We go to Dodger Stadium for Opening Day; to imaginary cities with Ben Katchor; to the Weimar Republic with singer Max Raabe; to the stage with Paul Dooley; and to a pet cemetery with Tess Vigeland.
What's it like to be a tax season sign twirler?
As Tax Day approaches, you're bound to see more and more of them on the street corners: sign twirlers for tax preparing offices. Dressed like Uncle Sam or the Statue Of Liberty, it's their job to draw you in before the April 15 deadline. Off-Ramp interns Robert Garrova and Mukta Mohan went to Northeast Los Angeles and Pasadena and tracked down two - Phillip Tolburt and Heather Gonzalez.
Interview: Director Werner Herzog on the death of Roger Ebert
Film critic Roger Ebert has died. He was 70 years old. More than just a critic and TV personality—Ebert was a phenomenal writer, a commentator on life, politics, religion, even food.
Ebert was also close friends with Werner Herzog, the director behind films like Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Grizzly Man. Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson reached Herzog by phone.
Interview Highlights:
Ferguson: We're talking on Thursday, I just found out the news that he passed away. When did you learn that Roger Ebert had died?
Herzog: "Just a few hours ago. I'm in the middle of mixing some new films and I got a call right into the mixing control room."
Ferguson: How did you take the news?
Herzog: "How can you take news like this? You can't, really. Of course, we have to. And we have to accept that Roger Ebert is not with us anymore. But I immediately had the feeling there was something much bigger going on and that is he was the last mammoth alive. The last one who created excitement about movies, and intelligent discourse about movies. Which has faded away in the last two decades, almost completely. His passing signifies much much more than one wonderful man who gave us excitement about movies."
Ferguson: When I read his reviews I didn't feel like I was being talked down to. I didn't feel like I was reading something academic. I was reading something that was literary.
Herzog: "Yeah, excitement. Our love and our excitement for movies. And of course, I've been soldiering on, and he called me the soldier of the good cinema. And I said 'Roger, no, no, no, it's actually you. And you are the wounded soldier. You are the one who is afflicted by disease, and you are holding out your post. And you are talking to us, although you cannot speak anymore. And you keep the excitement alive.' So, that's what I shared with him particular."
Ferguson: Is that why you dedicated Encounters at the End of the World to him?
Herzog: "Yes. In a way, yes. To the wounded soldier, who held the position that was abandoned by almost everyone else."
Ferguson: Did you really force Roger to watch the Anna Nicole Smith Show?
Herzog: "Of course, no. That's too much to say but I said to him 'Roger, you have to know what kind of world we live in.' And I said to him, 'Roger, the poet must not avert his eyes. One of the things you have to watch is Anna Nicole Smith.' Because there was something big about her. A shift in our understanding of beauty, of female beauty. These enhancements. And this is a major shift, whether we find it ugly or not doesn't really matter."
Ferguson: And he took your advice?
Herzog: "He did, yes."
Ferguson: I think a lot of people, at least in the States, first got into your films through some of his reviews. Did you find that to be the case? Do you think that his reviews helped?
Herzog: "Certainly, yes. A good case would be an early film of mine: Aguirre, the Wrath of God. It took quite a while until it found a wider audience. And it was very significant that Roger took Aguirre, the Wrath of God in his list of the ten best of all times. That somehow made people stop in their tracks and they said 'we got to see what this one is all about!' But of course, when I dedicated Encounters at the End of the World to him, he immediately said 'Well, I cannot review the film anymore. It would be a conflict of interest.' I said to him 'Roger, it doesn't matter at all. Review it anyway, and bring it down! Write a bad review, no matter what you like to do. There's never a conflict of interest.'"
Ferguson: Did knowing Roger inform your filmmaking in any way?
Herzog: "It didn't inform my filmmaking, per se, but it widened my scope to look into corners that I hadn't taken seriously yet. And it's the same reason, I guess, that I tried to tell him to watch the Anna Nicole Smith show. And, by the way, also Wrestlemania. And he asked about Wrestlemania, and I said I do believe there's a crude form of new drama emerging that we do not understand yet. And it's not the fights that are so important. What is more important is the show around it. The owner of the franchise stepping into the ring with four blondes with breast implants. And his wife is being wheeled in a wheelchair, paralyzed and blind. And he makes fun of his wife! And the son of the owner of the franchise interfering and fighting his father in the ring. And we had an understanding over this."
Ferguson: I don't have anything else to ask you unless there's anything you'd like to add, or something you think I forgot to ask about?
Herzog: "No, but, you see, where are we going now? It's what I do not know. And knowing, having known Roger Ebert has not changed the course of my life. But it has made it better."
