Life & Times - Transcript

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Life & Times Transcript

9/3/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The network television producer who's dedicated his life to documenting poverty.

Gerard Straub>> I think it's what motivated me, you know, to want to do films like this, to tell the story of the poor, to bring the poor to you so that you could see it and you could experience something you wouldn't normally experience.

Val Zavala>> And then, they're called Country Docs, but they make their rounds on the meanest streets of the city.

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>> Welcome to this special edition of Life and Times where you will meet some remarkable people, so get ready to be inspired. We begin with a man who gave up a comfortable lifestyle to tackle the world's biggest problem.

He was living the good life in Hollywood making plenty of money as a producer, but then something happened and now he travels the world filming human suffering. Why did he make such a dramatic change? Hena Cuevas has the remarkable story of Gerry Straub.

Martin Sheen>> "In these slums, misery is the daily bread. The bloated belly of poverty knows no relief."

Hena Cuevas>> Gerard Straub's documentaries are nothing less than eye-opening. From visiting lepers in Brazil --

Martin Sheen>> "The horror of leprosy is a reality in the Amazon region of Brazil. Shockingly, this area is home to forty-five thousand lepers who struggle for survival."

Hena Cuevas>> -- to spending almost a year with the homeless in Los Angeles's Skid Row.

Gerard Straub>> "My name is Gerry Straub. This is my city. Yet until recently, I had no idea so many people lived in such suffocating squalor in the shadow of such astounding affluence."

Hena Cuevas>> But before he started traveling all over the world with his camera, Straub was making thousands of dollars a week as a television network producer.

Gerard Straub>> You know, actually I never had any intention of making a documentary. I mean, I'm a soap opera producer. I've done, you know, dramas on the networks. It was the furthest thing from my mind.

Hena Cuevas>> Then in 1995, Straub, a self-proclaimed atheist, went to Rome to research a novel he was writing. He went into an empty church to take a break.

Gerard Straub>> I went into the church actually just to sit down. I didn't go in to pray. I sat down and I saw this prayer book there and I picked it up and opened it randomly and there was this Psalm 63, a soul searching for God. I didn't hear any voices or anything. It just seemed like I was immersed in this sea of love. I mean, something happened.

Hena Cuevas>> It turned into what he calls a life-changing experience.

Gerard Straub>> I began to understand that I could put the power of film at the service of the poor.

Hena Cuevas>> He's made five documentaries in some of the most destitute countries of the world, this one from El Salvador.

Gerard Straub>> "This is all, you know, the waste. This shack is a fairly typical slum dwelling. Twenty-two people live in this house. There are two small rooms and a kitchen."

I know the people. They're real to me and I spent enough time with the people that I was able to enter into a relationship and I think that's the secret of how I get, you know, really good stuff. I tell people that I don't take pictures. I try to receive pictures.

Hena Cuevas>> This approach helped him when he took on the Los Angeles Skid Row project called "Rescue Me". He spent over six months on the streets to earn the trust of his subjects, like Loretta whom he met at the beginning.

Gerard Straub>> "This is Loretta. When I first met her, she was new to living on the streets. How long have you been living here?"

Loretta>> "Oh, I guess about a month and a half, something like that."

Gerard Straub>> "What happened?"

Loretta>> "It's a long story. One day I'll be able to tell it, hopefully."

Hena Cuevas>> Some of the images he captures are haunting. Some people may find them very disturbing, like the story of little Moses from El Salvador.

Gerard Straub>> "This is Moses. Moses has an incurable blistering disease."

When I was editing the little Moses section, my editor who works on a primetime CBS show and -- I mean, he was so distressed that, you know, he had to stop. As I'm watching, I thought to myself, well, how did I do this? I don't know what it is. I think there's maybe a grace.

"Yet all the suffering in the world for me was embodied in this one small fragile boy. Moses is, without a doubt, the saddest person I've ever seen including the many lepers I encountered in Brazil."

I think I'm able to do it because I know that I'm not like doing this to exploit little Moses or for anything. I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that these films can help, if not Moses, but someone else, some other kids.

Hena Cuevas>> And help kids is what he wants to do with his latest project, "The Patients of a Saint". The film deals with the work of American doctor, Tony Lazzara, and the sick children in Lima, Peru.

Gerard Straub>> "Severely deformed at birth, he has no arms and one of his legs is truncated. Victor was suffering from severe malnourishment when he was found by an Italian missionary sister who brought him to Dr. Tony for treatment."

