Today on the show we'll talk with Senator Holly Mitchell about expanding political leadership opportunities for black women. Then, why is the U.S. so poorly represented at the BNP Paribas tennis tournament? Plus, the story behind the opening sequence of "True Detective," driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, plus much more.
Senator Holly Mitchell seeks to create political leadership roles for women
California Democrats wrapped up their 2014 state convention in LA this weekend. Talks focused on boosting voter turnout and bans on "fracking," one process for tapping natural gas reserves in the state.
But there was another prevalent issue for Senator Holly Mitchell: diversity. The Culver City representative is the only African American senator after Roderick Wright of Inglewood took a leave of absence recently.
And at the convention, Senator Mitchell spent time focusing on how to expand political leadership opportunities for black women. She joins us Take Two to talk more about it.
State lawmakers, DMV seek to allay fears over driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants
Starting next year, undocumented immigrants in California will be eligible for driver's licenses.
When we talked with the new law's author State Representative Luis Alejo, he said it was long overdue.
"It's certainly going to be a benefit when people know the rules of the road and they're tested in their license. That makes the roads and highways more safer for everyone," said Alejo.
But this plan has hit a speed bump. Some undocumented immigrants say they don't trust the licenses. They believe the info they hand over to authorities could be used to deport them.
New York Times reporter Ian Lovett recently attended a public forum in Bell, where residents expressed their concerns. He joins the show with more.
Marianne Williamson invokes 'better angels' in Congressional run
Author Marianne Williamson has been dubbed "the high priestess of pop religion." Her books on how to lead a spiritual life have sold 3 million copies. But KPCC's Sharon McNary says she's now considering a political life.
SXSW: A look at the latest trendy tech trends
Now we turn to Austin, where the South by Southwest festival is underway.
More than a week of movies, music, and of course tech. Companies from around the world come to Austin to market their products, and to test the waters on which ideas the young, influential crowds respond to the best. A couple of notable items include an Iron Man-like motorcycle helmet, and clothing with solar panels sewed right in, allowing you to charge your devices.
We turn now to Take Two's Jacob Margolis who's in Austin all week reporting for us.
Check out KPCC for daily updates from Jacob. You can also follow him @JacobMargolis on and Instagram. Tweet Jacob with the hashtag #WhatShouldJacobDo if you have suggestions on what he should check out!
BNP Paribas Tournament: Why the US isn't the star of the tennis court anymore
The lack of U.S. success in tennis lately is hardly news, except when America's play is so bad at a tournament right in our backyard.
The BNP Paribas Open is entering its second week in Indian Wells. There are only three Americans left, and 23 have already lost. We're only through two rounds on the men's side and three-and-a-half on the women's.
For more, we're joined by Neil Harman, tennis correspondent for The Times of London.
San Mateo Bocce Club hopes to keep tradition alive
We go now to another civilized game, bocce. It's a traditional Italian game, but it's played all over the world, including here in California, often by Italian immigrants.
Still, as the number of new Italian immigrants dwindle, some bocce clubs are struggling to keep the tradition alive. That's the case in the the northern California town of San Mateo. The California Report's Vanessa Rancano prepared this report.
On Wednesday nights it’s league play at the Peninsula Italian American Social Club. Two dozen people fill the echo-prone hall that houses the club’s two bocce courts. One wall is painted to look like the view from a Tuscan veranda -- with stone archways and rolling hills. The other is covered with team photos dating back to the ‘70s when the bocce league first got started.
Tonight, Nerina DiBella’s team is winning. She stands at one end of a court made of sand and crushed oyster shells that’s a little shorter than a bowling lane. “Come on, Bruno! Come on, come on!” she shouts, bracing as her teammate takes a shot. It’s green team versus red team, and DiBella is watching Bruno try to roll his green balls closer to the pallino – the little white ball that’s their target. “It’s a good one,” she says. “He’s going to make it. Done!”
Teams play year-round at the club. These aren’t pros. In fact, most of the players are in their 70s, and they don’t play for big prizes. They play for fun -- mostly. “Sometimes you play for a dollar here and you’d think their life was riding on it,” says Joseph Lencioni, aka Joe, the resident jokester. “They get down on their knees and they’re checking it and they’re like, ‘Don’t touch it’ and oh boy!”
