Huell retired after 20 years of California's Gold ... Countercultural Paul Krassner remembers getting stoned with Groucho, John, and Yoko; celebrating the dean of radio DJs, Art LaBoe, 87; another Instagram winner!
Documentary unearths story of failed theme park: Bible Storyland
Harvey Jordan was running an art gallery in North Hollywood when a man came in and told him he had some very rare Disney drawings that he wanted to sell.
"Immediately my eyes lit up 'Disney, Disney'," says Jordan. "He invited me over to his apartment to see them. He had about 250 of these originals drawings by an artist named Bruce Bushman and I was taken right away."
Jordan desperately wanted the drawings, but owner Jeffrey Todd spent the next 3 years wavering on his price. One day Jordan learned Todd had died in a house fire. He rushed to Todd's house and found 75 of the drawings had survived. He quickly bought them from the estate and took them to Disney's studios in Burbank.
"It turns out they were for a theme park that was never built. I grew up in Southern California and never heard of Bible Storyland."
In 1960, just five years after Disneyland opened, Jack Haley, the actor who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and a devout Christian, teamed with Donald Duncan of Duncan Yo-Yo's. Together they planned to build a new theme park in Cucamonga, one that would rival Disney in its ambition. They even hired two former Disneyland designers, Nat Winecoff and Bruce Bushman. Bible Storyland was their dream.
"They wanted to create it in a heart shape," says Jordan, "which supposedly represents God's love of humanity. And the park was going to be divided into 6 different lands. You'd be in the Garden of Eden, then Rome, then Egypt, then Israel, and Babylon. And each place would have rides relating to the Bible.
"Take Noah's Ark, a double carousel. It would be a typical carousel, but built inside a large ark and filled with zebras and camels going around the carousel. That's a very biblical theme, of course. But to the left of it is the 'Carousel of Mythical Beasts'. You see this girl riding on a half horse, half mermaid, with dragon feet. The mythical beasts! I never found that in the bible myself."
And neither did the local clergy. Todd Pierce, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor who's currently working on a book about early theme parks, says the designers didn't really put much thought into what their audience would think.
"They hired people with minimal contact with religious communities," says Pierce, "to create a theme park for Protestants and Catholics. Nat Winecoff talked about the trip to hell, and he would get so animated and excited about seeing Satan and the sulfur baths and fire fountains. And then you could go to Circus Maximus and see a recreation of the lions and the Christians played out on stage, and then afterwards you could eat lion burgers. So there was this type of cavalier attitude, this junkiness to it, that smacked of religious profiteering."
There was the the "Garden of Eden" boat ride, which looks a lot like Disneyland's jungle cruise, with scenes of Adam and Eve standing side by side with cavemen and dinosaurs. And there was a ride into King Tut's tomb, which has nothing to do with the Bible at all.
"It was supposed to open on Easter 1961," says Pierce. "In the summer of 1960, the Catholic clergy were organizing to picket the construction of Bible Storyland while earth movers were out there grading the land and getting ready to build."
The project was called off, and ex-Disney employees Winecoff and Bushman went on to work on other eventual theme park flops, like Apache-land and Hanna-Barbera land. Yet the dream of Bible Storyland lived on, all the way into 2001, when a park called the Holyland Experience opened in Orlando, Florida. Harvey Jordan reviewed it for his documentary.
"The big difference is that the Holyland Experience is actually backed by a Church, so there's a religious agenda there. Also there are no rides there, really. Most of the people are going for a religious experience. Frankly, it was boring. They re-created scenes from the Bible and you walked around and looked at old Jerusalem, but where was the excitement? Where are the roller coasters? Where's the carousel of mythical beasts?"
For now, the carousel is still spinning in Harvey Jordan’s fantasies. He’s toured Bushman’s drawings around the country and produced a documentary about Bible Storyland. And what reviving the park itself? Let’s just say, "Next year in Jerusalem!"
