The doctor said, "Okay, here's what we have to do." I mean, he was an expert at intestinal surgery that we just stumbled across.
He said, "Some of your intestine has gone bad and we have to cut out the bad part and sew the two good ends together." I said, "Oh, you're going to do an end-to-end anastomosis?" He really was astonished. He said, "How do you know that?" I said, "Oh, I did many of them on "Mash"." Now I knew this would make him laugh, but I'm dying and he's going to disembowel me in a second, and I'm trying to see if I can get him to laugh. That is a sickness, I think.
Patt Morrison>> Yes, you're a sick guy (laughter).
Alan Alda>> Yeah (laughter).
Patt Morrison>> This isn't a standard entertainment memoir about the people you've had lunch with.
Alan Alda>> Or have slept with (laughter).
Patt Morrison>> (Laughter) But it's very much a family story as well about your marriage of nearly fifty years to Arlene and your daughters and your grandchildren.
Alan Alda>> You know what? I tried to tell just one story. I didn't put in everything I could remember and I certainly didn't put in all the jobs I've had. It's not an illustrated resume. I never wanted to write a book like that. But what I found I was writing, especially because this happened after Chile where I almost died, I was looking at this kid who had this strange background, this strange childhood, who then grew into an actor, and only then realized he still had to keep growing to become a person, to become the person that he wanted to be.
All of that was in terms of trying to be more alive, more spontaneous, more present, more aware of what's really happening. That was a thing that started early on because I had to really be aware of my mother because she was schizophrenic and I had to read her face to figure out if she was telling me real reality or her reality. But then I had to watch the other actors when I was acting with them and I had to learn to listen. I had to learn to give up old ideas that didn't work anymore or that were actually a reflection of ignorance and let myself be open to new ideas.
All of that turned out to be like not stuffing the dog. You know, when I learned that I couldn't stuff my dog when I was eight years old and still have a live dog, I realized that the same thing applied to ideas and all these other things in my life.
Patt Morrison>> Alan Alda, thanks very much for being here with us. It's quite a book for a kid. Thanks very much for joining us.
Alan Alda>> Thank you. It was great to talk to you, Patt.
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Val Zavala>> Have you ever noticed how certain movies take place in certain cities, like romance movies in Paris or mobster films in New York? Well, how about Los Angeles? Well, it turns out that sunny Los Angeles is a favorite spot for the dark genre film noir. How did that happen? Vicki Curry talks with film historian, Alain Silver.
Vicki Curry>> Since the earliest days of filmmaking, Los Angeles locations have been in the movies and that's certainly the case in film noir. But is that Los Angeles brings something unique or special to these movies or is it just where they happen to have been made?
Alain Silver>> Well, it's sort of probably a less glamorous reply, but I think for the most part it's where these movies happened to have been made. I think what's interesting is that there are areas of Los Angeles that have, in many different movies, not just noir, but other types of movies, portrayed the East Coast, portrayed other parts of the country. What's interesting about noir is that, for the most part but not always, Los Angeles portrayed itself.
And a lot of the opportunities in Los Angeles for, you know, the evocative architecture, the landscape where obviously you've got the ocean and the desert in close proximity were very useful for a lot of noir movies. It really helped to evoke this sense of, you know, sort of an underworld open area with open landscapes all around it, a sense of menace perhaps lurking sometimes in the urban areas, but sometimes also in the deserts or by the ocean.
Vicki Curry>> So what is it about Los Angeles that's different from other cities?
Alain Silver>> Well, I think there are two factors. The one you brought up, I mean, the motion picture industry was here in the 1940's and 1950's during the classic period, so this is where the movies got shot. But I think what you have in Los Angeles is sort of universal recognition of certain of its icons all around the world. We feature a couple of shots of the Los Angeles City Hall. It immediately says Los Angeles to people not just throughout the United States, but, you know, in Europe, in South America, anywhere where movies and television get seen.
For the most part, filmmakers gravitate towards architectures that have something striking about it or towards landmarks. Yeah, the Santa Monica Pier figures in a lot of these pictures. Besides City Hall, Angels Flight which no longer exists, but for a long time was a landmark, the railroad going up and down, a depressed area in Bunker Hill.
Vicki Curry>> How does film noir use the city as character versus other genres of films?
