From Hollywood's historic Musso & Frank restaurant, Off-Ramp brings you a special Academy Awards preview special.
The Broad Museum's sneak peek brings in 3,500
Sunday, Angelenos lined up by the thousands to get inside an empty art museum.
The Broad museum in downtown L.A. doesn’t open for seven months, but when it announced it would let people get a sneak peek, the $10 tickets sold out immediately. The Broad said by the end of the day 3,547 people had toured the building ... an art museum that, for the time being, is void of art.
What they saw — and what seemingly 99 percent of them photographed on their cameras and phones — was a huge empty room. That's not quite accurate. It was filled with light, sound and people: 35,000 square feet without columns, suffused with warm sunlight filtering through the building’s web-like concrete exoskeleton, bathing Angelenos delighted to be let in on the secret — that is: what's that cool building look like inside?
Having the public appreciate the design of a building without any walls or art to get in the way is every architect’s dream. But remember that the Broad stands next to Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall. That prospect, says architect Liz Diller, was a nightmare. "That’s the first thing we thought," Diller said. "'Oh, s—, how can we possibly talk to that building, being next to that building?' It is one of the great buildings in the world. And so we decided we weren’t even going to try to compete. It had to work on its own merit."
(Rabe interviewing Eli Broad at The Broad as former LA Mayor Richard Riordan looks on. Credit: Dinner Party Download's Rico Gagliano)
The Broad is named for billionaire Eli Broad, who has also been deeply involved at the Museum of Contemporary Art across the street. The art in the Broad will come from his massive collection of contemporary art. At the sneak peak, where he greeted anyone who wanted to say hello, Broad said, "We’ve got art of the last 40 years, essentially, but if you combine our collection with that of our neighbor MOCA, no one in the world has a better collection of art since 1945."
Most cultural institutions have two big problems: getting the general public interested and bringing in younger audiences. Sunday’s event seemed to address both issues. Or as Edythe Broad, Eli’s wife and the museum’s co-founder, noted, "Not only do I love seeing the people, I love seeing that they brought their children. That’s the future art audience."
The Broad opens for real September 20.
Mardi Gras jambalaya recipe: Dominick's chef Brandon Boudet shows how to make iconic dish
Goodbye Joe me gotta go me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne the sweetest one me oh my oh
Son of a gun we'll have big fun on the bayou
Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and fillet gumbo
Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar fill fruit jar and be gay-o
Son of a gun we'll have big fun on the bayou
-- "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," Hank Williams
The calendar says it's still 12 days until Mardi Gras, but that's only for outsiders. Chef Brandon Boudet, owner of the venerable West Hollywood restaurant Dominick's, says growing up in New Orleans, Mardi Gras season started a couple weeks before, and his mom would take him out of school to go watch parades here and there.
Which is a long way of saying that you don't have to wait until Tuesday, Feb. 17, to make jambalaya, one of the traditional dishes of Mardi Gras. And it's easier and more convenient than you might think, as I learned at Dominick's a few days ago under Boudet's tutelage.
Fry up something tasty and fatty, like andouille sausage; add sofrito (chopped green pepper, celery, and onion, with parsley and garlic); a generous amount of Creole seasoning, like ...
... stir in long grained rice, then as much stock as rice; let the rice cook, covered; then when it's cooked, toss in the shrimp and let that sit for 10 minutes. Then: eat.
"Jambalaya is like one of those things: 'My mama makes the best jambalaya that way, my mama's jambalaya is better than your mama's jambalaya,'" says Boudet.
Which is to say, follow the basics just outlined, and you'll be good. The secret, Boudet says? "I think you definitely want some nice fatty pork product in there to really start that flavor early on." Can you get away with chorizo? "There's no wrong when it comes to making jambalaya." Just don't overcook the rice.
Boudet says jambalaya is the Creole culture's one-pot rice dish, like paella or arroz con pollo, perfect for making ahead of time, and serving to a big crowd as they watch the big game, or the parade, or just sit around talking about the last big game or parade.
Listeners: Obviously, Boudet makes it all wrong! Because your mama made it right. So please, share your jambalaya methods and recipes in the comments section below.
And as they say in New Orleans, happy Mardi Gras!
Remembering Gary Owens, the voice
In 2008, I met one of my heroes, Gary Owens, at Jerry's Diner in Encino.
It was a long interview and covered his life and career, and the power of the announcer.
After it aired, I'd call on Gary for a favor now and then, and he always called back, and whether he was leaving a message or speaking to me in person, he'd always say, "Hi, John. It's Gary Owens."
Yes, Gary, I knew it was you. How could that remarkable voice be anybody else?
I'm terribly sad that phone call will never come again. Gary died Thursday; he was 80.
Here's the whole interview, from the Off-Ramp archive.
'Finding Vivian Maier' co-director Charlie Siskel talks about Oscar Nominated documentary
Charlie Siskel, the co-director of “Finding Vivian Maier,” talked with host John Rabe about making a documentary about a nanny who turned out to be one of the century’s best and most fascinating photographers.
During her life, Maier was also a photographer who shot street scenes and interiors mostly, but went unknown her whole life.
