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LIFE AND
TIMES
PBS
- KCET
Life and Times transcriptOctober 26, 2004VAL SAVALA
Val Zavala>> Tonight
on Life and Times --
California cities are mad and they're not going to take it
anymore. Can they stop the state from siphoning off local
taxes?
Mayor Larry Guidi>> Why
do they have the $35 million deficit
and my city has a balanced budget? So what does that tell
you?
What's wrong with the picture? Does the fox really want to
guard the henhouse?
Val>> And then, a respected
newsman has the back story of one
of the oldest shows on television.
Plus, what
and where is Los Angeles? A new documentary tries to define
the elusive concept of Los
Angeles Now.
It's all coming up next on tonight's Life and Times.
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>> Have you ever felt overwhelmed
by where we live? This
massive metropolis that's larger than a small country, has over
sixteen million people, a couple hundred cities and more than
eighty languages. Well, now a new documentary by a fresh
hometown voice brings Southern California into perspective in
a
visually stimulating way. It's called "Los Angeles Now"
by
Phillip Rodriguez.
>> "The story of Los
Angeles is a small town that was multi-
cultural and became literally the most white city in the history
of urban America and now has become the most multi-cultural
city
in the history of mankind."
Val>> I talked with filmmaker,
Phillip Rodriguez, at his home
in Silverlake about how he approached such a huge subject.
Phillip Rodriguez>> I'm as
perplexed as everyone else is and I
feel as exhilarated and as concerned about this change that's
taken place in our city, the city that was when I was a boy,
Iowa by the sea, and now has become this unbelievable,
incomprehensible, fast-moving polyglot. I mean, I think
everyone in the elementary school I went to was blonde but me,
and to see it change in the course of twenty or thirty years
has
been so impressive.
>> "Someday when there
are so few blondes left in California,
we're going to put them in a preserve and we're all going to
go
look at them just remembering what it was like."
Medusa>> "Koreatown is
almost taking over Crenshaw. I'm like,
wait a minute, where did all of these -- you know, I'm reading
buildings where I can't even understand the language and I'm
like where did this come from?"
Phillip Rodriguez>> I'm a
crummy student and I'm not a
historian and I'm not a good statistician and I simply was
trying to get to evoke a feeling of how it's like to be here.
I
wanted the film to feel like life on a freeway.
>>
"We're in Los Angeles, somewhere in Bel Aire, Zsa Zsa
Gabor's house. I mean, you know, where is this damn town? You
drive along and am I still in East Los Angeles or where am I?
Is this Tarzana yet? I mean, where am I?"
Val>> Real unique technique
which I would call a city of
collage. Still images moving in relationship to each other as
opposed to just going out and shooting a bunch of pictures of
people. What were you after?
Phillip Rodriguez>> Good question.
I think that, again, we
wanted the film to feel like Los Angeles, a city that's
constantly in motion, where the mini-mall that was there last
week is gone and something is in its place the next week. We
rooted around for visual technique to attempt to evoke the sense
of change and disorientation.
Val>> One of the more edgy
moments was when there was a
discussion about the relationship between Jews and Latinos,
which is something that's not often broached.
Phillip Rodriguez>> Yeah.
I mean, there are lots of edgy
moments in the film, I think. I think a lot of us are feeling
like we don't know where we sit and where we fit in the context
of this change.
>> "The divide between the
Jewish community in Los Angeles and
the Latino community is one of the crueler divides."
Yuval Rotem>> "Many Jews
in the west side don't necessarily
have any curious understanding of the Latinos on the east side
because of them are in (inaudible) with Latinos. It's either
with their maid or their gardeners."
>>
"Most west side Jews could give a damn about Los Angeles.
They're not really of Los Angeles in the way the rest of us
are
and, by that, I include the Anglos and Jews, Middle Easterners
and Ethiopians who live in my neighborhood."
