The Brief

Stage and screen actor Alfred Molina is no stranger to performing characters with dimension, subtly, and humor in such roles as Inspector Gamache in the Three Pines, Diego Rivera in Frida, Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, and even as the villainous Doctor Octavius in the Spider-Man movies.

Molina now takes on the part of big-shot attorney Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind, now staged at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Originally created as a commentary on McCarthyism in the 1950’s, playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee used a fictional version of the real 1925 Scopes Monkey trial as a proxy for their message.

In the landmark case, a high school science teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution. Molina’s character comes to the defense of the high school teacher in a trial that shakes a small, religious town to its core.

Molina spoke with LAist Weekend Edition host Julia Paskin about taking on the role. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Julia Paskin: Your character states he is not there for the money, so why does Drummond take on the case?

Alfred Molina: He's there to defend the Constitution, I think, in some way.

[The play] was striking at something that was very, very deep in the American democracy, which is the much vaunted separation of church and state. And here we had laws being passed which were kind of faith-based that were controlling the education of people in the United States.

And [Drummond] is a warrior wanting to make sure that you know that the laws and people's freedom of thought — in particular, freedom of speech — are protected and cherished.

JP: Here we are in 2023 with some states still debating what can be taught in schools. Perhaps the subject matter has shifted, but the debate in Inherit The Wind feels current. What does it mean to you to perform the story today? 

AM: These idea and topics — they're still part of the national discourse.

It's what theater does best in a way. It's able to illuminate these ideas in a dramatic way that is hopefully going to keep an audience hooked on the arguments. And we've had a lot of excited conversations after the play with members of the audience who are responding very energetically to the questions that the play brings up.

JP: Your character is going up against Matthew Harris Brady (played by John Douglas Thompson), and despite having very deep disagreements, there is still a respect and reverence between them. That was refreshing to me in today's political climate. How do they maintain a humanity while thinking the other is entirely wrong? 

AM: That relationship, which has gone through lots of mutations over a period of years, is mentioned quite early on in the play. So you understand that there's a real history here. In fact, Brady says at one point, this friendship was based on a mutuality of admiration. They were clearly on different sides of the fence, but there was still this civility between them and an ability to discuss without rancor, without becoming sort of just angry with each other.

And I think that gives the relationship a depth which pays off later in the play.

John Douglas Thompson, Alfred Molina, and Cast in Inherit the Wind

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Jeff Lorch

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Pasadena Playhouse

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JP: Your character even comes to Brady’s defense — or in defense of how we just speak about people. What’s happening for Drummond in that moment and how do you see a connection to discourse today? 

AM: From a personal point of view, as the actor playing the part, it made me realize that you can disagree with people but that doesn't mean you have to hate them.

I remember many years ago, having a really serious discussion with a relative. And then we both said, you know what, we're never going to convince the other. So let's just leave this aside and enjoy the rest of the relationship which is the vast majority of it.

And I think that's something we've lost, particularly in this age of social media. And just the decent thing of, you might have disagreed with someone, [but] when they're no longer in a position to argue their case, that doesn't mean you dismiss their whole life.

Drummond actually says at one point, “I refuse to erase a man's lifetime.” And then he goes on to say “we all have the same right, which is the right to be wrong.”

JP: You last performed at the Pasadena Playhouse in The Father in early 2020. What keeps bringing you back to the Pasadena Playhouse? 

AM: Apart from the fact that it's a 10-minute commute, you mean?

But no, It's a lovely theater. It's got so much history.

And we're now under the leadership of Danny Feldman, our producing artistic director. We're in a kind of golden age at the theater, in [that] he's really channeled a lot of his energy and creative energy into making it truly a theater that belongs to the community.

I joined the board about a year or so ago, and we've now created an education committee.

The Pasadena Playhouse had a very healthy, very vibrant accredited school attached to it. Some of the alumni include people like Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. The school closed down in the late 1960s’s, due to kind of financial restrictions. The theater was going through a bad time.