Hena Cuevas>> There's also one of the documentaries where the emotion was just so strong that you decided to actually talk about it on camera.

Gerard Straub>> That was in Tijuana, Mexico.

"There's something that hits me so deeply when I come to a garbage dump like this and see human beings picking through the garbage. I think it's what motivated me, you know, to want to do films like this, to tell the story of the poor, to bring the poor to you so that you could see it, you can experience something that you wouldn't normally experience."

Hena Cuevas>> And in the process of helping the poor, he's exhausted his own resources.

Gerard Straub>> I have to raise every penny myself. That's truly the most exhausting part. You have to get the films out. People have to see them. I mean, most people who do any kind of technical work on the films will work for far lower than their normal pay.

Hena Cuevas>> Others have helped because he simply asked.

Gerard Straub>> Martin Sheen I met in a church one day, in an empty church. I'm sitting there and I just went up and started talking to him and he had a common love for helping the people in the Philippines and he volunteered to narrate the film, so that really kicked it in into overdrive.

Martin Sheen>> "Hunger has no borders nor does it discriminate."

Hena Cuevas>> You've been doing this for three years. How do you come to grips with the realities that you're filming and that you're working with?

Gerard Straub>> I don't get depressed so much because I also know there's great joy in these places and people have great faith. There's also an amazing spirit of resiliency with the people.

Martin Sheen>> "Moments before taking photographs of this elderly female leper whose life is overwhelmingly difficult and lonely, Gerry Straub asked her how she was doing. Her answer stunned him. "Very, very good, praise be to God."

Hena Cuevas>> How much longer will you continue doing this?

Gerard Straub>> As long as I'm able to stand. I just feel such passion for this. You know, I've never been so fulfilled in my entire life. Working at the networks, I could make a ton of money, have a lot of power and prestige. That meant nothing.

Hena Cuevas>> Straub says he's two mortgage payments away from losing his house. Still, he firmly believes his mission in life is to make sure the forgotten poor are always remembered. 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, 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>> She was living the American dream, a beautiful family and a comfortable life in Beverly Hills, but nothing prepared Brenda Freiberg for what she would have to endure, the loss of not one, but two sons to AIDS, and that has taken her life in an entirely new direction.

Brenda Freiberg lives in an elegant high-rise in Westwood. By all appearances, she has it made, a successful husband, her own career in communications, and a mother to three beautiful children. Then in 1986, everything changed.

Brenda Freiberg>> I've lost two sons to AIDS. My older son was diagnosed back in 1986.

Val Zavala>> Then a year later, her second son, Michael.

Brenda Freiberg>> My boys were diagnosed a year apart. They died almost five years apart.

Val Zavala>> Did you feel at that point too much for me to bear? Why me?

Brenda Freiberg>> I went through all of that and came to terms with I don't know why. I really did. I found some peace with that.

Val Zavala>> Just accepting that you don't know why.

Brenda Freiberg>> Just accepting, yeah, that there's something bigger, and through it all, the strangest thing is I gained faith.

Val Zavala>> Perhaps it was that something bigger that gave her the strength to take action.

Brenda Freiberg>> I got involved in all aspects. I got involved in treatment. I got involved in education. I got involved in direct services. I went to Washington a lot and lobbied. The first time we went to a march, it was not long after the diagnosis. It was at the Federal Building. I was terrified that my parents would see us on TV (laughter). There was this grown-up woman with grown-up children and I was just terrified (laughter).

Val Zavala>> But Brenda did more than march. This is Bombay, India, now renamed Mumbai. India, with more than five million people infected, is second only to South Africa in AIDS cases. And in India, the face of AIDS is much harsher. Through a series of events and contacts, Brenda made a trip to India.

She met the doctor who in 1986 had documented India's first AIDS case, the same year her son was diagnosed. Now Brenda makes three or four trips to India each year. She works with the YRG Clinic in Chennai, India. Brenda remembers her first meeting with HIV-positive women.

Brenda Freiberg>> I walked in and there were about twenty around a large square conference table in their vivid colors and their eyes just full of pain and anxiety and hope and fear. Everything was written there and it was all I could do to keep from just bursting into tears.

These women were looking at me as though I were their savior and I wanted to just go away. You know, here my dream of trying to help women in great need was on the verge of becoming a reality and I just thought who am I to think, you know, that I can do anything like this or make a difference?

