Pixar's Sanjay Patel tells us how he he made "Sanjay's Super Team," a tribute to his father ... Josh Stamberg in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” ... 5 Every Week gives you the keys to the city ... an immigrant's Thanksgiving comes days after the JFK assassination
5 Every Week: Godly burgers, goodbye Hotel Figueroa, and Goldblum on piano
Behold: five great things you should do in Southern California this week, from art to food to music to an adventure we’ll call the Wild Card from the makers of the 5 Every Day app. Get this as a new podcast in iTunes. If you want five hand-picked things to do in Los Angeles every day, download the free 5 Every Day from the App Store.
ART: Joey Arias at REDCAT
Joey Arias is New York drag’s grande dame, a living legend who’s graduated from the small stage to high art’s hallowed halls. He came up in the same downtown Manhattan performance scene that gave rise to icons like Basquiat and Klaus Nomi.
In a new piece, “Billie Holiday Centennial,” Arias celebrates the jazz legend’s hundredth birthday with a ghostly metamorphosis.
In a subdued and sentimental cabaret performance, he becomes Billie Holliday. He’s not an iota short of Lady Day’s world-weary croon.
This weekend is your last chance to check out this spectacular transmutation, with shows Saturday and Sunday night at REDCAT theater.
CITY: Goodbye, Hotel Figueroa
https://www.instagram.com/p/9mSd1ImxAA/
Well, it was bound to happen.
The Hotel Figueroa, that cute pre-war hotel, that anomaly in the shadow of L.A. Live — and about a dozen new, multi-million dollar construction developments — is finally closing its doors.
But don’t freak out. It’s only for a little while. From now until roughly Summer 2016, the Figueroa’s going to be closed for an ambitious overhaul.
The owners say they’re aiming to return the Fig to its former Spanish Mediterranean glory, but we can’t be the only ones who’re going to miss the Hotel’s current, gauche Moroccan interiors.
It's weird how ugly things become romantic when enough time passes, right?
Bid one last fond farewell to the Fig as we know it at their big going-away gala, happening Saturday.
FOOD: Burgerlords
https://www.instagram.com/p/-Run3JQDBa/
To think that we were once satisfied when mere royalty delivered us our ground beef sandwiches!
We know better now: no more measly Burger Kings for us. We’re sophisticated people, so we demand the actual deities behind the grill. We want Burgerlords. One word.
Yep, Burger Lords, a new fast-food window in the heart of Chinatown Central Plaza.
And despite the grand title, this place keeps it blessedly pure. There are only three choices: Hamburger, cheese, and double-cheese. Plus house made vegan varieties!
It all ranges from $5-7. Legit price point, great burgers, and no royal airs in sight.
MUSIC: Jeff Goldblum plays piano
Yes, Jeff Goldblum plays jazz piano.
Yes, he performs on Wednesday nights at the Rockwell Table & Stage in Los Feliz — surprisingly regularly.
Yes, if you're willing to show up a little early and wait in line for a seat at the bar, these shows are absolutely free.
And yes, it is a special privilege that we Angelenos have — to behold the glory of Jeff Goldblum in full 3D, as he tinkles around on the ivories and, yes, scats in his distinctively low Goldblumian register.
Forget reserved seats. Advanced tickets are always sold out for those. But you’ll want to be at the bar anyway.
Trust us. It’ll take some liquid courage to screw up the nerve to say "hi" to the Fly himself after — or between — his piano sets.
WILDCARD: Casey Jane Ellison
There’s really no one quite like Casey Jane Ellison.
She’s an arch, deadpan comedian who straddles — in leather pants, mind you — an increasingly irrelevant line between comedy and performance art.
In her brilliant web series — Touching the Art — Ellison drills and eye-rolls panels of esteemed female artists with her trademark affect — a brazen blend of gender studies smarts and valley girl narcissism. It’s totally compulsive viewing.
"Touching the Art” was included in the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial, which definitely marks Ellison among the most institutionally-recognized comedians in the trenches of L.A.’s vibrant stand-up scene.
