To celebrate the new Eames Anthology, we talk with the editor and an Eames grandson; Ray Bradbury's Red File; rescuing the brown recluse from its bad reputation.
Director Mel Stuart's kids tell stories from the making of the original 'Willy Wonka'
Madeline Stuart says, "I couldn't imagine a kid who wouldn't want to finish school every day" and come hang out on the movie set.
That kid was Madeline (and her brother Peter), and the film was 1971's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," based on Roald Dahl's book, directed by their father Mel Stuart.
Stuart worked in TV and film, directing "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," the documentary "Wattstax," and more than a hundred other projects. "But there's no question," Madeline says, "that Willy Wonka is what endeared him to so many millions of people."
Madeline and Peter Stuart will be joining me onstage at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. on Wednesday, June 24, at 8 p.m., to introduce a screening of "Willy Wonka" with stories and photos from their time on the set. It's part of the L.A. Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats series.
"This was my favorite book," she says. "I brought the book to my father and said, 'Dad, I'd like you to make a movie out of my favorite book.' Granted not every little girl's father is a director, and not every little girl's father is inclined to listen to a little girl, but my father wisely did."
So, they lived in Germany, where the film was shot, and every day after school at a U.S. military base they would take the tram to the studio. "For us, it was like walking into the pages of your favorite book," but not just for the few hours when you watch a movie or read a book, but for days and days during the shoot.
She and Peter have small roles in the film, and she says she delights in the dark tone that startled many moviegoers. "We all have a dark side to our nature, and children are evil little creatures. And the book and the film really capture that, that children can be spoiled, bratty, obnoxious, and the film outs kids for their own bad behavior." And they get their comeuppance ... except for Charlie.
For much more, listen to the audio of our interview.
A rare visit inside the Eames House, hallowed ground for designers
Charles and Ray Eames were pioneering American designers whose most famous work is the Eames Recliner. The Eames were so famous, the chair got its own unveiling on NBC's Today Show in 1956.
They also designed the Case Study House #8 in the Pacific Palisades, then lived in it from Christmas Day, 1949, until they died. On the outside, the house resembles a stark, modernist home with no soft lines. But go inside, and everything changes, and Off-Ramp got a rare and privileged peek when we interviewed Daniel Ostroff, editor of the new "An Eames Anthology," and Charles and Ray's grandson Eames Demetrios, chair of The Eames Foundation.
If you've been inside your friend's Mid-Century Modern home, where the coffee table holds either a stack of Dwell magazines or nothing — but never a cup of coffee or the TV remote — you're relieved to walk into #8. It's filled with carpets, plants, art, books and soft places to sit.
The anthology is as thick as a 2TB external hard drive, but it collects just a small portion of the Eames' writings that, as Ostroff explains, illuminates their process, a process that valued evolution above revolution. "They used to say, 'innovate as a last resort,'" says Demetrios. "And what they meant is that when you innovate for its own sake, little bits of knowledge and wisdom that have been accumulated almost unconsciously by people can be easily lost. For example, I can make an innovative car tomorrow. It'll have 23 wheels and there'll be absolutely no point to it. What they tried to do with their designs was have a quality called 'way it should be-ness,' so if something was really well designed, the idea of it having been designed at all would not be apparent."
The anthology includes the narration for the Eames' movie explaining the molded plywood chair, in which they say instead of designing a chair for how people should sit, they designed one for how people do sit. It's revolutionary, alas, in some design circles. "It might sound revolutionary," Ostroff says, "but it's actually consistent with the overall Eames message. They were living it a time when there were far more choices than man had ever been faced with before, and Charles and Ray said that when you're a designer, you're on safe ground if what you focus on are people, the people who use your designs. And the fact that they didn't go beyond that is one of their gifts."
Members Appreciation Day, the one day a year you can go inside the Eames House, is June 20, but you need to sign up by June 15. Daniel Ostroff will be there, too, signing copies of "An Eames Anthology."
