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12/07/05
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
It may be the American dream, but you'll be seeing fewer single family homes in Southern California's future.
G. Allan Kingston>> They don't realize the impact of what is happening in a community like Los Angeles which has now become the most crowded, dense, urban community in the United States exceeding even New York.
Val Zavala>> And then, there's nothing like Dame Judi Dench. We talk with the legendary actress about her roles past, present and future.
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.
Val Zavala>> It was the California dream, a single family home with a two-car garage and an orange tree in the back yard, but those days may be numbered. Land is scarce and expensive and developers are discovering that the only way to go is up. Toni Guinyard takes a look at Southern California's increasing density.
Toni Guinyard>> Home ownership. It's part of the picture representing the American dream, owning a home on a quiet tree-lined street complete with a white picket fence. In Southern California, it's an image many can only dream about.
G. Allan Kingston>> Only fourteen percent of the families in Los Angeles County can afford a median priced home in Los Angeles County.
Toni Guinyard>> Should we be embarrassed at the situation we're in right now?
G. Allan Kingston>> Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Toni Guinyard>> Allan Kingston is President and CEO of Century Housing, a private nonprofit corporation that works with developers to increase affordable housing. With so many people drawn to Southern California, the lack of affordable housing and housing in general is forcing city leaders to rethink our idea of what neighborhoods look like.
G. Allan Kingston>> Instead of one story houses and business as well, maybe you have two story businesses and houses. You have homes on top of businesses. You have three stories of housing instead of two stories of housing. You have apartments that are, after all, homes that are also in higher, more developed buildings.
Toni Guinyard>> The move to build up rather than spread out is a characteristic of density. It's a word that was repeated over and over during the annual Los Angeles Mayoral Housing Summit sponsored by the Los Angeles Business Council. It's a meeting bringing together everyone from policy makers to politicians, homeless advocates to housing developers, people with very different outlooks on how to tackle one issue: the lack of homes to meet Southern California's growing demand.
Peter Calthorpe>> I mean, a conference like this is astounding to me because fifteen years, when I would talk about things like transitory development and mixed use development, there was not a developer in the room that wouldn't be chuckling.
Toni Guinyard>> They aren't laughing at the ideas now.
>> "This KB project, there's units in there that sold for $285,000 and then there's ten single family houses on the same podium on the back side of this that they've sold between $1.6 and $2 million dollars."
Peter Calthorpe>> Put up mixed income, one-third market rate, one-third affordable and one-third public housing mixed together on the same city block, and all those market rate units were rented up immediately.
Toni Guinyard>> Calthorpe, like some of the other Summit panelists, is promoting housing density as a solution.
Peter Calthorpe>> Density is the evil word to many people because they think the problems of sprawl can be solved by more sprawl, which is kind of an ironic thing. People think that the answer to affordable housing is lower density housing farther from the urban centers and the job centers. They think the answer to traffic is more lanes on the freeway when, of course, we've demonstrated over and over again that more of the same will not solve the problems, so a shift is necessary. But density comes in all scales and packages and, in a large region like this, you have to have a range of densities.
Toni Guinyard>> That range includes building up along mass transit corridors and putting housing a short walk away from transportation. It's an idea former Los Angeles mayor Jim Hahn backed both during his administration and now.
Jim Hahn>> We are going to see more density, but put density where it belongs. Don't destroy single family neighborhoods. Put density in places like downtown, along transit corridors. Continue the work that's already been done.
>> "All of these buildings in downtown and the downtown core are ripe for redevelopment. They're all going through redevelopment and they're either densifying for parking lots to high-rise towers or old office buildings being converted into new housing."
Toni Guinyard>> Finding a solution to the housing crisis is not going to be easy. Talk of density bonus incentives, inclusionary zoning and smart growth have already become fighting words for some homeowners.
