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Life & Times Transcript
12/12/05 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Most of California's wetlands have already been lost. Can nature reclaim Bolsa Chica? Jack Fancher>> The basic goal is to restore a tidal wetland to near its condition of a hundred five years ago. 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>> All this and more straight ahead 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>> If there's one part of our environment that has taken a beating over the decades of growth in California, it is our wetlands. By some estimates, ninety percent of California's wetlands have disappeared and that's why a project south of Long Beach is so important. Roger Cooper takes us to Bolsa Chica where the past is making a comeback. Roger Cooper>> For what's supposed to be a quiet wildlife habitat, there's a whole lot of racket going on at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands these days. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> Nearby bike paths and even Pacific Coast Highway have been sent on detours. Pile drivers are pounding in pilings to create a new bridge. Earth movers are scooping out a giant new basin. Workers have removed sixty-four oil wells and cleaned up their contamination. And they've brought in eight-ton boulders imported from Catalina. Jack Fancher>> The basic goal is to restore a tidal wetland to near its condition of a hundred five years ago. Roger Cooper>> Jack Fancher of the Fish and Wildlife Service is in charge of a massive one hundred twenty million dollar project to return Bolsa Chica to the way it was. Jack Fancher>> Unfortunately, Southern California has an absolutely awful history of destroying its coastal wetlands that we have suffered in the view of some ninety percent loss. Roger Cooper>> A hundred years ago, the Pacific Ocean didn't stop at this spot. It continued inland to a place we now know as Bolsa Chica, but the day is coming and soon when the ocean will return. An old map shows what it was like back when the ocean was free to ebb and flow through inlets letting its saltwater tides wash over the wetlands. Ironically, it was ducks that caused this bird habitat to be closed off from the sea. Jack Fancher>> About 1899, a duck club and then private owner closed the ocean connection and started building dikes inside to create static water level ponds, duck ponds, and blinds. They had a duck club on the Bolsa Mesa and it was that way for about fifty years, up until about World War II. Roger Cooper>> Then, for another fifty years following the duck club, Bolsa Chica was ground zero for the hundreds of oil wells drilled into the coast around Huntington Beach. Jack Fancher>> That's a cumulative total of about a century that it's been cut off from the ocean. Roger Cooper>> For many years, it appeared the final destiny for these coastal wetlands would be in the plans of developers who wanted to build thousands of houses and a marina at the site. But environmentalists like Barbara Sentovich waged a thirty-year war to see that didn't happen. Barbara Sentovich>> Volunteer organizations began with the Amigos de Bolsa Chica thirty years ago. A group of people in Huntington Beach came together when they heard the development plan for the area and said, "Whoa, wait a minute. This place is valuable for other reasons than just development." Jack Fancher>> I call that the cycle of pain where there was pain inflicted on both sides, those for development, those against development. We broke that pain in 1997 when we found the resources to buy the property from the private owner. Roger Cooper>> The money to buy the property and restore Bolsa Chica came from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which put up seventy-nine million dollars in return for being allowed to remove marine habitats there for port expansion and that mitigation money is why this bridge will soon take Pacific Coast Highway over a newly created inlet, an inlet that will carry the ocean tide back into Bolsa Chica. Why do we want the ocean to come back? Jack Fancher>> At its simplest, the ocean is life. Life is brought in by tidal currents. There are larval fish and phytoplankton, zooplankton. The things that live in the ocean water are carried into the wetlands by the ocean tides. It's also a place where migratory birds, shore birds and water fowl seek out this abundant life that grows in the tidal wetlands and mud flats. Grace Adams>> This is what you call a saltwater marsh which is basically a highly-threatened habitat next to a rainforest. This is probably one of the most threatened habitats in the world. Roger Cooper>> This restoration project will create an additional six hundred acres of wetlands which will adjoin the existing one hundred seventy-five acres, something that delights Grace Adams who directs the Bolsa Chica Conservancy. Grace Adams>> I think that it's going to expand breeding grounds for the animals that we just talked about. More than two hundred species of birds come in and out of this area. We're right smack in the middle of the Pacific flyway, so wintering birds that come from north to south stop here as a breeding ground. They rest like humans do. Roger Cooper>> The existing wetlands receive only a muted tidal flow that