One of Philip K. Dick's editors - Marc Haefele - reviews Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle;" the Triforium in downtown LA gets new life; how to be a good gentile at a Hanukkah celebration; listeners try out the LAPD's shooting simulator; 5 Every Week helps you be social and smart.
Philip K. Dick's editor - Off-Ramp's Marc Haefele - praises Amazon's 'The Man in the High Castle'
Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele reviews "The Man in the High Castle," a ten-part series from Amazon based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name. Marc edited Dick in the later 1960s when he worked for Doubleday.
Back in 1961, Putnam decided to roll his career-future dice publishing an alternate-history book as a major mainstream novel, complete with a huge, costly ad in the New York Times Book Review. That book was Philip K. Dick’s what-if-the-Axis-won masterpiece “The Man in the High Castle,” in which Japan and Germany partition the U.S.
As commercial fare, the book flopped, with under 1,700 copies sold. Dick went back to writing rank-and-file science fiction almost to his death in 1982.
Now, almost unimaginably, “High Castle” has come to television in a generally well-received 10-part Amazon series. What was once a lean, spare novel of 280 pages with only three main characters, set almost entirely in a Japanese-occupied San Francisco, has become a poly-protagonist epic sprawling all over two continents.
Yet, also almost unimaginably, the spirit of the book, Dick’s unique gift for portraying all of his characters, big and small, as human beings, is somehow retained throughout. Along with good direction, at least adequate acting, and Frank Spotnitz’ exceptional production values, this makes the entire opus riveting.
"There are no heroes in Dick's books", Ursula Le Guin once wrote, "but there are heroics…what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."
Even the Nazis occupying the Eastern US and the fascistic Japanese in the west have their moments of humanity. Perhaps the most excessive of these is an elderly, mortally-ill Hitler, seeking to avoid another war—this time, with his former ally, Japan. Only one character is pure evil: a bounty hunter from the Colorado Rockies who seems to have escaped from a Quentin Tarantino movie. He doesn’t belong here and appropriately disappears from the final episodes.
Of course, he was not in the original book. But unlike other Dick-based films like "Blade Runner," "Total Recall," and "Minority Report," which abandoned Dick’s original narrative, many of the strongest characters and moments in the novel "High Castle" reappear in the series. Such as the disastrous, almost Tolstoyan, dinner party with a Japanese power couple attended by protagonist Frank Frink’s (Rupert Evans) curio-dealing employer. Or the super-powerful, totally unforeseen street scene (about which I will tell you nothing) with which the ten-part season series ends.
Juliana (Alexa Davalos) -- Frink’s estranged wife in the book, his girlfriend in the series -- was that rarest of Dick characters, a strong, positive, effective woman. She is even more so on the screen. The substitution of various film reels for the original fictional novel McGuffin generally works, albeit there seem to be a few too many abandoned operating 16 mm projectors left around.
And there are some clunkers. Like when the Nazi elevated monorail from which-side-is-he-on Nazi/underground operative Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) descends bears the label “U-Bahn.” Whoops, that’s a subway folks. The elevated is an “S-Bahn.” Or why is “Mack the Knife,” a song by a Communist (Bertolt Brecht) and a Jew (Kurt Weill), being sung at an otherwise terrifyingly well-imagined Aryan Victory Day picnic in occupied Long Island?
None of this is enough to spoil the fun of this great series, which despite its violent passages amounts to a think piece about life under despotism, the validity of hope in a world of hopelessness, and the fine gradations of humanity even among the worst people you can imagine.
KPCC listeners get a taste of LAPD shooting simulator
On Monday, KPCC listeners attended a panel discussion at the Tateuchi Democracy Forum in Little Tokyo to discuss the stories behind our Officer Involved investigative project, which documented the number of recent officer involved shootings in L.A. County.
A panel discussion is nothing new for public radio, but before the discussion, the LAPD allowed listeners to use its Force Option Simulator. The simulator is a computer program used to train cops who'll be facing dangerous situations: when should they shoot their gun, use their taser, try to talk down a suspect?
First up was West Covina's Ethan Shih. "I was called into a high school regarding a man who was assaulting people with a bat. I had a partner who was covering me. He had his gun out, so I decided to pick up my gun and follow him," Shih said.