Val Zavala>> But she has. The YRG Clinic has teamed up with AIDS Project L.A. They've received major support from the MAC Aids Fund, MAC as in the makeup company. The clinic provides not just medicine, but support for families and all-important sex education.

Brenda Freiberg>> Well, usually it starts with the men. A lot of the men are truck drivers. They're out on the road for several months at a time. It is common for them to have sexual relations at the truck stops. They go home and they don't tell their wives and the wives, even if they're educated, have absolutely no ability to negotiate safe sex.

The sex worker is very aware of AIDS, very aware of the significance of using condoms. Very difficult for them to do so because the men will say no and either they lose, you know, a client or they will earn less if they require them to wear the condom.

Val Zavala>> This report from Frontline/World interviewed sex workers and brothel owners in India.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> And aren't the men afraid of contracting HIV?

Brenda Freiberg>> Some are afraid of contracting. The message is getting through, but they're turning then often to sex with young men who ride in the trucks with them. You know, there's denial that there's homosexuality. It's called MSM, men who have sex with men. That's how they refer to it. But, you know, it just gets spread. This denial is really dangerous. I've heard people say that, for women, one of the highest risks for HIV is being married.

Val Zavala>> But there has been progress, especially in Calcutta. Unlike Mumbai, aggressive education programs and a willingness to speak frankly has resulted in dramatically fewer AIDS cases in Calcutta.

Brenda Freiberg>> There have been some wonderful things in India, one of them unionizing the sex workers in Calcutta. I think some terrific things have come from that because they banded together and they all said, you know, no condom, no sex. I think that made a lot of difference. The same thing has not been done in Bombay, for example. I understand there are a hundred thousand sex workers.

Val Zavala>> The YRG Clinic in Chennai has treated between ten and twelve thousand patients, but the need worldwide is huge.

Brenda Freiberg>> Thirty million have died. Forty million are ill with this disease. I just read today that there may be as many as thirty nine million more dead in five to ten years. It is the largest thing that's happened to our world since the Plague and, you know, we all read in the books about the impact that had on the economy, on the cultures, on the society. That's what's happening here. Everyone knows somebody who's been affected by AIDS which means that we all realize that we're touched by it.

You know, we joke or talk about how we're global. We are. We really are. Our economies, our cultures, are beginning to be totally interwoven which means that we are tied some way or another to every other person. I know it sounds overblown, but I really believe it's true. Those poor mothers are no different from me. I guarantee you that their broken hearts and my broken heart are exactly the same.

Val Zavala>> If you'd like more information about the YRG Clinic in India, you can call AIDS Project L.A. or go to their website at apla.org.

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>> Doctors making house calls are a thing of the past, so we were especially surprised to learn about a group of health care professionals who still go to their patients and we were especially impressed when we realized that the patients were on Skid Row. Hena Cuevas went along on these very unusual rounds.

Hena Cuevas>> It's six a.m. on a Thursday morning at this clinic in downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Let's go through our medications first before we go."

Hena Cuevas>> A doctor, a nurse, a social worker and a health coordinator are getting ready to make their rounds.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Except this team won't be walking the halls of a hospital. Instead, they'll be making house calls of sorts to patients with no homes living in the worst part of downtown, the gritty area known as Skid Row.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Rick, you got your bag out (laughter)?"

Richard White>> "You got it."

Hena Cuevas>> They're the Country Docs, members of a six month old pilot program. Three times a week, they bring medical treatment to the homeless. It's not a glamorous assignment.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Morning. How are you today?"

Hena Cuevas>> By seven, they're combing the sidewalks looking for patients, or clients, as they call them.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Los Angeles Mission Community Clinic. Does anyone need any medical services today?"

Hena Cuevas>> Heading the team of four is Dr. Bryan Sauter.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> We see a lot of individuals who are suffering from street problems, as we call them, the bronchitis, the sexually transmitted diseases, the things that they're not getting any care for and which can progress to more serious diseases.

Hena Cuevas>> Such is the case of the first man they encounter.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "What's going on?"

Samuel>> "I'm in a lot of pain."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "A lot of pain? Can you kind of tell me a little bit of what's happening?"

Samuel>> "My leg."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Your leg?"

Samuel>> "No, it's not my leg. It's my chest."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Your chest?"

Samuel>> "And my shoulders."