works its way through this inlet from Huntington Harbor. Even so, it's an eternal force of nature you can see with your own eyes. Much of the new wetlands will get the full effect of tides twice a day. Jack Fancher>> Two highs every day, two lows every day. So the water level in the tidal basin is constantly changing on an hourly basis. Roger Cooper>> Creating what Barbara likes to call a bird hotel. Barbara Sentovich>> It's like a marsh Marriott. They're protected here. They have a wonderful food supply. There's no fishing, no boating, no swimming in here, so it is really a sheltered wonderful place for the birds to stop over. Roger Cooper>> Bolsa Chica's abundance of wildlife already attracts hundreds of student groups and bird watchers and photographers from all over the world. Grace Adams>> It's so much fun when we have our classes and exercise and you say, "Okay, open your lunch boxes or your lunch bags and let's see what you've got." You can see exactly the food chain that gets emanated from wetlands, that their food that's in their brown bags can be directly connected to what's out here in the wetlands. Roger Cooper>> When will the ocean come back? Jack Fancher>> Our schedule has us pulling the plug, as they call it, or removing the inlet dam in the end of June 2006, so we're only about nine months away from that. Roger Cooper>> For now, the people who love Bolsa Chica are excited by the knowledge that it will only get better. Barbara Sentovich>> Today there's a Reddish Egret in here and that's most unusual for this area and we're watching it do a dance down at the other end to scare up fish and looking for its dinner. Jack Fancher>> So saving a place by restoring Bolsa Chica saves an island of biological diversity in a sea of urban landscape. Grace Adams>> It's a world of its own. It's a gift. Roger Cooper>> And so a way has been found. The moon will pull the tides and the rhythm of nature will continue at Bolsa Chica. It just sounds like a pile driver right now. In Huntington Beach, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times. [Film Clip] 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". David Okarski>> We're talking today with State Senator Sheila Kuehl. In eleven years in the California legislature, she's championed children, families, victims of crime, domestic violence and discrimination and much more. Now she wants to provide health insurance for every Californian. Senator Kuehl, thanks for the opportunity to talk with you about this. Why do we need health insurance for every Californian? Sheila Kuehl>> Well, right now about twenty percent of all Californians have no health insurance at all and another thirty percent are very seriously under-insured. They don't have any pharmaceutical coverage or they have a five thousand dollar deductible, so they can't even access their insurance. What happens is, a lot of them are forced to use emergency rooms for their primary health care and it's un-reimbursed care. So hospitals aren't being paid, doctors aren't being paid, or people just stay home and get very sick and then, by the time they go, they're so sick that they cost a lot of money. They have to be hospitalized. If everyone had health insurance, you'd get preventive care, you'd get primary care, and actually it saves a lot of money. David Okarski>> We're talking about Senate Bill 840, which you authored. Sheila Kuehl>> It's really important, though, to understand that we would have nothing to do with employing the doctors or the hospitals. That all stays private just like it is now. But instead of being stuck in a system where you can choose one out of six doctors or whatever, you can choose any doctor in California. You can choose any hospital in California. It's actually a much better choice for patients. David Okarski>> You're talking about efficiencies and savings, but who actually pays for it? Does it come out of my paycheck? Out of my employer's paycheck? Does it come out of income taxes? Sheila Kuehl>> It would not come out of income taxes or any taxes that we pay now for other purposes that go into the state coffers. We asked the Lewin Group to do an analysis about what is being paid now and what would be paid under a single-payer system. You pay it into a system that only goes for health care. The one I'm looking at, you would pay a percentage, maybe four percent, of your salary. That would be it. You would be totally covered including dental, vision, pharmaceuticals, durable goods, everything, for that. Your employer would also pay maybe seven percent. But it would be very predictable. It wouldn't be going up by double digits every year the way it is now. David Okarski>> No income taxes, but does any of this come out of the state budget, which is already bending, you know, at the breaking point already? Sheila Kuehl>> What comes out of the state budget is what's already coming out of the state budget, only with more predictable increases or no increases. That is payment for a portion of the indigent population. We pay for poor peoples' health care and we pay actually quite a bit. It's the second largest item in the California state budget. It's grown by fifteen or twenty percent every year because the Feds mandate that we pay for certain things. So I think this makes it much more predictable. We'll still