The suspect appeared on screen, chasing after a woman and swinging a baseball bat before disappearing around a corner. Shih and his partner caught up with them, "but I didn't see her, so I thought the man was just by himself, smashing the furniture." He hesitated for a few blows, "then I noticed the girl, and that's when I decided [to] shoot three times."
Two shots missed, and the last grazed the assailant's lower back, but his shots were fired after what simulator operator Steve Shyy called a "skull crack."
"It was disappointing. I felt like I could have reacted quicker, but I had no idea what I was getting into. I had tunnel vision. My heart was beating. It was really difficult," says Shih. "It's really opened my eyes and kind of made me more sympathetic when [police] say they saw something or they were falling back to their training. I used to think that was a cop out, but now I realize that's pretty much the only option they have when violence goes this fast."
To hear more from the event, click on the audio player, and check out all the stories in KPCC's landmark Officer Involved project.
Song of the week: "Change of the Guard" by Kamasi Washington
Kamasi Washington is a jazz saxophonist and a Los Angeles native. If you've listened to the latest Kendrick Lamar or Flying Lotus release, you've heard his skills put to tape. He's become a respected solo musician in his own right.
This past May, Washington released a nearly three hour long solo album called — what else? — "The Epic."
"Change of the Guard" is the first song of that record, and it's this week's Off-Ramp song of the week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQRBzSN9Vw
A few tips for Goyim at your in-laws' Hanukkah party
So you're invited to a Hanukkah party, and you're a Buddhist or a Catholic or -- God forbid -- an atheist. How should you behave? Do you have to talk like Tevye and eat bitter herbs and blow into a sheep's horn?
If you'd checked out The Mash-Up Americans, the new KPCC podcast, or talked with co-host Rebecca Lehrer, like I did, you wouldn't have to ask. The cover it in an episode called "Top 8 (+1) Tips for Being the Best Non-Jew at the Hanukkah Party."
Number one?
Relax. Hanukkah isn’t the Jewish Christmas. Don’t overplay the day. Hanukkah is a super minor holiday. You may never have heard of Sukkot or Shavuot, but Hanukkah is basically like Groundhog’s Day compared to them. Everyone knows about it, everyone knows the ritual that goes with it, Hallmark even gets to make a few shekels selling Hanukkah cards and blue and white wrapping paper, but no one’s going to church over it.
Other tips you hear about in our audio interview: don't blow out the candles and bring a lighter, Tums, and a bib. And our tip: subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and check out Rebecca's video on our Facebook page.
5 Every Week: LA Rebellion Cinema, Animation Breakdown, Reggie Watts, Triforium and more!
Behold: five great things you should do in Southern California this week, from art to food to music to an adventure we’ll call the Wild Card from the makers of the 5 Every Day app. Get this as a new podcast in iTunes. If you want five hand-picked things to do in Los Angeles every day, download the free 5 Every Day from the App Store.
ART: Killer Of Sheep at Union Station
When Charles Burnett’s 1978 film Killer of Sheep was rescued from obscurity almost ten years ago, it felt like it came out of nowhere.
Shot in Watts on a shoestring, it was an unprecedented thing that seemed like it hatched out of the egg fully-formed—outside of time and cinematic tradition.
But that’s not exactly true, of course.
Burnett’s movie was just one product of a whole underground film movement. It was basically ignored during its day, but it later came to be called the LA Rebellion.
The Rebellion was a group of African American filmmakers who came up through UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television starting in the late 1960s through the early 1980s, a golden era during which their self-supported cinema existed in a sort of vacuum.
A dreary, atmospheric masterpiece about a dreamer who lives in Watts and works in a slaughterhouse, Killer of Sheep is the fitting final installment of a Fall film series put on by the Echo Park Film Center. They've spent the past few months exploring the alternate histories of Los Angeles Cinema.
It screens for free this Wednesday in the Historic Ticketing Hall at beautiful Union Station, with a special introduction from the Director himself.
CITY: Animation Breakdown Festival (feat. Rick and Morty Live)
Animation Breakdown are the Cinefamily’s resident cartoon connoisseurs, the guys responsible for the historic Silent Movie Theatre’s cereal-fueled Saturday Morning Animation block, as well as its more adult-oriented animated affairs.