5 things you didn't know about the brown recluse spider
Richard Vetter, who has set listeners straight on black and brown widows, and who co-wrote "The PCT Field Guide for the Management of Urban Spiders," has written the first comprehensive book about possibly the most unfairly maligned spider of all: the brown recluse.
(Spider expert Richard Vetter. Image: UCR)
The retired UC Riverside researcher talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe about his new book, "The Brown Recluse Spider."
From their interview, here are five things you probably didn't know about brown recluse spiders.
1. You weren't bitten by the brown recluse spider and neither was that guy you heard about.
If you live in Southern California, it wasn't a brown recluse that bit you (or that guy) — if you were even bitten — because they simply don't live here (see below).
[Doctors ] would say, "Well, of course there are brown recluses here, we diagnose the bites all the time." The problem is there are many things that can cause skin lesions that look like recluse bites, about 40 different conditions that we currently know.
Plus, Vetter says they avoid human beings.
People think that if they just have one recluse in their house that this thing is going to be running around like the shark from Jaws, running around chomping on them. I did a study with a woman in Kansas, and she collected, in six months, 2,055 brown recluse spiders in her house. Most of these were babies, and about 400 were of a size big enough to bite, yet it took 11 years before these people had one registered bite in their house.
2. They can slow down their metabolism and live up to 5 years.
They are sit-and-wait predators and can survive without feeding for quite awhile. They just lower their heart rate and they just sit there, if they're sitting away from predators, so they're not going to be running around to get out. They just wait there.
3. They didn't have a bad reputation until the Eisenhower years.
Actually, for years there had been conjecture that these little brown spiders were causing problems. Farmers knew very well that there were some problems in their barns, and they had a pretty good idea that it was a spider that was doing it, but it wasn't until 1957 that it was proven scientifically.
Whenever there is a new spider that is thought to be toxic, the media just jump on this all over the place and everyone gets really excited about things. So what happened after 1957, there was a rush to provide a lot of information to people, just like when the West Nile virus started or Lyme disease, 1977.
4. There aren't any brown recluse spiders in Southern California.
The brown recluse is one species of spider, which is found in the Midwest. There are no populations of the brown recluse spiders known in Southern California.
We do have the Chilean recluse in a few buildings in L.A. County. They are usually in the basements of municipal or commercial buildings. They are not biting people, and the Department of Health doesn't consider them a concern.
And we also have the desert recluse out in the deserts — Palmdale, Victorville, Blythe, China Lake, Indio — not in the L.A. Basin at all.
5. Richard Vetter's "The Brown Recluse Spider" is the first book about the brown recluse spider.
There really was no source for a lot of people who were not sure of what was going on. This is a book based on scientific information and I think it's going to convince a lot of folks.
But as Vetter admits, we do love our legends. Listen to the audio for much more on the much maligned brown recluse spider.
Three women directors in LA Film Festival's LA MUSE showcase
On a typical weekend at L.A. Live's Regal Multiplex, you get typical Hollywood. Digital dinosaurs. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Minions. That's Hollywood. But it’s not Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles Film Festival takes over L.A. Live, you'll get 10 tales from Venice Beach, Little Armenia, East L.A. and every other point of the L.A. compass.
"Last year, there were so many films that were uniquely Los Angeles," says LAFF director Stephanie Allain. "We wanted to create a showcase for them. " They called this city showcase LA MUSE, "because we felt it was about how the city inspires so many people around the world — to come here, to make movies, to be part of the magic, to re-invent themselves."
LA MUSE comes with its real-life muse: a self-described potty mouth named Zoe Cassevetes, who is John's daughter, Gena Rowland's kid. Indie royalty in every way. "If I'm going to be a filmmaker with this crazy job, then I want people to feel things," Zoe says. "When something hits you hard or personally, it changes your life. That's what art is about — I mean, that's what some art is about. And for me, that's what's kind of important and what I like about making things."