John Maloof — Siskel's co-director — bought her negatives at auction and began scanning the photos. Her work has since taken on a life of its own. "Finding Vivian Maier" is nominated for Best Documentary Feature at this year's Academy Awards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zya5kG_9cFw
Sound Designers Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro on creating "Unbroken"
Since we work in radio, it's safe to say this category is the most important for the success of a film. Although Best Cinematography gets a higher billing at the Academy Awards. And sure, Best Acting and Directing, too. But sound editors, the people who make and add sounds to a film give the movie just as much impact: a glass that shatters on a wall. An approaching thunderstorm. Or maybe the sound of a B-24 Bomber.
Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro did just that for "Unbroken," the biography of track star and war hero Louis Zamperini. Their work for the film netted them an Oscar Nomination for Best Sound Design, and they joined John Rabe in the corner booth at Musso & Frank to talk about the process.
Commentary: 'Volcano' is a better Los Angeles film than 'Crash'
"In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."
- "Crash" (2004)
Ten years ago, the movie "Crash" took home the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Academy Awards. The Los Angeles of "Crash" is segregated and inflamed. Persian, African-American, Salvadoran-Puerto Rican and White people collide violently with one another via carjackings, service interactions, a little sex, and most of all, car crashes. Having found themselves outside their bubbles, they do what we all do in unfamiliar company: deliver candid, racist sermons about the prejudices they hold to be self-evident.
Fans said "Crash" shined a light on racism while undermining PC pieties, but the movie winds up reinforcing as many stereotypes as it assaults. It has something for everyone: a racist cop if you marched for Black Lives Matter, a scary black carjacker if you sent a check to Darren Wilson. It showcases some undeniably high-wire melodramatic performances, but its ideas about how people live are both overstated and undercooked.
But that’s not to say you can’t make a great movie about race, space, transportation, and Los Angeles.
And that movie is 1997’s "Volcano", a popcorn-pushing disaster movie. No one would mistake it for a sensitive portrayal. When sexy geologist Anne Heche and plain geologist Not-Anne-Heche go spelunking under the MacArthur Park subway stop, guess who gets boiled alive?
It’s like that. A volcano rises from the Tar Pits, Tommy Lee Jones tells people what to do and saves children. Awesome enough.
There’s a subplot where black residents south of Wilshire protest as emergency personnel protect LACMA’s treasures and not their homes. Tensions rise, but angry white cops and suspicious neighbors work together and reroute the lava. After the long night, a little white boy sees them all covered in snowy volcanic ash and says: “Look at their faces; they all look the same.”
OK, it’s not Ralph Ellison. But then, check out evil developer Norman.
Norman’s building a luxury apartment tower. He hates that his doctor wife takes care of “those people.”
Norman’s like the opponents of the Crenshaw subway line, who for years claimed that burglars from East L.A. and South L.A. would use it as a getaway car for Beverly Hills robberies. In the book "Railtown," author Ethan Elkind shows how metro officials voted against the Crenshaw line because they didn’t want their crazy racist neighbors in Hancock Park airing their prejudices in public.
In "Volcano", that kind of transit racism gets a beautiful B-movie comeuppance: Tommy Lee Jones detonates Norman’s big tower, diverting the lava into Ballona Creek. Plus his wife leaves him.
So, ten years after "Crash" won its Academy Award, Give me the choice of a Rube Goldberg prestige picture with a narrative engine fueled by coincidence and prejudice, or a brash B-movie with a surprising depth of reference to the way Angelenos actually get split up by surface streets and subway tracks? I’ll take the volcano. Plus, hey: sexy geologist.
Tourists: This is not the Harrison Ford star you're looking for
At Musso & Frank, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. you'll find a star for an actor named Harrison Ford. The story goes that when Harrison Ford, star of "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" learned he was going to get a star on the Walk of Fame, he was surprised because he thought he already had one: the one in front of Musso's.
But in fact, the star out front is for Harrison Ford the silent star, who was born in 1884 and died in 1957.
Ford started making films in 1915 and was leading man opposite Norma Talmadge, Marion Davies, Clara Bow and others. He only made one talkie, Love in High Gear, in 1932. He was hit by a car in 1951 and never fully recovered.
Academy Award nominees for Best Original Song Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois talk 'Lost Stars,' more
Since 1934, the Academy's given awards to songwriters for composing the best original song in films. Songs that have taken awards are classics like the theme from Shaft, "I Just Called to Say I Love You," and the unforgettable and insufferable "My Heart Will Go On."
This year, songwriters Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois — formerly of the pop band the New Radicals — got a nomination for "Lost Stars," from the romantic comedy "Begin Again."
Alexander and Brisebois talked about the song and their writing process with Off-Ramp host John Rabe.
What makes a movie Oscar bait?
What does it take for a studio or performer to get an Academy Award? A clever campaign can help, being a good film helps too. But why not custom tailor a movie to win an Oscar? You hear about movies like this around award season everywhere—they're called "Oscar bait." Biopics with strong, meaty lead roles, epic dramas about real world events. They sweep up awards but rarely make it into film classes. So what makes a movie Oscar bait? And do any films this year meet the definition? Filmweek contributor and LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson joins John at Musso & Frank.
Oscars 2015: Fashion designer Nick Verreos on best costume nominees, red carpet fashion
The Oscars wouldn't be the Oscars without the glamor of the red carpet. Just like the movies wouldn't be the movies without perfect costumes. Nick Verreos is in the unique position to talk about both: Nick was an early contestant on "Project Runway" and is now red carpet fashion commentator with the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
He joins Off-Ramp host John Rabe at the corner booth at the historic Musso & Frank Restaurant in Hollywood.