She’s got a new web series called “The Right & Left Brains of Casey Jane’s.” It’s a very funny, characteristically opaque stab at marketing and “branded content.”
And it somehow manages to double as long-form commercial for a fashion line. It’s complicated.
You can stream the series online now, or for a more communal experience, swing by Cinefamily this Wednesday night, where they’ll screen the whole thing.
Meet Dave Meyers, the director behind Missy Elliott's music videos
When Dave Meyers first met Missy Elliott, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" had just come out. The year was 2000, and though she had a successful album under her belt, Missy had yet to win six Grammys and 21 Billboard Music Awards, and she still hadn't become the only female rapper in history to have six platinum albums. Meyers was an up-and-coming director that Missy had her eye on.
"Missy recruited me. She had seen my work and wanted to sit down for dinner, and we went to the movies to talk about visual filmmaking," Meyers said. "We went to see 'Crouching Tiger' and that was ripe with visuals that at the time were pretty cutting-edge."
Together, Meyers and Missy made some of her most memorable music videos, including "Work It," "Pass That Dutch" and "Lose Control," propelling both their careers to new heights: Missy would win five MTV Video Music Awards including Best Video of the Year in 2003; Meyers would create the ubiquitous dancing silhouettes ad campaign for Apple.
So, after seven years without a video, Missy Elliot released "WTF (Where They From?)" last week, and it was no surprise she co-directed the video with Meyers.
This time, Meyers wanted to try something different.
"In the past we took on very large sets and big universes and very large, surreal ideas," Meyers said. "With a title like 'Where They From?' — with her being absent for some while to the point that some young people don't even realize who she is — to me, it felt like it would be an interesting contrast... where you put it her in the street, but you still have her be larger than life."
Angelenos may recognize those streets, as Meyers shot the entire video in downtown Los Angeles.
But this isn't your hipster's downtown. The locations for the video offer a visual tour of DTLA's often-ignored or disappearing icons.
There's the 6th street bridge.
Pershing Square Metro Station, which Meyers said was "actually really accommodating... they had the least amount of restrictions of any of the locations that we had."
There are even Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams puppets dancing in the Jewelry District.
Meyers said it was the puppets that the video was built around. It took three months to build them.
"That's where the idea started," Meyers said. "[Missy] and Pharrell had spoken, and they wanted to do a video that was all puppet-based. And then as we started building the puppets and we got that in the pipeline, Missy and I started having our reunion and talking about all the things that made our videos stand out."
Missy hasn't set a date yet for her next album release, but Meyers says she's "back. Big time."
As for Meyers, he's happy to be reunited with his long-time video collaborator, who he hasn't worked with in six years.
"It was a huge reunion, we were smiling the whole time. You know, we climbed the mountain together several times over back in the day," Meyers said. "Missy, she provides a really great landscape for me to go anywhere, and the way in which she raps and changes subjects all within even a verse, allows me to be as random or diverse as I feel like being."
LA Times’ Russ Parsons on when he realized food writing wasn’t just recipes
Here's something shocking from my interview with Russ Parsons, the Los Angeles Times food writer who is leaving the paper after 26 years:
"One of the turning points of my life was when Ruth Reichl hired me to be her deputy at the Times. And at that point, Jonathan Gold was writing Counter Intelligence, Ruth was writing the restaurant reviews, we had Charlie Perry ... we had a huge staff. We needed a huge staff because, typically, the Food section was 70 to 80 pages every week, and during the holiday season we would publish two sections a week and sometimes those would be hundred-page sections."
Russ remembers being told that one of their sections brought in $1 million in advertising sales.
The coverage of food at the L.A. Times is still stronger than at many newspapers — and Gold has returned — but it's a shadow of its former self. Here's how Russ announced his departure from the paper in an e-mail to friends and colleagues:
"As you have probably heard, these are tough times for the newspaper business. And as you may have heard, the Los Angeles Times recently offered an amazingly generous* buyout package. Well, I’m taking it. I have had an extraordinarily wonderful 26-year run at the Times, in large part thanks to you all. ... But for everyone there comes a time when they should move on. I’m beyond excited to figure out what my next chapter will be. And [my wife] Kathy and I are extremely fortunate in that I have the freedom to choose almost anything. Perhaps ironically, my last day at the Times will be Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving."
