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Life & Times Transcript
05/17/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- He could have stayed in the newsroom, but Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, got swept into the desperate world of the homeless. Steve Lopez>> I was walking through downtown Los Angeles and came upon a guy playing a violin who clearly was living out of a shopping cart. Where was this guy schooled that he plays this well? And if he does play this well, then why is he living on the street? Val Zavala>> And then, ever heard of a professional tree climber? Whether it be for hire or for fun, this outdoorsman knows the ropes. These stories and more 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>> Most of us couldn't bear to look Los Angeles's ugly homeless problem in the face and yet that's what Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, does day after day. It was his persistent coverage of the homeless problem that has earned him awards and criticism. Toni Guinyard got a tour of Skid Row from Steve Lopez who manages to see what most of us would miss. Toni Guinyard>> Just one visit to Skid Row and you'll walk away with images that stay with you long after you leave. Steve Lopez>> I mean, this is a snapshot of social disintegration at its worst. When you've got people, you know, trying to survive on these streets with, you know, desperate with their illnesses and their fears, you just know that you've got to do better. Toni Guinyard>> Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, decided to write about Skid Row and the people he met here in this city within a city. Shannon Murray>> What Skid Row is is approximately fifty square blocks of services, housing and homeless people. Toni Guinyard>> Call it the capital of homelessness and despair. It's an area east of downtown Los Angeles most people don't visit unless they have to. Shannon Murray>> And in this area, there's approximately between seven and nine thousand homeless people at any given point in time, some of them on the streets, some of them in programs and about a third of them in permanent housing in the community. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> Shannon Murray chooses to come here. She's the Deputy Director of LAMP Community, a Skid Row-based nonprofit agency devoted to providing housing and services to homeless people who are mentally ill. Shannon Murray>> The people I work with are what get me through my day every day. We're talking about really the most sick people in our society, for the most part. People that have been in jail, in prison, for years. People that have mental illness, that smoke crack every day. They're amazing people. Yes, once in a while, there are some very frustrating ones. But for the most part, they surprise us and challenge us (laughter) and teach us every day. Toni Guinyard>> The idea that anyone here on Skid Row can surprise and challenge and teach is a tough sell, but it happens. Steve Lopez>> This is a story that, when I first stumbled onto it, I had no idea what the story was or where it would take me. Toni Guinyard>> In column after column after column, Lopez has taken his readers on a tour of Skid Row. His words both shock and shame readers. Steve Lopez>> Look, I write a column. This is not some passive little "here's what I think you might want to consider". It's two-fisted and it's in your face and that was the whole point of the Skid Row series. Guess what? This is the city you live in. Enjoy your breakfast, but you're going to have to, you know, get this down along with your eggs and your bacon because this is where you live and this is who you are. Toni Guinyard>> The lesson Lopez learned about Skid Row started with one man, a homeless musician. Steve Lopez>> Nathaniel is his name. Nathaniel Anthony Ayres. This all begins a little over a year ago when I was walking through downtown Los Angeles and came upon a guy playing a violin who clearly was living out of a shopping cart. You know, it's a pretty striking picture. It's like where was this guy schooled that he plays this well? And if he does play this well, then why is he living on the street? Toni Guinyard>> It's a question Lopez needed to answer, so he kept coming back to that man and learning bits and pieces about him with each visit. It seemed unreal. Nathaniel was Julliard educated, but schizophrenic and living on the streets for thirty-five years. Steve Lopez>> People like to think that you've made a moral choice to live on the streets chasing rats away with a stick and it's not a moral choice. It's a result of whatever predicament you're in, whether you've got some form of addiction, whether you've got a mental health issue. So people like Nathaniel have just been left to these streets. Toni Guinyard>> Over time, Nathaniel became more than just the subject of a newspaper story, more than another soul on Skid Row. Nathaniel became a friend. Steve Lopez>> The man has been a gift to me not only because we have a strong friendship, but because he helped me see these worlds that I didn't know much about. Toni Guinyard>> On these streets, Nathaniel introduced Lopez to his world, one of mental illness, homelessness and survival. Lopez in turn introduced his readers to Nathaniel's world. Kita Curry>> I think what Steve has done is take all the readers in Los Angeles and beyond Los Angeles on an odyssey where they've come to understand people that formerly they wouldn't even look at. Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Kita Curry is President and CEO of the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center. So moved by Lopez's Los Angeles Times series on Skid Row, it honored the columnist for his work erasing the stigma of mental illness. It's estimated that a third to a half of the people living here are mentally ill. Kita Curry>> If you're mentally ill and you're on disability, you might be getting eight hundred dollars a month. If you're trying to live in a hotel or a motel and pay your rent every day and then also eat, it's easy to end up homeless. Toni Guinyard>> For every supporter, Lopez has his share of critics who have grown weary of the unwavering attention given to the plight of the homeless in this Skid Row community. Steve Lopez>> Yeah, you get criticism all the time. What do you want us to do? Who are you? Can't you write about anything else? Toni Guinyard>> But Lopez continues writing about Skid Row, the residents, the homeless, development, police, prostitution, mental illness, violence and housing. At times, the attention has become overwhelming. Shannon Murray>> Meaning like I think there's maybe more kind of like looky-lous and more people wanting to do stories, but kind of on their terms. So it feels a little bit invasive, I think, to the community in a lot of ways. Toni Guinyard>> The challenge is finding a way to use all of this attention to help the people living here and point out what you have to look a little closer to see, the personal victories. Chaylone Hill>> "How you doing? You doing all right today?" Toni Guinyard>> Chaylone Hill would like nothing more than have people understand how quickly life can change when you suffer from a mental illness. Chaylone Hill>> And I was married and I have children. I left to go get some bread one day and I never came back. Toni Guinyard>> She ended up on Skid Row. Chaylone Hill>> I was scared to get well. Like my voices. I was used to my voices. They kept me company. I was never lonely. Then I found out that the voices weren't natural and I had to get that under control. Now I talk to people. Toni Guinyard>> When she was offered therapy and medical help, she took it. When she was offered a job at LAMP Community, she took that too. Chaylone Hill>> Today when I walk out, I have a destination. I know where I'm going today. Shannon Murray>> Our clients, which we call members here, are amazing individuals and have been through, a lot of them, more pain and trauma than any of us could ever imagine and they're true survivors. Toni Guinyard>> Murray will tell you the key to survival is housing. >> "There's four guys in this cubicle. Up front, we got cubicles where the women are." Shannon Murray>> What is proven to work with most people, even severely mentally ill people, you know, people that have been homeless for years, is moving them from the streets or in an emergency situation straight into an apartment, a permanent supportive housing unit. Toni Guinyard>> This is one of them, the St. George Hotel. Michael Alvidrez>> There are a total of eighty-six tenants that live in the building. They all pay rent. They all have a lease. They all prepare their own meals. So this provides them an opportunity to become stabilized. Coming from the streets gives them an opportunity to sort of re-socialize into a larger community that's been lost on the streets. Toni Guinyard>> Homeless advocates say that, if the situation on Skid Row is going to change, the homeless must be given a chance to get off the streets. Kita Curry>> I think it's criminal to sweep people up like garbage and that's what we're doing here even on Skid Row. Steve Lopez>> This is a measure of who we are. It's not something in Brentwood. It's not something high on a hill. This is it right here. This is California. This is Los Angeles. Welcome to it. How do you feel about it? Toni Guinyard>> That's one question Lopez will continue asking. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> Nathaniel, the musician that Steve Lopez followed for so long, is now off the streets and staying at an apartment most of the time. He's on the verge of getting treatment and there are plans to build a studio where he can practice his music and teach. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> Times are changing for the four major commercial networks. Television audiences are shrinking. Tempers in the board room are flaring. And hit programs like "American Idol" often happen by accident. Little wonder the networks are desperate. That's the title of Bill Carter's latest book. Saul Gonzalez talked with Carter about the cutthroat business of network television. Saul Gonzalez>> Mr. Carter, author of "Desperate Networks", thank you for joining us on Life and Times. Bill Carter>> Great to be with you. Saul Gonzalez>> A lot of your writing concentrates on the rise of the mega-hits over the last several years, "Lost", "Desperate Housewives", "Survivors", and so on. How important are these shows, which kind of almost dig themselves into American culture, into the American psyche, for network success now? Bill Carter>> I think they're life and death. I think that's what they're all about. You know, on cable you can see a show that attracts two or three million people. You'll never see a show that attracts thirty million people. They just haven't generated a show like that. The networks are the only ones that can do that, but they have to keep doing it. That's what really defines them now. They're the ones that generate these cross-cultural hits that young people and old people, black people and white people, rich people and poor people, everybody watches and that's what they sell to the advertisers. If you want to launch a product, you still have to come to network television because we're the ones that draw these mass audiences. We can still do that and nobody else can do it. If they can't do that, then they're no different from cable and they can't charge these extra rates for advertisers and then their whole economic structure falls apart. Saul Gonzalez>> Now your book is specifically a story of the last few years of network television and really the central tale in it, to me at least, seems to be the fall from Mt. Olympus of NBC post-"Seinfeld" and "Friends" years and the rise of ABC and CBS as two juggernauts. Bill Carter>> A very unusual circumstance. Network television is always considered to be cyclical because the guy on the bottom tends to be the guy that takes chances and he finds the hits that way. But it didn't happen for a long time because NBC maintained pretty much a twenty-year dominant string with only a few little, you know, slow periods in between. But then all of a sudden, after being, you know, pretty dominant and making the most money, making more money than anyone has ever made in network television, their long run of consistent hit shows fell apart all at once. Instead of going from first to second to third and slowly kind of dropping, they dropped like a stone. Saul Gonzalez>> Plummeted. Bill Carter>> No network had ever gone from first to last overnight like that, but what really happened was they managed for so long to milk the shows they had and stay on top that the cow was dry (laughter) and there was nothing left to replace it and they fell right to the bottom. Saul Gonzalez>> When networks go looking for new shows, when they take the risk and put a big new show in their schedule, how much of their decision-making is driven by intellect and experience and how much just sheer luck and instinct? Bill Carter>> Well, my reporting seems to indicate it's much the latter because, in almost every case, the big show that people love now from "Idol" to "CSI" to "Survivor" to "Lost" was rejected by virtually everybody and was basically abandoned. I compared it to Dickens. You know, Dickens is always like an orphan that finally is the hero and it's true in network television. These shows are orphaned. They're left at the doorstep. Saul Gonzalez>> These are all the Oliver Twists of ideas. Bill Carter>> And finally they emerge usually because there's one champion. In "Lost", the guy who literally was running the program department invents the idea for the show, gets tremendous resistance, the first script is terrible, he brings in J.J. Abrams, a really talented guy who rewrites it, comes up with the notion that the island is actually haunted in some way. ABC still resists because the pilot is too expensive. Finally, this guy gets fired. He's out of the network before it even goes on the air. Saul Gonzalez>> And he runs this kind of campaign from outside of ABC, this kind of insurgency to get some -- Bill Carter>> -- to get somebody else to put it because it was his last baby. It was so much his personal project that he was afraid ABC would just sit on it and let it die. So even though he had no authority over it anymore, he quietly contacts NBC and says to them, "I can deliver you that show." They go, "Wait a minute, Lloyd. You were fired. How is that going to happen?" He says, "I can surreptitiously deliver you the tape in the dead of night and you can watch it and you can buy it." Now ABC did not give it up. If they had given that up and it had gone to NBC, that would have been just an incredible scandal, but they didn't. They stuck with it and, to their credit, they wound up deciding it was at least promising and they marketed it tremendously and it launched really very strong. Saul Gonzalez>> Network television has been around for half a century or more. Why the reliance still on instinct and on sheer luck? I mean, don't we know what America wants by now? Fifty years after Jackie Gleason went off the air? Bill Carter>> The oldest saying in show business is that nobody knows