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Life & Times Transcript

2/15/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

East Los Angeles has culture, history and political clout, but it's missing one thing.

Gloria Romero>> It's a vibrant community that understands its roots and is ready to take its place on an international stage.

Val Zavala>> And then, brain tumors used to be a death sentence, but technology is offering new hope. Would you believe surgery without a knife?

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>> It's feeling ignored, neglected and left behind because it doesn't have what the other eighty-eight cities in Los Angeles County have: cityhood. I'm talking about East Los Angeles, the unincorporated area between Boyle Heights and Monterey Park. It's got a strong identity and now some people say it should stand on its own two city feet. But as Hena Cuevas tells us, there's more to cityhood than a City Hall.

Hena Cuevas>> A drive down Cesar Chavez Avenue takes you deep into East Los Angeles, or East L.A. as it's popularly known. Many consider this seven square mile stretch the heart and soul of Mexican American culture. After all, this is the birthplace of the musical group, Los Lobos.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> And the Chicano movement of the 1970s. It's even been immortalized in film.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> The 1987 movie, "Born in East L.A." starred Cheech Marin as a United States citizen who was mistaken for an illegal immigrant.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> But for all of its notorieties, East Los Angeles is not even a part of Los Angeles. It lies within an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County. Now there are some who want to change that and have East Los Angeles become its own city. One of them is State Senator Gloria Romero.

Gloria Romero>> It is a vibrant community that understands its roots and is ready to take its place on an international stage.

Hena Cuevas>> More than forty years ago, there was a similar push for cityhood. It was the late 1960s and East Los Angeles was creating its own political identity. There was a student walkout to protest the deplorable conditions at schools.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> There were the Chicano civil rights demonstrations in the 1970s. Today that political clout still holds. East Los Angeles is a mandatory stop for politicians searching for that Mexican American vote and, through it all, its population has grown from a hundred to a hundred fifty thousand.

Gloria Romero>> If East Los Angeles were to incorporate right now, the city of East Los Angeles would be in the top ten of cities in Los Angeles County in terms of population. So the question is almost why not? Why hasn't East Los Angeles moved forward to become a city?

Hena Cuevas>> One reason has been financial. Could this area support itself as a city? Gloria Molina is a County Supervisor who represents East Los Angeles. She favors cityhood, but wonders if there is enough money here to support a government.

Gloria Molina>> There might be enough of a tax base, so hopefully there is. And if not, again, once you are a city, you are empowered to tax yourself. That is something that a Council and a Mayor can do and people can vote themselves any additional taxes that they want to have if they want certain resources available to them.

Hena Cuevas>> This is the new County Hall. It's where residents go to access county resources.

Gloria Molina>> Now you don't have to go across town. You know, if you have an issue that deals with building and safety, but you also have an issue that deals with the fire department, they're right there right next to each other.

Hena Cuevas>> So you know you can come to this office and the questions can be answered.

Gloria Molina>> Absolutely, and it's all done here.

Hena Cuevas>> But still there's a general feeling that East Los Angeles has been neglected. A third of the residents live below the poverty level and crime is high. Police protection comes from the sheriff. Fire service is a responsibility of the County Fire Department. But if the area becomes a city, all of those services and more become its responsibility. Trash, for example, as well as the maintenance of the public parks and libraries.

Gloria Molina>> I think there's pride in being a city. There's also responsibility and you have to understand that it's going to cost for those services. So we don't know and that's why they're doing the feasibility impact of whether that could happen or not.

Hena Cuevas>> One question facing any new city is how do you generate enough revenue to pay for all of those additional city services? One way is through business. But one of the challenges facing East Los Angeles is that it is mostly residential with a very high density population. So some are wondering where is all that new business going to go?

The biggest commercial arteries are on Whittier and Atlantic Boulevards. Whittier has mostly small older businesses while Atlantic is known for its car dealerships. But the area doesn't have any big box stores that generate hefty tax revenues. There's not even a supermarket.

Gloria Molina>> I know that people would love to see major grocery stores here and they'd love to see the big box, but that means that they might have to turn over their house. Somebody's going to have to go in order to make room for a huge Costco or something like that.

