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Life & Times Transcript
01/06/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- It's had a lot of work done to get ready for its close-up, but wait until you see what they're doing to keep you away. Chris Baumgart>> You can walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, you can walk up to the Eiffel Tower, you can take an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building, but you can't get to the Hollywood sign. Val Zavala>> And then, where can you walk in the clouds, visit a rainforest and see meat-eating plants? We'll show you what's new at the Huntington Gardens. 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's probably the best known sign in the world, nine letters that spell out the word Hollywood. It looks simple from afar, but the closer you get, the more you realize what it takes to protect the sign from fires, vandals and now terrorists. Hena Cuevas hiked up the hill to tell us about the Hollywood sign's makeover. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> In a city where celebrity comes and goes, the Hollywood sign has held a starring role for more than sixty years. Perched high above Los Angeles, tourists from all over the world consider it a must-see and, over time, these nine letters have come to represent Los Angeles like nothing else. Chris Baumgart>> It represents dreams. It represents hope. Hena Cuevas>> Chris Baumgart is the Chairman of the Hollywood Sign Trust, the nonprofit group responsible for maintaining the sign. Chris Baumgart>> It also represents the Southern California lifestyle and the very important role that the film industry plays here in Hollywood and what draws people to the entertainment industry. Hena Cuevas>> But like all Hollywood stars, she's not averse to a facelift. It's been ten years since the last one, but regular paint won't do in this situation. Chris Baumgart>> They're facing south, so they take all of the abuse of the smog, the winds, the rain against this layer of paint, so you get the bubbling and the water getting underneath it. That's why the timing for this paint company to come up with their 2005 technology paint was perfect. Hena Cuevas>> The company offering the latest in paint technology is San Diego-based Red Diamond Coating. Brad Kubela>> One of our marketing strategies was to seek high-profile applications. This is a high-profile (laughter). Hena Cuevas>> Brad Kubela is the President of the two year old company. In exchange for the publicity, he donated the three hundred gallons of paint needed. It was a great idea, but how do you paint letters that are almost five stories tall and poised on a steep hill? Brad Kubela>> So I came down here and I went, "Oh, my gosh, how are we going to get somebody to donate their labor on this deal?" But we found out pretty quick. You mention Hollywood sign and we didn't have any trouble. Hena Cuevas>> A specialized commercial painting company agreed to do the job, bringing the total donated value to eighty thousand dollars. The other challenge? Our sunny California weather. What is some of the weather damage that you were able to find on the letters? Brad Kubela>> Primarily, sun damage where the paint before just baked and just flaked off the sign. There was some vandalism, but very little since they've put the security system in. Hena Cuevas>> Since 2001, a state of the art security system has kept both vandals and over-eager tourists away from the sign. What many people don't know is that, unlike other famous landmarks, it's actually illegal to get near the sign. Chris Baumgart>> You can walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, you can walk up to the Eiffel Tower, you can take an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building, but you can't get to the Hollywood sign. Hena Cuevas>> It is protected twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There are infrared motion detectors plus fifteen cameras constantly beaming images via the internet to law enforcement officials. Chris Baumgart>> That has truly reduced the problems we've had at the sign with people coming up to it, some of them innocently just wanting -- they're from out of the country. They're tourists and they thought it would be fun to go to the Hollywood sign. They didn't realize that it's against the law. Hena Cuevas>> Another danger? Fires. According to Baumgart, that risk often comes from people. Chris Baumgart>> If you look below us, we're on a sheer cliff and we've got this dry scrub brush. If you have folks coming up here, somebody drops a match or a cigarette, this whole hillside could go up in flames and endanger the neighbors that live right below us. Hena Cuevas>> There are numerous signs indicating that this is a restricted area. Violators face at minimum a one hundred dollar fine and possible jail time for trespassing. Chris Baumgart>> At the top of the "Y" here, you can see one of the security cameras. Just for example, there's another one over