Mario Conti runs the league. “Just because you’re Italian doesn’t make you a good bocce player, let me tell you,” he says, “It’s like any other game – either you have it or you don’t.” Being Italian does help get you into this social club. When it was started in the ‘30s it was called the New Deal Italian American Federation. At first they held meetings in members’ basements. Now it’s mostly a place where people socialize at dinners and cultural events.
Mario and his wife, Nella, were born in Italy and grew up in the Bay Area. Nella Conti remembers the South San Francisco of her childhood as a tight-knit Italian community. The city was completely Italian, she says, “It was like being in Italy almost. It was great.” Mario Conti remembers it the same way. “You go to the bank, everyone spoke Italian,” he says. “Just like now you walk downtown South San Francisco, everyone speaks Spanish.”
The Contis say the social club keeps them tied to their roots, to their families and to their dwindling Italian American community here.
For Alberto Biancalana, who’s originally from Lucca, Italy, this club is one of the best in the Bay Area. He points out that the club has more than 800 members, and it’s just one of many in the area. But they’re all in trouble if young people don’t show interest. “If the young people don’t come in, we are an endangered species,” he says. “If the young people don’t carry on with the tradition, what are you gonna do? Everything’s gonna end, see.”
In fact, on this night, there were no young players in sight, but Biancalana is hopeful that it will change. “I bet you my son would like to play if he ever felt like coming here to try,” he says. “Because that’s what it takes-- it takes a little bit to try and then you get hooked.”
Nerina DiBella watches as her teammate is inches from hitting the pallino.
“We got 2 points now!” she says. “This is it -- it’s game! We won both games. We did it, Bruno!”
On the Lot: 'Black Fish,' SXSW, Sarah Jones and more
Now it's time for On the Lot, our regular series of talks about the film biz with LA Times reporter Rebecca Keegan.
It wasn't nominated for an Oscar, but the documentary "Black Fish" is still going strong. The film is about the treatment of killer whales in captivity, and it inspired some legislation last week here in California.
Now an update to a story we've been following, the death of Sarah Jones. Jones was a 27-year-old assistant camera woman who was killed in a train accident while on location for a Greg Allman biopic, "Midnight Rider," in Georgia. There was a memorial for her Friday night, and this has really become a rallying point for improving safety in the industry. What are people saying?
We talk a lot about the importance of the Chinese market to Hollywood and now a producer, Robert Simonds, known for some big successes with Adam Sandler like "Happy Gilmore." He's announcing he's partnered with a Chinese investment firm to basically build a studio with the Chinese market in mind. How would this work?
But it would also buck the current trend for these big budget special effects-laden movies and move towards a more star-driven vehicle model.
South by Southwest is happening this week, we heard earlier from our producer Jacob Margolis who is there checking out the technology and music. But there is also a movie component. A couple of big premieres there, first up the new Seth Rogen film, "Neighbors" in which he actually plays the grown up to Zach Efron's wild frat boy:
Jon Favreau, who kind of cut his teeth on indie fare before he moved on to direct the "Iron Man" franchise, is getting back to his indie roots.
Finally, "Veronica Mars," the crowdfunded film starring Kristen Bell reprising her popular TV role. The real star of the film is the KPCC studio where some scenes were filmed.
On a heart-warming note, people in Hollywood like to talk a lot about the power of the movies, but there was a piece in the New York Times magazine over the weekend that really brought this idea home. It was about the significance of Disney movies in the life of a young boy with autism.
'True Detective': How the opening titles came together, what they mean
The hit HBO series "True Detective" starring Matthew McConnaughey and Woody Harrelson wraps up this weekend, and the first thing viewers will see — as they have for the previous seven weeks — are the haunting titles of the show.
Fans of the show have been looking for clues to this Southern murder mystery in the title sequence, an eerie montage of characters from the series laid over powerful images of the Louisiana landscape.
The sequence was directed by Sydney, Australia-based Patrick Clair, the creative director of the company Elastic, which has also done the title sequence for "Game of Thrones" and "The Americans."