Gustavo Camacho>> Well, this establishment is a great example of the potential that East Los Angeles has.

Hena Cuevas>> Gustavo Camacho works for Senator Romero, but he's also the President of East Los Angeles's Chamber of Commerce. He says there might not be a lot of vacant lots, but there are still plenty of properties that could be developed.

Gustavo Camacho>> You don't have to displace anyone. You don't have to go through a residential. What we need to do is that we have a lot of these old buildings that are deteriorating.

Hena Cuevas>> Camacho says that East Los Angeles faces competition from surrounding cities to attract retail. The cities have an advantage. They don't have to go through the county to get approval.

Gustavo Camacho>> Unfortunately, it's not a business-friendly community, so a lot of these national brands or just some other mom and pop businesses that are in other areas won't locate here for the simple fact that, you know, it's just too difficult to do business in East Los Angeles.

Hena Cuevas>> If East Los Angeles were a city, he says, it could approve projects a lot faster.

Gustavo Camacho>> Particularly with some of the national brands, they want to come in. They're ready. They're in line to come in, but they just want it to be a little easier for them to establish themselves.

Hena Cuevas>> He points to businesses such as Coffee Bean as a kind of company that East Los Angeles wants to attract. Plus, he says the car dealerships bring in a lot of revenue with the big ticket items they sell.

Gustavo Camacho>> We're trying to promote that whole idea of "buy East Los Angeles" where you buy East Los Angeles and you keep your money in East Los Angeles. The sales tax comes back to the community.

Hena Cuevas>> For Romero, the current push for cityhood is all about banking on the East Los Angeles brand.

Gloria Romero>> It's exercising clout. Remember that East Los Angeles has marketing. It has name ID. It is real. I've seen presidential aspirants come to East Los Angeles. They know that it means something very powerful.

Gloria Molina>> There's a sense of pride and empowerment from just the term of being a city and being in control and self-determination, but there are many people who may be just as satisfied now and are unsure as to what it means or what the differences will be.

Hena Cuevas>> Once the economic study is complete, petitions for cityhood could start circulating. If approved, the issue would go on a ballot. Ultimately, it will be up to the residents of East Los Angeles to decide and, with an identity that needs no introduction, who knows? Cheech Marin's new show could be called "East L.A. 90022". I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> So what do you think? Should East Los Angeles be its own city? You can let us know by posting 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>> Radiation has been used to treat cancer for years, but now new advances have refined the technique and new machines are allowing doctors to focus in on brain tumors that used to be inoperable. Take the case of Bill Dailey from Thousand Oaks. He had lung cancer. Unfortunately, it had spread, or metastasized, to his brain. Chemotherapy doesn't penetrate to brain tissue, so the only way to treat his tumors would have been with radiation.

Before, doctors would have exposed the entire brain to radiation. Today, this machine allows them to aim the radiation very precisely, using it like a surgeon's knife. They call this device a Gamma Knife. Allison Bruce is a reporter with the Ventura County Star. She spent weeks researching advances in cancer treatment. Although she's a newspaper reporter, she learned to shoot and edit video for the paper's website.

Allison Bruce>> If you want to go here, you can learn more about the machine from the radiation oncologist.

Dr. Eugene Ahn>> "This is the tool that we use to treat a wide array of brain tumors."

Val Zavala>> I talked with Allison about the Gamma Knife and why it's such a major step forward.

Allison Bruce>> Basically, what one of the surgeons was explaining to me is that, with chemotherapy, it does a good job of affecting cancer in the body, but it doesn't make its way into the brain. So if a patient has cancer maybe that has metastasized to the brain or spread up to the brain, then the Gamma Knife gives them a way to go in and treat that cancer. Then they can allow the chemotherapy to do its job and treat the cancer of the body.

Val Zavala>> So brain tumors that were once considered a death sentence can be treated. Ninety percent of the time, the tumors shrink or stop growing. So tell us about the patient that you followed.