on the end of the "D". Both cameras are looking both directly below the sign on this plateau and also down the hillside for watching people come up. Hena Cuevas>> Still, there are those who will try. Chris Baumgart>> In those kinds of cases where they're just innocent tourists, we shoo them away with voice announcements from the various speakers on the nine letters. Hena Cuevas>> The sign's beginning was not glamorous. In 1923, a real estate company put up the word "Hollywoodland" to attract attention to its home development on the hill. Then in the mid-1940's, developers sold the land and the sign to the city of Los Angeles. Five years later, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce dropped the last four letters, transforming Hollywoodland into the icon we know today. But time and weather took their toll. The letters rusted and even collapsed under their own weight. Chris Baumgart>> So it was constantly falling down, half a letter would be missing and putting it back up. So makeovers were the rule of every year since 1923 when the sign was first built. Hena Cuevas>> In the late 1970's, the original letters which were made out of tin were replaced with the current letters that are made out of galvanized steel. Still, the only thing that remains from that original 1923 sign is this piece of wood, part of the foundation for the letter "L" in Hollywoodland. To raise funds for a new sign, the Chamber of Commerce had an idea: symbolically auction each letter, and it worked. Each sold for a hefty twenty-eight thousand dollars. Musician Alice Cooper, for example, sponsors one of the "O"s. The new and improved sign went up in 1978 followed by a minor tuck, as they say, in 1995. According to Kubela, today's renovation should take the sign well into its golden years due mainly to the paint which is similar to what NASA uses on the space shuttle. Paint on the shuttle is designed to withstand intense temperatures during re-entry. It's expected to have no problem facing Southern California's blazing sun. The new paint also goes on thicker than regular latex and can stretch. Brad Kubela>> Because we stretch like this, that has a huge impact on the cracking and the chipping because we move. You know, the hill moves, things move, your buildings move and that's why you need elasticity because it moves with the building and then it has a hundred percent memory and it goes back to its original size. Hena Cuevas>> It's also waterproof which Kubela says will keep the flaking and the bubbling to a minimum. The ultra-white paint even got its own custom name. They called it, yes, Hollywood White. Brad Kubela>> Super white. It's just that. It's a whiter, brighter, cleaner product with all the same benefits and the features of this product. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> The restoration will take about three weeks to complete, but in this photo-snapping town, this Grand Dame will be more than ready for her close-up. 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>> She has sold more than a hundred million copies of her books, the fabulously successful Anne Rice, famous for her Vampire Chronicles. But her vampire days are over and Anne Rice's latest novel is based on the life of Christ as a boy. Patt Morrison met Anne Rice in the Rare Book Room at Los Angeles's Central Library where they talked about her new book, "Christ the Lord". Patt Morrison>> Anne Rice, thank you for joining us on Life and Times. Anne Rice>> Glad to be here. Patt Morrison>> Your body of work, your name, is inextricably linked with vampires and witches and now we have Jesus. What is the evolution? What is the process that took you from those beginnings to this present book? Anne Rice>> Well, personal conversion brought me to it, reconciliation with the church I had grown up in and a personal commitment to Christ to write his life. That's the short answer. Patt Morrison>> Was this a religious epiphany or a literary one? Anne Rice>> I kind of read my way back to faith and part of that had to do with the books I was writing. "Servant of the Bones", "Memnoch The Devil", "Pandora", "The Vampire Armand", these books in particular had heavy, heavy religious themes. I was searching. I was looking. Patt Morrison>> Were you aware of that at the time? Anne Rice>> Yes, definitely. I didn't think, though, that I would find faith. I didn't think it was possible to find faith and then it happened. It's very difficult to describe the way your mind sort of lets go in a situation like that, the way you let possibilities come, the way you let faith return. Patt Morrison>> It seems to me that, in a way, the two characters of Jesus and the Vampire Lestat may not be that different, that Jesus was the opposite. One is darkness, one is light, but both are about searching for meaning. Both have a supernatural quality to them. Anne Rice>> That's true. I wouldn't see them as opposites by any means. I think that, in my writing the way I used the vampire heroes, they were precursors. They