RELATED: 'True Detective': The Handsome Family performs the theme song live on KPCC
For the latest installment in KPCC's series Hollywood Jobs, Clair told KPCC's Take Two what it took to create the great title sequence.
Interview Highlights:
On how he got into producing opening titles for film and TV:
"I wanted to be a filmmaker from when I was pretty young. I knew that's where I wanted to head. As I kind of got older, I got more and more involved in design, and I guess it sort of became a natural evolution that title sequences where you get to combine filmmaking and storytelling with design and animation and that sort of ended up being something I'm pretty passionate about. It's pretty interesting. I feel pretty lucky to be working in this area and it's lots of fun."
On the trend of having highly stylized opening titles:
"It starts with a very functional purpose of trying to get those credits up there before we get into the actual show and give the audience an impression of who is making it, and I think it evolved from there. Giving a chance for the show makers to set a tone for the story they're going to tell. I think in the last 10, 20 years as animation techniques — especially with the advent of the digital industries — they've gotten much more complex, much more expressive, and we're able to carry so many more different styles of design and art onto the screen that it's made sense for the title sequence to become like a real chance to express the character of a show in a more visual and abstract way."
On the threat of the DVR to the title credit business:
"Well I think the biggest compliment you can tell to a titles designer is that your sequence is one of the ones I don't skip. Certainly I skip plenty myself, and I totally understand it."
At what stage of the show/film he gets brought in to create the titles:
"It always varies, but we get brought in once the show is off and rolling. Usually they've started shooting the show or they're about to start shooting the show. It's confirmed to go to air, and that's when they start getting us in and giving us a bit of material to give an idea of what we might want to do with the titles, where we could take it and how we can help the showrunners introduce the show to the audience."
On what materials he got to work with to create the title sequence for "True Detective":
"I got three scripts in my inbox one day, just nothing else, kind of like, 'We're making this new show; it's about some detectives; three episodes attached here.' I remember sitting and reading them all that afternoon, and they were good scripts, really, really good scripts. It was exciting. We had no visuals at that stage."
"Before we started getting into the development, we had good chat with [creator] Nic [Pizzolatto] and [executive producer and director] Cary [Joji Fukunaga]. ... Those guys had a really clear idea of the symbolism that they were using to tell the show, really clear idea of the characters, and really clear idea of how they wanted to engage the audience. ... From there we were able to be really creative with the visuals, we could go off and do whatever we wanted and build upon the storytelling that they were setting up."
On the imagery in "True Detective" and how he crafted the idea:
"One of the really interesting things about what the show is doing is using Louisiana at that time as a way of talking about characters. It's a really poisoned landscape, and they're really poisoned characters. It's a landscape that's been really ravaged by time and experience. That's exactly what's happening in the characters' lives. ... Just after hearing the showrunners describe it that way, we got off the phone and immediately realize that we could build portraits out of literal images of those landscapes and do something in a design sense to reflect what they were doing in a dramatic sense."
On how much control he has over the design process:
"It always varies from project to project, but in this case, we were really lucky in that Nic and Cary had a really clear idea of what they wanted to do and the story they were telling, but they let us have freedom on the imagery. What happened as the process evolved is that they were really supportive of us pushing that to the edge."
On which part of the sequence posed a particular challenge:
"That great shot of the stripper's heels. At one stage we had scoured the Earth looking for the photographer that had taken that shot, and we had to give up and remove the shot from the sequence. it was really Nic and Cary coming in and saying, 'Hey, that shot's important, that's really telling a lot.' They pushed us to go back and look again."
"We ended up tracking down the photographer in Russia, getting him some money via Western Union, and at the 11th hour securing the rights to that shot so that we could get it into the sequence. I think what you actually see in the sequence is a somewhat three-dimensional digital recreation, which kind of takes it to that next level."
Original Pitch for Title Sequence from True Detective by scprweb
Missing Malaysian Airlines flight highlights issue of stolen passports
First we turn to another question raised by the disappearance of a Malaysia Air flight. Two of the passengers on that flight were using stolen passports, which has people wondering just how easy it is to do that and what kind of security measures are actually in place.