Every year at about this time, the Breakdown boys are given full reign over the theater for their annual Animation Breakdown Festival—an extra-long weekend of weirdness that’s about to hit conniption pitch.
This year’s program is packed out with some of the leading lights in contemporary cartoonery, including an Animated Evening with director Lance Bangs and a special Show & Tell with Bob’s Burgers creator Loren Bouchard.
And the marshmallow in this sugar cereal? A live, fully improvised episode of cult sci-fi cartoon Rick & Morty, for which I am personally going to camp outside the theater like a tween awaiting a new Harry Potter movie.
The Animation Breakdown Festival starts this Thursday, and runs through next week.
FOOD: The Smokehouse
What is a barfly, technically? How does a fly differ from say, just a bar regular? What's less than a barfly?
A bar...maggot?
Ponder these and other great philosophical questions in the shadowy confines of the Smokehouse, a 60-year old steak joint a bone’s throw from the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. And they keep your martini on ice.
The daytime ambiance here is dotted with martini-drinking barflies, grubs, and gnats, all sheltering from their boulevards of broken dreams… but you might also spot George Clooney commandeering a corner booth for a meeting, so what is reality?
Just get some sirloin and commit to whichever way the coin flips.
MUSIC: Reggie Watts at El Cid
It's gotta be one most under-appreciated patios in Silver Lake: El Cid.
Down a winding series of staircases, El Cid’s outdoor, semi-secluded enclave of high booths is a gem—and worlds away from its Sunset entryway.
Inside there's a totally great little venue, which hosts the city's premier flamenco dinner theater — as if anyone else would dare vie for the title — a tradition El Cid has been celebrating for 50 years now.
The rest of their calendar is an unpredictable potpourri of country, comedy, and cabaret, with one notable exception: Tuesday night's standing appointment with Reggie Watts & Karen, his Late Late Show band.
Apparently Watts recognizes a dusty diamond as much as we do.
Add it to that epic list of regular celebrity endeavours we as Angelenos take for granted.
WILDCARD: Triforium turns 40!
In a car city like LA, public art is easy to ignore. Even when it's six stories tall and weighs 60 tons. Even when it's smack-dab in the center of Downtown Los Angeles. And even when it looks like it landed there from a galaxy far, far away.
We’re talking about the Triforium, a 1975 sculpture on Temple and Main. It should be impossible to miss, and yet—when's the last time you took a look at it?
Designed by artist Joseph Young, it was initially supposed to be a "polyphonoptic" sculpture. That means Young wanted to use motion sensors and a computer system to translate the motions of passersby into psychedelic patterns of light, sound, and music.
Unfortunately, the computer never quite worked, and time has not been kind to this ambitious project—these days, it's a glorified pigeon roost. But we're trying to change that!
We just launched the Triforium Project: a coalition of artists, urban planners, civic leaders, and LA enthusiasts who believe that Joseph Young’s vision for an interactive light and sound sculpture deserves a new life.
On Friday, Dec. 11, we’ll be celebrating the Triforium’s 40th birthday at the intersection of Temple and Main, downtown. Come for tours of the sculpture’s usually off-limits control room! See the ancient computer! Enjoy tunes from dublab!
Cake, tours, history, optimism - details for the party 4-9pm Friday
And stay for the free cake.
What is the Triforium, and why should we rehabilitate it?
On December 11, join supporters of the Triforium downtown for the sculpture's 40th birthday party, and learn more about the effort to change this white elephant into the full realization of Joseph Young's original intent. The Triforium Project celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Triforium on Dec. 11 at Fletcher Bowron Square (Temple and Main LA CA 90012) from 4 to 8pm. There will be cake and tours of the usually verboten Triforium control room.
When artist Joseph Young described the Triforium — his gargantuan, multi-colored public art project to the people of Los Angeles in 1975 ‚ he coined a new word: Polyphonoptic.
"The rosetta stone of art and technology,” he called the sculpture, which sits on the corner of Temple and Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. It didn't look like anything Angelenos had seen before.
Standing six stories tall, and weighing 60 tons, the Triforium is made of three separate off-white concrete wishbones joined together by an inner circular frame. The wishbones hold up 1,494 hand-blown Italian glass prisms in every major color of the spectrum. The sculpture would define Young's career, who died in 2007.