were questors. They were people who suffered and people who were searching. They helped me to find my way back to Christ and they had Christ-like elements as heroes often do in literature, but they certainly didn't -- I mean, they lived in a dark world and it wasn't possible for them to find redemption, so they were in a way very different. Patt Morrison>> You were born and reared a Catholic. You have returned to the church and, as you pointed out, it's a church that doesn't permit women to become priests. Yet you have put words in the mouth, in the first person, of Jesus. How do you think that will be received? Anne Rice>> It's been received very well. It's been received overwhelmingly well by Catholics in particular, but I wrote the book for everybody and it makes me joyful when the book is received by evangelicals and other Christians and also by people who are not Christian at all. That's the whole idea really, to make a book that makes Jesus real to people that don't think about Him or don't really think about Him except in certain ways. It's to try to say let's present the Jesus of the bible and let's make Him absolutely real for you, day in and day out, in Palestine, in the first century, with a family. Patt Morrison>> You were asked whether you were nervous about undertaking this project and you said, "No, I was scared to death." (laughter) Anne Rice>> That's right, that's right. Patt Morrison>> Was it the daunting scale of the project? Was it the fact that this is a divine figure? Anne Rice>> Well, it's that and also the fact that I believe in Him, so I was determined to get it right. Now whether I got it right or not isn't the point, but I certainly tried to get it right in terms of my own beliefs, but in the scale -- Patt Morrison>> -- and you haven't vanished in a puff of smoke, so you must be doing something right (laughter). Anne Rice>> (Laughter) I haven't vanished in a puff of smoke, no. Patt Morrison>> Do you think anyone else had ever gotten Jesus right? Anne Rice>> Oh, I'm sure other people have gotten Him right, but I think there's always room for an artist to put forward her point of view, to tell the story again. Telling the Christian story over and over again is our obligation as Christians and Christian artists should try again and again to bring people close to God through what they do, whether they're making paintings or music or opera or whatever they're doing. With me, it's novels. Patt Morrison>> Do you take literary license on a subject like this? Anne Rice>> I think there is literary license to always take. Either that, or we're just not going to do any movies about Jesus or any novels about Him or any paintings. If we can't take license, we can't do it. But He became human. I mean, that's the essence of Christ in the reincarnation, that He came down and He joined with us and, from the very beginning, artists have been celebrating that incredible mystery, that love story. Patt Morrison>> In your earlier cycles of novels, you were the master of the universe. You created the characters as you chose. They had their own cosmology. You could invent your own biology or physics as you see fit. Now you're dealing with figures who are well-known, about whom much has been written and who are familiar to millions of people around the world. How different was that and how difficult was that? Anne Rice>> It was very different. It was very, very different. It was like walking on a narrow path and making sure that you don't step off that path. Because this had to be done according to my beliefs. I didn't set out to do a living Jesus or an off-the-wall Jesus or a Jesus who just evolved in the process of writing the book. I set out to do the Jesus I believe in and that meant getting it right, getting the story of Bethlehem, getting the shepherds rights, the Magi. For me, Jesus is the Son of the Virgin Mary, so I had to describe the Virgin Mary the way I believe in her. Patt Morrison>> And her back story as well. Anne Rice>> Exactly, and what it was like to be a girl in Nazareth to whom an angel came. I mean, people would have been whispering about you and talking about you behind your back. I had to get that into a story. But ultimately, it's a fiction. I have to say that. The seven year old Jesus I write about is somebody I made up and it's not the Lord any more than anybody else's art is the Lord Himself. Patt Morrison>> As I was reading this, it struck me that it is in one way a genre book. It's a coming of age book about a boy who undergoes sibling rivalry and temptations. It's a story of a boy who's afraid of himself and who wants to find out about himself, but concerned about what he will find. As you say, he has more reason than any other to feel that way. He said, "I must not misuse who I am." Anne Rice>> Right. Patt Morrison>> And how many boys struggle with temptation in the form of a devil in their dreams? Anne Rice>> That's true, yes. He's definitely the exceptional person, the supernatural hero, the ultimate