Jim Hahn>> Somebody built the house that they lived in. San Fernando Valley used to be orchards and olive groves. Somebody decided to bring in housing there and people took advantage of it. But you can't be the last one there and then say I want to shut the door behind me.
Peter Calthorpe>> Some of the other problems that sit out there are neighborhood groups that are very frightened of change, any change, and on some level I have a great amount of empathy because change in the past always meant things got worse.
Charlotte Laws>> You have an assault on the property owner, on the single family property owner, currently in so many different ways.
Toni Guinyard>> Charlotte Laws is a member of the Greater Valley Glen Neighborhood Council. She's lived in the San Fernando Valley for twenty years.
Charlotte Laws>> I understand the idea of building along mass transportation and I understand that there's a logic in that, but at the same time, if you already have an area that's too congested, then it's not logical. It's no longer smart growth. It's not as intelligent as it originally may have seemed on paper.
Toni Guinyard>> When you talk about increased housing density, Laws thinks only of --
Charlotte Laws>> Increased traffic, problems with parking, buildings going up taller than currently allowed, trying to cram people into an area where already there is a difficulty with services and with quality of life issues.
Valerie Olive>> I don't want to be the classic nimby. I am a liberal. I believe in affordable housing and I want to make another point about this.
Toni Guinyard>> Valerie Olive is Vice President of the Greater Valley Glen Neighborhood Council. She says her criticism isn't about nimbyism, the not in my back yard syndrome. Her fight is against density bonus incentives allowing developers to build more units than zoning laws permit in exchange for including affordable housing units.
Valerie Olive>> I'm not completely against more density and less space, but I don't want it to happen in a willy-nilly fashion. As it stands right now, the law that they just passed at the state level allows for it to happen anywhere and it's essentially up to the unfettered will of the developer.
Toni Guinyard>> Her reaction to increasing density to provide for needed housing is an indication of what may become a fight pitting the city of Los Angeles against other communities, and the fight may grow in intensity --
Antonio Villaraigosa>> "The Los Angeles Business Council issued a challenge."
Toni Guinyard>> Now that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his plans to float a one billion dollar housing bond measure.
Antonio Villaraigosa>> "Today I accept the challenge of putting on the ballot a billion dollar housing bond to build the housing that we need in the city of Los Angeles to ensure that the housing trust fund has the money."
Toni Guinyard>> The housing bond, coupled with the second announcement that the city's affordable housing trust fund has been doubled to one hundred million dollars, was a hit with this audience, but the mayor must still win over the public.
Valerie Olive>> I understand better than most the financial difficulties people have and I am not against affordable housing, but I want it to be done in a controlled fashion in a way that can minimize the negative impact of those that live around these projects and I don't want to see the whole community suffer. The good of the few is important, but at what cost?
Eric Garcetti>> "We are now prioritizing housing, which was a switch of what happened for ten years in the city of Los Angeles when we moved things out of housing and got ourselves into this trouble into economic development."
Toni Guinyard>> It is a tough balancing act, addressing the needs of current residents with the needs of people looking for an affordable place to live, all in a city poised to grow up rather than spread out any further. I'm Toni Guinyard 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>> Hollywood has plenty of stars, but Orange County has its share of stars as well, everybody from Richard Nixon to John Wayne, and as Orange County reporter Roger Cooper tells us, now there's a book that brings together the one hundred most influential people of Orange County.
Roger Cooper>> The Orange County Register is celebrating a major milestone, a century of printing the news in Orange County, and to mark its one hundred years of covering the county, The Register has published a book, "100 People Who Shaped Orange County". Andrew Horan is the paper's Sunday and Projects Editor.
Andrew Horan>> We got a panel of civil leaders together, nine people, to work through nominations from readers and from Register editors in all corners of the county. We had about two hundred fifty or three hundred names of people that were nominated and our panel debated it for hours until we got to our final list of a hundred people who shaped Orange County.
Roger Cooper>> Let's go through some of the more notable people in your book here. The Duke is an Orange Countian?