anything. You can't guess going in what it is the viewers are going to like. You can intuit, you can research, but until it happens, like who would have thought that "American Idol" is going to work? I mean, I say in the book that it was passed over by everybody and I understand that someone walks in from England and he says -- Saul Gonzalez>> -- Simon Cowell. Bill Carter>> Simon Cowell and his partner, Simon Fuller, and he says, "We're going to do a reality show with singing." They're like, "What, are you crazy? The American audience for music is spread out all over the place. Some people like rap, some like rock." He was basically thrown out of every office in Los Angeles when he came to pitch it originally and I don't blame the network executives for that. Even at the very end when he finally has it at Fox, they won't pay for it. They're like saying, "We'll put it on if you find advertisers. We won't pay you a nickel for it." And only because of the champion there, amazingly enough, was Rupert Murdoch, the actual head of News Corp which owns Fox. He gets a call from his daughter who's seeing the show on in England and says, "Wow, there's a tremendous show on in England. Do you know what's happening with it in the United States?" He says, "No, I don't. I'll call my Fox people." He calls the network and they say, "Well, we're talking about it, we're thinking about it." He just says, "Well, stop thinking about it. Buy it today. Do it today. Get it today." So they went out and bought that show they wouldn't have otherwise and it's just transformed the network. I can't believe, in the abstract, that somebody would say, "That's what the audiences are going to want." You don't know until the audiences tell you. As soon as it was on, they said, "Yeah, that is what we want." Saul Gonzalez>> And then everybody claims that it's a good idea. Bill Carter>> Of course. Absolutely, because success has a million fathers. Saul Gonzalez>> As a well-informed observer of this industry, what do you think are the challenges it has to confront and grapple with in the next five to ten years out to remain relevant both as an industry and as a force in society? Bill Carter>> Mainly, the main thing they're facing is the changing of distribution systems because, you know, they can't count on people coming home and watching the television sets. The shows are going to be available on so many other means like on computers, on iPods, on wristwatches. Who knows how people are going to see this video content? Their challenge for them is to create the contents that people have to have. Before you know you want to download a show, you kind of already have to like it. So in essence, I think they're becoming more like the movie companies in a way where the networks' run is like that opening week box office where you have to establish that's the product everyone is talking about, that's what we want to see. So they really have to continue to generate really big numbers for a certain amount of shows that they can then sell across these other platforms and try to make more revenue because the advertising revenue is going to go down. Advertisers are spending more money on the internet than ever and that's only going to continue. So it's incumbent on them, if they're going to keep making shows that are very expensive to make -- and that's why they're so good. They're much better and higher quality than shows you see on cable or internationally --then they've got to have revenue and the revenue has to come from these other sources. Saul Gonzalez>> Well, Mr. Carter, author of "Desperate Networks", I wish you many good years of reporting on the industry and many good hours of viewing its content. Bill Carter>> Thanks a lot. 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 out here at Topanga Canyon State Park where most people just stick to the trails, but we met one young man who went off the beaten path for an entirely different experience. His name is Nick Araya and he's a professional tree climber. That's right. You can hire Nick to take you up in a tree for a different view of the world and maybe, if you're adventurous, a little swinging. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> But today, he's hitting the trail for a solo climb just for fun. About a quarter of a mile off the trail is a growth of his favorite climbing oaks and, along the way, a rattlesnake which we opted to walk around carefully. Now do you know this tree? Nick Araya: Yeah, I've climbed it, oh, four or five times already. Val Zavala>> How did you get into this? Nick Araya>> I started as a rock climber, actually. I lived in Wisconsin and, when I was in college, I didn't have a car, so I couldn't just drive to the nearest rock-climbing crag. So I had all the rope and the harness and everything and I thought, hey, I bet I can use this stuff to climb those oak trees on campus. So when the security wasn't watching, I gave it a shot and, sure enough, it worked. Part of it can be intimidating, I think, for people. They see all the ropes and all the equipment and helmets and swinging around