be paying for it, but we won't be paying as much. David Okarski>> But it is a single-payer system, which means no more private insurance companies. What do the insurance companies think about that? Sheila Kuehl>> Well, they're not thrilled because, as you know, they've been making quite a bit of profit off of these insurance plans. The hospitals are not doing so well, but the insurance plans are very, very healthy. David Okarski>> But what about doctors? I understand maybe the CMA isn't quite thrilled with it, the California Medical Association. Sheila Kuehl>> The California Medical Association has been very interesting in their response to this. They've been cautious. They have not embraced it. They have a lot of questions. But they're engaged with us in questions and answers. We want to make it work for doctors. Doctors are the backbone of the health care system. David Okarski>> Now what about businesses? I understand that the California Chamber isn't entirely on board with this yet. Sheila Kuehl>> I think the California Chamber has two major concerns. One of them is that they are particularly dominated by big businesses and many of those big businesses are not paying health care right now and they don't want to. Under this plan, they would have to pay some percentage of their payroll for health care. The second thing is that there are a lot of pharmaceutical companies that are on the board of the California Chamber. Not the local, but the state chamber. They are concerned because part of the plan of saving money is that California's going to negotiate -- not force -- but negotiate. Well, I say to the pharmaceutical company, you know, "I'd like to buy thirty-five million people worth of Damatol." And they say, "Well, that's a very big market." And I say, "Yes, that's exactly right. What price will you give me?" So I think the California Chamber is also concerned because their pharmaceutical companies want them to be concerned. David Okarski>> Would this make California's health care system like Canada's or Great Britain's, for better or worse? Sheila Kuehl>> This would not make it like Canada's or Great Britain's. Part of the problem with Canada's system is that it actually does come out of their tax income. It's not like you're paying a premium and all that premium goes into health care. So they vote in Canada how much is going to be spent on health care. In Great Britain, to a great extent, the doctors can work for the government, so the government is -- I mean, it's like government-controlled health care. This plan is nothing but an insurance plan. It's just a way that everybody has insurance by paying a premium. David Okarski>> How does this differ from "pay for play", which has been on the ballot recently? Sheila Kuehl>> It's very different from "pay or play" because what that said was, if you're an employer, you have to buy insurance, period. There were no efficiencies. It was the same old insurance companies making twenty percent increases in their premiums every year. David Okarski>> Is this a radical idea for America? Sheila Kuehl>> I think it's a fairly conservative idea for America. It saves money. It creates efficiencies. It's very democratic. That is, everyone is covered. It doesn't depend on whether you're rich or poor. Everyone gets comprehensive health insurance. David Okarski>> Okay, and yet, in the past, all talk of universal health insurance has been a big debate, but a really tough sell. Isn't that true? Why so, and why would it work now? Sheila Kuehl>> I think there's been scare tactics about universal health care that created an atmosphere about it that really is just not true. I think people think that it's socialized medicine which really is where the doctors work for the government. We have nothing to do with running the health care system if we create a large insurance system. The system is really crashing in on itself. We absolutely need something that's a real reform, so I think that's why now there's growing support. David Okarski>> It's been passed by the Senate. It's in the Assembly. Where is it now in the Assembly and the whole process and what do you think is going to happen next and what are its chances? Sheila Kuehl>> We have long talks coming up with the governor, who has not indicated support for the bill, but there's a race next year for the governor's seat as well as a number of other seats. Some of the candidates may support the bill. That could actually be a factor in their election. So since I have two more years after that to serve, my intention is to keep this bill going until we get it because we need it. David Okarski>> Senator Kuehl, thanks for spending this time with us. Sheila Kuehl>> It's a pleasure. Thanks so much for doing it. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 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>> 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 urban 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 emotionally 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 on the coast 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 not 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 that 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. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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