Russ, author of "How to Pick a Peach" and "How to Read a French Fry," has many more years of writing left, and he promises to keep Off-Ramp up to date on the next chapter.
The early chapters of his journalism life included being a sports reporter and a music writer. He started cooking in the 1970s, "but it was never something that I thought about writing. To me at that point, recipes seemed like a very limiting way to write. I wasn't aware then of being able to write contextually about food, which is the thing that's been the most rewarding part of my career. I love teaching people to cook, but I really love writing about the world of food."
But then he profiled a cooking teacher in New Mexico, then he took a class, and learned he liked "fancy" food - "as opposed to grilling chicken." Then for a year or so, he says he cooked and worked, gratis, in friends' restaurants, and then pitched to his boss the idea of being a food writer.
We're glad he did.
The most rewarding part of his time at the Times? The fact that across the region, people are spending this Thanksgiving eating food Parsons had a hand in helping them cook.
Listen for much more of our interview at Grand Central Market by clicking the arrow on the audio player. And to see a video of Russ talking about his very first meeting with Julia Child, check out our Facebook page!
(*A year's salary and benefits for veterans like Russ.)
Josh Stamberg, son of NPR's Susan Stamberg, on Mamet, radio and relishing time with mom
It wasn't awkward at all meeting the guy whose mom I've had a crush on for about 30 years.
(KPCC's John Rabe and NPR's Susan Stamberg at The Broad in Feb. Credit: John Rabe)
Josh Stamberg, son of NPR icon Susan Stamberg, plays "Teach" in the LA Theatre Works production of David Mamet's "American Buffalo." But as the TV star's mom told me in an email, "One of his first theatrical adventures was as a waiter in the Maret School production of Hello Dolly."
"Actually," Josh says, "It was 'James and the Giant Peach' in second grade, and the first big one was 'Fiddler on the Roof,' like any good young Jewish boy would do. Also, 'Carousel,' which I may have dropped out of because I was playing soccer or something."
"Those are a little heavy for 10 year olds," I say. But in Stamberg's school, they did 'Requiem for a Heavyweight' as the senior play!
In any case, it prepared him well for "American Buffalo," a very early Mamet play. "I believe it was his third play," he says, "and in some ways, it reads to me like his most compact. I guess there are others that have as few characters, but it feels very lean in the best way. And the dialogue is the great Mamet dialog; that weaponry of language."
To see Stamberg (Showtime’s “The Affair”) and Rich Hutchman ("Mad Men" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love") doing one of the cleanest scenes from the play, check out the video on our Facebook page.
Directed by Brian Kite, "American Buffalo" runs Thu., Nov. 19 through Sunday, Nov. 22 at the Bridges Theatre at UCLA. It's an LA Theatre Works production, which means it's a staged reading, with a Foley artist (Jeff Gardner) doing the sound and the actors at microphones, looking straight ahead, not at their fellow cast members.
"It is hard to not make eye contact," Stamberg says, "because that's part of the beauty of collaboration as an actor, but it's also relieving and wonderful to just put the focus on the words."
"American Buffalo" ends Sunday, then presumably Josh will be resting up for the annual Stamberg family tradition: making the Pepto-Bismol pink cranberry relish his mother has become famous for. You can make it, too.
An Italian restaurateur remembers Thanksgiving 1963, darkened by JFK's death
Late November, 1963. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas just days before Thanksgiving. The nation mourned but carried on. Here's an excerpt from a wire story printed in the Chicago Tribune on Nov. 28.
(UPI) Hyannis Port, Mass., Nov. 27 -The kitchen at the home of Joseph P. Kennedy bustled with Thanksgiving preparations today as the family drew together once again for the annual reunion. The Kennedys went ahead with plans just as if the President were alive. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy and her children were scheduled to arrive tomorrow in time for the traditional dinner. A breeze off Nantucket sound held the half-staffed flag on the late President's home as stiff as if it were starched ... A second huge turkey was delivered to the house today, indicating that most of the clan will be present. Should all of the children arrive, there would be about 30.
