Behind the scenes at the Oscars with Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan, California's snow pack is below normal, the history of LA's only outlet mall
Backstage at the 90th Academy Awards
Awards season came to a close Sunday night at Hollywood's Dolby Theater. Many of the nominees made history.
Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan was perched backstage at the theater all week, from rehearsals to showtime. Keegan spoke to A Martinez about everything you didn't see on the telecast. The Frame's John Horn was also at the ceremony and joined in on the conversation.
Post-envelope gate worries
The envelope stack is getting smaller. Each time the accountant hands off an envelope to a presenter she says, “Confirming this is the envelope for (category name).” #Oscars pic.twitter.com/0AcJhGioxt
— Rebecca Keegan (@ThatRebecca) March 5, 2018
Last year's Best Picture announcement was a bit of a disaster, and it was something the Academy and Price Waterhouse accountants did not want happening again. Keegan said she saw some new protocol implemented this time around.
One of the things I noticed was that the accountant in the stage right wings, which is where the error was made last year, it was a new accountant and she was using what looked to me to be a different procedure.
When she would hand off the envelope she would say to the presenter, 'And this confirms that this is the envelope for the best actor category.' Also, if you looked at the envelopes, the font on them was enormous.
Me Too and Times Up movements make their mark
Salma Hayek, Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra held hands, whispered in conversation and Sciorra sang along to the performance of Stand Up For Something as they waited to take the stage. #oscars pic.twitter.com/YuipuSSp2w
— Rebecca Keegan (@ThatRebecca) March 5, 2018
The issue of inclusion was woven throughout the show from the very beginning of Jimmy Kimmel's monologue, all the way through to the end, with Guillermo Del Toro's speech acknowledging his status as an immigrant.
But it was the trio of Weinstein accusers consisting of Salma Hayak, Annabella Sciorra and Ashley Judd that Keegan recalled as the pivotal moment of the Times Up and Me Too moment.
I had watched them do this in rehearsal and it was very emotional, particularly for Annabella Sciorra. In rehearsals, she stepped to the microphone and began to read her script and just stepped back and said, 'Whoa.'
These are three women who have made allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein. In some cases, their careers have been really affected by that, and here they were on the film industry's biggest stage.
Another woman responsible for perhaps the biggest moment of the night was Frances McDormand's Best Actress acceptance speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-86vgvZGMs4
McDormand introduced the world to a new word, "inclusion rider." It's a concept that was new to even her. Keegan spoke to one of the women behind the concept, which essentially means:
The idea is that if an actor has a rider where they can say, 'Hey I want my makeup artist with me on this movie...' they can have an inclusion rider and the suggestion that the folks at USC have made is that this inclusion rider mirror the general public.
In other words, your set — including the crew and background actors — will be 50/50 male/female, 40 percent people of color, 5 percent LGBT and 20 percent people with disabilities.
For more on the growing change in Hollywood, be sure to read The Frame's coverage of the 90th Academy Awards. You can find it here.
Immigration crackdowns affect 5 million children
Well over 100 people were detained in immigration sweeps across Central and Northern California last week. The Trump administration has stepped up its efforts to deport unauthorized immigrants.
But those detentions don't always happen in a vacuum. When a person is taken -- especially one with family in the US -- it can disrupt lives, especially those of young people.
That's the finding of a study from the UCLA Civil Rights Project. It shines new light on how immigration crackdowns affect students in grade school. Lead researcher Patricia Gandara joined Take Two to discuss her findings.
How many young people are connected to the immigration issue
About 5 million kids across the country are in a family in which at least one parent may be undocumented.
Students are feeling terrorized
This has been reported before and it's the reason we wanted to do this study. In various reports, young people -- children -- are being affected by this. We wanted to understand how schools are being affected by this. What we found is that the schools in fact are deeply affected by this, and not only the children of immigrants but other children in the same school. They're distracted, they're stressed, their anxious, they're crying.
Affect on schoolwork
One is that absenteeism is up. Two thirds of our respondents said their absenteeism had increased and more than a third said the problem is serious.
