Balancing love and commuting ... TiGeorge's George LaGuerre writes his memoir ... "Son of Saul" and how it's different from many Holocaust movies ... 5 Every Week takes us to MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary for the LA Art Book Fair ... What kids know about true love: everything.
TiGeorges LaGuerre, LA's most famous Haitian, writes his memoir
The most famous Haitian in Los Angeles is a man of many names: Jean-Marie Monfort Hébert Georges Fils Laguerre. Most people just call him TiGeorges. It means "little George," since his dad was named George.
Since 2002, he has run TiGeorges' Chicken, a small restaurant in Echo Park near Bob Baker’s Marionette Theatre. In 2010, it burned down, but has since reopened and nearly doubled its size. Laguerre has published a memoir, “No Man Is An Island,” which recounts his journey from the beaches of Haiti to the city of Los Angeles.
The first thing you notice when you walk into his restaurant is the brick oven in the center of the room. Chickens rotate as fat drips into the crackling, spitting flames. TiGeorges is usually there, turning the wood, chatting with customers, checking on the kitchen.
"You had to be the 'haves' to consume chicken in Haiti on Sundays," TiGeorges says. "And then we will consume that with boiled plantain, white rice and puree of red beans. So if you were in the high society of Haiti, even up today, this is something that I guarantee you will find. Chicken is the dish."
What makes his chicken so special? TiGeorges's presence — and the fire. "You need flame," he says. "I used to go get wood in the alley of Los Angeles until I get to a point I couldn't find any more woods in the alley. And then one Sunday I was passing by an alley in Echo Park and I saw an avocado tree that had fell in somebody's backyard. So I walk to the owner and ask him if I could get few pieces because I didn't have any wood to cook on Monday. He said sure."
He still uses avocado wood. It's crucial to his approach of "bringing the outdoors inside."
"Haitian cuisine is probably one of the best cuisines that exist because we adapt the concept from the French, the African. We combine with what we already have and then that's what Haiti's is all about. So you go to Haiti, you go to the bottom of the barrel, you will have a nice dish. That's a sure thing," TiGeorges says.
His restaurant isn't just a place to eat. It's also a cultural center. "When people come to my restaurant," he says, "they leave really, truly with the Haitian experience. We play cards, dominos. We are great storytellers. We always have an issue to discuss."
He calls over a man sitting at a nearby table. It's Gary Senatus, better known as Cooper (after the actor Gary Cooper). A longtime friend of TiGeorges, he painted many of the works that hang on the restaurant's walls. Cooper is also a killer at dominos.
"I can never beat him," TiGeorges says. "He's trying to be diplomatical about it. He's a master at it."
Cooper's favorite dish is the chicken. He waits patiently as it turns on the spit, trying to convince TiGeorge not to throw it in the oven (the usual procedure) after its time in the open-air oven.
"I'm going to have a fight with him because he wants to change the recipe," TiGeorges says.
"What just happened with George calling Cooper over, that's what happens every time I've ever been here," says Jeremy Rosenberg. "It's like going to the barbershop or a house party. It's never just you're sitting here eating."
"Oh no, the camaraderie that comes with it," TiGeorges adds.
Another longtime friend, Rosenberg knew TiGeorges before the restaurant opened and he co-wrote his memoir, a project that started a decade ago.
The story begins in Port-de-Paix, a city on the north west coast Haiti, TiGeorges's grandmother taught him to cook.
"She was a street vendor," he says. "She used to cook food back then. 100 years ago there were a lot of European in my hometown. And then they say, "Oh, missus. You can cook so well. Why don't you come to cook for us? So my grandmother can read and write, left the sidewalk, went to work for rich people, rich Europeans that were in Haiti back then. And that's how my whole family started."
Her specialty was fried fish. And "fried plantains. Fried sweet potatoes. Things of that nature. And pikliz. You go to Haiti, if you are not served pikliz, then you didn't have a Haitian dish," TiGeorges says.
Pikliz is to Haiti as kimchi is to Korea or sauerkraut is to Germany. A tart peppery slaw made with shredded cabbage, carrots, onions, scotch bonnet peppers, vinegar, salt, and other seasonings. "You let that age and trust me, it will do wonders to your dish," TiGeorges says.
He was 16 when he came to the United States with his mother in 1970. "It was not my thing but your mother told you you gotta come, you follow your mother," he says.
TiGeorges studied filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts in New York. But directing gigs were few and far between so he did whatever odd jobs he could find. He cleaned up the beach at Coney Island, drove a taxi (which paid for college), painted houses for $20 a room, parked cars in Manhattan, made deliveries.
Eventually, he made his way to Los Angeles, where he became a restaurateur and unofficial ambassador of Haiti.