Hena Cuevas>> His name is Samuel and, like many of the clients they treat, he doesn't give them much information.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> Well, what we see with a lot of clients who are actually living on the street is they don't even know what their problems are, so we have to begin from the very, very start and just kind of create a foundation around that patient. "How long have you been out here on the streets for?"

Samuel>> "Long time."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Long time?"

Hena Cuevas>> He tells them he smokes crack. Drug addiction and mental illness are rampant and are the biggest problems they have to deal with. Howard Kahn is with L.A. Cares, the group that funds Country Docs. He says bringing health care to the homeless is the first step in helping them get off the streets.

Howard Kahn>> It's real hard to get a job if you're not healthy. If you're suffering from a mental illness that's not treated, getting off the street is really difficult.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Does your chest hurt when I push on it?"

Samuel>> "Yes."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "It hurts all over?"

Samuel>> "Yeah."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "So it sounds like it may be a cardiac problem. What we'll do is we'll get him over to our clinic and start doing the basic workup on him, EKGs and some other cardiac testing and, then if we need to, we'll work in conjunction with the county and hope we get him connected back into services if we need to, all right? How's your stomach been feeling?"

Hena Cuevas>> The doctors patrol the five-block area of Skid Row where there's an estimated nine thousand homeless. After they make the initial contact on the street, they encourage them to come here to Volunteers of America, a drop-off center. It's a place where the homeless can come, get referrals and take a shower. Once here, they can give them the additional health care that they need.

But convincing the transient population to come inside to see a doctor is a challenge, so a lot of treatments are performed right here on the streets of Skid Row. This man not only has a bloody forehead, but also an infected finger.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> He's got a blister that we're getting some of the fluid out of the blister. They are very painful. I've been quite a bit down here in the street because a lot of people on their feet, we see them mostly.

Hena Cuevas>> Next, the group encounters a man who's been in a wheelchair for more than three years.

Richard White>> "Sign your name right there for me. That's just giving the doctor permission to treat you and give you medicine."

Hena Cuevas>> Richard White is the team's health coordinator.

Richard White>> I really believe we're making a big impact. The more I come down here, the more I'm encouraged to keep coming back.

Hena Cuevas>> And he's coming back in more ways than one. More than fifteen years ago, Richard used to be one of them.

Richard White>> I was out here two to four years and my drug addiction was real heavy and deep.

Hena Cuevas>> White eventually got help from the Los Angeles Mission, the group that runs Country Docs. He's now their HIV screener and he hopes his example will help others leave Skid Row.

Richard White>> Yeah, and it really burns my heart to see people still down here in their addictions. They were out here when I was out here and I really hope that what I'm doing will be a testimony to them and an encouragement to them to come out of it.

Hena Cuevas>> Rounding out the team are a nurse and a social worker who offer guidance on finding jobs and housing. So is Country Docs making a difference? It's too early to tell and there aren't any figures on what kind of an impact they're having, but Sauter says he can see the change.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> When we make that connection out in the street and they see the care that we're bringing out here to them, they see that somebody does really care and it makes a difference. "Patty's going to go ahead and wrap that for you right now, okay?"

>> "Thank you."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "You're very, very welcome."

Hena Cuevas>> Sometimes clients ask the Country Docs for more than health care.

Sandy>> "Can you all pray for me?"

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Sure. We can do it here. Why don't we start off with that? Sounds like you're having a rough time today. Father God, we just lift Sandy up to you right now, Lord, praying that whatever is bothering her and troubling her right now, you'll just take that load upon yourself, Lord, and just give her a sense . . ."

Hena Cuevas>> Country Docs is a three-year pilot program and, if it's successful, L.A. Cares hopes to continue with it.

Howard Kahn>> If this works, I think expansion is the right idea. The shame of it is that all these folks should have health care coverage anyway, but so many of them don't down here.

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Yeah, you're very congested up there. What color is the phlegm that you're bringing up, your sputum?"

Sandy>> "Green."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Green. Okay. And three weeks, you're not getting any better. And no stomach problems? Nothing like that?"

Sandy>> Just when I cough."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> Ultimately, people have to make a choice and we'll do everything that we can to help them. So when it comes to saving the world or making a difference in everyone's life, it's a reality that we can't do that. But if we make a difference in one person's life, we've done our job. "God bless. You be good, okay? Take care."

Sandy>> "Bye."

Dr. Bryan Sauter>> "Bye, Sandy. Take care."

Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> Thanks for joining us for this special edition of Life and Times. I'm Val Zavala. 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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