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the family of Piero Selvaggio was sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner — 25 people, a table laden with bounty, two uncles carving two enormous birds.
In nine years, Piero would open Valentino in Santa Monica and usher in the food revolution with then-unheard items like carpaccio and arugula and good Italian wine. But now he's just 16, fresh from Sicily, experiencing his own food revolution: cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts and turkeys — which they'd fed to the livestock back home in Italy.
Talking with me at Valentino last week, Selvaggio remembered the exact day he arrived in New York: 10/10/1963. He got a job washing dishes at a university dining hall at a dollar a day and settled in with his family, who had started to come over from Italy in the 1950s.
"On this Thanksgiving Day, as we gather in the warmth of our families, in the mutual love and respect which we have for one another, and as we bow our heads in submission to divine providence, let us also thank God for the years that He gave us inspiration through His servant, John F. Kennedy."
— LBJ's 1963 Thanksgiving message to the nation.
"The first time I heard of Thanksgiving," he says, "was a few weeks after I arrived, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and there is this conversation that the Kennedys, the whole family will celebrate Thanksgiving because they don't want to break the tradition." It floored him, and gave him a sense of how "holy" this holiday was to Americans.
(JFK pardoning a turkey on Nov. 19, 1963. Kennedy Presidential Library/NARA)
Listen for much more of our interview on the audio player above, and stayed tuned: next week, Piero will give us some fresh ways to serve the old Thanksgiving leftovers.
Oscar nod for Pixar's Indian-themed short, 'Sanjay's Super Team,' debut film for Sanjay Patel
Update: 1/14/2016: "Sanjay's Super Team" has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Film (Animated). Congrats to Sanjay Patel and his whole team!
KPCC's John Rabe and animation expert Charles Solomon talk with Pixar animator and director Sanjay Patel about "Sanjay's Super Team," the short that opens with "The Good Dinosaur" November 24.
"I told (Pixar's) John Lasseter that every morning my dad worshiped his gods in his shrine, which were the Hindu gods, and every morning I worshiped my gods in my shrine, which wee the superheroes and my shrine was the TV."
-- Pixar animator Sanjay Patel to KPCC's Off-Ramp
It's a simple premise: A little Indian boy tries to watch super hero cartoons one morning, as his father tries to worship at his household shrine. The father shuts off the blaring TV and makes his son come pray with him. The boy falls asleep and has a dream in which superheroes morph into his father's deities. Good triumphs, the boy awakens, and at the end, son and father have new respect for each other.
It's only seven minutes long, but it tells a story that's millennia old and as new as the next baby and his doting father. It's "Sanjay's Super Team," the directorial debut (and avowed finale) of longtime Pixar animator Sanjay Patel, whose parents moved him from Great Britain to San Bernardino County to run a motel when he was only five.
"The one deity that felt like it was at the bedrock of the short was Vishnu. In the Vedic cosmology, there's Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma. Brahma is the god of creation, Shiva is the god of destruction, and Vishnu is the god of preservation and balance. And this trinity works to keep things in balance. I always knew Vishnu was going to be this perfect mirror to my father. In many ways, he had this tightrope that he walked in terms of someone who was really grounded in the East, but had to walk this line in the West in terms of balancing his identities and figuring out a way to survive as an immigrant. His job was bringing us to this country and helping us balance the priorities of both cultures and helping to keep one alive without rejecting the other."
Patel -- who also writes and illustrates books like The Little Book of Hindu Deities -- says he and his father were very emotional when they watched the short together ... his father not having seen a movie since "The Sound of Music" in 1960s England! Patel also adds that -- not surprisingly -- having a two year old son of his own has given him a new appreciation for his father and mother.
For much more with Sanjay Patel, listen to the whole interview by pressing the arrow in the audio payer.
