Rob Schmitz on China and Apple, Richard Chamberlain in The Heiress at the Pasadena Playhouse; Bookman David Kipen on Expo Line; Merv Griffin's historic TV archive
From RFK and MLK to Whitney Houston - The Merv Griffin Show now on DVD
UPDATE 11/12/2014: The Merv Griffin Show 12-DVD set has just been released. Here's our Off-Ramp interview from 2012, when they'd just begun licensing some of the archive for documentaries, and others.
Merv Griffin (1925-2007) created Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and those will probably be his legacy in the public's mind. But from 1962 to 1986, he hosted a daily talk show that was carried on all the major markets and featured all the personalities of the day.
Yes, over the years there's going to be a lot of froth, but as David Peck, the president of Reelin' In The Years, discovered as he began to prepare the Merv Griffin Show archives for licensing, Griffin hosted the lasting greats as well, including Rose and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, John Wayne, Joan Crawford, and a young girl who performed for the first time on television on his show: "Whitney Houston," Merv said, "Now there's a name you're not going to forget."
Peck says the Merv Griffin shows will be a treasure trove for documentarians, historians, and biographers; and there are plans to release DVDs, as well.
Dick Cavett used to write for Merv Griffin, and in 1965 alone, appeared on the show seven times. Cavett admires Griffin's business acumen, but also his stamina and ability to always be pleasant ... which of course was exactly what the home audience wanted.
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Audio:
1. Cavett and Peck join Off-Ramp host John Rabe for a fun interview of memories, discoveries, and rare clips of the Merv Griffin Show.
2. A medley of great Merv Griffin guests, including Whitney Houston, Woody Allen, MLK, RFK, John Wayne and Joan Crawford.
3. Merv Griffin Show 7/13/1981 - Jerry Seinfeld
4. Merv Griffin Show 12/10/1979 - Francis Ford Coppola
5. Merv Griffin Show 8/1/1966 - Richard Pryor and Jerry Lewis
6. Merv Griffin Show 7/13/1966 - Timothy Leary
Libros Schmibros founder David Kipen on Expo and Metro's light rail history
Last weekend saw the opening of the Expo line: Los Angeles County's newest light rail train. Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson was at the opening and rode the line all the way to its current western terminus at La Cienega and Jefferson. There, he ran into David Kipen--the frequent KPCC guest and founder of Boyle Heights lending library Libros Schmibros. During his free time, Kipen says, he's also a proud rail geek.
Richard Chamberlain on "The Heiress," a weird audience, coming out, and sideburns
Richard Chamberlain, the heartthrob from "Dr Kildare" and the miniseries "The Thornbirds," who finally came out as gay about five years ago, now stars in "The Heiress" at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Chamberlain plays Dr. Sloper, played by Ralph Richardson in the 1949 film, and for the performance grew a large set of sideburns which, he's surprised to hear, makes him hip with the kids. "Cool," he says.
In our interview, he wouldn't talk much about Sloper, preferring to let audiences come to it fresh, but he did say he was nervous when on the first night the audience laughed at everything -- sad scenes, funny scenes. "And I don't I don't know who they were, or why, but it really worried me because I thought, 'Oh, my God, what are we doing wrong?' and I couldn't figure it out." The subsequent audiences didn't react that way, he says.
"The Heiress" runs through May 20 at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Laura Hillman - a Schindler Jew tells her story
Their numbers are dwindling and the memories are painful, but many Holocaust survivors will not refuse an invitation to talk about their experiences, seeing it as their duty to the 6,000,000 who didn't make it. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Laura Hillman, saved by luck and by Oskar Schindler, told her story at the Bowers Museum.
Above, we've posted an excerpt from her speech, and the entire half-hour address.
Rob Schmitz - who broke the Mike Daisey/Apple story - on the"Three Chinas"
Last Monday, Off-Ramp host John Rabe interviewed Marketplace’s China correspondent Rob Schmitz at the Crawford Family Forum about the biggest story in Schmitz's career - Mike Daisey's false claims about Apple and Foxconn. Schmitz's discoveries led to This American Life's retraction of its Daisey episode.
Schmitz told the audience at the CFF, "I think that Mike Daisey, in some ways, has raised awareness about factory workers in factory conditions in China. I think that’s a good thing. He has not, though, raised understanding or improved understanding about this issue at all. He’s actually obfuscated a lot of things for people."
Schmitz doesn’t see China as the threatening country the media and politicians make it out to be because it is struggling to deal with its own problems. To understand China, from an economic standpoint, think of it as "at least three countries."