Andrew Horan>> He sure was, at the end of his life and end of his career. He moved to Orange County in the 1950's and became somebody who became predominant both as a public figure, but really even in civic life. You can still see his influence, if not his lore, around Orange County. His nine-foot bronze statue stands at the airport that bears his name.
Roger Cooper>> And he lived in Newport Beach right on the harbor there?
Andrew Horan>> That's right, and there's still an unmarked grave somewhere in Orange County.
Roger Cooper>> Somebody named Tiger grew up here?
Andrew Horan>> He sure did. He was something of a child prodigy from the get-go. He dominated golf as a ten year old. He won a pitch-and-putt contest, soon went on to dominate high school and then went to Stanford, dominated college and the pros. One of the reasons he's in the book is that it goes beyond his athletic prowess. He started a learning center which is going to help disadvantaged high school youth learn basic skills, as well as some golf.
Roger Cooper>> And that will be built in Orange County?
Andrew Horan>> That's right.
[Film Clip]
Roger Cooper>> You cannot do the influential one hundred and not mention the man behind Disneyland.
Andrew Horan>> That's right. He came to Anaheim in the early 1950's. A lot of strawberry fields and orange groves, in particular orange groves, and set about buying up land and a lot of people thought he had something wrong with him, that he couldn't possibly make a go of a commercial business. But he slowly showed that indeed he had a good idea. He created a family theme park that was his whole idea and, within a few months, he had drawn a million visitors.
Roger Cooper>> And you can't think of rock and roll without the contribution of another Orange Countian who made the book's one hundred.
[Film Clip]
Roger Cooper>> Leo Fender of Fullerton created the famous Fender Stratocaster guitar put together in the back of his radio repair shop. Try and find a star who doesn't play a Fender, from Eric Clapton to Jimi Hendrix to The Rolling Stones.
[Film Clip]
Roger Cooper>> Martin and aviation and Orange County. They all go together.
Andrew Horan>> They do. Glenn Martin in 1909 was someone who had the first manned flight in California. He flew in downtown Santa Ana for twelve seconds and, from that, grew an industry that grew to become the manufacturer of airplanes and airplane parts. They built bombers for World War II and it became Martin Marietta.
Roger Cooper>> There's a gentleman standing on the beach at an easel painting on what is now Laguna Beach.
Andrew Horan>> Frank Cuprien wasn't the first painter to come to Orange County and to come to Laguna Beach. He was an accomplished painter when he came in the 1914 era roughly. Really, it was because of him that Laguna Beach became known and in a way marketed in those sort of early day ways as an artist colony that is still celebrated today.
Roger Cooper>> People who bite into pies think of one of your one hundred.
Andrew Horan>> It's almost a cliché, the idea of someone who cooks well and whose food is so tasty that their friends tell them, "You ought to be in business. You should open a restaurant." Marie Callender was a good baker. Her friends and family told her she ought to open a store and she and her husband began selling pies out of the back of an old car. They pulled the seats out of it and drove around first in Long Beach. They did that for almost a decade. They opened their first restaurant in Orange and a lot of people have eaten at a Marie Callenders. They're all over.
Roger Cooper>> Take the hundred people together. Is there a great common denominator about these people and Orange County?
Andrew Horan>> There is, and it's interesting. This isn't something that we knew going into the project. It really distilled itself out as I was editing these biographies from a variety of writers that these really are people who had a vision and had a passion and acted on it. They're people who many of them saw failure before they saw success. Many of them saw failure more than once before they saw success. But each of them in their own way was successful and one of the criteria that the panel used and that we used in picking these people was that they are people who made an impact in their time and whose impact still is with us.
[Film Clip]
Roger Cooper>> Orange County has produced Singing Cowboys.
Andrew Horan>> Well, and the Singing Cowboy produced professional sports for Orange County. Gene Autry didn't set out to buy a professional sports team. He wanted some content for his radio station. He went to the Winter Baseball meetings and eventually purchased a baseball team that became the Angels. It depends on how you want to label them, but we'll just call them the Angels.