How the research was conducted
We invited 47 school districts across the country to participate; 24 opened their doors and agreed to do the survey, including more than 730 schools in 24 school districts across 12 states in all sectors of the U.S. We were interested in whether there were differences by region. The worst is the South. That appears to be because there's less of a consensus about how to deal with this and many school districts don't have a particular policy and it leaves people wondering.
How to reduce stress in children from immigrant families
Our respondents told us we need to have forums in our communities between the school and the community so the community understands the school is a safe place. Parents are losing faith in the government and even in their schools. A lot of people said parents would no longer sign permission slips for field trips. Anything that required a signature, parents were refusing because they were afraid it would be used against them.
March 5 DACA deadline is mostly moot
March 5 used to be the day the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was supposed to sunset, after the Trump administration canceled the program last September. It was supposed to mark the start of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants losing their work permits and deportation protections.
But two court injunctions this year have blocked that, allowing young immigrants with DACA to keep renewing their status, at least until the courts rule otherwise. KPCC immigration reporter Leslie Berestein Rojas joined Take Two to talk about where DACA goes from here.
Does March 5 matter for DACA?
From a practical standpoint, it doesn't. There have been two court injunctions now, including one in California, that let people who already have DACA continue to renew their status if they're eligible to do so. March 5 was partly significant in that when President Trump rescinded DACA in September, young people whose DACA was expiring between September 5 and March 5 were given just one month to apply for a two-year renewal, one last time. But anyone whose DACA expired after March 5 was told they could not renew. That's changed with the court injunctions. Anyone who is eligible to renew their DACA status can keep doing so. The only thing is that new applications won't be taken. But for those who have DACA already, the program is supposed to stay in place until the courts make a decision on it.
When courts might make a DACA decision
As we saw last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear an expedited appeal from the Trump administration. The administration was hoping to bypass the Ninth Circuit court in California as it appealed the first injunction. But the high court says they're going to have to go through the Ninth Circuit, and this could take months. If the Ninth Circuit and the Second Circuit – that's where the second injunction will be appealed – appeals courts rule on behalf of the administration, then the program could come to a halt. But if they don't, the administration will likely appeal once more to the Supreme Court. And a decision there likely wouldn't happen until next year.
Does the March 5 deadline matter in other ways
It matters symbolically to a degree, and also because there's a lot of confusion out there. DACA has been a moving target, as we know. It's hard enough for us to keep up with the developments. Immigrant advocates worry that not everyone knows that they can renew their status now. They also worry that because everything is so uncertain, some DACA recipients won't want to stick their necks out.
Where Congress stands with DACA
When President Trump canceled DACA in September, he said Congress should come up with a more permanent plan by then. But then he threw in all these conditions – money for a border wall, big cuts to legal immigration – which he wanted in return for legal status for DACA recipients. Congress wasn't able to come up with any kind of compromise. Four bills were voted on in the Senate last month, and nothing made it out. There were also some attempts to tie a DACA solution to spending bills, but that didn't happen either.
The human cost of Uber and Lyft: Life in the dying taxi industry
Carl Ditlefsen vacuums out his car as the sun sets on the Green Cab taxi lot. He’s the only cab driver here. Next to the lot is a cluttered two-person office and a tarp lean-to. It covers a portable toilet with a sign that reads “Taxi Driver Parking Only.”
Ditlefsen just finished a slow 11-hour shift, and he's had only one good ride all day. His pay will be less than minimum wage, and these days, that's normal. Ditlefsen's competitors, like Lyft and Uber drivers, routinely make $20 to $30 an hour.
"I used to work four or five days a week, and you were able to survive,” Ditlefsen said. “You weren’t on easy street by any means, but you were able to survive. If you keep me busy that’s all I ask.”
Ditlefsen is wearing a blue hoodie that’s worn and pilled. One of his black sneakers has partially separated from the sole. I asked him if he thought he’d retire anytime soon.
“Oh, I don’t think there’s retirement in sight,” Ditlefsen said. “You drive until you die. Whether you like it or not, a lot of us don’t have retirements to fall onto.”