("Day out of Days")
At LAFF 2015, Zoe will be following up her 2007 Sundance breakout "Broken English" with a new drama. "Day Out of Days" is about an actress hitting 40 and the Hollywood meat market. ("Day Out of Days" is a chart filmmakers use to count cast members' paid days.) There are surface parallels to "Opening Night," one of her parents' late masterpieces. Zoe hadn't realized this, but she sees there's a link right away.
"In a way, yeah. I mean, 'Opening Night' is my favorite of his films at the moment. I didn't think of it like that. I just thought, maybe like he did, that it's horrible to see all this talent and beauty and everything just cut off. Like, 'Oh, you're forty? Bye!'"
Like Hollywood, South L.A. has been on screen a lot — or a sensationalistic version of it used to be, back when it was called "South Central." Documentarian Delila Vallot grew up with one foot in Hollywood and one in South L.A. When she returned to her father's neighborhood after years away, it was to tell a story of hope.
"I kind of wanted to go back and see if something as simple as planting a seed could really change lives," Vallot says.
Ron Finlay is the accidental activist who ran afoul of a city ordinance when he grew vegetables on the median in front of his South L.A. home. Finlay's a TED Talk superstar now, with millions of followers. In Vallot's "Can You Dig This," he's part of an ensemble. Ex-gang bangers garden with skills learned by raising marijuana. A loving dad's poor food choices nearly kill him, and his mantra becomes, "I got to see my ladies grown." Paroled murderers sit in halfway houses, raising vegetables as atonement.
"We used to have a quote in the movie that we've since taken out," Vallot says. "'The very act of planting a seed requires hope.' I don't think it's a solution for everything, but I would like for people to embrace (gardening) as a particular healing mechanism."
If resurrection is the heart of "Can You Dig This," sterility is the curse chronicled in "No Más Bebés," a shattering new documentary from director Rene Tajima-Pena that unfolds like a science fiction nightmare.
It's the early 1970s. Poor women all over America check into charity hospitals to give birth. They return to their families sterilized and baffled. In L.A., County-USC Medical Center is the epicenter. There are suggestions of racism in the court case that follows: Latinas accusing white male doctors of sterilizing them against their will.
But "No Más Bebés" resists using its real doctors as stock movie villains. The medical men are allowed their point of view. But it's also quite clear where "No Más Bebés" stands: with the women the filmmaker sees as real-world heroes.
"I always say that I like to make movies when something pisses me off, Tajimka-Pena says, "and this really pissed me off. Although it pisses you off, you make the movie, and then you start getting deeper into the story. And things are different shades of grey."
These are the stories your neighbors are telling about themselves and the city you share with them. And that just scratches the surface of LA MUSE's 10 films. In a summer where our screens are predictably crowded with explosions, disasters and cartoon supermen, empathy is still what the movies do best.
Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene directed and co-produced the documentary "The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy," which was just nominated for an Emmy.
Ray Bradbury's biographer: FBI spied on the author's kids
Ray Bradbury's biographer, Sam Weller, says he was shocked by the FBI's incompetence and perfidy.
First, they got Bradbury's name wrong in their documents, consistently calling him "Raymond," when his given name was "Ray." And the FBI reported that Bradbury made repeated trips to Cuba, when he never went there in his life.
But the Red File, which Weller obtained through a Freedom of Information Request, also shows that FBI agents were parking their cars at night on Bradbury's street in Cheviot Hills, watching his children.
Bradbury, Weller says, "was quite startled by that. He was a pack rat, so he took that file out of my hand immediately and said, 'Mine! Mine!' He wanted to keep it."
Weller speaks Monday at the Central Library and promises to share Bradbury documents, photos, and letters the public has never seen before, including the Red File but also some of Bradbury's huge collection of celebrity photos. "He arrived in Hollywood (from Illinois) in April of 1934," Weller says, "and when he got there, he was this devotee of cinema, and he stalked the celebrities." So there are photos of Bradbury with George Burns, Marlene Dietrich, and Ida Lupino, among others.