But after 40 years, the sculpture sits, neglected, perched on top of the Los Angeles Mall. Most of its lights have gone dim, homeless people’s shopping carts dot the square, the organ that once provided the music for the sculpture has been ripped out.
With its 40th birthday approaching, it's worth asking: why should we save it? And how did we get here?
When the Triforium debuted to the public on December 11, 1975, it was a crisp evening. There was a 30 minute delay — the speakers weren’t working. Like a foghorn, feedback boomed out. Mayor Tom Bradley shouted his speech, desperate to be heard: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Triforium!"
City Council President John S. Gibson Jr. also stepped up to the podium. Wanting to be clear about his disdain for the sculpture, he took a public pot-shot: “This is not a jukebox. You don’t have to put a quarter in it,” as if a normal passerby could confuse the two.
What the public saw the night of the Triforium’s debut was “the world’s first polyphonoptic tower” — as Young called it — marrying light and sound in a way that had never been done before in public art. Here's a video of an organist performing "Jingle Bells" on the Triforium:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itnre5GshZc
In a perfect world, every note of the 79-note glass bell carillon would correspond with a certain color. If the note was played softly, then the light would appear dim. If played loudly, then the light would shine bright — sort of like the spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
But from the start, the Triforium had issues with its computer system — and cost overruns. The sculpture ended up costing well over double its $350,000 budget. A month after its debut, the L.A. Times ran an article detailing its electrical issues.
Rather than the synthesis between art and technology, the sculpture seemed to only demonstrate its limits.
The Triforium entered into the world buttressed by the lofty rhetoric of its creator — but does it deliver?
"I don’t know that it does," said Ken Bernstein, a historian for the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. "Personally, I admire the Triforium as an artistic work and as an artifact of technology. I’m not sure it quite has risen to that level in part because the technology has been spotty in terms of its endurance. It has required frequent repairs."
This idea of bridging the gap between art and technology carried weight in the early '70s. LACMA mounted a show in 1971 called “Art and Technology,” pairing famous artists with giant corporations. The show asked, “What kind of art is relevant in the space age?”
By the 1970s, Joseph Young was a very accomplished mosaic artist. His mosaic reliefs graced the sides of several large buildings throughout the U.S. How did this mosaic artist make the jump to large scale, technologically based public sculpture?
"This was the first piece he’d done, this scope," said Leslie Young, the artist's eldest daughter. "[It] was designed to be like the center of a piazza. My parents lived in Rome when they first got married. When he designed the Triforium, he wanted to see that place become a gathering place. I think that he was greatly disappointed that the city didn’t have the long range plan in place to support that."
In its 40 years, the sculpture has been rehabilitated, usually in fits and starts. "In 2006, soon after it turned 30, the Triforium got a facelift. Qathryn Brehmn, the director of the downtown L.A. art walk, led the charge. Her love of the sculpture goes back decades. She recalls seeing it for the first time and being fascinated by the work. But she soon realized she was in the minority.
"Living downtown and dealing with the civic center a lot and being an artist downtown and being involved with several other things that were downtown, I started realizing that people didn’t like it," she said.
Jump to 2005 and Brehmn's love for the Triforium never died, but the artwork fell into disrepair. She made a case for preserving the sculpture to then-Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district contained the Triforium. Perry had the city replace most of the 1,494 light bulbs and clean out most of the light boxes — dimmed considerably after 30 years of pigeons roosting.
A handful of Angelenos came to celebrate the newly restored work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9jHsVD-JsM
But today, the sculpture sits again in disrepair. Roughly 5 percent of the lights will flicker on seemingly randomly. The music was turned off in the late '90s after a judge in the federal courthouse complained of noise.
Looking back the on legacy of the Triforium, the sculpture's greatest champion in politics was probably the first person to present it: Mayor Tom Bradley. Because of his shepherding, not only was the Triforium fully funded but music played underneath it during the entirety of his mayorship.
A few months after that dedication ceremony, Bradley spoke to a class of 6th Graders. He took questions about gun control; about school funding, too. But even there, he couldn't escape a question about Los Angeles’s newest piece of public art.
