We talk with one of LA’s experts on relics, mummies, crypts, and the way we live with death ... KPCC Science Reporter Matt Bloom looks at the fungal disease killing droves of LA ficus trees ... The amazing career of Ruth Batchelor: one of NPR’s first film critics, founder of the LA Film Critics association, and songwriter for Elvis ... We celebrate the 50th anniversary the Monterey Pop Music Festival ... Chris Greenspon, former intern and freelancer for Off-Ramp, and now its last producer, remembers the first time he ever heard the show.
A fungal infection is killing a quarter of LA County’s ficus trees — and it’s spreading
Interview in the mausoleum with relics expert Elizabeth Harper
"Reach a certain moment in your life, and you discover that your days are spent as much with the dead as they are with the living." – Paul Auster
This has been one of my favorite quotes for a long time. To me it means that when you get older and your friends, relatives, and heroes start dying, you have a choice. You can either stop thinking about them because they're dead, giving up, as it were, the pleasure of their company; or you can keep them in your life. To me, that's not denial; it's being realistic.
So, it makes sense that I felt a kindred spirit with Elizabeth Harper, who keeps the website All the Saints You Should Know, when we met at a beautiful mausoleum at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena to talk about the history of cemeteries, relics, castrated Italian avuncular mummies, and the best spots in Los Angeles to commune healthily with death.
Elizabeth will be part of the team when Atlas Obscura leads tours of The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Saturday, July 1. It's billed as "A celebration of life, death, architecture, and the patron saint of Los Angeles."
Here are some highlights of my mausoleum conversation with Elizabeth Harper:
At first glance, she says, all of the tombs are very similar.
And that was one of the things, when we started making modern cemeteries, outside the city lines, they wanted them to be regular and not so expressive and macabre. But people leave little things behind. On a lot of these (crypts), you can see a little emblem of something that was important to them. If they were a Mason or if they served in the Army. I like the (cremains) urns that are shaped like books. I have a friend who is a librarian and she was very taken with the idea of being in a book.
Napoleon instituted the Edict of Saint-Cloud, which mandated that cemeteries must be outside city limits (for health reasons) and must be toned-down (for no good reason).
People did not like the edict. There's a very famous poem called Sepulchers by Ugo Foscolo that was written in protest, that said, essentially, looking upon the graves of strong men strengthens the mind and the spirit.
From Slate: Photographing the Real Bodies of Incorrupt Saints, by Elizabeth Harper
Elizabeth often writes about cemeteries and tombs and sometimes posts photos of bodies, which causes a "certain segment" to assume she has no experience with death, or she wouldn't presume to do such a thing.
What I want to put out there is that we have this pervasive idea that we grieve and move on, and this moving on is very important, and I think there are multiple ways to incorporate the idea of death in your life, to get used to the idea, without forgetting, that's more of a way of memorializing. When I take these pictures, I'm very aware that these are real people, and I think of myself, what I will be one day, and people I love, who are already there.
Make sure to listen to our entire interview in the audio player to hear Elizabeth's 3 top spots in Los Angeles to consider the place of death in our lives, and to hear about poor old Uncle Vincent, a neutered naked mummy in a small town in Italy who has a large fan base.
Off-Ramp's producer on the first time he ever heard public radio (it was Off-Ramp)
After a few semesters of college radio at Mt. San Antonio College, I landed my first radio job: Board Operator! At struggling KFWB Newstalk 980. My career in radio began the way it does for so many, working odd hours and weekends.
A few months into my new gig, I was leaving for work and I thought, “You know, if I’m going to work in radio, I should listen to the radio.” I drove over the bridge on Hacienda Boulevard in La Puente, heading towards the 60, and right in front of my on-ramp, there was a big, orange billboard for KPCC. Why not 89.3?