Allison Bruce>> So basically, I went one morning down to Thousand Oaks where the Gamma Knife is located in this area. I met up with a patient from Thousand Oaks who had lung cancer that had basically metastasized to his brain. It had spread up to his brain. If you click on him, you get to hear a little bit about his story from him and his sister.

Christie Dailey>> "Bill was diagnosed at the beginning of November, so we've had a lot of bad news in a very short time. Learning about the Gamma Knife procedure was the best news we've had during that time."

Bill Dailey>> "It was very precise in its attacking the lesions in the brain. Basically, it's kind of made for what I have. I have about six small lesions that they're going to try to kill."

Allison Bruce>> One of the options there was in the past was whole brain radiation if you had several tumors throughout your brain. While that was something that worked, the side effects aren't very good and it can have a lasting effect on how you think, how you remember, those sort of things. So it was very important to him to try something that reduced that effect.

So he went in, they attached a case to the patient's head which is then used to position them within the machine. What happens is, there are two hundred one cobalt sources that provide the radiation. Actually, there's this helmet that they put the patient into and it has two hundred one holes and those line up with the cobalt in the machine. Then the radiation comes through the holes and intersects in one specific place. Where it intersects, that's where you get the high level of radiation.

Val Zavala>> Doctors use an MRI of the brain to aim and guide the radiation to the exact spot. The procedure takes about twenty minutes per tumor.

Dr. Eugene Ahn>> "You can see this white spot here and that's an enhancement. That's a brain tumor. This is located in the cerebellum. This is another white spot. This is another tumor that is located actually in the brain stem."

Val Zavala>> Then he was out by the end of the day?

Allison Bruce>> Out by the end of the day and went home that day. That's another thing that, you know, they really like about the Gamma Knife. Patients can go in, get treated and, as one of the surgeons said, they can be on the golf course the next day.

Val Zavala>> But doctors can't always get to all the tumors in one treatment because of positioning limitations, so one session may not be enough.

Allison Bruce>> The other challenge is that any time there's treatment within the brain, it can cause brain swelling. So if you treat too many of these tumors at once, that could be dangerous for the patient. Sometimes they'll treat a few, send them home to rest and recover for a couple of weeks, and then bring them back and treat the rest.

Val Zavala>> Gamma Knife treatment is covered by Medicare. It's an expensive procedure.

Allison Bruce>> The hospital told me that it runs on average about eighteen thousand to twenty thousand per treatment.

Val Zavala>> That's expensive.

Allison Bruce>> That is expensive. Their argument is that, if you had to go in and actually have surgery done with a physician going into your head, then that would cost more.

Val Zavala>> And how much does one of these machines cost?

Allison Bruce>> The machine is up -- well, I know for the Thousand Oaks location that they paid about five million for the machine and for the building. The building has to be built to specifications. In places where they needed maximum shielding, they've got two-foot thick walls. It's definitely --

Val Zavala -- that adds up.

Allison Bruce>> It definitely is an investment.

Val Zavala>> I asked Allison what eventually happened to Bill Dailey.

Allison Bruce>> Unfortunately, the patient in Thousand Oaks passed away about a month after the treatment. His family felt it was important to still tell his story and why he wanted to have the treatment done. It's always uncertain what the cause is, but because he had so many lesions to be treated, you know, one of those may have affected him at the end.

Val Zavala>> Still, with a ninety percent success rate, demand for the Gamma Knife is high and its potential is still unfolding.

Allison Bruce>> They've started using the machines in recent years for treating Parkinson's patients to try to help them with the tremors that come with that disease. So there are a lot of new things that they've discovered even since they started using this machine.

Val Zavala>> Check out the Ventura County Star this Sunday and Monday for a special series on advances in cancer treatment. And if you'd like to find out more about the Gamma Knife, you can go to their website at venturacountystar.com.

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. Our first movie this week is the romantic comedy, "Music and Lyrics". It stars Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore in a film directed and written by Marc Lawrence.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media, and Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor. Jean, what did you think of "Music and Lyrics"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Another romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant. I think that he steals the movie completely. Romantic comedies, of course, are quite predictable always. This one, though, has some really funny lines and some great sight gags, most of them courtesy of Mr. Grant. Now I must tell you, Larry, that I thought this film was really cute despite one glaring problem. This would normally be an insurmountable problem because there really is not a great deal of chemistry between the two stars.