Taxi drivers like Ditlefsen are being sent to the brink by Uber and Lyft. Over the years, the companies have pushed down the cost of a ride and the earnings for drivers. Cab drivers have tried to fight back, protesting and forming unions. But Uber and Lyft's footprints continue to expand.
Recently, Doug Schifter, a for-hire black-car driver in New York City, went to the steps of City Hall and shot himself to protest the industry’s decimation. Before taking his life, Schifter posted on Facebook about the financial pressure put on drivers like him by services like Uber.
The taxi companies themselves are imploding. In San Francisco, Yellow Cab went bankrupt in 2016. Yellow Cab had around 500 medallions, which the city sold for $250,000 apiece. The company ended up selling for around $810,000, a little more than the sticker price for just three medallions.
Yellow Cab, Luxor and Citywide have all been consolidated into one company. Green Cab, Ditlefsen’s company used to have 19 members. Now it’s down to six. And they don’t even drive full time.
Mark Gruberg is a taxi driver and co-founder of Green Cab, which is driver-owned. Gruberg said many younger drivers have left the industry and those who remain are mostly career drivers. Many of them are stuck with medallions, which can be a big financial burden. The upshot of all this is that there are fewer cabs on the road.
Gruberg shows me the company’s shift schedule. It used to be filled all the time. Now the schedule is shot through with yellow, the color for unfilled shifts.
Gruberg says Uber and Lyft have taken away cab drivers’ biggest paydays: Valentine’s Day, Halloween, St Patrick’s Day, even New Year’s Eve. None of these days bring in the business they used to. Gruberg says drivers have lost between a third and half of their income.
At the end of every shift, Deborah Sears, the office manager, adds up what drivers earned.
“There’s days when some guy will come in and say, I had three fares today,' ” Sears said. “It’s like going out there and playing Russian roulette.”
Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Hastings, recently conducted an ethnographic study, comparing cab drivers with those for Uber and Lyft. Dubal says identity plays a huge role in the lives of these drivers. “The sort of dignity that people got from their work when they were full-time professional drivers is just not possible with Uber and Lyft."
Dubal said ride apps like Uber and Lyft are not only destroying the stable long-term jobs of the taxi industry, but also the sense of community in the industry.
“Because of how low the fares are they have to drive and drive and drive and drive for an inordinate amount of time in order to eke out a living,” Dubal said. “So there isn’t an opportunity to build community in the same way that there was in the taxi industry.”
Dubal says the “app drivers” are way more atomized, isolated. There’s no taxi lot, less of a sense of community. They just flip on the app and drive, feeding customer demand for cheap, convenient rides. Dubal said “consumers who use these ride services are absolutely complicit” in the destruction of the taxi industry.
Joe Disalvo just arrived at the Green Cab office for his shift. He has a bright, bushy, white mustache and bifocal lenses.
“I’ve heard drivers say things like, 'If I don’t die of old age soon, I’m going to go crazy,' " Disalvo said.
Disalvo has been driving since 1984. He’s one of the career drivers who is locked into the job.
“I’m 74, and if I was younger I’d just leave,” Disalvo said. “I’d get a second job or go do something else, but my time has passed for that. I have to do what I am doing for as long as I can and make it work somehow.”
Disalvo is also stuck financially. He took out a loan to buy a medallion. For Disalvo and many others, it was the de facto taxi retirement plan. Now Disalvo says a medallion is pretty much a worthless piece of tin and a huge financial burden.
“There are drivers who are applying for food stamps and welfare,” Disalvo said, “I haven’t done it, I haven’t had to, but this is the first year I’ve been underwater.”
Disalvo finishes the tiny paper cup of water he’s drinking, crunches it and drops it in the trash. He thanks me for letting him vent. That, he said, will at least keep him going for a little while longer.
Why LA’s Citadel looks like an ancient Assyrian palace
On Interstate 5, near the City of Commerce, a regal building flanks the congested road. Complete with concrete battlements and tall and winged figures, it's the Citadel — L.A.’s only outlet mall. And it makes quite a statement.