Alain Silver>> Well, obviously, you know, Los Angeles as a character in a western is not something that one expects. I think that what film noir uses in terms of its prototypical landscape fits perfectly with a city like Los Angeles. The majority of film noir is urban, you know. It takes place in the city streets sometimes during the day, but mostly at night, so the streets of Los Angeles were there to be used.
Vicki Curry>> What are some of your favorite noir films where the city of Los Angeles plays a character?
Alain Silver>> I think "Double Indemnity" represents the synthesis of creative elements that often takes place in the classic period. It's based on a story by James M. Cain who's from the East Coast and doesn't really evoke that much of the city. But when Billy Wilder hired Raymond Chandler to work on the screenplay, Chandler brought a certain relationship to Los Angeles for the task.
So you have a character, as he's driving away from his first meeting with the femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson, portrayed by Barbara Stanwyck, this character, Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray, driving down towards Hollywood and thinking that, you know, he realized the woman was asking him to commit murder and he associates that with the smell of honeysuckle and thought that he'd never realized murder could smell like honeysuckle.
I think, in "Double Indemnity" and the way it interacts with the environment, there's a scene later on at the Hollywood Bowl. You have interactions with the landscape like that that are, for the people who live here, uniquely Los Angeles. But for the viewer, say, in another part of the country or in another part of the world, it works purely as an evocative image as the context that helps make the scene work literally as a physical setting and emotional in that it supports the characters in terms of the scene that they're playing together.
Vicki Curry>> What are some of your other favorites?
Alain Silver>> Most of the projects that were shot here by the B units used a lot of the industrial areas around Los Angeles sometimes portraying itself, sometimes not. You have a picture like "The Killers" which Robert Siodmak directed at Universal, very loosely adapted from the Hemingway short story. That features a robbery and Siodmak went on location at a natural local factory and shot this robbery in one remarkably long take. It's really a remarkable use of a cityscape in support of a tour de force staging of the scene.
Alternatively, Siodmak did a picture like "Criss Cross" which opens with a remarkable aerial shot of downtown Los Angeles. It eventually swoops in and then dissolves to Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo in a parking lot and it's clear from the way the picture starts, from the score by Miklos Rozsa, that there's something really ominous going on.
Maybe the most remarkable picture of the classic period is "Kiss Me Deadly". It uses the countryside where it opens, a Jaguar swerves to avoid a woman in a trench coat, gives her a ride into town. There are other shots at the ending where a beach house simply blows up because of a small case containing some atomic material. In between, you've got downtown, you've got West Los Angeles where Mike Hammer, the protagonist, lives. You've got various parts of the city, a jazz club at South Central.
Essentially, you have Los Angeles providing for a wide variety of locations all of which are intensely evocative in terms of the plot and again in terms of the character and the interaction at these places. "Raw Deal" uses a lot of the rural elements that are available all around Los Angeles. It focuses on a character on the run and he's really in an urban area for most of it.
Vicki Curry>> Yet Los Angeles is often used as a stand-in for other cities.
Alain Silver>> Indeed it is. I think Los Angeles, the city as character, is something of a chameleon. Los Angeles sometimes plays itself. Los Angeles sometimes portrays other cities. But I think, in terms of the classic periods in the noir era which dates roughly from 1940 and the release of "Maltese Falcon" to 1958 and "Touch of Evil", in that era, the city for the most part, whether it played itself or whether it played another city, it often was used to evoke this sense of dark, urban environment where there's menace lurking down an alley, lurking around the corner.
So they took the city and extrapolated and made it sort of, you know, an every-city and let it stand in for what they presumed was present in most American cities and most cities around the world. I think that's why the movement resonated with audiences not just here in the United States, but really everywhere the movies played around the world.
Vicki Curry>> Alain Silver, author of the book, "L.A. Noir", thank you so much for taking the time to come and speak with us.
Alain Silver>> My pleasure.
Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time.
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.
Val Zavala>> Next time on Life and Times --
Going to the hospital can be a painful experience, especially if you don't have health insurance, but should the worst part be getting the bill?
>> It's unfair to charge someone who doesn't have this little insurance card five hundred or six hundred or thousands. We can understand if it's ten or twenty percent.
Val Zavala>> That's next time on Life and Times.
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