But we're hopefully in the next few years trying to resuscitate that side of the theater. And Danny's already started moves towards that, you know, we've had productions involving local school kids.

So for me, it's lovely to be part of an institution that is truly part of this community.

Inherit the Wind is directed by Michael Michetti and is being staged at the Pasadena Playhouse through Sunday, November 26th.

Protip: You can enter a lottery to watch the show from special seating onstage.

In notoriously car-centric Los Angeles, thousands of fans have been taking public transit to get to the World Cup.

Metro has logged more than 100,000 rides to and from SoFi Stadium for the first four matches in Inglewood, on its special shuttle buses carrying fans directly to the stadium from various locations across the region. That service costs $1.75 a pop – the same as a typical bus ride.

The transit agency organized the enhanced bus system to bring passengers to the stadium directly from as far as Newport Beach and as nearby as Culver City. Ridership on those buses has jumped each match – from 18,551 rides to and from the first game between the U.S. and Paraguay to more than 29,000 rides when Iran played Belgium on Sunday afternoon.

There were long lines to catch the shuttle at Union Station before the first two matches. One rider, Cristian Vasquez, came from the Antelope Valley for the U.S.-Paraguay match. He left home at 9:30 a.m. and was the first in line for the bus.

“It’s a service that really helps out the community that probably can't afford SoFi Stadium's parking lot or the existing parking areas,” he said.

After the Iran-New Zealand match, LAist observed long waits for a bus ride home from SoFi, as the crowds exiting after the match all lined up to board the buses at the same time.

People have also been taking the train to the tournament. According to Metro's numbers, when Iran played New Zealand at SoFi last week, K Line ridership was up 41% and C Line ridership jumped 23%, compared to a typical Monday. Those lines are the closest to the stadium.

Other fan events such as the FIFA Fan Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum have led to similar spikes for Metro. On the day of the first match in Los Angeles, when the U.S. beat Paraguay 4-1, the agency reported that fare gate taps at the Expo/USC station were up nearly 600% compared to an average day.

Alicia Greene took Metrolink and Metro to the Fan Fest from Anaheim and was enthusiastic about the journey.

"The Metro system is awesome," she said. "It couldn't be easier."

Angelenos packed trains in Koreatown last week when South Korea and Mexico played each other in a highly anticipated match. Ridership on the newly extended D Line was up more than 95%.

"While we were laser-focused on the stadium, something else was rising across town," Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins wrote in a blog post. "In Koreatown, thousandsof fans poured onto our rail lines at key stations like Wilshire/Western and Wilshire Normandie and into the streets to watch the Mexico-South Korea rematch."

The World Cup is considered a test run for public transit before the 2028 Olympics, and it's not over yet. The next game in Los Angeles is Thursday, when the U.S. plays Turkey at 7 p.m.

Kavish Harjai, Destiny Torres and Matt Ballinger contributed to this report.

The Los Angeles Unified School Board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a nearly $21 billion spending plan for the next school year.

The budget includes raises, class size reductions and increased mental health support that are part of new contracts with the district’s largest labor unions.

There is also nearly $5 billion in school construction and renovation projects, which are funded by voter-approved bonds — that money cannot be shifted to pay for salaries or other school needs.

LAUSD’s budget next year exceeds expected revenue by $2 billion. The district will, for the third consecutive year, pay the difference with reserves.

However, district staff say by the 2028-29 school year, the budget deficit will grow to $3.6 billion. The board recently approved a fiscal stabilization plan to solve the deficit — but which will likely result in the elimination of thousands of jobs.

The board’s meeting begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday and will stream online.

An earthquake is overdue along Southern California’s “critically stressed” San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, according to a new study.

As stress builds on a fault over centuries, it builds pressure that has to be released in an earthquake. In the study, scientists found that the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults are under more stress than at any point in the last 1,000 years, meaning that a massive earthquake could be on the way.

