The Brief

In 1972, something unheard of happened on national television. An Asian American singer-songwriter duo was invited to perform on the widely-watched The Mike Douglas Show by guest hosts John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“They’re beautiful singers,” Lennon said in his introduction. “And they have a story to tell.”

Cut to Nobuko Miyamoto and Chris Iijima sitting on stools on a dark stage.

“Usually people know very little about Asians, and this is a song about our movement, our people’s plight in America,” Miyamoto said, as Iijima strummed the opening chords to “We Are The Children.”

We are the children of the migrant worker. We are the offspring of the concentration camp.

 Sons and daughters of the railroad builder who leave their stamp on America.

Behind the scenes, Miyamoto had battled to perform that song over the protests of a show producer, who worried it would be too subversive for housewives in the midwest, and the conciliatory overtures of Lennon, who asked them to soften the lyrics.

 Watching war movies with the next door neighbor. Secretly rooting for the other side.

Miyamoto’s lifelong quest to tell Asian American stories is chronicled in a documentary film premiering Saturday in Los Angeles at the VC Film Festival: Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement.

The film, directed by Quyên Nguyen-Le and Tadashi Nakamura, chronicles Miyamoto’s creative journey as a third-generation Japanese American born in Los Angeles at the start of World War II to her run as a performer on Broadway and in films such as West Side Story.

She walked away from it all to focus her energies on the Asian American movement that emerged in the late 1960s.

With Iijima and another activist, Charlie Chin, Miyamoto recorded A Grain of Sand, an album with songs written with an Asian American consciousness like “We Are The Children” that has earned it the title of being one of the first “Asian American” albums.

In the years since, Miyamoto has devoted herself to making community art in L.A. with her multicultural arts organization Great Leap. The group’s collaborations with other artists of color across the city have birthed theater productions, music videos, workshops and the FandangObon festival, which fuses Mexican, Japanese and West African musical traditions.

Nobuko Miyamoto leads dancers outside the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo for the 2014 FangdanObon festival.

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Courtesy Mike Murase

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"A lot of people see what I did with West Side Story," et cetera, as a pinnacle, and I don't see that," Miyamoto said. "The major part of my life and my work and my dedication has been in the community. That's what I'm proudest of."

Her path to Hollywood

After World War II broke out, Miyamoto’s family was detained with other Japanese Americans at the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia.

Miyamoto, then a toddler, slept in a horse stall with her family for several months before her father volunteered to harvest sugar beets in Montana as part of the war effort. Workers lived in barracks. Because her dad had a family, they lived in a cabin.

Nobuko Miyamoto is flanked by both parents in a 1945 photo with relatives.

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Courtesy Harry Hayashida

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The family moved to Idaho then Utah before making it back to L.A. It was in Boyle Heights where Miyamoto discovered ballet.

“Dance gave me a sense of rootedness because I felt I had some control over my body and what my place was in the world,” Miyamoto said.

Nobuko Miyamoto, pictured here at age 5 or 6, had discovered her love of dancing and movement at a young age.

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Courtesy Harry Hayashida

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She excelled and Hollywood casting directors took notice. Starting in her teen years, she was booking roles in film productions of The King and I and later, West Side Story, in which she played Francisca, one of the “Shark Girls.”

But the high from mainstream success quickly wore off. Miyamoto recalls being on Broadway performing in a 1958 hit production of the Flower Drum Song about a family from San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Nobuko Miyamoto chronicles her seven decades of performing in her memoir "Not Yo' Butterfly."

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Josie Huang

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“I felt really uncomfortable and I was confused,” Miyamoto said. “What am I feeling? And later I thought about it, and I realized, 'Oh, we're chop suey. We're Chinese food for white people.' And that started me thinking what, how can we tell our own stories?”

An Asian American album

Miyamoto, who had traveled to New York in the 1960s to help a friend make a film about the Black Panthers, drew inspiration from the Black Power movement. And she found solidarity with Asian Americans of all ethnicities, guided by civil rights leaders such as Yuri Kochiyama.

They protested the Vietnam War — “the third war that I had seen the U.S. killing people who looked like me” — and fought to have Asian American history taught in college.

“In numbers we weren’t that many but together we had more of a force,” Miyamoto said.

In New York, Nobuko Miyamoto wrote and performed with fellow activist Chris Iijima.