Song of the Week: "I want love" by Babes
This week’s Off-Ramp song of the week is “I Want Love” by the Los Angeles band Babes.
https://soundcloud.com/babesband/i-want-love
Babes is a family band: three of the members — Aaron, Zach and Sarah Rayne Leigh — are siblings. And two others — Jeffrey Baird and Bryan Harris — are cousins.
I Want Love is off Babes’ new album "Untitled (Five Tears)," released last month on Barsuk records. The band recorded "Untitled" in a mobile recording rig in locations all over Los Angeles.
Want to see them live? Babes play the Bootleg Bar on Friday, November 20. There's also a great — somewhat NSFW – music video for "I Want Love," directed by Doug Lussenhop, featured previously on KPCC's The Frame.
Rainn Wilson on Baha'i, acting, being a 'Bassoon King' and... round worm
... Actually, we're not even going to mention the time Rainn Wilson was in Nicaragua with his family and a round worm exited his body. It's just too gross. But it's in his memoir, "The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy." In disturbing depth.
However, we do talk about his painful upbringing by two loving parents who didn't love each other, how he fell from and returned to his Baha'i faith, his zonkey, his love of "Taxi" and "Barney Miller," his horrible, horrible grandfather who didn't get struck by lightning, and why he acts. Also, we sing, so you'll want to listen to the audio for the full effect. Here are some of the highlights:
On his awful grandfather, Chester
"He was a pretty horrible man. It's hard for me to find anything redeeming about him. He was a multimillionaire who stole his brother's lightning rod electrical company business from him. The brother went on a long vacation and signed over the paperwork to his brother, Chester... and then he came back and Chester was like 'Oh, it's all signed over to me, belongs to me now, sorry, you're out.'"
Wilson remembers that his grandfather was a member of the Seattle Yacht Club, but never tried to assist Wilson's family, who were living in shabby rentals and driving beater cars "on the verge of exploding."
On the loveless marriage between Wilson's father and stepmother
"My birth mother took off to have a series of affairs, relationships, and marriages. I didn't really see her again until I was about 15. My dad got immediately remarried. ... A year in they knew that they didn't love each other, and then they stayed married for 15 more years after that. So, it's a very peculiar kind of torture for a child to grow up in a family that seemingly has all these normal things; we watched TV, we ate pancakes, sometimes we took Sunday drives, we visited relatives... but at the same time, in that house itself, there was no love. There was no hugging, and laughter, and passion, and all the things that come with love. So that's kind of a crazy-making situation."
But Wilson's father and stepmother raised him on the Baha'i faith...
"...where all the writings are about love and unity," says Wilson. Wilson's father met his second wife in Nicaragua while doing religious work in the jungle villages of the Mosquito Coast, "filled with monkeys and mosquitoes and malaria. And quicksand. Actual quicksand." Wilson left the Baha'i faith, but returned to it and now prays and meditates daily.
From the nerdy "Bassoon King" in high school to a television star on "The Office"
"I have always felt like a misfit. I think that's what growing up in a weird, stilted, oxygenless home will do to a person. I always loved comedy. I loved the crazy sidekick characters and all the great '70s and '80s TV shows, and [it was] beyond my wildest dreams that I ultimately got to play one."
"Taxi" in particular left its mark.
"It bridged that gap between comedy, and it had so much pathos and reality woven into it at the same time, and you really felt like these were real characters. It brought the sitcom a little bit more into the real world, in a similar way that 'The Office' did."
In 'Entertainment', comedian Gregg Turkington engages with his alter ego, Neil Hamburger
For the last 20 years, comedian Gregg Turkington has made a name for himself pretending to be Neil Hamburger, a hapless anti-comedian who’s toured internationally.
Now, Turkington has co-written and starred in “Entertainment.” His character is based on his alter-ego, but the film, which he co-wrote, paints an impressionistic, dark and surreal picture of the struggles of low-level entertainers everywhere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laCKBx6dmW8
So what does making a film like this mean for a comedian who’s made a name for himself pretending to be someone else?