According to Adrian Scott Fine, director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy, that kind of architectural grandeur was taking off in the 1920s, when the Citadel's wall was first built.
Adrian Scott Fine: Being a place of filmmaking and movie-making, it was also about fantasy... Places like the Mayan Theatre, the Chinese Theatre and other places that were evoking a style from an ancient past, but kind of doing their own twist on it. Very much an L.A. way of doing things.
Proliferating that Hollywood feel were architecture firms like Morgan, Walls & Clements. They built some of L.A.’s most historic structures, including the Mayan and El Capitan theaters. And yes, that original Citadel wall.
In those early days, Commerce wasn’t a city yet. The area was industrial, unlike downtown L.A. or Hollywood. Commerce, Vernon, Bell Gardens and their surrounding areas were all about manufacturing, production and jobs.
There’s a reason such a spectacular structure was built in an industrial place. Adolph Schleicher, founder of the Samson Tire & Rubber Company, had the idea for the building's construction.
In 1929, just before the stock market crash, Schleicher didn’t just decide to build a factory in L.A. He wanted to go big.
Palace big.
Like the kind built for the Assyrian King, Sargon II. Never mind that Sargon's reign ended a long time ago, in 705 B.C. He was an ancient ruler whose style coincided with the Samson theme Schleicher was going for.
Samson, before he was associated with tires, was a biblical figure known for his great strength. Fine, of the L.A. Conservancy, said there may have been correlations between Samson as a symbol for strength in the company's tires.
"Also, there's the idea about strength in the tires, and the tires are the foundation for your car. So there’s some correlations that probably exist between those too," Fine said.
According to Fine, the factory’s style could also point to the discovery of King Sargon’s palace, which was found excavated in the late 1920s.
"There was a lot of interest in kind of antiquities during this era. People were gravitating towards this architecture, and it was all about exotic cultures from far away places bringing it to L.A."
Unluckily for Schleicher, the economy’s foundation crumbled with the stock market crash, which put a damper on the Samson tire business. Soon after the factory opened, he was forced to sell it to the company now known as Uniroyal.
![Photograph of an exterior view of the Home of U.S. Tires, [s.d.].](https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e0bd574/2147483647/strip/true/crop/500x381+0+0/resize/1000x762!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fa.scpr.org%2F197763_8597bb180a6ee4218ae2512e8eac9701_original.jpg)
After World War II, the tire industry bounced back and L.A’s automotive industry took off. In fact, the Commerce area in car manufacturing was second only to Detroit up until the '60s.
And at that time, the factory crashed again. It was an abandoned eyesore, dulled by pollution.
The City of Commerce purchased it in 1983. And a development company, Trammell Crow Co., later bought it, transforming it into a mix of stores, office buildings, even a hotel that opened 28 years ago.
Louis Troiani was the lead architect behind the Citadel’s most recent transformation in 2003, where people go now to find brands like Coach, Levi’s and DKNY on the cheap.
If you've ever seen those 30-foot-tall LED screens just above the wall, that was Troiani’s baby. A pretty eye-catching way to show commuters it's open for business.
Next to each screen is a large winged creature. The creature’s official name is a Lamassu, an ancient Assyrian protective deity with cloven feet and a human face. Troiani added that too. And if you happen to catch a glimpse of them at sunset, the light and shadows reveal extra textural details.
"If you were to see them up close, the veins in the legs. It is truly an exact replica of the original," Troiani said.
But the wall also has hidden gems, like a series of triangular engravings that literally tell Sargon’s story.
"That is the original language of the Assyrians which is called cuneiform. This language helped tell [King Sargon's] story in a written format while the visuals gave you a taste for the story they were trying to tell," Troiani said.
Embedded in the Citadel wall, there are also genies. They were military advisors back in the day. Troiani also gave some insight on their roles.
"They conquered kingdoms all over the place and had such power. Until one year, one battle, King Sargon II died, and they moved from that palace to another palace."
And that new palace? It's the Citadel, of course.
The genies still serve a purpose. They stand guard, protecting, even today in a little kingdom called Los Angeles, where the Citadel looks like it’s here to stay.