And the movies affected his books. "I argue that Ray Bradbury is the first great literary writer to have his sense of narrative shaped by cinema. He was born in 1920, he started seeing movies when he was 3 years old, and they were vital to his sense of imagination."
Sam Weller is the author of "The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury," and "Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews." Weller will be lecturing on Bradbury Monday, June 15, at noon, in Meeting Room A of the LA Public Library.
Japanese-American WW2 vets gather in Little Tokyo
If you eat lunch outside the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo, look for the large granite arch, with a flagpole in front of it. It's the "Go For Broke" monument, commemorating Japanese-Americans who served in World War II despite being detained as suspected traitors in internment camps by President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.
Saturday, June 6 marked the 71st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and the Go For Broke National Education Foundation held a ceremony honoring the Veterans of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, its 100th Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service (MIS).
"Go For Broke" was the mantra of the 442nd during WWII. Veteran Yoshio Nakamura remembers breaking the Gothic Line. "We climbed up this tremendous mountain in the dark, and surprised the German outpost on the high ground, and that ended the war in Italy."
(Yoshio Nakamura, of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Courtesy of the Nakamura Family)
In 2000, President Clinton awarded the 442nd Regiment 20 Medals of Honor, a total of 21 for the unit. Tokuji "Toke" Yoshihashi, from the 442nd's 100th Battalion, recalled the regiment's first Medal of Honor recipient, Sadao Munemori. "He was in A Company, which I was, and I was there when he (posthumously) got his medal. He threw himself on a German grenade to save his two buddies, but he lost his life doing it," says Yoshihashi.
Munemori led his squad through German fire in Seravezza, Italy after his leader was injured. He took out two German machine guns and gained ground for his squad before sacrificing himself.
("Toke" Yoshihashi. Courtesy of the Yoshihashi Family)
The Military Intelligence Service was comprised of two branches: a Pacific branch of translators interrogating and dispersing propaganda in Japanese, Thai and other Southeast Asian languages, and a European branch that did so in German. Ken Akune and his brother Harry were approached in Colorado's Amache internment camp by military recruiters seeking Japanese speakers. The Akunes volunteered themselves, and 19-year-old Ken was placed into MIS as an interrogator. Twenty-one-year-old Harry was a paratrooper who served in the Philippines and New Guinea.
(Camp Amache, where Ken and Harry Akune were interned, in Granada, Colorado. Credit: J Curnow/Flickr Creative Commons)
Akune recalls mostly decent treatment in the military, except for one executive officer from the Office of War Information. The executive made sure Akune was without food or transportation when he was sent to interrogations. The tension between the two came to an impasse when Akune was told to give up his seat for a British guest at a military dinner, and when he wouldn't move, the executive ordered him to move. "The hell you will! I'm in the military, you're a civilian!" Akune responded. The chief of MIS didn't punish Akune, who was the first of many harassed interpreters to stand up to the War Information executive.
(Courtesy of the Akune Family)
Both Akune and Yoshihashi had family in the Japanese military. Akune had two younger brothers who lived with his grandmother in Japan and joined near the end of the war. One of Akune's brothers was drafted as a kamikaze (though he did not have to take a suicide mission). Yoshihashi had cousins and uncles fighting for Japan, one of whom was a four-star general. Yoshihashi, who was interned at Arizona's Gila-River camp, remarks that while his father's generation was "gung-ho for Japan," he was an American, and "couldn't see their point."
"We were told to report in Pasadena, and they could not tell us where we were gonna go. It turned out we were at the Tulare Racetrack, which was made into an camp. One of my friends who came to visit me was appalled by the prison-like situation there, and where we talked in the visitors room, we had to talk through bars, like in a jail, and it so affected him that he could not talk about it for 30 years." —Yoshio Nakamura recalling his internment
On the same block as the Go For Broke monument and the Japanese American National Museum, is the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. This was a deportation site for the internment camps, but during the war, monks kept internees' possessions safe in the basement of the temple. GFB President Don Nose says it will be the new Go For Broke Education Center to teach students about civil rights history and current events.