John Rabe gives Max Raabe an A for bringing back musical elegance
The other German kids were listening to Elton John, Kraftwerk, and Jethro Tull, but Max Raabe pulled out an old 78 from his father's collection and fell in love. The classically trained tenor now fills concert halls around the world with the sounds of the 1920s and 1930s, "the most elegant pop music we have ever had."
His repertoire includes the American songbook as well as the German, although some of the Germans — like Walter Jurmann, who wrote "San Francisco, open your Golden Gate" — wound up writing for the American songbook when they came to America to escape the Nazis.
"The music was meant to bring the audience far from any reality," Raabe says. "It's a kind of fairy tale with music."
Raabe, 50, sings with the the Palast Orchester big band, which he founded in 1986. They've been to Southern California a few times — initially with the help of Jurmann's widow, Yvonne — but they're making their Disney Hall debut Wednesday, April 10.
Yvonne Jurmann's take on her husband's music mirrors Max's.
I knew my husband's music long before I met him. Growing up in Hungary during and after World War II, music was a refuge for me, as it was for so many during that dangerous, uncertain time. Composers of popular music wrote in a life-affirming, romantic style to counter the terrors and despair of daily life. With the future, even survival itself, so uncertain, music became one of our most important possessions. Walter ... felt that a composer lives through his music, so he never cared whether his name was in the limelight as long as his music brought pleasure to people.
Google Max Raabe and you'll find this YouTube video, and you might do a double-take. Is he on the Letterman show?
No, Raabe explains, it's Harald Schmidt, a German daily talk show host who unashamedly copied his format, set, lighting and even — apparently — Paul Shaffer from Letterman. Raabe says when Schmidt was chided about this, he replied, "Yes. Why should I change a thing which is perfect?!"
Raabe also notes that even though he and the Palast Orchester are performing dance music, nobody dances. Even when they've played fancy balls, people stop dancing, come to the stage and watch them perform.
I didn't get a chance to ask him about a rather odd new video he's posted, featuring "Mr. Green," who looks suspiciously like Kermit the Frog.
(And here's Raabe's peformance of the classic "Dream a Little Dream.")
Using technology to bring lost sound back to life
We can read our forebearers' speeches and see their portraits, but we can't hear their music or what they sounded like. But now Patrick Feaster, a professor at Indiana University, is trying to change that.
Feaster has been taking pictures of phonographs, using other musical techniques and turning the visual sound waves into actual voices and music. He has been called a sonic Dr. Frankenstein for reanimating these long-lost sounds.
Some of his discoveries can be found in a new book called "Picture of Sound" published by Dust to Digital. There’s the inventor of the gramophone Emile Berliner describing his whereabouts in 1889. There are ancient medieval manuscripts that have been turned into actual music.
Feaster says there is almost a limitless amount of work that can be done in this field. He’s currently looking at the possibility of playing back early recordings of heartbeats as well as telegrams from the 1830s.
Patt Morrison talks with Feaster about what spurred his interest in this project, how it works and we play some of his most interesting discoveries.
Ben Katchor's 'Hand-Drying in America' brings out the big stuff by focusing on the small
For years, artist and writer Ben Katchor has been noticing things we don't notice. Or maybe its better to say he thinks harder about things we all notice than most of us. The tag sticking up from a woman's sweater. Buildings he calls "taxpayers." Views from expensive apartments.
In his new book, Hand-Drying in America, a compilation of monthly comic strips he does for the magazine Metropolis, Katchor ruminates on the sound of the common light switch. "The architect spent hundreds of hours designing burnished brass switch plates for his new office tower, and then left it to a contractor to install these 79-cent switches behind them. ... The sound we are greeted with ... recalls to mind the dirty men's room in the rear of a Babylonian coffee shop." Instead, he suggests making switches emit "the muted horn of a steamship ... the crowing of a rooster ... the peal of distant thunder."
Katchor told me his strips are "graphic notations of dreams that I have about the city." He often writes, he says, just before going to bed, when he's in a half-waking state. "This concentration on these minute details is not just to be willfully obscure. It's like a scientist looking at the molecular structure of things. If you really want to see how things work, you have to go down to the small scale."
As Glen Weldon writes for NPR:
"A poem," said writer Richard Hugo in his book The Triggering Town, "can be said to have two subjects, the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem ... and the real or generated subject, which the poem comes to say or mean, and which is generated or discovered in the poem during the writing." The movement Hugo describes is exactly the kind that takes place in each Katchor strip — a topic is introduced and the story that grows around it follows the oblique emotional logic of dreams, like a poem discovering itself.
The new book is about 12" x 12", so each strip gets its due. It's a pleasure to take five minutes with each strip and dip into Katchor's dreamland. Laura Pearson writes in TimeOut Chicago:
Katchor’s vignettes brilliantly satirize human behavior, changing social values and cities in flux. Perhaps most of all, they highlight the timeless need for human connection.