and all and "I could never do that". But also keep in mind that the people that are doing it this way have been doing it for a long time and they have a more advanced understanding of what they're doing. I could set up a system in just a few minutes that any person, any able-bodied person, can do and even handicapped people have been brought up into trees. Most of us, probably all of us, have climbed a tree or several trees when we were little and, to be able to kind of get back to that, but now the lawyers are involved, so we need ropes and everything to keep us safe. But in reality, the ropes let you go a lot further than you ever could when you were a kid without that fear of "Mommy, I can't get back down." When I was coming up from the ground, I was setting up what I call a foot-lock that attaches me to the climbing rope so that I can foot-lock up the rope, which is what I was doing where I was pinching the rope with my feet and kind of inch-worming up the rope, so that was it. Once I got up into the tree, then I switched over to the climbing setup, the doubled-rope climbing setup, which lets me go up and down at ease just by leaning on this knot and it locks in place. Then if I grab it and pull it, it will let me slide down. Val Zavala>> What do you see from up there? Nick Araya>> Oh, I can see the whole ridgeline of Topanga Canyon. I see a helicopter way off in the distance. What the neat part is, in the neighboring trees, I can see birds fluttering in the canopies way at the top which you might not necessarily see from the ground, and then the deer in the field way over there. Val Zavala>> Now when you climb, how long do you stay up there usually? Nick Araya>> If I'm climbing by myself, it's not uncommon for me to spend all day in the tree. Maybe get here in the morning, maybe it's ten o'clock right now, and stay here until the set sets and watch the sun set. I would be perfectly content to just sit right here for an hour or so. Maybe I'll bring a book and just kind of lean up on the tree. Val Zavala>> You'll spend all day there? You don't get bored? Nick Araya>> No, no. I'll bring a camera. Once you get set up, if you quiet down, the birds forget about you. I've seen some remarkable things from up in the canopy and taking some really neat shots of hawks and hummingbirds and things of that sort. I'm going to kind of scoot along and maybe walk across it if I can and set my rope on the other side of the tree. Once I do that, there's a good opportunity for me to lower myself down and stand on a branch and do some big swinging, which is a lot of fun. Just kind of pendulum in and out of the tree. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> What do you think of people who, you know, those environmentalists and protestors who stay in trees from month to month to month? Nick Araya>> Well, it's kind of -- what they're trying to accomplish is very political and they're battling the lumber companies or something like that. I have a lot of respect for what they do, but also the lumber companies are just trying to meet the needs of the people -- the demands, I should say, of the people -- so we can make it a lot easier on the tree sitters if we just stopped buying so many wood products and use more recycled products. That said, I've actually climbed a couple of trees with tree sitters and brought them food and things like that because I'm a tree hugger and I side with the tree sitters more than I would the lumber companies. [Film Clip] Nick Araya>> But one of the other things that we strive for is to not hurt the tree. I could take this rope and just throw it over the branch like that and clip into it, but as it rubs on the branch, it starts actually cutting into the branch and that can be damaging to the tree. So if I run it through this pulley, now the rope rubs on that pulley and not on the branch. Most of the time when I climb is by myself, but occasionally I'll climb with other people. Sometimes you just want to get up as high as you can and get as far away from the people walking on the ground as you can, so a tall redwood would be the ideal. But typically, I like a tree much like this one. It's spread out a lot. I like the big jungle gyms. [Film Clip] Nick Araya>> I guess the neatest thing, the draw, for a lot of people, is that it's different from what we see in our day-to-day. You know, most people get up, get in the car, drive to work and do whatever it is you do at work. Then you get in the car and head back and do it again. Just to be able to stop that and just explore a world that we only see the bottom of as we walk around on the ground. We only get to see the bottom of branches. To see what the animals see and to play in a different kind of way than we got to play for a long time since we were kids. Phew, that was fun. That was one of my better swings. Val Zavala>> If you'd like to find out more about tree climbing, you can contact Tree Climbers International through their website at treeclimbing.com. 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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