The First China is the one Daisey describes in his monologue: "That's the government. That's the state. That's the communist party," Schmitz says. It's also the state-owned enterprises that compete with the U.S. on an international scale, like Foxconn. "That's the China that we're scared of."
The Second China is Chinese consumers. Schmitz says, "this China, in many ways, loves America. They want to buy our products, they want to send their kids to our schools." Schmitz says this China is the one the U.S. can depend on for economic growth.
The Third China is the one that's left out of the media: the poor China. "There are 400-million people who live on less than two dollars a day in China," says Schmitz. And they hold the key to the country's future, "because if the Third China gets angry enough, the First China won't be around anymore."
Schmitz doesn't think China is trying to take over the world, but instead just wants to keep what it has. He says "I don't see this so-called Imperialist China happening anytime soon."
Crescent City debuts: Are you ready for LA's first "Hyperopera?"
Premiering this Thursday, May 10 in an Atwater Village warehouse is what's likely Los Angeles' first ever hyperopera. Crescent City is the debut production by The Industry, a new Los Angeles opera company, and it combines the talents of composer Anne LeBaron, librettist Douglas Kearney and director Yuval Sharon.
Crescent City is an almost biblical story of redemption and chaos backed by experimental music, visual art installations, and a one-of-a-kind audience experience where viewers are free to go almost wherever they like. Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson visited the set just before rehearsal.
Director Yuval Sharon explained that he enlisted the help of six visual artists to transform the 25,000 square foot warehouse space into Crescent City, which is loosely based on New Orleans.
The story takes place after the mythical city has been mostly destroyed by a hurricane.
"There are very few people left in the city, and everything's been basically ravished by the storm," he explained. "A year later, another hurricane is coming, Hurricane Charity, and this one is really going to wipe the city off the map."
A voodoo priestess offers herself as a sacrifice to the voodoo gods in return for the safety of the city. They agree on the condition that they can find one decent person among the degenerates, prostitutes and drug dealers living there.
"This is kind of an opera in which the opera is happening around you on all sides," Sharon described. Audience members can chose viewing the world of Crescent City from four different perspectives.
"You can have one fixed seat ... You can also have a seat within one of the installations, that's a bean bag chair created around the dive bar, and that's a fully immersive experience, where it's really just happening right around you," Sharon said. "You can also sit just outside the world and remove from it and perch up on an 8-ft platform ... We call that the 'Skybox,' kind of jokingly. And the final perspective is having the ability to walk freely around the entire space, whenever you want."
Composer Anne LeBaron said that similarly to the visuals, the opera's music also takes a contemporary flair.
"I would like an audience to think 'Oh, I never knew opera could be like this.' Or to think, 'Oh, this is a new form that blends more of a popular side of music or vernacular with contemporary musical techniques, with a big band sound, with some lyricism. It's really another kind of animal," she said.
She added that familiar instruments like the trombone, tuba and trumpet will produce an undeniably New Orleans-influenced sound.
"I just love the music from that area – it's in my blood. My father was a musician," she recalled.
According to LeBaron, the music for the opera coincidentally came together with New Orleans' hurricane tragedy. "It just so happened that when I was writing the opera that became Crystal City, [Hurricane] Katrina struck. One of the things that really struck me after the tragedy was how much press came out about 'Do we really need to save a city like this?' And I'm talking about periodicals like The New Yorker," she said.
Sentiments like those, LeBaron added, fueled the opera's story.
"It didn't occur to me to write an opera based on the story that we now have. But, these kinds of injustices were really outrageous and of course that affected not only how I wrote the music, but how the story came together for our opera," she said.
What was that ear-splitting noise in West L.A.?
Did you hear it? Between 10AM and 1PM on Monday, some West L.A. residents were jarred by a series of piercing noises near Barrington and Exposition Boulevard. It sounded like a miter saw cutting through the center of the earth, or maybe a new grindcore band.
The real culprit? Metro.
Ahead of construction for the remaining portion of the Expo line, Metro hired acoustic consultants ATS to do some noise tests near the site of the rail line. In fact, they took specific measurements for a pair of sound studios that probably have the most to worry about. But ATS didn't set out to mimic the sounds of a train. Instead, they just wanted to produce a really really robust signal, one that could easily let them measure how well these buildings were soundproofed.
So they basically whipped out a stadium-sized PA system. They set up four 1500-watt Dynacord Cobra speakers to deliver a multi-frequency noise at 100 decibels. They tested a handful of these noises in minute-long bursts, and according to audio specialist Alec Ernest, "It was shockingly loud every single time."
Take a listen.