He answered the child curtly and clearly: “It’s ours now, so we’re going to have to live with it. More than that, we’re going to learn to be proud of it.”
Vincent Price's very Off-Rampy cookbook, 'A Treasury of Great Recipes,' is back!
UPDATE: Come hear Elina Shatkin interview Victoria Price about her folks' cookbook at Samuel Freeman Gallery on Tuesday, Dec. 8, at 7pm. As a bonus, see Martin Mull's newest paintings in an unsettling but beautiful show called "The Edge of Town." The gallery is at 2639 South La Cienega Blvd, LA CA 90034.
Mary and Vincent Price loved food, but they weren't snooty. Their "A Treasury of Great Recipes" turns 50 this year and has been lovingly re-released in all its calorific glory. Off-Ramp contributor Elina Shatkin gets the backstory with daughter Victoria Price.
"I don't think my parents really saw themselves as culinary experts. I think they really thought of themselves as cultural ambassadors. They knew that they had been allowed to have experiences that other people didn't have. So I think what they wanted to do was show people what was possible." — Victoria Price
In "Theatre of Blood," Vincent Price plays a deranged actor so enraged by a bad review that he murders the critic's poodles, bakes them into a pie and force feeds them to the critic until he dies. Worst. Dinner party. Ever.
In real life, Vincent Price was elegant and erudite. He was a traveler. He was an art collector who now has a university museum named for him. And he loved to eat.
"My dad, I think, was not only the original American foodie — he was kind of a metrosexual before there was even such a thing," says his daughter, Victoria Price.
In 1965, her parents published a cookbook. The 500-page "A Treasury of Great Recipes" was heavy and ornate. The bronze cover was etched with gold lettering. Everything about it screamed "keepsake." And it was. The book was a hit.
"I was kind of blown away when Saveur magazine named it one of the 100 most important culinary events of the 20th century," Victoria Price says. "It was more than just a cookbook that was about food. It was experiential."
Its recipes came from the Prices' favorite restaurants around the world. Tre Scalini in Rome, La Boule d'Or in Paris, the Ivy in London, Antoine's in New Orleans, the Pump Room in Chicago and dozens of others. But the Prices weren’t snobs.
The book includes this tribute to a classic American snack: "No hot dog ever tastes as good as the ones at the ballpark. It is a question of being just the right thing at the right time and place. So we have included Chavez Ravine, the Los Angeles Dodgers' magnificent new ballpark, among our favorite eating places in the world."
According to Victoria Price, "the philosophy of the cookbook was gourmet is where you find it and ambiance makes the occasion. And from growing up, I knew that what that meant was gourmet is not the province of the elite. It's not something you get when you go to a five-star restaurant."
That's partly why the book was so popular. It was all about making the world of haute cuisine accessible.
"My favorite memory of my childhood, foodwise for sure with my dad, was one day he woke up and he said: 'Today we're going to go find the best taquito in Los Angeles,'" Victoria Price recalls. "In those kind of pre-food truck days, the best taquitos were found at the little huts that were attached to car washes. We must have driven 200 miles that day. And it wasn't just about eating the taquitos, but you had to try the amazing sauces to dip the taquitos in, the salsas. So we tried all of them. And we had so much fun 'cause we talked about it. It was sharing what we loved about them. It was engaging, it wasn't just shoving something in your mouth."
But then, tastes changed. "I like to say that you could have a heart attack after three bites of some of those recipes," Price says. "Heavy cream and butter..." The book fell out of style and out of print. But it became a cult classic. Which is why, on its 50th anniversary, it has been reissued in a glossy new edition.
It's a time machine, with recipes from a handful of classic, long-shuttered L.A. restaurants. Here's the cold cucumber soup from Scandia on the Sunset Strip and the veal cutlets Cordon Bleu from Perino's.
And it's a world tour. If you couldn't jet off to Mexico City to eat at the Rivoli, you can make their chilies poblanos rellenos at home. Can't make it to Sardi's in New York? Here's their chicken tetrazzini, frogs' legs polonaise and asparagus milanese.
"I think what they wanted to do was show people what was possible," Victoria Price says.
As much as Vincent Price loved food and art and acting, he loved people more.
Thanks to Piotr Michael, who impersonated Vincent Price's voice for the radio story.