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Courtesy Maximo Colon

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Miyamoto teamed up with N.Y.-based activists Iijima and Chin to write folk songs with a defiantly Asian American perspective, and toured the country like troubadours, playing to cities with concentrations of Asian Americans such as L.A., Oakland, Chicago, Boston.

“They made music to help inspire the people they were working with,” said Sojin Kim, a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. "It was so deeply ingrained in this practice of community.”

In 1973, the trio recorded A Grain of Sand in New York with Paredon Records. It’s since been added to the Smithsonian’s folk catalog.

Writer and activist Phil Tajitsu Nash would later describe the album as “the soundtrack for the political and personal awareness taking place in their lives.”

Now an elder

Not only after the release of A Grain of Sand, Miyamoto moved back to L.A. where she raised her son, Kamau, as a single parent and founded her arts organization Great Leap.

Fifty-some years later, Miyamoto hasn’t stopped telling stories. In the last several years, she’s published a memoir "Not ‘Yo Butterfly" and released an album of new and old songs through Smithsonian’s Folkway called "120,000 Stories," referring to the number of those incarcerated during World War II because of their Japanese heritage.

Residing in Mid-City with her filmmaker husband Tarabu Betserai Kirkland, she continues to make visual art like through this video she filmed during the pandemic:

And she serves as a mentor and inspiration to newer artists like the Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement filmmakers who marveled at her commitment and stamina as they pored over archival footage of her and interviewed her many collaborators.

“As an artist myself, I'm always wondering, what can art do, if anything, for society, right?" Nguyen-Le knew said. “Nobuko gives us sort of a map for what it can do and how she's done it over decades of her life.”

Nakamura, whose filmmaker parents were part of the Asian American movement with Miyamoto, grew up knowing her as one of his “aunties.” He took dance workshops that she gave at L.A.'s Senshin Buddhist Temple, where Miyamoto would often bring her son as she taught.

Nobuko Miyamoto with her son, Kamau Ayubbi.

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Courtesy Nobuko Miyamoto

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But now Nakamura understands Miyamoto the artist and it's only reaffirmed his belief in making films that are unapologetically for Asian Americans.

“We know that mainstream media, mainstream education, usually will not include our stories as Asian Americans or if they do, they usually get it wrong,” said Nakamura, who also made a film about Iijima after he died in 2005 called A Song for Ourselves. “So we take inspiration from artists like Nobuko. We're going to have to do it ourselves because no one else will. We have to really literally fight for our own storytelling.”

Quyên Nguyen-Le and Tadashi Nakamura co-directed Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement.

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Miyamoto has been working on a new recording of We Are The Children with producer Chucky Kim and singers Treya Lam and Taiyo Na.

The timbre of her voice is different. Her collaborators are from another generation. But her fight for recognition and justice is unchanged.

“I’m here as an elder now to say, ‘Remember, there was an Asian American movement,'” Miyamoto said. “We did stand up. We marched in the streets. We fought for what we wanted. And it's still happening.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced several significant rule changes for the 99th Oscars, including AI protections for actors and writers as well as expanded eligibility for international films.

In a statement to NPR, the Academy on Saturday said the changes are in response to listening to the global filmmaking community and addressing barriers to entry in its eligibility process.

The Academy added that its rules and eligibility standards have always evolved alongside technologies such as sound, color, and CGI, and that AI is no different. Awards rules and guidelines are reviewed and refined each year.

A blow for Tilly Norwood 

Among the most noteworthy changes, the Academy now explicitly states that only roles, "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent" are eligible for Acting awards. In other words, AI creations like the much-hyped Tilly Norwood cannot hope to win a Best Actress Oscar anytime soon.

Particle6, the production company behind Norwood, did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment on Saturday about its creations' ban from consideration. In March, Norwood commented, "Can't wait to go to the Oscars!" in an Instagram post announcing its newly released music video.

The Academy also requires screenplays to be "human-authored" and said it reserved the right to investigate the use of generative AI in any submission.

Meanwhile, qualifying flesh-and-blood human actors can now be nominated for multiple performances in the same category if those performances get enough votes to land in the top five. So, someone like Anne Hathaway, who has five major movies scheduled for release in 2026, could now theoretically sweep the nominations – though that outcome seems extremely unlikely.