The first thing I heard (and I should clarify that this was also my first time ever hearing public radio) was Janis Joplin getting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on Off-Ramp. Clive Davis, the CBS A&R executive who signed Joplin, told the crowd about how Joplin had suggested sealing their new relationship by having sex (though he demurred), and that his heart was broken when she died. Then Kris Kristofferson sang “Me & Bobby McGee,” and I was smiling, until I heard a chorus of hippies singing "Mercedes Benz." Pee-yew!
“Should I stay?” I asked myself. How could I not, when someone named Dylan Brody came on and told a story about letting his dogs poop on the neighbor’s lawn? But then, the real cheese, for a 20-something year old, biracial kid who loved space ships and tough punk girls; "Love and Rockets" cartoonist Jaime Hernandez talking about drawing for Junot Diaz.
All this was to say nothing of the loud, defiant-sounding host, who kept saying. "This is Off-Ramp, I’m John Rabe." I listened to him slide between all of these topics, and even report from the field himself, talking about museums in a way that wasn’t – boring. After a few more pieces and a few more uses of the Off-Ramp theme song, I had a new favorite show. And I suspect a few other people did too.
That was November 2013. Five months later, I was on the show. At the end of the episode, I noticed that they had an intern in the credits, and after many repeated scourings of the KPCC careers page, the position finally opened up. So what’d I do? I went out with my chintzy audio recorder, and recorded a story so if I got an interview, I wouldn’t go in empty-handed. I didn’t get the internship then, but John did buy the piece. Remember the one about the Burmese Café run by an ex-biologist?
I kept freelancing after that, and honestly, I got a lot of my ideas from stuff that Off-Ramp wasn’t doing. John would have Angelyne, and her famous Hollywood billboard, but what about the giant neon sign at Rose Hills Cemetery in Pico Rivera? Kevin Ferguson would hang out with Mike Watt from the Minutemen, but what about punk supergroup, the Flesh Eaters? And could we talk about a domestic violence shelter in a Thanksgiving Special, or the fact that a home-abortion movement started in Los Angeles?
John eventually asked me to intern after turning the Jim Tully mini-documentary in, and even after joining the company, writing these kinds of stories for Off-Ramp was still not easy, but there was room for all of them. I would be beyond thrilled if somebody heard even one of them when they heard Off-Ramp for the first time.
Searching for Ruth Batchelor: founder of the LA Film Critics Association
I’ve been a member of the LA Film Critics Association since 1999. LAFCA is a good group - collegial and filled with real movie lovers. But it has a problem.
It's a professional organization, meaning a baseline for membership is you have to have a job, and film criticism is overwhelmingly white and male. 78 percent of the top critics listed on RottenTomatoes are male, and women write only 18 percent of the major reviews. So LAFCA is like the profession itself: overwhelmingly a platform for white men.
It's trying to diversify. It has been for years. But how do you do that when the pool you draw from has a huge institutional bias? According to film critic Claudia Puig, "Criticism has been a white male dominated field for very long. And it continues to be. And not just white males, but middle aged."
Claudia is the current LAFCA president - and a legendary critic, who wrote lead reviews for 14 years at USA Today, and now appears regularly on KPCC’s Film Week.
"Very few movies pass the Bechdel Test. Women are often just girlfriends, wives, mothers. They don't get to have a story arc of their own. But if you had more women reviewing these movies, they would point out certain things that people might not notice as potentially offensive. Because we have been harassed, or we have experienced any number of things. It's something I've grappled with through my entire career." - Claudia Puig
I'm on a committee with Claudia for the LA Film Critics. The concept is to mentor young writers - to generate diversity, from the ground up. One idea is to have a scholarship for aspiring female film critics. We thought it would be good to name it after a prominent woman from the group's past.
So I went to Myron Meisel, who joined LAFCA in 1979, just four years after it formed, and I asked him, "Is there a woman you can think of who played an especially prominent role in the history of the LA Film Critics Association?" "Oh!," Myron said. "Ruth Batchelor was the founder and driving force..." "Wait, what?" I asked. "LAFCA was founded by a woman?"