Bible Storyland has been awarded Best Documentary Film at the Hollywood Reel Independant Film Festival. It will make its West Coast premiere this coming Monday, December 3rd, at 5pm at the New Beverly Theater.
Huell Howser's retiring: An Off-Ramp remembrance
11/27/2012 Update from John Rabe: Huell Howser is reportedly retiring, without a big announcement. There's a nice collection of videos and appreciations on LA Observed, and I'm reposting our long segment with him, from the glorious day he let us tag along as he taped a whole show around a single food item. Huell, we love you and you'll be missed.
When we explain Off-Ramp to people, they often say, "Oh, it's like Huell Howser, but on the radio!" We take it as a compliment, and were delighted when Huell, whose home base is KCET public television, asked Off-Ramp to spend the day with him.
The impetus for the Huell Howser/Off-Ramp tour of L.A. was National Donut Day, a celebration of what might be L.A.'s favorite food. We started at the Salvation Army's kitchen at the VA campus in West L.A., where they made donuts the way the Doughboys liked them in World War I — cakey and substantial. Then, it was off to India's Sweets and Spices in Glendale for some vada, which is a delicious savory donut. Finally, to East L.A. for churros, one of the most delicious confections in the world ... when they're hot.
Here's what I learned about Huell:
• Huell is truly curious about everything, but what he likes is to learn, meaning he's not sitting at his home in the high desert, or his place in Palm Springs, or his pad in L.A. reading more about donuts right now and trying out recipes. He's off to the next thing.
• Huell is very sensitive about his accent. He says, rightly, that it's ridiculous to think someone doing shows about California shouldn't have a Tennessee accent, when the whole idea of California is that it's a wonderful melting pot of cultures. "Should I have a Filipino accent? An Armenian accent?" He also says that Southerners are the last allowable target of jokes, and he's probably right about that, too.
• Huell loves his fans but he does not like taking photos with them when those photos are going to wind up on Facebook among a million other photos. Photos are a reflex now, and what takes one minute for one of his fans equals easily half-an-hour a day (or more) for Huell when he's out in public.
• Huell thinks much of TV is too fussy, and that over-elaborate production is taking the spontaneity out of it. He uses 99 percent of what his cameraman, Cameron Mitchell, shoots. He sets up the shots ahead of time, lets the subject know roughly what he'll be asking, then bulls forward with simple intros and transitions. (I personally think there's a middle ground, which is what you hear in Off-Ramp. We do plenty of post-production, but only when needed.) It accomplishes two things: Stuff happens in his segments, and people feel at ease to discuss things and tell stories because the set-up and interview is simple; and Huell is able to cover an enormous amount of ground. Go to his Web site and check out the stuff they've done in 20 years, and you'll find yourself saying, "That's amazing."
Yes, it’s easy to make fun of his accent and his boundless enthusiasm, and the way he talks to his cameraman. But over 20 years of California’s Gold and all the spinoffs, he’s has given voice to thousands of California citizens and has been the conduit for teaching volumes of California history. And for that, Huell Howser truly is California’s gold.
Now, to see how Huell plays on commercial TV, check out this video of an extended gag played on a local Sacramento reporter who did Huell Howser imitations. I love how Huell just takes over the set when he ultimately joins the show in progress.
— John Rabe
Kevin Roderick on Huell Howser's retirement
Kevin Roderick, of LA Observed, remembers back more than twenty years, when Huell Howser came West as a general assignment reporter for Channel 2, and then found his niche on KCET doing the long-form visits he became famous for.
Talking Santa iPhone app grants exclusive Off-Ramp interview
For all I know, the TalkingSanta iPhone app has been around for years, and it's come and gone as the app dujour for 12-year olds. But my nephew Bill just showed it to me, and I've spent happy hours making Santa say outrageous things and burping. But as a journalist, I figured Santa deserved equal time. I especially wanted to know the most common thing people have him say. Turns out, some people are trying to break up Mr and Mrs Claus.
Perfect strangers collide in KPCC's Instagram challenge
The Instagram feed of Miss_Lucifer_ is anything but satanic. This London-based Instagrammer is fond of tranquil landscapes, old cars and autumn leaves.