"Haiti is probably the only country, if you come to my house as a guest, I will give you my master bedroom and I will hit the floor," TiGeorges says. "You come to my house, oh, I'm gonna tell everybody in the neighborhood, I have a foreigner coming to visit me. And I'm gonna make sure you get the royal treatment. So this is the part of Haiti that people never know about."
Until now.
'Son of Saul' star on why it's not an Oscar-bait Holocaust movie
You know the nominees. You know the controversies. But did you know this is the weekend Academy members finally start to vote for the best films and filmmaking of 2015?
Few movies have more buzz than "Son of Saul," Hungarian director László Nemes' powerful recreation of Auschwitz at the height of the Holocaust, a leading contender for the Foreign Language Oscar. Critics agree: This is a different look at the appalling crimes of Nazi Germany. But what makes it special? For answers, Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene sat down with Saul himself, a gentle Hungarian poet named Géza Röhrig, to talk about life, art and why tears are inappropriate when contemplating the hell of the Holocaust.
The Hungarian film "Son of Saul" may be the most harrowing film about the Holocaust ever made. Lead actor Géza Röhrig says, "That's the point. Movies I know, they are running these fairy tales about rescuers and survivors and all that. The norm was not to survive. Two out of three Jews in Europe did not. That's what 'Son of Saul' is all about."
Röhrig is thoughtful and soft-spoken. He's a notable poet in his native Hungary. He speaks like one. "In history, man always murdered man. There's no news in that. The news is that they left the dirty work for the victims themselves."
As Saul, Röhrig plunges headlong through the genocidal nightmare of Auschwitz on a strange but human quest. He's a Sonderkommando, a Jew forced to help dispose of the murdered dead. "You know we all have breaking point, and he is dead before dying, he's already so ghost-like and robotic. He can't have a shred of humanity any more."
But one day Saul witnesses a miracle. A boy survives the gas chamber, only to be murdered and marked for dissection by the Nazis. "They might have just locked eyes right before he died. And to his own surprise, when he witnesses the agony of this kid who survives the gas chamber, all of a sudden, he's the closest to Saul, this boy. And from that point on, for him it's way more personal. He's not interested in surviving."
Shot in a relentless series of long takes, "Son of Saul" was designed to make a historical nightmare immediate and real. "Our way was to minimalize," Röhrig says. "We didn't want monologues, we didn't want music. We used very few cuts. We had to bring it down to the eye level."
Röhrig and director László Nemes were adamant: there could be no sentiment, and the audience would never be allowed the luxury of tears. "Well, you know, to avoid melodrama. Kitsch. The sort of response from the viewer that is overwhelmingly emotional."
Isn't weeping entirely appropriate when facing something like the Holocaust?
"No," he says. "It's entirely inappropriate. It's almost appalling to me. Weeping is fine for an individual drama, you know? You know, a parent passes. That happens with the individual, then you cry and that's cathartic and that's great. People love actually crying more than laughing I believe. But when it comes to millions of people, innocent people, young and old, industrially being gassed and burned? I don't think crying does justice to that. You have to be shaken in a more lasting way."
Röhrig knew his topic intimately. Hungarian and Jewish, he visited Auschwitz as a young man and was permanently changed. "It's like the first time you arrive to the sea. There's that huge moment. And obviously seeing Auschwitz is the same thing in a negative sense. I lost my faith in man, and I had to walk away with faith in something else. And that took time. The place has a certain gravity, or radiation, or whatever you call it."
Röhrig is never offscreen in "Son of Saul" — a remarkable feat for a first-time feature film actor, but it's not his first public performance. To make Saul authentic and true, Röhrig reached back to his youth, when he was in a punk band called Huckleberry. He remembers, "It was in the mid-'80s, when Hungary was a one-party system still — we had an Iron Curtain. It was insufferably quiet there, very gray. There was nothing to join, so we had to create something out of nothing. Making a band was kind of forbidden... And yes, I think performing in the '80s, I think that's considered to be [acting] experience."
Saul is another man in revolt, trying to keep his spirit alive.
Have lunch and get an Oscars preview at Hollywood's oldest restaurant
Join Off-Ramp host John Rabe as he interviews Oscar nominees, critics and more in a booth at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood. The taping starts at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, February 16, and wraps up around 2 p.m.
If you want to join us, reserve a table for lunch at Musso's (323-467-7788). Tell them you're here for the show, and they'll seat you in front of our booth.
Compared to most of the staff at Musso & Frank, assistant manager Bobby Caravella is practically in diapers. Bartender Ruben Rueda's been there for 48 years, waiter Alonzo "Panama" Castillo is at 42 years and Domingo Pule has logged 22 years at the grill — after 14 years at Schwab's Pharmacy.