For more on this we're joined by John Magaw, a former administrator of the Transportation Security Administration and Senior Counselor at APCO Worldwide.
Outdated technology makes it harder to locate missing Malaysian flight
Another mystery surrounding missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, before the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers, is it didn't report any problems. Radar data suggests the plane may have turned back before disappearing, according to Malaysian officials.
This lack of information describing what happened points to what may be a issue with modern airplanes: an outdated communications system. Here in the U.S., an effort to replace it with one based on GPS technology that constantly relays plane information has stalled.
For more we're joined by Joan Lowy transportation reporter for the Associated Press
Mexican authorities kill infamous drug boss 'El Chayo' again
Mexican authorities say they have killed one of the country's most notorious drug lords, for the second time.
Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, known by his nicknames, "El Chayo" or "The Craziest One," was reportedly shot and killed by federal troops yesterday. Trouble is, he was also supposedly killed four years ago. Here to tell us more is Sylvia Longmire, author of "Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars."
Hey Caddyshack! Golf courses and cemeteries are not 'the two prime wasters' of wate
If you do a google map of Los Angeles satellite view, you might notice some big green patches amid a sea of concrete. A lot of them are cemeteries and golf courses, and they're among the biggest water users in the region. To save money, most try to conserve water as much as possible.
But as environment correspondent Molly Peterson reports, only some of their efforts easily transfer to your backyard.
How the Dunites created a secret utopia among the Oceano Dunes
"The most amazing vibrations on earth could be found 18 miles south of San Luis Obispo California in the middle of the Oceano Dunes...That’s where we are. A vortex, kinda like Sedona Arizona, just a magnificent energy center." — Environmentalist John Reid
We’re a few miles south of Pismo Beach not far from the 101 freeway. I’ve been following environmentalist John Reid into the dunes for hours. We're a little lost, but that's the nature of the place.
An entire squatter community once disappeared into this wilderness — a colony of hermits, artists and poets called Dunites. They sat out the great depression here in a string of wooded coves, drawing in visitors like John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair and even India’s holy man, Meher Baba. The Dunite appeal — as, Reid sees it — was their freedom.
"To live the American dream the way it was intended to be lived, not the way it was manufactured to be," said Reid. "They were able to have their little plots of land, their gardens and their creative enterprises without any government interference."
Tucked behind commercial farmland and oil fields, the Oceano Dunes are still obscure. Most people I’ve talked to have never heard of them. Strange considering they’re 18 miles long and look like an Egyptian desert sitting halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
You know those famous Ansel Adams dune photos? Well, that’s them. Except now they’re a big RV campground and off-roader’s paradise.
Fenced off from the vehicles, the Dunites’ archaeological remains sit side by side with those of the native Chumash who lived here for thousands of years before them. Big white heaps of their ancient discarded meals. Their shell mounds.
"You could tell which ones are Chumash and which ones are Dunite based upon the size of the clam shell," said Reid. "When the Chumash were here, there were a lot more sea otters, the predator of the Pismo clam. But when the Dunites were here, sea otters had gotten rare, the clams got larger, lived longer."
Full grown clams, a mediterranean climate, fresh water a few feet underground, and secluded coves. What more could a hermit ask for?
The last Dunite
Reid tromps into a snarl of vegetation where the last Dunite in the wild was ever seen, back in the late '70s. This is where Norm Hammond, a firefighter at the time, saw a plume of smoke he thought was coming from a wildfire. Searching for a way in, he spotted a secret trail.
"You had to get on your hands and knees, and there were places where the limbs had been cut and hooked together like a gate. It opened up into a clearing. There was a fellow in there tending his fire, washing clothes," said Hammond. "There was several buildings. He had a little garden going and I saw him but he didn’t see me so I stood there long enough to check out what was going on."
When that last Dunite died a few months later, the group’s legacy might have largely vanished, but for Hammond. He had become transfixed. Since then, he’s published a history of the Dunites and is still unearthing their artifacts.
At the Oceano Depot Museum, we stare at what looks like a hippie health guru who’s time-travelled back into a 1930s photograph.