Chinese same-sex couples wed in West Hollywood
Ten same-sex couples from China were married in a public ceremony Tuesday morning in West Hollywood. It was a destination wedding sponsored by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Why West Hollywood and not Beijing? Homosexuality was decriminalized by the Chinese government in 1997, but it still doesn't recognize same-sex marriages.
Among the ten couples were newlyweds Liu Xin and Hu Zhidong. They'd been in a relationship for over nine years before they decided to make the commitment. To make the trip, Liu and Hu competed in a contest with 400 other couples, sharing photos of themselves, writing essays and even producing a video to make their case.
Liu and Hu are both young, they live in Beijing and work for internet companies. Speaking through a translator, they said they feel society and the government are becoming more accepting of LGBT people. Hu mentioned that the government now participates in World AIDS Day.
But still, there's work to be done, they both agreed. Liu said a friend of his who underwent surgery in a Beijing hospital had to sign a form before his boyfriend could visit him.
Hu and Liu flew back to Beijing on Wednesday. First on their agenda is a conversation with their parents. Like a lot of the couples at the West Hollywood ceremony, they hadn't come out to their parents. "We're a little bit nervous," they said through the translator. "We're also excited. We think our parents will accept us."
Sister Corita Kent, creator of LOVE stamp, world's biggest selling artist
"Sister Corita, the rebel nun, the joyous revolutionary, as artist Ben Shahn called her, came of artistic age and into raised consciousness in the 1960s — a decade of war and of culture-bending forces." So opens April Dammann's new "Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography," from Angel City Press.
Kent's prints, made both during and after her time as an Immaculate Heart sister in the L.A. Catholic Archdiocese, made her one of the most prolific mid-century pop artists. She was on the cover of Newsweek and compared to Andy Warhol. Her work includes the LOVE stamp, which by 1985 had sold more than 700 million copies.
John Rabe spoke with Dammann about Kent's life and works:
When did she start making art?
She was discovered to have artistic talent as a kid in parochial Catholic schools in Hollywood, and it was encouraged by a couple of the young nuns, so she was making art from an early age. But really, the nuns in her order — the Immaculate Heart of Mary — they all became teachers, and so she began teaching in schools, even in Canada for a time. But her art developed in graduate school, studying art for an MFA. She discovered silkscreen process early on in her study and began making multiple prints of beautiful, original silkscreen, while teaching at Immaculate Heart College.
Tell us more about her serigraphs.
She would draw subject matter from the commercial world around her — advertisements, slogans — but also from the Bible. So she would turn messages that were to draw us toward, maybe, General Mills cereal into something like 'The big G stands for goodness,' and that could sell Cheerios, but to Corita the big G was God. And so she would try to infuse the spirituality into everything she did, but with fun and incredibly bright color.
And the Archdiocese was not in love with this.
This was a terrible time for the nuns of this order in Hollywood. They were a progressive order, they were liberal, and the Vatican II reforms came along; Sister Corita and her sisters, this was made for them. But it was Corita's luck to have the most conservative archbishop in the country. Cardinal McIntyre was their male authority in the hierarchy in the Los Angeles church, and he would have nothing of reform for these nuns. He became angry, he called them bad women and he threatened to make them suffer, and he did make them suffer.
(Cardinal McIntyre at 1961 ground-breaking ceremony at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica shaking hands with Patricia Kennedy, with Sister Mary David and Mother Mary Ancilla. LAPL/Herald-Examiner collection)
McIntyre eventually dismissed all of the Immaculate Heart teachers. Was this turmoil the reason she vacated her vows?
You know, she's been asked that question, and to the day she died she said "I can't tell you exactly why I left, but that kind of turmoil, seeing the suffering of my sisters — I really had to get out of there."
