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Life & Times Transcript
10/12/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- A lesson in black and brown. A professor and a filmmaker share their concerns about race. Trae Briers>> The Hispanics in the movie, they're not gang-affiliated, you know. So I kept it just being guys who were in college or guys who want to go to college. Joan Evans>> I can't believe that once you get into it how tightly held stereotypes are. Val Zavala>> And then, a comic for president? Politics is played for laughs in "Man of the Year", but will our critics be amused? It's all 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>> Tensions are rising between African Americans and Latinos in the wake of the shooting death of three year old Kaitlyn Avila who was shot by a black gang member. And the question arises, how do we overcome these racial tensions? Well, we met one young filmmaker who believes that movies can make a difference and he has a small film that's making a big impact. Toni Guinyard went to Oxnard to find out more. Toni Guinyard>> This is Oxnard, a city of just over two hundred thousand people and growing, a city of agriculture, industry and tourism, but there is also conflict. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> Rutherford Briers III, who goes by the name of Trae, was born and raised here. Trae Briers>> Oxnard is predominantly Hispanic, so being from Oxnard and being a black man, I grew up in a Mexican culture. A lot of times, we don't get to see that side of the story. Toni Guinyard>> Rather than pretend the clash of cultures does not exist, he focused specifically on just that in his first filmmaking venture, a movie he wrote, produced and directed called "In Your Eyes". Trae Briers>> I was compelled to tell a story about an interracial relationship between a young African American and an Hispanic female because, in the culture of the African American and the Hispanic, there's an underlying tale that we don't get along. [Film Clip] Trae Briers>> I wanted to bring out that true stereotype of the interracial conflict that we have as a culture, but tell it in a love story. A lot of times when we hear about the race relations between Hispanics and African Americans, it's always negative. I wanted to do something different, but keep it honest. Jorge David Ramirez, Jr.>> Why this subject? Well, the subject has to be told. Toni Guinyard>> Jorge David Ramirez, Jr. was Executive Producer. He's known Briers since the second grade and he took a loan out on his home to help finance the movie. Jorge David Ramirez, Jr.>> He has like these Latinos that are minorities, but they clash with other minorities, so then they want to separate themselves. What we showed is something that we can unite and come together versus fighting against one another. Trae Briers>> We don't have that big racial conflict problem like we do in Los Angeles, but we do have it when it comes to relationships. [Film Clip] Trae Briers>> I guess our media portrays a lot of Hispanics and blacks as being gang members, so I stayed away from that. That's been done over and over again. Let's show a different one. Let's have real conversations. Let's have real, you know, situations as opposed to being shoot 'em up, bang, bang, and sex and drugs. Jorge David Ramirez, Jr.>> Everybody has a message and we just want our message to be heard. You know, everyone can get along with one another. Toni Guinyard>> Aside from a few screenings here in Oxnard and in Santa Barbara, the movie never made it to the big screen. But the men behind the movie say that doesn't matter as long as they get people thinking and talking. Joan Evans>> "Prejudice without discrimination. Let's talk about that for a second." Toni Guinyard>> Sociology instructor, Joan Evans, teaches a course on race and ethnic relations at Oxnard College. Joan Evans>> "Prejudice is an attitude. A lot of us can't help our attitudes." Toni Guinyard>> Is this class needed here? Joan Evans>> I wish it weren't. I can't believe that, once you get into it, how tightly held stereotypes are and, moreover, how they're acted on as far as self-segregation. [Film Clip] Joan Evans>> One thing about the class that surprises me is how hesitant people are about talking about race and what they really think. Toni Guinyard>> That is, until I told them about the movie and gave them an open invitation to provide their perceptions about journalists -- >> "They have an agenda of what they're trying to prove or get at." Toni Guinyard>> And this report. >> "Well, just look at yourself. When you walked in, you seemed like a pushy attitude." Toni Guinyard>> Pushy attitude. That's a compliment to what I've been called (laughter). Their comments and opinions were honest and to the point. >> "I'm prejudiced to my own race. If you come over here from Mexico, you'd better learn English because that's what we speak here. If I go to Mexico, they're not going to expect me to get by on English." Toni Guinyard>> They shared their thoughts on stereotypes of different ethnic groups. >> "Alcoholics." >> "They say they're dirty." >> "They say they're loud and arrogant." >> "They all own 99-Cent Stores." >> "You know, we do prejudge because when I see a Mexican person, I'm like, oh, you know, we have similarities, so I tend to go to that person. But then I get to know other people like a black person. I mean, I'll get along with him, but I do have a prejudgment of him." Toni Guinyard>> Biases confronted in the movie, "In Your Eyes". Interracial dating. Is it an issue here at Oxnard? Is it something people talk