"This is George Blais. He was generally a nudist. He believed in drawing the power of the sun in the day, and the power of the stars at night into his naked flesh," said Hammond. "He’s shown here with one of his paintings depicting the evils of eating meat and drinking milk.
Blais was a self styled evangelist among this band of renegade Sufis, Theosophists, yogis, and astrologers. When India’s great spiritual teacher of the '30s, Meher Baba, visited them, he may have seen some of their art, like this sculpture that looks half robot painted in the pallet of a B-52s album cover.
"This is a religious figure, The Evolution of Consciousness. Those crossed legged things are supposed to symbolize duality. And then the square is truth and then the little ball on top is enlightenment," said Hammond.
Shifting sands
I’d always streaked past this Pismo Beach stretch of the 101. Written it off as culturally devoid. RV parks, dreary motels, outlet malls. Yet when I looked for an affordable way to vacation in nearby Avila Beach during peak season, I landed in a $45 a night Airbnb tent on someone’s lawn overlooking this.
"The sand dunes migrate over time so a couple of the cabins just got swallowed up by the dunes," said Reid.
Realtors tried to develop the dunes into an Atlantic City of the West, but the shifting sands made it impossible for owners to ever find their tracts of land.
Eventually one small development did sprout up among the broader Dunite population. A utopian commune founded by the grandson of President Chester Arthur. A friend of FDR’s with carte blanche at the White House, Gavin Arthur wandered out of city life on a literary quest. John Reid is writing a book about Arthur.
"Gavin first went into the dunes in 1926 having just come back from Ireland where he would buy weapons for the IRA with his allowance from his father," said Reid. "That wasn’t going anywhere so he came back to the United States and happened upon the Oceano Dunes. Heard that there were hermits living out there and eventually he got to know them and a seed was germinated of establishing a utopia out there and a literary magazine."
Arthur found an empty cove, named it Moy Mell — that’s Gaelic for “Land of Honey” — and built a handful of vacation-style cottages. He moved in an editorial staff that published what he hoped would become the New Yorker of the west. The Dune Forum.
Arthur urged Dunites and literati alike to sit around the fire, debate controversial issues and share new work. An unknown John Steinbeck read from what would become his first commercial success, Tortilla Flat.
Another face around the campfire, Upton Sinclair. The social justice writer frequented Moy Mell in the moments leading up to his run for governor of California. The group’s fireside chats were turned into articles Arthur hoped would reach across class lines.
Among them, there was a young girl named Ella Thorp Ellis. From her bohemian seaside cottage in Santa Cruz, she explained what drove her father, Dunham Thorp, the managing editor of the Dune Forum, to leave his job as a press agent in Los Angeles.
"Dunham worked for Joan Crawford. She was bossy and Dunham didn’t like being bossed around," said Ellis. "He didn’t want Hollywood, he wanted a real intellectual community. So he got rid of Joan Crawford."
Between the time I’d met Ellis and found someone to guide me to her old neighborhood, she’d passed away. Like so many aspects of this story, I’d barely caught a glimpse of her before she was gone. I’d been hoping to get her a copy of this recording of her mother, Marion Thorp, interviewed by historian Norm Hammond in 1979:
HAMMOND: What did they do for heating at Moy Mell? Did they have wood there?
MARION: Yes, Gavin had a big fireplace. Oh it was fine. Saturday night Gavin would bring some wine and ale and beer and they’d have a party and a dance.
HAMMOND: A dance! Who did the cooking there?
MARION: Everybody took a turn. Gavin liked to cook fancy dishes. You know, like you’d get in a good restaurant.
End of an era
By World War II, Gavin Arthur turned Moy Mell over to the coast guard who were patrolling for Japanese submarines. Not long after that, dune buggies would invade, forever shattering the Dunite solitude.
Lately, the lure of the Dunite seems to be growing. A small group of devotees are working to preserve the spirit of their settlement. They’re restoring Gavin Arthur’s cabin. It’s been moved to the Oceano Depot Museum where it was recently surrounded by a small ocean of sand.
So next time you’re barreling through some stretch of California highway that seems a little beneath your travel standards, you might want to pull over, get out of the car, and press your ear to the ground. Some old Dunite like Ella Thorp Ellis might be summoning you from the vortex.