Hugh Grant is adorable in his part and actually Drew Barrymore, after a very neat, cute, horrible opening is adorable herself. But for some reason, they don't quite seem to match. I don't know if it's an age difference or whether it's something else, but I still liked the film.

Larry Mantle>> Peter, what did you think?

Peter Rainer>> Well, Hugh Grant may steal the movie, but there's not much to steal (laughter). I think that, you know, he like mugs throughout the movie and makes sort of funny faces and winks and is just so overbearingly charming that, to me, it's no surprise that there was no chemistry between him and Drew Barrymore. She, I think, has this very natural, sort of cuddly cute presence and has rescued many a movie.

She can't quite do it here because that character she's playing, the sort of bubbly part -- she waters the plants and that's how they meet -- contradicts the other part of her life where she's this very downcast woman that's wronged by her writing teacher played in a very smart and quick cameo by Campbell Scott. Who wants to see Drew Barrymore all weepy and pouty and downcast for, you know, half the movie?

Larry Mantle>> The Robert Hanssen FBI spy case unfolds in the film, "Breach", starring Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Breach", Peter?

Peter Rainer>> I liked "Breach" a lot. It's a very well-told picture about Robert Hanssen, the FBI operative who was arrested in the 1980s for spying for over twenty years for the Soviet Union and then for Russia. He was nabbed ultimately with the great aid of fellow agent, Eric O'Neill, played by Ryan Phillippe in this movie. They worked very well. It's basically a cat and mouse spy versus spy scenario where O'Neill has been placed there as a mole really to figure out what's going on with Hanssen, but for a long time, he doesn't even know why he's spying on Hanssen.

The best thing about this movie for me, aside from the kind of well-told narrative and thriller sequences which are very intelligently done, is Chris Cooper's performance. It's just phenomenal. He plays a guy who's so completely at odds with who he is on the inside and the outside. It's a phenomenal piece of work.

Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of "Breach"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I liked the film too. I mean, Hanssen was a man of great psychological contradictions, shall we say, and the big question in the film, but not one that the film completely answered, is why he did this. He was a devout man, devoted to his wife and children, seemed to despise communism. Yet he was a double agent for twenty years. He apparently put his fantasies on the internet, put pictures of he and his wife having sex and sends them to a friend of his out of the country.

It strongly suggests that Hanssen felt under-appreciated by the FBI and that this is his way of showing that, "You see, I'm really better than you think I am." But for that, of course, he would have to be caught and it never looks like he really wants to be caught. So there's that psychological element which I found slightly less than satisfying, but my guess is also that nobody really knows.

Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, the historic drama, "Days of Glory", which tells the story of four North African men who enlist in the French army to try and beat the Nazis. The film is directed by Rachid Bouchareb.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Days of Glory", Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, Larry, the power and strength of this film is that it does expose how very poorly the Algerians were treated by the French and what they had to go through and that they were still willing to fight for this country where they'd never even been, so I think it has that going for it. However, I must say, I found it quite confusing the first time I saw it because, until the characters are established, you're not really sure who is who.

Two of the main characters are both tall and thin and I was completely confused about which was which. Then there's a peripheral character who dies early on and I thought he was one of the main characters. I'm just saying this as a way to really pay attention to all the characters you're seeing because it will make it a much more enjoyable experience.

Larry Mantle>> Peter?

Peter Rainer>> Well, I liked this film, but I don't think it's a terribly inspiring piece of filmmaking. It has a kind of conventional narrative and the way the battle sequences and the sequences between the men are described are out of a kind of standard Hollywood war movie, but the subject itself is very riveting.

I gather that, as a result of this movie, some reparations were made to the families of these men, these Algerian soldiers, who were terribly wronged and that comes across very strongly in the film, the wrong that was done to them.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media. Please join us again next week for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> KPCC broadcasts the hour version of FilmWeek Friday mornings at eleven. 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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