misfit, ultimate outcast and yet one of us completely and entirely and by intention. Patt Morrison>> And a boy, as you say, who does things differently from other boys. He can bring back from the dead a kid who was knocked down and did away with, he can breath life into clay sparrows that he's made, so he understands how different he is. Anne Rice>> Absolutely, and for me, Jesus is God. I mean, He's only put aside his all-knowing abilities. He's put them aside to experience things in a human way, step by step. I feel that's clear from Scripture, that Jesus did not call on His powers at all times to know everything. The whole mystery of why He came down and stayed so long, to me, has to do with the fact that He wanted to go through things step by step. Why else? I mean, He was God. He could have come for a month, but He didn't. He came for over thirty-three years. Patt Morrison>> So many of your books deal with pain and pleasure and the intensity of that. How does that relate to the present book? Anne Rice>> That's almost been the subject of the books to a large extent. A heightened awareness, a heightened sensibility. Patt Morrison>> An altered state really? Anne Rice>> Right, yes. And, of course, what I'm saying I guess through all that is that we all experience it by just being a human being and having self-awareness and the knowledge that you're going to die puts you in an altered state from everything else on the planet. Patt Morrison>> Do you ever intend to go back to the genres, the vampire and which subjects that you dealt with before? Anne Rice>> No. Patt Morrison>> Why is that? Anne Rice>> They no longer reflect the way I see the world. I mean, my vampires were my heroes and they helped me in my search and I love them, but I don't see the world anymore the way I saw when I wrote those books. It's not dark for me now. It's not filled with despair. It's not filled with anxiety. I see a very different world. I see a world in which everything makes sense and that's an extraordinary thing to experience. Once you do experience that as I have, the commitment has to be total to that vision. Patt Morrison>> Anne Rice, your twenty-seventh book, "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt", thank you for that and thank you for being with us on Life and Times. Anne Rice>> Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. 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>> I'm here at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino where something big has happened. A sixteen thousand square foot greenhouse of sorts has opened, filled with hundreds of species of plants and, if you think plants are just something pretty to look at, think again. Here you can touch, poke and prod and some of the plants will actually grab back. Its official name is the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. To my eye, it was simply a wonderful greenhouse. I got a tour from Jim Folsom, the Director of the gardens at the Huntington. Inside this steel and glass pavilion are three distinct climates created by a group of architects, engineers, botanists and geographers. One was a Cloud Forest, cool and very humid. Another is a Bog, little soil but very, very humid. But the first place you see as you enter the Conservatory is a Rainforest, an emerald landscape under a glass dome four stories high. Jim Folsom>> What we've brought in are plants from around the world from those situations that like warm, humid nights and warm days and a good average growing condition. Val Zavala>> You've got some gorgeous plants. Tell us about it. Jim Folsom>> They're floating with growth. This is a fun plant. It's a palm from the areas around Singapore and that part of southeastern Asia, tropical Asia. Val Zavala>> That is stunning. Jim Folsom>> It's beautiful. It's called a Joey Palm. This small tree with these hugely -- each of those feather-like things is one leaf. There were probably only about three leaves on that plant that were on it when we planted it in July. That small tree has doubled its size since July and we're in November now. Val Zavala>> Now what is this here? It looks like a lily pond. Jim Folsom>> Well, this is a pond and it's all landscaped in and it's got all of its systems going, but the plants that are here are just visitors because the pond was designed for a very particular water lily. These are tropical water lilies in this pond and people are enjoying seeing them and they have a nice fragrance, but next year we'll be growing a very particular kind, the ones that make these massive leaves so big that they will even support a little child. Val Zavala>> Now what's happening right here? We just got rained on. Jim Folsom>> Well, we're at the end of the day. We get a little bit of fog coming in. So this is keeping the humidity up. I don't worry about it. Val Zavala>> Now this is the -- Jim Folsom>> -- this is the Cloud Forest. Now that is low and tropical, wet tropical. This is in the mountains in the tropics where it's cool and misty. Val