Roger Cooper>> Orange County, home to presidents.
Andrew Horan>> Richard Nixon was Orange County's first homegrown president. He's in the book because he's from here and his library is here. He came back here obviously after Watergate and began his rehabilitation into a figure of national prominence from San Clemente.
Roger Cooper>> Writers live in Orange County and live in big houses on hills.
Andrew Horan>> (Laughter) Dean Koontz is sure one of those. He loves Orange County as a place to set a lot of his stories and he's very comfortable here now.
Roger Cooper>> It's not a scary place to him.
Andrew Horan>> Not at all.
Roger Cooper>> Another champion of human relations.
Andrew Horan>> Ruben Martinez. Maybe you've heard of him because he won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, but he's somebody who was a barber who loved to read, began putting books in his barbershop and now he has a bookstore. He actually has four bookstores.
Roger Cooper>> The county has produced Nobel Prize winners.
Andrew Horan>> UCI is a hotbed of research and Sherwood Rowland won a Nobel for doing climate change research.
Roger Cooper>> This book of "100 People Who Shaped Orange County" is available from The Register at its website, but ironically another part of the paper's history is not. There is a bit of a mystery here. You know the paper is about a hundred years old, or at least newspapering is, but you have a quandary. You don't know exactly what?
Andrew Horan>> It's interesting because The Register was born in 1905 when some businessmen got together and formed it as the Santa Ana Register. It entered sort of a crowded field. There were other newspapers of the day, but no newspapers from that first year of publication, from 1905 until into 1906, exists, so it's unclear what day the first publication came out. We know that the business was formed on November 25, so that's the day that we're marking as the hundredth anniversary.
Roger Cooper>> So if a Life and Times KCET viewer has in their attic a copy of that first paper, you'd be interested in that.
Andrew Horan>> We want to hear from him or her.
Roger Cooper>> Andrew Horan, you need to start work on the second two hundred.
Andrew Horan>> Yeah, tomorrow.
Roger Cooper>> Thank you for sharing with Life and Times.
Andrew Horan>> Thank you.
Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:
Life and Times
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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.
Val Zavala>> She's played everyone from Queen Elizabeth to James Bonds' boss. She is Judi Dench and PBS fans know her best as Jean from "As Time Goes By". Well, I got a chance to talk to Judi Dench about her incredible career.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Time has been a friend to Dame Judi Dench. The Oscar-winning actress came into the world's spotlight in her mid-sixties and has stayed there ever since.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Since her first stage role in 1958, Dench has starred in scores of film, two hit television series, and countless theatrical productions. Her latest film is about a bored London widow who decides to buy a theater and, when ticket sales slump, she suggests something bold.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> The movie is based on the real life of Mrs. Laura Henderson who owned the Windmill Theatre in Soho in the late 1930's. It's called "Mrs. Henderson Presents". Your most recent role perhaps in many ways -- I don't know you that well -- but it seems to match your true character. She's feisty, she's a little salty. Do you feel that as well?
Judi Dench>> Yes, but I would prefer it the other way. I would prefer that I'd found something that was of hers. Tell her story, really. And she was bossy and independent and rude and feisty and, yes, all those things. It was a gift to play.
[Film Clip]
Judi Dench>> This is the story of a woman who lost her son in the first World War and spent most of her life in India with her husband and then decided not to settle for widowhood and living a privileged life in London, but decided to spend her rather considerable amount of money she had on opening a theater, something she knew absolutely nothing about.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Now was it true that, when you were a little girl in school, one of your teachers said, "Judi needs to learn to be quiet"?
Judi Dench>> I bet they did, I bet they did (laughter).
Val Zavala>> And apparently you had a temper as well?
Judi Dench>> Oh, yes. I've got a temper.
Val Zavala>> Still?