"If an actor has an extremely prolific year, might we even see someone swallow up three of the five nominations?," wrote Deadline's awards columnist and chief film critic Pete Hammond about the changes. "Probably won't happen, but it's now possible."

Under previous rules, an actor could only receive one nomination per category. If they had two high-ranking performances in Best Actor, for example, only the one with the most votes would move forward.

International films prioritizes filmmakers over countries

While international films can still be the official selection of their countries, now they can qualify by winning the top prize at a major international festival such as the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Lion at Venice, or the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Historically, countries "owned" the nomination, and only one film per country was allowed. The new rules allow multiple films from the same country to compete if they are critically acclaimed, and it shifts the honor from a geopolitical entity to the filmmakers themselves.

Largely positive response

The changes have prompted a largely positive reaction from the film community on social media, such as on the popular The Shade Room entertainment and celebrity-focused Instagram feed, where commenters widely praised the "human-only" move to protect creative jobs.

The Academy's Awards Committee oversees the rules in tandem with branch executive committees, the International Feature Film Executive Committee and the Scientific and Technical Awards Executive Committee.

The rules are scheduled to go into effect next year, covering films released in 2026.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Los Angeles changes fast, and oftentimes that means some of the architectural relics of our shared past get swept up and paved over in all the "progress." (RIP Garden of Allah.)

But there are still places where you can find ruins that tell a tale, like a long-forgotten speakeasy reputedly for old Hollywood near La Crescenta.

The ruins are still there 

On a recent afternoon, author and local historian Mike Lawler led me just beyond the boundary of Crescenta Valley Park. Joggers like me might have seen an old, towering stone arch shrouded by bushes there — and wondered what lies beyond.

Turns out there was once a place called the Verdugo Lodge back there and Lawler has spent years excavating its history.

A car speeds away from the lodge onto New York Avenue. The stone archway that still stands can be seen in the background.

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“It was a very high-end speakeasy for a time,” Lawler, who also helps run the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, said. “An amazing thing. And all the ruins are still here, just like this arch.”

Lawler said we don’t know exactly when the lodge was built, but we do have some of the picture starting in the late 1920s. The place was set up kind of like a timeshare where people bought 10 x 10 foot ‘tent lots’ that gave them access to on-site amenities. There was a golf course, stables, trout stream, a swimming pool — and a lodge with gambling and alcohol.

“The Crescenta Valley in the teens and '20s was a hotbed of moonshine, prostitution, all that stuff," Lawler said. "It was a quiet little community. But in all these canyons up here, stuff was going on. Illegal stuff!”

We don’t have a full guest list, but Lawler said it’s likely at least a few Hollywood types had gone up to the lodge to circumvent Prohibition era laws.

In some ways, it was kind of like the original glamping. Lawler said patrons probably weren’t doing much sleeping, though.

“They might have been unconscious!” he said with a chuckle.

Lawler led me to a road that swooped around a meadow. We passed by a massive swimming pool nestled into the hillside.

Once known as the “Crystal Pool,” it’s now empty and fenced off, with pitch black locker rooms below.

The exterior of the locker rooms for the old Crystal Pool.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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We continued our journey up the hill and eventually arrived at a cascading stone stairway.

And at the top, the big show: overgrown with orange monkey flowers and goliath agaves lies the foundation of the old Verdugo Lodge, with lofty stone fireplaces the only guardians keeping the surrounding oak trees at bay.

Lawler takes out a floorplan that one of the former owners drew up for him.

“This is what it was laid out like on the inside. So a dancehall, and band stand on that side... And then upstairs was the gambling,” Lawler said.

Lawler had in hand a copy of a Los Angeles Times article from 1933 he found. The headline reads: “Revelers Flee in Lodge Raid.”

“The police that raided it were here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And there were still 500 people here. And they said it was the classiest joint they had ever raided... Anyway, people were diving out of windows and everything,” Lawler explained.

In a ruin like this, covered with moss and overgrowth, the imagination can run wild, too.

The archway that still stands outside of what's now known as Mountain Oaks.

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Lawler pointed out a questionable door jam below the old dancefloor that’s been cemented over.

“That is a door. So what is behind there? So there’s a room in there that got walled in for some reason,” he said.