"We weren't shocked. You had Ruth, who was very much concerned with creating a Los Angeles equivalent to the New York Film Critics Association. Which she largely pulled together by force of will. While Ruth was the moving force, you really can't discount her ability to martial the enthusiastic support of Charles Champlin as a co-founder, and the imprimatur of the Los Angeles Times behind him. Ruth had an enviable ability to make everything she undertook seem inevitable." - Myron Meisel
It's poignant, isn't it? And a little creepy. A prestigious group commits to gender diversity, and somehow, it doesn't have the institutional memory to know that the pivotal figure in its history was a woman.
How could we forget Ruth? Batchelor was nothing if not memorable. Before she became a pundit, she was a successful pop songwriter in the style of Neil Sedaka, or Goffin and King. She wrote dozens of songs, recorded by everybody from Phil Spector to the Partridge Family. She wrote Elvis Presley numbers, including "Cotton Candy Land," which might be the most hated track in the Presley catalogue.
But Batchelor also wrote "Where Do You Come From?", which is beautiful.
Elvis Presley performing Ruth Batchelor's "Where do you come from?"
Where do you come from, Ruth?
It wasn't easy to find out.
Batchelor's New York Times obituary was full of false leads. It said she was a critic for National Public Radio. She wasn't, but when NPR searched their archives, they unearthed a lead: a Film Comment article from 1982, where Batchelor is described as "Ruth Batchelor of National Public Radio's 'As it Happens.'" "As It Happens" airs on Canada's CBC.
So I placed a call. And I waited.
Meanwhile, I found a blog post about Batchelor as a songwriter on an excellent site called "Zero to 180 - 3 Minute Magic." The title of the post was riveting: "First 'Women's Liberation LP.'"
It turns out in 1971, Ruth Batchelor self-produced and financed a concept album called "Songs for Women's Liberation: Reviving a Dream."
Myron Meisel told me about Ruth's earthy sense of humor, and it's right there in the first write-up's, where her working title is "A Quarter for the Ladies Room." A Billboard article from August 1971 quotes Batchelor about the album: "Right now I have an album of dirty Women's Liberation poems recorded, and I'm trying to sell the master." Then she laughs. "The last record company I recorded for folded."
Batchelor shopped her record. There were no takers.
But Batchelor proved unstoppable. She created her own record company and called it Femme Records. Then she put out what the leftist journal Broadside called "the first feminist record album," all by herself. "Reviving a Dream" is forgotten, bordering on lost. It's never been available for streaming, or released on CD.
Batchelor's record is a pastiche of radio styles from her era. There's Joan Baez folk, two drawling country laments, even some call and response stuff Batchelor probably learned from Phil Spector and his girl groups.
Are Batchelor's songs any good? They're amazing. Amazing just because they exist.
She fits into the churning sea of anonymous faces so seamlessly it takes awhile to realize: She's Ruth Batchelor. The woman who founded the LA Film Critics. A group currently struggling with gender diversity.
LAFCA prez Claudia Puig agreed to an interview knowing it had to do with LAFCA, but not what it was about. I played her Batchelor's song "Drop the Mop." Batchelor intended it as an anthem, scored to a tempo of marching feet.
The listen was awkward - like force feeding a roommate your iTunes playlist. Claudia took notes the whole time, to occupy her critical mind, but I could see when it ended that she was moved.
"Yeah, it's a really interesting song," Claudia said. "My reaction is sort of...ummm..."
Claudia hesitated, looking for words.
"And this was the origin of the group. Yeah. It really kind of... It is really interesting. I'd never heard of her. She was right there, fighting that fight."
"And here, we were looking for an avatar," I said.
"Right. Right. It means something. This is a really important discovery that you made."
A piece of the portrait was missing - an essential one. It came courtesy of Kevin Robertson, a producer for "As It Happens" at the CBC. Batchelor had been the show's "Hollywood Correspondent" in the early 1980s. There was audio in the archives. Kevin provided me with five MP3s.