about? >> "I've never heard of anyone talking about interracial dating, but I think it's good to go out with other people that are different." >> "I don't really find anybody other than my girl really attractive, which could be just the way I was brought up or whatever." >> "Oh, I think it's great because like I get to experience like new cultures because my girlfriend is like American Polish." >> "Not that I'm racist, that, Oh, I don't like you because of your color and I don't want to go out with you, because I don't know them. You know, they could be like the sweetest person, but I just can't. Not that I can't. I don't find it interesting. Like I just stick to my own race, Mexican, and that's how it is." >> "We can learn more about another culture and we can understand the people." >> "Like experiencing new cultures and whatnot and how they cook because my mom always cooks like weird stuff that I don't want to eat (laughter). I'm white-washed." Toni Guinyard>> What do you mean by the term "white-washed"? >> "Like I've been drowned so much into like the American culture that I'm practically half white, half Latino." >> "I too have been white-washed as well, but I find being white-washed is an advantage. I don't have to worry about the police (laughter). Toni Guinyard>> What do you feel like when you're standing in front of those students who look so different than yourself? Joan Evans>> I don't think anything. I think, oh, I'm so glad that maybe I can get them to talk. I really appreciate the opportunity to say, you know, we really need to talk about race just like we need to talk about everything else that we don't talk about. If we don't talk about it, that means we need to talk about it (laughter). Toni Guinyard>> And that is what the movie is doing, putting the subject of how we live and love, along with the biases and prejudices that go along with it, on the table no matter how uncomfortable the topic makes us feel. Joan Evans>> Do we drag out prejudices and find out? I think it's a good idea to just kind of get it on the surface, but maybe it's not. Toni Guinyard>> Briers believes that it's a good idea and uses his movie to push us to at least look at our similarities. Trae Briers>> I mean, there's a scene where I think one of the Hispanic guys in the movie has corn rolls in his hair which is usually affiliated ethnically with the black culture having braids in their hair. So I wanted to show how the cultures are crossing over now. Toni Guinyard>> And most of all, he wants to showcase Oxnard and all of Ventura County as a destination for movie-making. Trae Briers>> My focus and my goal is to show the world-- not just Oxnard, but the world -- that we are a growing community. We are a beautiful county. Toni Guinyard>> And that's the view from his eyes. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> We'd like to know what you think about black/brown relations and you can post your opinion on our Blog. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog. 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>> Home prices are falling finally and there are a lot of changes in the real estate market, but how do you keep up with them all? Well, there's no one better equipped to keep up with those changes than Bloggers. Sam Louie met the editor of one of Los Angeles's most popular real estate Blogs. Sam Louie>> Cary Kadlecek has a passion for real estate. That passion can be seen and read on a Blog titled lacurbed.com. Cary Kadlecek>> We call it a Blog and I would say the purpose really is to provide a kind of slightly sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek, slightly editorialized take on city life, planning development and real estate in Los Angeles. Sam Louie>> Cary is one of three editors on the popular Blog that started just over a year ago. He's quick to point out that they're not realtors or developers, but that doesn't mean they don't have an opinion on the housing market. Cary Kadlecek>> I think the way that things are going, based on what I've understood, is that, you know, there's a softening of the market. Economists that I read tend to think that the coasts and particularly California are going to drop more drastically than the center of the country. Sam Louie>> You had mentioned that you're not an economist, so what exactly is your background and how do you contribute? Cary Kadlecek>> My background is that I am urban planning student at USC and I've always been interested in these sorts of things. I've always read about these kinds of issues on my own. Sam Louie>> He estimates that the Blog gets close to one hundred thirty thousand hits each month. Part of the popularity is their tongue-in-cheek style of writing. Cary Kadlecek>> So I had written a post, as I have been doing for a few weeks now, about price drops in houses. There was a house here I found, for instance, that was listed originally at $1.15 million dollars and the sellers then dropped it twenty-two percent to $899,000. So I made the comment, "We understand that the market was pretty wacky not so long ago, but there must have been a lot of crack rock smoked when the sellers decided on its original listing price. Maybe those classy iron bars are the jewels or the diamonds." So that's the kind of tone that I like to take, at least. When you're looking at a house like this -- Sam Louie>> -- very modest looking house. Cary Kadlecek>> Very modest looking house with, you know, iron bars. To think that these sellers were listing this at over a million dollars is just ridiculous, you know? Sam Louie>> Cary believes another reason for the Blog's growing