What we do know is that, sometime after the raid, the tawdry Verdugo Lodge and the surrounding land were purchased and then renamed Mountain Oaks by the Kadletzes — an entrepreneurial family who had run everything from a Turkish bath to a mini golf course. Over the next few decades, the family would rent the place out to local groups for recreational retreats.

The future of Mountain Oaks 

After they sold it in the ‘60s, Lawler said Mountain Oaks faced a “nightmare” of development threats. Over the years, some of the subdivided "tent lots" had been combined and sold off, Lawler said. A dozen private homes now stand on these pieces of land, next to the ruins of the Verdugo Lodge.

A map showing the Mountain Oaks public property acquired by The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA).

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Courtesy MRCA

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Last year, with help from the City of Glendale, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant among other funding sources, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) put up $6.1 million to acquire 33-acres of the land — not including the private lots where the homes stand — so the public can continue to roam the meadow and ruins.

Paul Edelman, MRCA's director of natural resources and planning, said his group will continue to manage the land, doing things like brush clearance, trash pickup and sign maintenance. And he said there are no current plans to remove the ruins or make any major changes to the property.

“If somebody comes up with a grand idea where they can find some funding for us to do something to enhance it, we’re always open to it,” Edelman said.

The purchase was good news for local preservationist Joanna Linkchorst.

“I grew up directly up the hill. But I always saw the sign that said ‘private property’ and didn’t really think about it until several years ago when I finally asked Mike. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, we got a resort speakeasy down the street,’” Linkchorst said standing among the oaks and overgrowth.

Linkchorst, who founded the group Friends of Rockhaven to preserve another nearby historic site, said it’s been amazing to see all of the decaying structures that were still hiding out at Mountain Oaks.

“There’s almost like these little ghosts in your head as you imagine what it was like when there was a beautiful wood floor and there was a second floor that people came jumping out of,” Linkchorst said.

Now, let’s check in to the Overlook Hotel.

That’s the fictional place Stanley Kubrick brought to life in his 1980 film The Shining, loosely based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.

A local architect who hails from South Pasadena meticulously crafted a 3D model of the iconic space so Shining fans everywhere never have to check out.

‘I just couldn’t stop’ 

At his day job, architect Anthony Chieh mainly works on residential and boutique commercial spaces. But over the course of five months, he spent his nights meticulously recreating a virtual replica of the Overlook Hotel from the film that first scared him when he was 12.

Of course he started with the deeply haunted Room 237. That’s where Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, has a terrifying encounter with a ghostly woman.

Chieh's 3D rendering of Room 237

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Anthony Chieh

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“But once I started, I just couldn’t stop,” Chieh told LAist.

“I ended up modeling the Colorado Lounge, and then after that I was thinking maybe I should make the lobby and then arriving to the Gold Room, and then Grady’s bathroom.”

“It’s like a rabbit hole,” he said.

Users who download Chieh’s free 3D model can fly through all of those spaces, immersed in atmospheric sounds and music from the film.

“It’s interesting to dive into these kind of fictional environments and try to make sense of it,” Chieh said. “And the hope is people will get a different perspective once they’re in there.”

Kubrick’s take on the Overlook was famously inspired by real hotels like the Timberline Lodge in Oregon and the Ahwahnee in Yosemite. But the interiors you see in the film were created on sound stages in England.

“Real architecture, physical buildings, are built for people to live. And for movies, these are more meant to express the emotional aspect of things. It’s a psychological construct,” Chieh said.

In a recently published video essay on YouTube, Chieh dives deep into those psychological constructs and how, as he puts it, “Kubrick designed the Overlook Hotel not as a backdrop, but as the film's true villain.”

How spaces scare 

Chieh said during the monthslong process he was reminded of the power of architecture and design in the real world too – whether it’s an uncomfortably repetitive carpet design or a claustrophobic hallway.

“A physical construct can affect your emotion,” Chieh said.

“You can use it in a way to make people feel comfortable and you can also use it in a way to create fear.”

Chieh's 3D rendering of the Torrance's apartment in 'The Shining'

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Anthony Chieh

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What’s next for this architect moonlighting as a 3D modeler?

Chieh says he’s thinking about giving the spaceship from “2001: A Space Odyssey" the virtual treatment next. Or maybe turning to a local non-fictional space, like the Stahl House.

That is, of course, if he can ever escape the Overlook.