“Because it’s been quite a long time since the Southern San Andreas or the San Jacinto have had a large earthquake, we’ve accumulated a lot of stress,” said Kate Scharer, a co-author of the study and a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Using geological evidence, including tree-ring records and sediment samples, a team of scientists created a computer model that shows how pressure accumulates along faults over time. Then they ran the model up to the present day to estimate how much stress is now building beneath our region. They found that pressure has been gradually building since the last Big One in 1857, one of California’s largest seismic events on record.

“The idea that all of those segments of the fault could have enough stress for an imminent future earthquake was already there,” said Harold Tobin, the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and a professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. “This [study] puts it on more of a quantitative, rigorous scientific basis.”

One area of interest is the Cajon Pass, the narrow corridor between the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

“Cajon Pass could act as an ‘earthquake gate,’ like a junction that either stops or transmits large ruptures between the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults depending on stress conditions,” said Liliane Burkhard, the lead author of the study and a research affiliate in the Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.

The pass is a place where a major earthquake could jump from one fault system to another, Burkhard said. It could allow the rupture to spread farther across Southern California and affect millions more people across the Coachella Valley and San Bernardino County.

Going forward, Burkhard hopes to study other earthquake-prone regions where several fault systems interact and create risks that remain difficult to predict.

Scientists agree that Southern California will experience another major earthquake. The challenge is that no one knows exactly when.

“It could happen today, tomorrow, or in 10 years, or in 30 years,” said Ahmed Elbanna, director of the Statewide California Earthquake Center and a professor at USC who was not involved in the study. “On geological time scales, these are all very short.”

So it’s a question of when, not if.

“We should certainly expect to experience large earthquakes in our lifetimes,” Scharer said.

A refrigerated warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics has burned in Boyle Heights for nearly a week. Public health officials are urging residents nearby and downwind to protect themselves from the smoky air.

But what exactly is in the air is still unclear.

Authorities say they’ve cleared the most hazardous materials — ammonia and lithium-ion batteries — from the fire zone. A spokesperson for the L.A. Fire Department said foam insulation, wood pallets of food, and solar panels on top of the 500,000 square-foot building continue to smolder.

Materials including plastics, electronics and even rotting meat are likely burning, which means the pollution particles emitted “tend to be highly enriched with toxic organics, toxic metals, that are above and beyond what just normal, day-to-day air pollution would look like,” said UCLA air pollution researcher Yifang Zhu.

She said air quality indexes may capture the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not necessarily the specific toxins in them.

“You'll have almost like a double jeopardy in a sense that the levels [of particulate matter] are higher, and the toxicity is also higher,” she said.

Measuring heavy metals or volatile organic compounds requires special monitoring equipment, Zhu said.

“It’s very difficult to measure,” she said.

But she suspects at least some types of health-harming heavy metals are likely to be in the smoke.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for more specifics about what is in the smoke.

People “shouldn't have to guess about what they're breathing or rely on rumors, scattered information and updates, and incomplete information,” she said at a news conference. Jurado, whose council district includes Boyle Heights, added that data from regulators, such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, should be released in clear, understandable language in English and Spanish.

The South Coast AQMD told LAist before Jurado spoke that the agency has monitors that measure particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, but not other types of pollutants. The agency said it has set up additional monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. The agency added that the Environmental Protection Agency is also monitoring air quality at the fence line of the facility. LAist has reached out to the EPA for details.

Zhu added that even when the fire is eventually put out, the cleanup can kick up even more pollution — a lesson learned through her research after the L.A. fires.

“ I think people really need to take precautions,” Zhu said, emphasizing that those closest to the fire and downwind should avoid being outside as much as possible, keep windows closed, run a HEPA or MERV 13 air filter, and wear an N95 or similar mask otherwise.

UC Irvine toxicology professor Michael Kleinman said if thawed meat is also burning, that could lead to further toxic gases being released.

Experts urged precautions, especially if you smell smoke.

“ For people who are very close to the fire, like the firefighters themselves, they have exposure to both particulate matter and potential toxic gases, and that's why you'll see them wearing respirators,” said UC Irvine chemistry professor Suzanne Blum. “But once you're some feet away from the building, then the primary concern is the particulate smoke that is coming from this fire.”