Zavala>> It's cold in here. Jim Folsom>> It's cold in here. In some of these cloud parts, it gets down below forty even in the daytime, but it hardly ever freezes. If it froze, you'd get an entirely different circumstance. Val Zavala>> And you've got some exotic things in here. Jim Folsom>> Oh, it is the jewel box of the tropics. When you get into the great Cloud Forest, the trees are covered with these epiphytic plants, plants that grow on other plants. Val Zavala>> That's "epiphyte", a plant that derives its nutrition from the air and rain and usually lives on another plant. Hey, I learned something. Now do all these orchids exist in the same place in nature or have you drawn them from different parts? Jim Folsom>> We've drawn them from the Cloud Forests around the world, mostly from Latin America, Panama, to Columbia, Costa Rica, their fabulous floras of epiphytes there, but it's a little bit showmanship. We want people to walk out and be so excited because they're going to go learn more, think more, dream more. Val Zavala>> The whole idea behind this seven and a half million dollar project is to plant seeds not only in the soil, but more importantly, in the minds of young people especially California middle school students whose science literacy is among the worst in the country. Jim Folsom>> This is dedicated to that middle school group's kids making major decisions about where they're going in life. Kids have learned enough in school to be able to really take in voracious amounts of knowledge, so it's that group, but it's for all ages. It's the Disney thing. There's something here for everybody. Val Zavala>> Right. Now this is called -- Jim Folsom>> -- the Bog. Val Zavala>> A Bog. Some kids may not even know what Bog means. Jim Folsom>> Well, they know what bodies in bogs are, right? They know these grim things. But a bog means a place where the soil is saturated with water and it kind of circulates around, but it rises and falls and it's so saturated and there's so much movement of water through it that there are no nutrients. They're are all washed out. So the plants that grow in bogs have particular concerns. Their problems are how do you get your roots on nitrogen and all those useful nutrients? Well, they have evolved to systems of carnivorous, Venus Fly Traps, Pitcher plants. This is a Pitcher plant. Val Zavala>> Pitcher, as in a pitcher of water? Jim Folsom>> A pitcher of water, and this opens up. These are last year's leaves. This is an individual leaf and it has a little bit of water in there and it's kind of like that Roach Motel thing. Insects check in, but they don't check out. They go down and they don't come out. Val Zavala>> They can't get back up. Jim Folsom>> Right, right. When we harvest one of these, it will be full of insect carcasses. Nothing but the shells and all -- Val Zavala>> -- so the plant eats the meat of the bugs and leaves the carcasses? Jim Folsom>> It dissolves away the useful parts, extracts the nitrogen and some other minerals and then, when this leaf passes away, you'll just find it chock full of little dead ants and other bugs. Val Zavala>> This is the kids' favorite? Jim Folsom>> Oh, this is uniformly -- the opportunity to close a Venus Fly Trap is, once again, a hands-on thing. We have a screen here so you can see it. We can talk you through it. This one actually has a dead fly in there already. Val Zavala>> Okay. Jim Folsom>> On the surface of the leaf are these trigger hairs that stick up and, if an insect hits two of them or one of them twice within about a second and a half, the leaf closes. Oh, that one was kind of slow. Val Zavala>> Oh, but that's great though. The Conservatory has fifty hands-on exploratory stations. In this area called the Lab, there are magnifying glasses, microscopes and video scopes. Jim Folsom>> So with this simple microscope, you have both compound and simple microscopes in here, they can focus on different plants and they can get a slightly more magnified group. Not only do they get to do this, if there's a larger group like a family, they can all participate because of what's going on there and they can, of course, once in a while, put it on their chin (laughter). Val Zavala>> Of course, being kids. And adults too. Jim Folsom>> And adults too. Val Zavala>> Every part of a plant from its roots to its flowers can be seen up close and beautiful. And by the way, not every plant grows upwards. Jim Folsom>> This is not about coming and seeing. This is about coming and doing. Hands-on science, hands-on natural history, hands-on gardening. Val Zavala>> And for those of us who just want to stroll in search of exotic foliage that could never survive in Southern California back yards, the Huntington's Conservatory is a treasure trove. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> For more information on the Conservatory, you can go to their website at huntington.org. 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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