Exactly! In an earlier book, Cheap Novelties, Katchor drew and described how homeless men will pour a cup of free sugar into a cup of coffee so they can get their carbs for the day, and how putting sugar into paper packets demeans these men because it leaves a pile of litter and makes their action more obvious. A few weeks ago, at a Tacos Mexico stand in downtown Los Angeles, I saw a man do exactly that. He opened packet after packet of sugar, and I thought, "Katchor was right!"
Ben Katchor is appearing at an event at the Skirball Center Wednesday, April 10.
Opening Day: Dodgers shut out Giants, fans love Dodger Stadium makeover (photos)
Clayton Kershaw hit his first career home run to break a scoreless tie in the 8th inning before finishing off a four-hitter today to lead the Dodgers Los Angeles over the San Francisco Giants 4-0. Kershaw became the first pitcher to throw a shutout and hit a home run in an opener since Bob Lemon for Cleveland in 1953. "What an awesome feeling," said Kershaw, who charged around the bases accompanied by a prolonged roar from the sellout crowd of 53,000. "I probably wasn't feeling my feet hitting the ground."
A few hours before, Sandy Koufax’s ceremonial first pitch was a weak one-hopper, but the hundred-million dollars in improvements to the stadium were a home run for the fans. Finally. It’s been tough being a Dodger fan lately, and under Frank McCourt, things went from sketchy to ugly. KCBS sports anchor Jim Hill has been to two-dozen opening days, and, standing on the field during batting practice, he said you could feel the optimism. "It’s wonderful to see how the fans are coming out to support the team, but even more important than that, the new owners have put their money where their mouth is."
Team President Stan Kasten helped make the Atlanta Braves the winningest team in baseball for a 15 season stretch, but here at Dodger Stadium, his job is harder than building a winning team. He’s waiting to see if the improved security, better amenities – like more stalls in the women’s bathroom -- and more logical logistics will convince fans the Guggenheim Group is sincere that this is a “new blue.” "I don’t want to prejudge the reaction," he said, watching the stands fill up. "We did something on every level of the ballpark. But I wait the feedback of the fans. That’s how we got most of our good ideas, was talking to fans, talking to customers. I’m sure a lot of that will continue, and that’s how we’ll know whether we’re on the right track or not."
Jasmine Salas, a Dodger fan from Santa Fe Springs, told me the stadium passes the acid test. The bathrooms are now clean, instead of messy, and there are enough stalls, so she didn't have to wait in a long line. But does the stadium feel different? "It does feel different," she smiles. "A lot different, it’s a lot friendlier and it’s a lot more open and there’s a lot more space."
A man with a big smile and a warm Southern accent came up to me and wanted to talk about his experience on Opening Day. Jimmy Churchman, from Tampa, couldn't but rave about his Dodger Stadium experience. " The food is good, the beer is cold, and everything’s good. This is what real baseball’s all about. If we could ever do something as big as this in the Tampa Bay area, we would really have a big thing. The whole atmosphere … everyone’s been so friendly to us. Just a lovely thing here."
But Jimmy wasn’t wearing a Giants’ cap or uniform shirt, and that’s the real test. One more ugly incident, and all the fish tacos and wi-fi access in the world won’t fill up the stadium like in the good old days.
One thing from the good old days hasn’t changed, by the way. Vin Scully got the biggest cheer of the day when he was introduced to help start the day, and later, up in the top deck, I heard a little transistor radio broadcasting Vin's play-by-play ... just like it was 2003, 1993, 1983, 1973, 1963, or 1953. "You gotta have Vin," a woman said. "Especially today."
Paul Dooley teams with his 'Wicked' wife in new play, 'Assisted Living'
Actor Paul Dooley and Winnie Holzman are a quintessential showbiz couple.
He's the stage, tv, and movie vet. (He played the dad in Breaking Away). She's the librettist of the Broadway smash Wicked.
Now, they've created Assisted Living, a three-act play at The Odyssey Theatre that explores the relationships between an aging soap star, his girlfriend, an old grump, and the grump's daughter ... who is the soap star's #1 fan.
He credits director Mike Nichols with his success on stage. Nichols had three Neil Simon plays running, and cast Dooley in The Odd Couple. Robert Altman gave him his big break in film, casting him in several movies, including Popeye.
Dooley says the germ of Assisted Living came thirty years ago when Dooley and Holzman took a stab at answering a pile of fan mail to Dooley. They started riffing on it, then wrote some pages, then put it away for decades. It wasn't until the two were holed up in a hotel during Hurricane Sandy that they brought out the notes and started developing it into the two-actor play.
The Odyssey Theatre is at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. in Los Angeles. Assisted Living runs weekends through May 12.