Today we'll discuss the investigation of a deceased Colorado parolee who was involved with white supremacist groups. We'll also check in on the confusing courtroom drama in Bell and consider the ways that an artist community in West Hollywood might affect the neighborhood. On FilmWeek, guest host Patt Morrison and the critics review this week's releases, and David Mamet joins us to discuss his film "Phil Specter" premiering this Sunday on HBO. All that and more, on AirTalk.
Is the killing of a Colorado prison official connected to white supremacy groups?
The complex case involving the deaths of a chief of Colorado prisons and a pizza delivery man is under investigation. The suspect, Evan Spencer Ebel, was a Colorado parolee who was killed today in a shootout with Texas police after a car chase. His car, a black Cadillac, is similar to one that was seen near the home of Colorado prison chief Tom Clements just before he was shot.
Various news organizations are reporting that Ebel belonged to a white supremacist prison gang call the 211 Crew, and there's speculation that the gang was connected to Clements' killing. Patt's guests explore the history and sociology of the Aryan Brotherhood and white supremacy movements in the United States and their role in other murders.
Why do racially driven gangs exist in prisons? How do they operate? Do released gang members support those still in prison?
Guests:
Pete Simi, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska and co-author with Robert Futrell of "American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s the Hidden Spaces of Hate" (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010)
Carla Hill, investigator and researcher for the Anti-Defamation League; one area of their research focuses on domestic extremists in America
More chaos surrounding the Bell jury
The Bell corruption trial has reached new levels of abnormality after Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy declared a mistrial yesterday.
Kennedy said “all hell had broken loose” due to a jury that was divided on the verdicts reached thus far. Furthermore, several jurors expressed their concern via anonymous notes to the judge after rendering the verdicts received thus far. Still, nearly half the counts have not been decided yet, and this impasse represents an extreme rarity in the legal world. While the developments certainly indicate a boon to defense attorneys trying to mount a challenge to the delivered verdicts, experts feel that since the jury deliberated and decided, there’s no precedent for overturning them.
The case moving forward with the undecided counts is less clear, and the defense is reluctant to show their cards given former Bell administrator Robert Rizzo’s upcoming trial; Rizzo is thought to be the mastermind behind the corruption scandal.
So what’s next? And why is this case so bereft with jury problems? What was going on in the deliberation room?
Guests:
Corina Knoll, Los Angeles Times reporter covering the Bell corruption trial
Richard Gabriel, trial consultant for Decision Analysis, co-author with Ted Donner of “Jury Selection: Strategy & Science" (Clark Boardman Callaghan, 2011)
West Hollywood apartment complex designed to attract 'creative types'
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that two new apartment buildings will go up soon in West Hollywood, named the Dylan and the Huxley. The idea behind these new developments is to cater to young people who don’t live the traditional 9-to-5 lifestyle, but who work from home and hope to find the sense of community we envision when we think of bohemian loft living and sharing physical space as well as wifi passwords.
The idea of selling the idea of a way to live isn’t a new one. A generation ago, suburbs sprang up all over the country filled with identical stucco and tile “McMansions” equipped with massive dining rooms, designed and built to cater to a desire to project a certain image and live a certain lifestyle. And if these buildings in WeHo are an indicator of the next wave of building and marketing a lifestyle, we have to wonder: are they getting it right?
Are developers able to instantly create a sense of being by simply replacing the no-longer-necessary dining room with an office? Can we buy the community we aspire to, or is that just a dream? Would Dylan Thomas and Aldous Huxley approve?
Guests:
Mike Leipart, chief marketing officer at The Agency, a Beverly Hills real estate agency
Amitai Etzioni, founder and director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University in Washington DC
FilmWeek: Olympus Has Fallen, Admission, The Croods, and more
Guest host Patt Morrison and KPCC film critics Andy Klein, Lael Loewenstein, and Charles Solomon review this week’s new releases, including Olympus Has Fallen, Admission, The Croods, and more. TGI-FilmWeek!