audience is it's uniqueness. Cary Kadlecek>> I think it really brings together a lot of things that have never really been brought together on the internet in Los Angeles, at least, talking about all these different issues in one sort of forum. It's things that people are really interested in. I mean, people love to talk about real estate, but they love to talk about all these things about city life and planning and development. I mean, it's something that people get very interested in and are very passionate about, so I think it's just done a good job of really filling a niche that people are really interested in. Sam Louie>> When you first started, what were some of the first topics that generated a lot of interest? Cary Kadlecek>> You know, housing always generates interest. Housing prices, looking at houses, the types of houses that are on the market and what people are asking for them were always the things that interested a lot of readers. Sam Louie>> In fact, housing and real estate still make up a majority of the Blog's main topics, especially now as articles posted on the Blog forecast a drop in home prices. Cary Kadlecek>> And things are sitting on the market a lot more now too. Just the other day when I was looking at some houses for one of the postings I was doing, there were houses I was seeing that were sitting on the market for almost a year already. So that's the kind of thing that wasn't happening before. Sam Louie>> There are also some unusual selling incentives that caught his eye that were absent from the market before. Cary Kadlecek>> This is a picture of a house in Los Feliz where the seller is offering to pay six months of the buyer's mortgage to buy the house. But there are a lot of other things that people are offering as incentives too. Televisions, fur coats, tickets to Europe, I mean, all these crazy things that sellers are doing. Then, of course, I posted the question, well, why doesn't the sellers drop the price? Sam Louie>> On one of your Blogs, you had mentioned forty-eight percent of southern Californians pay more than thirty percent of their income on rent or mortgages. What does that indicate to you? Cary Kadlecek>> Well, I think it indicates something pretty clear and that is housing prices have gone and did go up a lot more quickly than incomes. I think everybody could agree that, in their scramble to buy houses, people stretch themselves thinner and thinner. Sam Louie>> Cary does get paid for his postings, but it's not much, about eight dollars apiece. What he really gets out of this is a sense of satisfaction by informing others of the real estate trends all with a humorous spin to it. Cary Kadlecek>> And they're realizing that they can probably not have to pay $850,000 for, you know, a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house that's relatively in shambles. You know, they can maybe get it for $750,000 now. A lot of those sorts of things we like to poke fun of and joke about on the Blog, so I think a lot of our readers enjoy that. At least, we hope that they enjoy that. That's why we write it and we get a lot of positive feedback from readers. Sam Louie>> What's the future looking like here in southern California? Cary Kadlecek>> I think the future is good for southern California. You know, I think buyers are realizing that they can be a little bit more selective and that they can hold out a little bit longer. Sam Louie>> But don't hold out too long. Cary Kadlecek>> You never know. I mean, it's just like playing the stock market. You can't possibly predict what's going to happen in the future. Six months from now, the prices could start going up again, so it's really a gamble. Sam Louie>> Okay. Well, I guess we'll just keep reading your Blog. Thank you, Cary, for joining us. Cary Kadlecek>> 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 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. Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Last year, we had the critically acclaimed film, "Capote", which told the story of Truman Capote's years doing research into the case of two cold-blooded murders. The book, "In Cold Blood", resulted. This week, the film, "Infamous", treads that familiar territory. The movie stars Toby Jones as Truman Capote and Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, his friend. The film is written and directed by Douglas McGrath. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Lael Loewenstein of Variety, and Ella Taylor of the L.A. Weekly. Ella, what did you think of "Infamous"? Ella Taylor>> It's going to be a very hard sell simply because of the comparisons between that and the award-winning "Capote", but in some ways, I think it's very much the better movie. In the first place, Toby Jones looks tremendously like Capote. He gives a marvelous performance that makes even Philip Seymour Hoffman look mannered. Sandra Bullock is quite a nice surprise as Harper Lee, and the film takes an extremely daring view of the relationship between Capote and the prisoner, Perry Smith, which many will find tendentious, but really perks you up. Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Lael? Lael Loewenstein>> Well, I think it's inevitable to compare it to "Capote" and, in a way, it's unfair. I actually found that to be much the superior film so much because of Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance. Hoffman looks nothing like Capote, but to me, he really nailed the heart and the spirit and the ambiguities of the writer, whereas Toby Jones looks and acts so much like Capote, but he in fact personifies what exactly are the strengths and weaknesses of this film. This film adeptly summarizes the flamboyancy and the aesthetic qualities of Capote's world at the time, but it doesn't really get to the heart or the soul or the sadness of the man and his legacy. So that's what I think was really lacking here as well. Larry Mantle>> Our second film this week is the comedy, "Man of the Year". It stars Robin Williams and Laura Linney. The film is written and directed by Barry Levinson. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> The comedy, "Man of the Year". What did you think, Lael? Lael Loewenstein>> Well, I thought it was half of a pretty good movie. It's a very serious hybrid, this film. It's a political comedy, but it's also a kind of suspense thriller at the same time and that part just didn't really work. It reminds me of some films, for instance, like "Dave", the Ivan Reitman comedy with Kevin Kline as a popular hero who's unexpectedly made into the president because he looks like the president. In this case, Robin Williams plays Tom Dobbs, a television talk show host who's drafted by his enthusiastic audience into running for president. What first starts as a joke turns out to be a serious political campaign. When Dobbs really loses it at a public debate, the things just really take a turn. There's a whole sub-plot involving Laura Linney as an employee of an electronic voting company where she finds discrepancies and some problems with the system. She tries to report it to Dobbs himself and then people set out to kill her. So that part of the film didn't really work so much, but there are parts that are funny and Williams himself is very good. Larry Mantle>> Next, we have a very difficult to watch documentary, "Deliver Us From Evil", which shows the Roman Catholic priest who is a serial pedophile as he describes how he ingratiated himself with the families of those abused. The film was also a damning portrait of the actions of the Roman Catholic Church in California in how it dealt with the wayward priest. Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock on AirTalk, I'll be interviewing the writer-director of the film, Amy Berg. We'll talk with one of the now grown victims of the priest and also get a response from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> The documentary, "Deliver Us From Evil", Ella? Ella Taylor>> There are three portraits in this movie. One is Father Oliver O'Grady who is a very amiable and cooperative monster who would even sleep with the parents of children in order to get to them so that he could abuse them, hundreds of them. The second is a portrait of his victims, who are now predictably very troubled adults, and their anguished families. But most significantly, the movie is a stinging indictment of the Catholic Church that shows how this pedophile was moved from one parish to the other even after they knew at the highest levels, and that includes both Cardinal Mahony and Pope Benedict. It's an indictment not only of the cover-ups by the church, but how its everyday practices infantilizes the public and aggrandizes the priest. It's completely convincing. Larry Mantle>> Lael, what did you think? Lael Loewenstein>> I think Ella just nailed it. This is an incredibly disturbing, horrifying documentary that is very, very important and I think people need to see it and, from a political standpoint, I absolutely hope that this persuades people to kind of reopen the investigation into the church and into the role of Bishop Mahony as well in terms of what he knew. He essentially allowed -- and this is all documented in the film -- Father O'Grady to continue his work as a priest pedophile by transferring him from parish to parish. This went on over the course of twenty years in northern and central California and it's just staggering. Several people make the point in the film that Mahony actually chose the priest over the children. Right now, you have O'Grady walking around free in Ireland because he was deported after serving only seven years of a sentence. So it's just really heartbreaking. I hope some good can come of this film. Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, a drama featuring two long-time friends who take a weekend outing only to find that their lives are going in very different directions. The movie is "Old Joy". [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Ella Taylor, what did you think of "Old Joy"? Ella Taylor>> This is an absolutely exquisite film in which almost nothing happens and yet it contains the whole world. The story, such as it is, is of two old male friends who are going on a camping trip in the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest. Almost nothing happens, and yet there are these tremendous emotional shifts that are going on that are handled very delicately largely through the physical landscape. Even though there's very little going on, there's no plot, there's no motives as such, and there's really no pay-off, the movie speaks volumes about the tragic asymmetry of human relationships and how people are often on very, very different tracks and how change can affect relationships in very deep ways. I highly recommend it. Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC for our critics, Ella Taylor of the L.A. Weekly and Lael Loewenstein of Variety. We invite you to join us next week at this same time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times. Val Zavala>> For the hour version of FilmWeek, tune in to KPCC radio Fridays at eleven a.m. 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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