Judi Dench>> Yeah. Don't lose it often, but when I do, things go flying. I'm not proud of that at all. But I did once throw a whole cup and saucer and a cup full of tea at my mother-in-law (laughter) and Michael.
Val Zavala>> Your husband of many years?
Judi Dench>> And I missed, I'm happy to say.
Val Zavala>> Does it bother you a little bit, after having invested so much time becoming this incredible Shakespearian actor, that what you get known for worldwide is being James Bonds' boss? How do you feel about that, having gotten known worldwide?
Judi Dench>> I was a lot of fans to young men between the ages of eleven and fourteen (laughter). You know, you're very cool to be a grandmother and to be M. It goes down frightfully well.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Is there anything on your list that you really wish you hadn't done that's so bad you could just cross it off your list?
Judi Dench>> No, none at all. You know, it's all to do with the experience I had really. Never really to do with the finished results. Films that I remember, the actors and the director and the time we had doing it. I've never really had one that really wasn't fun to make in some way.
Val Zavala>> Was there one where you learned a particularly important lesson about acting? Was there kind of a turning point?
Judi Dench>> Every one I've done, I've learned something.
Val Zavala>> Still to this day?
Judi Dench>> Very much so, because the filming is not the thing that comes easily to me or naturally to me, but I know that less is more. I just kind of thought Cate Blanchett and I -- you know, just watching her and observing her. That's a blessing in itself.
Val Zavala>> What did you learn from her?
Judi Dench>> Well, I realized this extraordinary thing of economy, a real economy. You know, I've admired her for years and she has a wonderful economy of style that, you know, I just want to do too much really on things. I copied her (laughter).
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Is it true that you don't read script? That you have someone describe it to you? Why is that?
Judi Dench>> I like the fear. I like somebody to tell the story, tell me the story that I've got to tell, you know. And I like the fear of then coming to the first reading and not knowing too much about it and then the process starts.
Val Zavala>> So the first time you actually read the script is when you go to the first rehearsal even?
Judi Dench>> Usually.
Val Zavala>> Really?
Judi Dench>> Yeah.
Val Zavala>> So you don't even know necessarily if your character has great lines or --
Judi Dench>> -- no. I get the gist. That's what I act on instinctively like an animal, you know, picking about on little bits of things (laughter).
Val Zavala>> Now how would you compare celebrity and stardom in America versus Britain?
Judi Dench>> You mean how one is lauded?
Val Zavala>> Yeah.
Judi Dench>> It's a question, if it happens to you, of just keeping a proportion on things. It's fatal to really read things about yourself. You have to have your feet well -- you have to be more grounded in a way than anybody else, you know, than any other job because you mustn't start believing things that people write. You must kind of have your own sensibilities and know your weaknesses and your strengths, but try in a way not to get carried away because it's easy to do that.
Val Zavala>> It really is, especially when the world around you is constantly following you.
Judi Dench>> Yes. But you know, you get one good notice and that's wonderful and, the next thing, you get a very bad notice. So you know, you have to keep a kind of level, so I don't read any notices anymore.
Val Zavala>> Is that right? There was one very bad review that had to hurt a little bit. It was when you were very young and played Ophelia in "Hamlet".
Judi Dench>> Equivalent of the national theater. Employer chose a young schoolgirl, as it were, to play Ophelia. Very good for me. I hated it at the time. Cried a lot. That's when I used to read notices. Then I learned not to (laughter).
Val Zavala>> Still, a survey recently showed that you were the most beloved person in Britain second only to the Queen. That has to feel good.
Judi Dench>> Yes, but they also say "national treasure", which I loath. Adam Bennett is also a national treasure (laughter). Why on earth was this ever invented? Makes you feel like the British Museum, seeming as something rather dusty, sitting in a corner. Don't want to be that.
Val Zavala>> Dame Judi, thank you so much for spending some time with us.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks 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.
Sponsored in part by:
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