Olympus Has Fallen
Admission
The Croods
Guests:
Andy Klein, film critic for KPCC and the L.A. Times Community Papers chain
Lael Loewenstein, film critic for KPCC and Variety
Charles Solomon, film critic and animation historian for KPCC, author for amazon.com
David Mamet on stretching the 'truth' in HBO's 'Phil Spector'
You won’t find a more diverse and prolific list of credits than that of David Mamet's. "Glengarry Glen Ross," "About Last Night," "Hoffa," "The Postman Always Rings Twice," and "Wag The Dog" are just a few examples of his willingness to embrace controversial topics with style and substance. This time around he takes on the weirdness that was the Phil Spector trial, for HBO.
Mamet has said that the film, starring Academy Award-winners Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, is a “work of fiction.” Fiction or not, the portrayal of the iconic “Wall of Sound” producer who was famous for pulling guns on musicians well before he was famous for his eccentric coif is already drawing attention. Critics have praised Pacino for his portrayal of Spector and the dynamic between Pacino and Mirren, who plays Spector’s defense lawyer.
Writer and Director David Mamet joins AirTalk with guest host Patt Morrison to talk about the inspiration for this film, why he chose to depict Spector’s personal side in such a way, and the relationship between Spector and his lawyer that drives the movie.
Interview Highlights:
On how the film isn’t a biopic:
“It's a movie, it's a story! Every time I see a movie that says ‘based on a true story’ my immediate thought as a member of the audience is ‘I don't care if its based on a true story, I care if it is a true story.’ Which means, is it consistent? The study of what happened, as I understand it is called ‘history,’ so you live through a couple of generations you see one generation's historical certainty is revised in the following generation and back and forth we go in time.”
On how stories change as they’re told through different people/media:
“It’s also because we human beings are a crazy bunch of monkeys and we want novelty. For example in the movie Al Pacino playing Phil Spector says to Helen mirren playing his lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, ‘Why'd they kill Christ?’ She says ‘Because he was the son of God,’ He says ‘no they killed him because he was still the son of God, still is not news."
On what about Phil Spector that engages him as "still" Phil Spector?
“I don't know! I mean I don't know Phil Spector. I got in touch with him through his lawyer and I said I liked to come visit and his lawyer wrote back, ‘Thank you for your interest he'd rather have privacy.’ Of course I understand that … I think the question that's driving some of the newspapers nuts, as if they needed any help, was what relationship does this have to reality? And my question is ‘how the hell do we know?’ I mean if you look at the newspapers, what relationship does any politician’s reputation have to reality?"
On allegations that the film is misinforming:
“Anytime you put somebody up on the screen, what you're doing is a fiction. Even if you call it a documentary, it’s still a fiction because at the very least you have to choose what you're going to show and the order you're going to put it in. It doesn't matter that they say shoot for show and cut for dough, unless you wanted to show nine months of 12 hours a day of the O.J. case, what you're showing is a fiction, because if you had some scissors and pot of glue you could cut the actual footage to look like he's a monster, or you can cut him to look like he's an innocent victim.”
On what drives the movie:
“So the question of the movie is really not about Phil Spector, it’s about the character Linda Kenney Baden, who's his lawyer. The question is although she's convinced he's guilty, although she hates him, although she despises him and wants nothing to do with the case, she's tested, and her test is to what extent can she put aside prejudices and fulfill her oath as an officer of the court to see that he gets a great defense.”
On if he thought Spector was wrongly convicted:
“It doesn't matter to me as a filmmaker, I would hate to think that an innocent person went to jail. There's an ancient Talmudic phrase which is ‘Where there is law, there is injustice,’ so what we've come up with in the West as a substitute for ordeal, you know let’s throw them in the water and see if they sink, if they sink they're innocent, or let’s torture them and see if the devil comes out, or let’s draw lots to see if they're guilty or not. What we've come up with is an equally imperfect but perhaps more humane system whereby we say ‘We don't know if he's innocent or not, nobody can know what happened in the room it's impossible.”
Weigh In:
Does a fictionalized account of the Phil Spector trial sound interesting? And for that matter, what is the line between fact and fiction when telling the story of a life recklessly lived?
Guest:
David Mamet, writer and director of HBO’s “Phil Spector” that premieres Sunday at 9 P.M. on HBO