But he gets it. "It's been a real education," Caravella says. "I've been in the restaurant business for 30 years, and I have people working for me that have been working here for over 40 years. So when I try to say 'this is the way to do it,' they kinda look at me, smile and say, 'Sure, sonny.'"
Highlights include recently finding a photo of Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio eating lunch in Booth No. 3, "which we call the Marilyn booth. Half the people we tell believe us, and half the people think we're telling them a story just to get them in the seat."
Another was meeting director Paul Mazursky's widow at Musso just after he died and being able to express his appreciation for the director hiring him as AD on several pictures — then walking her out and discovering Mazursky's star outside the front door.
Frank Sinatra, he says, always sat at Table 224 with his "good friend" Jilly Rizzo. "We like to think he just liked to be in that room, and it was a little bit secluded, but," Caravella laughs, "I think it was because Jilly could see out the front door."
And then there was the time a grand old lady came in with her grandsons and asked to be seated in a particular booth. She told him it was her 95th birthday, and she remembered her fifth birthday at Musso ... in the exact same booth.
Listen to the audio for more stories of Hollywood history at Musso & Frank Grill, and join us Tuesday afternoon!
Valentine's Day: We figure out how to balance love and commuting
KPCC's Karen Fritsche faced a common LA dilemma - how do you manage your love life in SoCal, where dating can involve hours of driving? Karen came up with a scientific solution.
(Since this piece originally aired in 2009, Karen found true love, married him, and had a baby. So: her system worked.)
Song of the week: "Mouth" by Anenon
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is "Mouth" by Anenon. Anenon is the solo project of Brian Allen Simon, a Los Angeles native. Simon's a composer, saxophone player and electronic musician who's worked with Julia Holter, Morton Subotnick, Laurel Halo and more.
https://soundcloud.com/anenon/mouth-2/s-EbVPo
Simon's performed live in clubs, all ages venues and even as an installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art. If you want to see him live, you'll have the chance on February 27 at Pappy and Harriet's in Pioneertown, if you feel like a drive.
"Mouth" comes off Anenon's upcoming album, "Petrol." The album is, according to Anenon:
...an album about Los Angeles, but not the Los Angeles you know. It’s a Los Angeles built as much upon the frenzied kinetic energy of its freeways as its moments of thoughtful, early morning solitude.
You can listen to the second single off "Petrol" here.
5th graders know what love is, tell commentator Hank Rosenfeld
To me, love is stubbing out a menthol cigarette in a cup of coffee, an empty bottle of whiskey by the side of the road, a shuttered motel in 29 Palms. That’s why I loved my job at a Santa Monica elementary school. The 5th graders there kept me sane when Valentine’s Day approaches. They don’t have those kind of memories … yet.
I ask Krshna, "What’s your definition of love?" Without blinking, he says, "The definition of love is me liking Sophie." Not "a" definition or "one" definition, but "the definition." It’s crystal clear.
5th graders have lots of crushes. Not that they are all as willing as Krshna to talk about them. And of course they’re too young to understand what Strindberg called "the inevitably primal confrontation between men and women." They’re too busy playing. They’re 10 or 11 years old, running around with their shoes untied. And my job is to help them with their poems that go, "Love is like a hot fudge sundae."
When Amy tells me quietly, "Love is a strong thing. It’s when two people really care about each other," I think of that quote about love from Martin Buber. He called it "a vague instinctual overwhelming feeling."
If the girls are a little quieter, the boys who want to talk really want to talk. Noah and Vincent grab the mike and basically start doing a radio show.
Noah: Valentines isn’t about who’s the coolest, the hottest. It’s about who you love, right, Vincent?
Vincent: Right. You have to spend time with your girlfriend or your loved ones and you have to just realize how beautiful Valentine’s is.
Noah: I mean if you don't have Valentine’s Day, if you’re married, how will you ever say to that special person “I love you?”
Wasn’t it Blake who said, "we’re all here to bear the beams of love?" That may seem a bit above the pay grade of an average adult, but children send out those beams without even trying. Krshna, before he went back to class, left me with this. "Love is a real right thing and I think everyone needs love to feel happy and stuff like that. And I hope Sophie becomes my girlfriend, and I hope you find love Mr. Hank."
O Krshna, I don't think there’s anything in that grab bag for Mr Hank. I was in one relationship for six years. We used to break up every Valentine’s Day. We’d get back together around Easter or Passover; something to do with resurrection, or guilt.
But the 5th graders are studying the circulatory system right now, and in the standard California science book, it says that the heart is actually hollow. But when it gets to beating and rhythmically pumping the blood around the body, well, it feels alive.