Batchelor's CBC brand was gender traditional. She was the tinseltown gadfly, a niche created by Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons in the 1930s. There was gossip about Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. Richard Burton's widow. Marvin Hamlisch. TV's "Gomer Pyle."
It was kitsch heaven, so I wasn't disappointed. Not exactly. But it was still a bit like listening to Wonder Woman try to be ordinary, because hey, we all gotta eat.
Ruth Batchelor's "Mr. Principal"
The LA Film Critics get a cameo in Batchelor's Oscar season broadcast, when she mentions her LAFCA Awards vote. For awhile, I thought that would be the only audio connecting the "As It Happens" Ruth Batchelor to the feminist fireball she wanted to be.
Then Batchelor starts riffing on "Partners," a buddy cop farce about a straight cop who goes undercover as a gay man. The film had sparked protests from the gay community. Batchelor is unsympathetic, which is surprising in a civil rights pioneer. Her reasoning is devastating.
"You know if women got angry every time there was a movie against women," Batchelor says, "there wouldn't be any movies."
Batchelor died of cancer early - she was just 58. 25 years later, men still direct most mainstream movies - 93 percent as of 2015. They have 70 percent of the speaking parts, and play 88 percent of the leads.
While women get to be naked twice as often in American movies.
Men review almost all movies too. Maybe that's why Ruth Batchelor founded the LA Film Critics. Because she lived in that world. She covered it. Spoke to it. Fought hard against it.
And then left behind a hidden legacy.
"She is our avatar," Claudia says, as our interview time runs out. "It sort of makes me want to redouble our efforts to honor her spirit."
As the hotel prepares to open, a look from the top —almost — of the Wilshire Grand
UPDATE 6/22/2017: The Wilshire Grand hotel in downtown LA, the tallest building in the West if you include the spire, opens officially July 2. In April of 2016, Off-Ramp got a sneak peek. Do not look at the photos if you have vertigo. By the way, Hal Bastian, the unofficial mayor of Downtown LA, is billed as the hotel's first paying guest.
Get up early any morning and stand where Wilshire crosses the 110 Freeway, and you'll see a parade of men and women carrying lunch boxes, wearing Carhart and Dickies, steel-toed Red Wings and hard hats, safety glasses and gloves, all them converging on the Wilshire Grand, which is rising inexorably over downtown Los Angeles.
In 10 months, it'll eclipse the U.S. Bank Tower as the highest building west of the Mississippi. Nine hundred fifty people work there every day now; before long it'll be 1,000, skimming drywall, painting, installing fixtures, laying tile and hardwood, checking level and plumb, and — hopefully — measuring twice and cutting once.
And then, when it's done, as Mayor Garcetti told a crowd of workers at the weekly safety meeting Monday, parents will point to the building and tell their kids, "Your mom (or dad) built that."
That's a very Eric Garcetti thing to say, but I can verify that every time we see the U.S. Bank Tower, my crazy father-in-law, who was a carpenter on that skyscraper, does exactly that.
Garcetti says the Wilshire Grand represents 2.669 million man- and woman-hours of construction work, with a total of 11,000 jobs in the building phase, and 2,000 permanent jobs. "And that's not even counting the city bureaucracy that supports this," he laughs.
50 years later: Lou Adler on Monterey Pop
UPDATE 6/22/2017: This month marks the 50th anniversary of Monterey Pop; so it's a great time to republish our conversation with one of the men who made it happen. Here's show biz historian Alex Ben Block interviewing the one and only Lou Adler.
In our continuing series of interviews with entertainment legend Lou Adler (conducted by Hollywood historian Alex Ben Block of The Hollywood Reporter), we hear the true roots of the music festival Monterey Pop. Adler also tells Alex how he got back the footage that eventually became the enduring Pennebaker documentary about the festival.