Phillip Rodriguez>> My film,
for instance, was financed in
great part by the Skirball Foundation and for that I am very
grateful. But all my film is trying to accomplish is to
stimulate and maybe provoke some kind of interaction. I think
a
lot of us, because the city is so spread out and because we
don't sit on top of each other, we don't experience each other
every day in the metro, that we're disinclined perhaps to engage
and consider each other's point of view. All my film is trying
to do essentially is to mix it up a little bit, stir up a little
bit and maybe sometime impolite conversation.
Val>> So what kind of reaction
do you hope or expect to get
after people see it?
Phillip Rodriguez>> I would
really like for the film to
stimulate conversation. The fact that we made a movie that has
Eli Broad next to Wanda Coleman next to Selma Hayek next to
some
taxi driver from Central America.
>> "My
child that I have, he's not going to be a cab driver
like me because he knows how hard it is. He knows that there
is
a better way and he's sees the light and he already knows what
he wants to do. He wants to be a movie director."
Val>> But it's not just the
Latino century. One of the big
points that you make in your piece is that it's going to be
such
a mixed race. Everyone is going to be part this and part that
and a quarter that and a fifth that. After a while, will race
not mean anything in particular?
Phillip Rodriguez>> That's
not a question I can answer. I'm
not qualified. Which is why I only make documentary films. I
don't think about such things. Honestly, I don't know. Things
could go so many ways. I'm just a chronicler. I'm not a sooth-
sayer or, again, a statistician or a sociologist. I simply take
the camera around and try to get a sense of what people feel
and
what they fear and what they aspire to for the city.
>> "You're going to have many Anglos with Latino
grandchildren
increasingly and so that they're brought into this mix as family
members whether they want to or not."
>>
"I've gotten tickets before and they write down white.
You
know, it's not a big deal to me. I'm not going to be like, no,
I'm Asian, you know. It's just whatever people want to call
me.
It's their deal. Not mine."
>> "You
grow up in a white neighborhood, you're going to have
white. You grow up in an Asian neighborhood, you're --
>> "Everybody speaking Korean and eating Korean food."
>> "You know how it is, though. I mean, you
blend in to
everything. So we adapted."
Medusa>> "Ten years ago,
I'm getting out of my car and I had an
Afro. This kid said, hey lady, this ain't black history month.
This little black kid. Wait a minute, you know what I mean?
I
was almost offended. But three years later, everybody had an
Afro. Mexican-Americans have Afros."
Phillip Rodriguez>> I guess
my mission is two-fold. In the
context of the city, I would like people to experience it and
bounce it off their own experience and some of it is going to
ring untrue. To some, it will be rubbish. To some, it will be
maybe an irresponsible publication. To some, it will be an
incomprehensible video game.
[Film Clip]
Phillip Rodriguez>> The city
is the one most poorly
represented, misunderstood places in the world. It's the most
photographed and it's the most absolutely non-understood.
Hollywood is largely responsible for that because it exploits
images of the place that have nothing to do with the facts that
are here.
>> "To that extent, the people
I know in Southern California
seem much more hostage to the lure of fame."
>>
"I'm going to be the center of Los Angeles in a minute,
you
know (laughter)."
Val>> So we live in the most
diverse culture that's ever
existed, as you said, on the human planet and yet we don't talk
to each other.
>> "We used to have the railroad
tracks. Now we have the 405,
the freeway. That's the great divide."
>>
"If I'm on the other side of aviation, you know, I'm a
fish
out of water, I'm flipping around. No, I'm over here."
Phillip Rodriguez>> I simply
wanted to introduce this city,
this dynamic place, to the rest of the country.
Val>> Phillip Rodriguez, you've
done a fantastic job of
representing this city and it is a difficult one to represent.
Phillip Rodriguez>> Thank
you, Val. I appreciate it.
Val>> Whether you're a new
arrival or have lived here a long
time, you'll enjoy seeing "Los Angeles Now". It's
on KCET
Saturday, November 27, at 9:00 p.m. It's also showing at
various places around town. Just go to their website for
details at losangelesfilms.org. And that's our program. I'm
Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching. We'll see you next time.
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.
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