Diane Davis, the woman behind @Miss_Lucifer_, won our most recent challenge with Instagram Lovers Anonymous.
The challenge asked photographers all around the world to snap photos of someone they had never met before for the theme "Perfect Strangers."
Diane made her winning entry while she was wandering the streets of London and noticed a woman wearing bright red boots in the distance. She instantly crossed the street to take a photo.
When she arrived she realized the photo wasn't about her subject's red boots, but rather the juxtaposition between the woman's dog and The National Theater review.
Diane stood right in front of her subject and snapped the photo with her iPhone before anyone noticed. After she pet the dog, chatted up the red booted lady for a moment and kept moving.
A brief history of street photography
Today, street photography is experiencing another renaissance. Everyone has access to top notch cameras on their phones and can be discrete when snapping photos of strangers on the go.
Technology has always been at the heart of street photography and the proliferation of candid iPhone photos today is one of the newest chapters.
One of the first "street photographs" dates back to 1838. Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the silvered copper plate technology called a Daguerrotype, took one of the first known photos of a human in this photo of the Boulevard du Temple.
While the street was actually bustling with people, the one man in the bottom left is the only visible person because he was getting his shoes shined and happened to stay still for the entire exposure.
Eugène Atget, another prominent French street photographer, focused his lens on the streets of Paris in the early 20th century.
Atget carried a large format wooden camera that exposed images on glass plates throughout Paris to document the city's architecture and people.
John Thomson, a pioneering Scottish photographer, traveled to Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore and other countries in Asia in the late 19th century to gather some of the first images from the east.
Photographers like Atget and Thomson lugged around large format cameras that had slow shutter speeds and could not easily capture the ever changing action of the street, but all that changed in 1925 when Oskar Barnack introduced the Leica A series, a lightweight 35mm camera with a faster shutter speed.
Henri Cartier-Bresson picked up his first Leica in 1931 and traveled all over the world with the faster, smaller camera. Known as the godfather of photojournalism, Cartier-Bresson coined the term "the decisive moment" and founded Magnum, still one of the premier photojournalism agencies.
Today mobile photography is remaking the street photograph and millions of people around the world are sharing their slice of the world on Instagram.
Here at KPCC we want you all to be part of the action so check out our newest challenge Fleeting Glance.
Happy shooting.
Paul Krassner tripped with Groucho, and told John & Yoko "Don't Bogart that joint"
In 1968, I was watching TV coverage of the Democratic National Convention. I remember turning to my father and asking, "Dad, why are the police beating up those students?" "I don't know, son," my father replied.
Thus, at age thirteen, I learned to question authority because they didn't know everything. Later I learned those students were led by activists Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, and other "Yippies."
Krassner came up with the name for their group, The Youth International Party, and years later I was lucky to get to write for his countercultural magazine The Realist, which he published from 1958-2001. Paul taught me how many ways there are to have a conversation. He interviewed major players like Norman Mailer, Ram Dass, and Groucho Marx in iconoclastic "Impolite Interviews." He's been an avatar in exploring consciousness; writing about his psychedelic journeys with everyone from Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead at the pyramids in Giza to John Lennon at an oceanside cabin in northern California.
He also unashamedly used substances. In our interview, Paul vividly recalls how, when they both took LSD, Groucho was seeing visions of gothic cathedrals, but he was seeing cockroaches; and how when John and Yoko were smoking their pot/opium joints, Yoko said, "Put another cookie on the fire."
Not only did Paul once write for Mad Magazine and edit Lenny Bruce's autobiography, but in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal, he ran a free underground abortion-referral service for safe doctors. Now 80, the social satirist and his wife Nancy Cain (author of Video Days) live in Desert Hot Springs, so I don't get to see them much.
The FBI called Krassner, "a nut, a raving unconfined nut," which he turned into a title for an autobiography: Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture.
I'm proud to call this confessed nut a friend. He taught me to question everything.