For much more, click on the audio to hear John's entire interview with April Dammann. And go see the Corita Kent exhibit at PMCA which opens June 14.
Song of the Week: 'Free' by Dam Funk
This week’s song of the week is “Free” by singer, producer and past Off-Ramp guest Dam Funk. Pasadena born and raised, Dam Funk (who’s real name is Damon Riddick) has worked with Snoop Dogg, collaborated with Steve Arrington of the legendary funk group Slave and even interviewed George Clinton.
“Free” is off a new EP by Dam called “STFU” which can be downloaded for free and streamed here:
http://soundcloud.com/stonesthrow/sets/dam-funk-stfu
Oarfish: Fascinating, rare, mythical—but really bad eating
When it comes to fishes, we turn to Dr. Milton Love, UCSB marine biologist and author of "Certainly More Than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast," although when it comes to one fish in particular, we don't know much.
A 15-foot long oarfish washed ashore on Catalina Island Monday, which isn't too rare, but Love says, "there are only about six sightings in the entire world of a living oarfish underwater." Only six sightings in history.
"People just don't know much about them," Love says. "What we know is mainly from beached specimens. The animals have beached themselves all over the world, from the tropics to Scotland, Norway, and in Japan. And it's very hard to tell much about a fish when all you've got are dead ones."
(UCSB marine biologist Milton Love. Image courtesy Milton Love)
Love says we are pretty sure they normally live hundreds of feet beneath the surface, they eat jellyfish and crustaceans, and they taste awful. "Apparently, they're horrible. Almost no one has ever eaten one, but I read a report recently of someone in Norway who ate a chunk of one and said it was so bad even his dogs wouldn't eat it, which is pretty bad."
For much more on the oarfish, whether the recent beachings are evidence of global warming, and an update on Survive! Mola Mola, listen to our audio interview.
Downtown's Bar 107 defies landlord, refuses to leave
UPDATE 9/14/2015: This just in.
Also, Bar 107 in the
is officially closed and locked up. Goodbye cheap bears, weird people and rockin' music.
— Eddie Kim (@eddiekimx)
Also, Bar 107 in the @HistoricCore is officially closed and locked up. Goodbye cheap bears, weird people and rockin' music.
— Eddie Kim (@eddiekimx) September 14, 2015
For almost ten years, Bar 107 has thrived in the growing downtown Los Angeles bar scene. It's one of the few places in America you can go for gong karaoke. It gives out free pizza during happy hour.
May 31 was supposed to be Bar 107's last day — its landlord stopped renewing the month-to-month lease. But the bar defied the order, and — as of this posting — is still open today.
On the evening of May 31, DJ Morgan Higby Night read from a prepared statement by the ownership, saying the bar would stay open until forced to leave. It complained of downtown changing and becoming less inclusive. "Bars with personality and reasonable drink prices have been replaced by sterile, safe s---holes with ridiculous prices and even more ridiculous ice cubes."
Bar 107 sits near the corner of 4th and Main Streets downtown. It's in the same building as the historic Hotel Barclay. When reached for comment on Monday, property manager Victor Vasquez said he was "very disappointed" to have seen the announcement.
Vasquez said he'd made numerous attempts to provide Bar 107 with a long-term, multi-year lease but the two sides couldn't come to an agreement. Management, he said, made the call to talk with prospective new tenants around March. He said the two sides are back at the negotiating table now and he hopes they'll reach an amicable agreement.
Eddie Kim, a senior writer for LA Downtown News, said stories like this aren't uncommon in downtown nowadays. "It's one instance out of many where there's changes happening," he said. When Bar 107 opened its doors nearly 10 years ago, it replaced Score, a well-liked gay bar.
"The people who love Bar 107 are losing a place to love," Kim added. "It's part of the identity of this neighborhood, right?"
Ownership from Bar 107 couldn't be reached for a response at the time of posting, we'll update if we hear back.