The story of Neil Hamburger
When Gregg Turkington takes the stage as Neil Hamburger, he wears a tuxedo, carrying (and sometime dropping) an elbowful of drinks. He coughs loudly into the microphone. He berates the audience for showing up late or not laughing too quietly. His repertoire is made up almost of entirely what/why jokes with off-color, sometimes offensive punchlines. Here's a video of his 2006 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Hamburger's network TV debut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djqPOXKWLfk
Neil Hamburger's real identity was as open as an open secret could get. Sure, Turkington would never talk publicly about Neil Hamburger. And yes, Neil would reciprocate in interviews. But almost every news story about Hamburger correctly identified him as Turkington's alter-ego. And the question could be answered after 30 seconds of Googling, at most.
"I've never been one who likes to do comedy where you're letting the audience in on the joke right away," says Turkington. "I kind of like the mystery of it. And I don't know that most people that see Neil Hamburger take it at face value and believe in it, but that's how I like to present it."
Part of the intended mysteriousness behind Neil Hamburger lies in his origins. Originally, Hamburger was a character on a prank call album recorded by Turkington and friends. He started getting requests for more from the character.
At home, Turkington started recording comedy albums under the Neil Hamburger name. It was a simulated stand up record: he'd mix in field recordings of casinos to simulate a live audience. Friends would pretend to be hecklers. After Neil delivers a punch line, Turkington would mix in awkward laughter just as often as he'd leave it out.
As fans of Neil Hamburger grew in numbers, so did demand to see him live. Gregg accepted an offer to open for a punk band touring Australia. It didn't go well:
I remember the second show I ever did as Neil Hamburger, it was an underage show. In Australia they don't have all-ages shows, at least in Victoria. It's either everyone's over 18 or everyone's under 18. Everyone was under 18. So I thought "well this will be fun, these kids."
And they [were] like a lynch mob! These sweet little kids I see lined up before the show turned into the nastiest monsters you've ever seen. They just lined up at the front of the stage and just spit, and spit, and spit, until the black tuxedo was covered in spit.
The spit dried off, and Turkington says he came out of the experience surprisingly upbeat. "There was something about performing, I felt like I could take this in some other directions that aren't explored on the records."
Neil Hamburger has opened for bands like Tenacious D and Bad Religion, appeared on dozens of Network and Cable TV shows.
During all this, Turkington controlled the Neil Hamburger's public image completely. That changed when director Rick Alverson proposed making a film based on the character.
Taking to the big screen
In "Entertainment," Turkington stars as The Comedian — not Neil Hamburger. But he wears Neil's tuxedo, tells the same jokes, and friends and family even call him Neil. But where Neil Hamburger is a lovable but grumpy antihero, The Comedian is a sad figure. He travels the California desert playing bars to crowds that are mostly indifferent, sometimes hostile. When he isn't on stage, The Comedian tours depressing landmarks and leaves desperate, unreturned voicemails for his daughter.
It's a weird, impressionistic journey dotted with moments of surreal comedy and violence. The appearances by A-list stars like John C. Reilly and Michael Cera make the movie even more odd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KB49WmW7g4
"One thing that I really liked, was a psychologist told me that she thought it was the most accurate depiction of clinical depression that she'd ever seen on film, which I thought was really interesting." says Turkington, laughing a little.
By starring in the movie, though, Turkington starts a new chapter in his career: It compelled him to talk publicly about Neil Hamburger for the first time. And in making the movie, he gave up control over a character that for 20 years made up part of his identity to collaborate with Director Rick Alverson and co-writer Tim Heidecker.
"It was tricky," Turkington says. "It was very strange to be letting down my guard in these ways. Because I trust Rick so much, and his vision, I eventually just said 'You know what? I'll do what you need.'"
Can a film like "Entertainment" transform a career? Turkington, a veteran performer, stars in an Adult Swim web series and has appeared in movies like Marvel's Ant Man lately. A movie like Entertainment shows there's much more going on than Neil Hamburger.
"Entertainment" opens at Cinefamily on Thursday, November 19 and will be available on iTunes, Netflix and other streaming services worldwide on November 13.