Today on the show, we'll talk about the Atwater oil spill. Do crude oil pipelines run through your neighborhood? Then, Japanese fans loyal to original Godzilla have doubts about another US remake. Plus, California honey production dwindles as drought continues.
Atwater Oil Spill: Do crude oil pipelines run through your neighborhood?
A pipeline ruptured in Atwater Village early yesterday morning, flooding the Northeast L-A neighborhood with crude oil.
The pipeline was shut off remotely, but not before 10,000 gallons of crude oil flowed into the streets of the mostly industrial neighborhood. Officials are still trying to determine the cause of the spill.
While it was mostly near industrial businesses it was also just blocks away from a residential area. If you were surprised that an oil pipeline could be that close to people's homes, you're not alone.
Thousands of pipelines like these run throughout the entire city and state. Here to explain is Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis.
Find out if an oil pipeline is running through your neighborhood
Map of Oil Pipelines in California
The woman who fought school segregation before Brown v. Board of Education
Tomorrow marks the 60th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that ended school segregation. But, a lesser known case ended that practice in Southern California seven years earlier.
RELATED: Before Brown v. Board, Mendez fought California's segregated schools
For more on this, we're joined by Shereen Marisol Meraji, reporter with NPR's Code Switch team and occasional Take Two host.
Friday Flashback: Susan Rice on Benghazi, Hilary Clinton, Jill Abramson and more
It's the end of another week and time for the Friday Flashback, Take Two's look at the week in news. This morning we're joined in-studio by Ashley Perez, an editor with Buzzfeed, and David Gura, Washington reporter for Marketplace.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice, speaking at an event this week hosted by the Women's Foreign Policy Group, was asked whether the Congressional committee newly formed to investigate the Benghazi attack would unearth more information.
Her response, "Dang if I know," didn't go over well with conservatives. Rice's supporters claim that conservatives took the remarks out of context. What's your take on this committee and the response to Rice's remarks?
The panel itself isn't what you'd call a balanced committee — the majority of them are Republicans and Congressional Democrats have threatened to boycott it.
This week, Karl Rove also weighed in on Benghazi, suggesting Republicans keep up the pressure on the incident. He also suggested the blood clot Hillary Clinton suffered shortly after the attack might have been more serious, and that she might have suffered a brain injury.
Bill Clinton came to her defense and suggested that this would be only the beginning as the race for the 2016 Presidential election nears. Is this a one time thing or did the Clintons effectively shut down any suggestion that health would be an issue if Hillary indeed runs for President?
Barack Obama is facing a lot of criticism this week over one of his choices for a federal judge post, but not from conservatives, from people within his own party.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid slammed the president's choice of Michael Boggs to fill a judicial seat in Georgia. Who is Michael Boggs and what is he being criticized for?
He's not the only nominee that's facing opposition. David Barron, a former Justice Department official who helped write the documentation supporting the use of deadly force to kill American extremist Anwar al-Awlaki. Who's opposed to Barron?
In bizarre news, the NRA has launched a new Netflix-style website where you can watch shows devoted to lifestyle, information and...guns. One of the shows is called Noir, and its hosted by a guy who's young, educated and African American:
Do you think that this kind of outreach is a smart move by the NRA? Is this move surprising?
Finally to the big media story this week. New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson was ousted. No one exactly is sure why. What's the latest on this? How big of a blow is this for other female journalists, no matter what the cause?
Court rules GM must pay $35 million fine for recall delay
GM announced today that it will pay a $35 million fine issued by the US Department of Transportation, as a result of the car company's delay in recalling certain cars with faulty ignition switches. Alan Ohnsman, auto reporter for Bloomberg, joins the show with more.
'Chef': Jon Favreau and Roy Choi on making a film about cooking and life
In his latest film, "Chef," writer-director by Jon Favreau collaborated with famed Los Angeles chef and entrepreneur Roy Choi to craft a film about cooking, life and what it means to be an artist. The two talked with Take Two's Alex Cohen about how they came together on this labor of love.
In the film, Favreau plays a chef named Carl Casper, who runs the kitchen at one of L.A.'s hottest restaurants. When the city's top food critics reserves a table, Carl decides its time to revamp the menu, but the restaurant's owner (played by Dustin Hoffman) vetoes the idea.
Carl's quick temper eventually gets him fired. He then tries to get his culinary groove back by opening up a food truck with the help of his young son. They serve up Cuban sandwiches, and the truck becomes a bit hit with crowds across the country, reminding him why he loves what he does.
Favreau, who spoke with Take Two at his office in Venice, explained why he wanted to make a film about people who cook.
"Ever since I read 'Kitchen Confidential,' I've really been interested in that aspect of culinary culture," Favreau said. "I've always loved food, and food is extremely cinematic — like 'Eat, Drink, Man, Woman' or 'Jiro Dreams of Sushi' — that I thought I could do [a] really good job doing something with food. I don't know what is was going to be, but I knew I wanted to do something."
More important, Favreau said, he knew he wanted to do it right. He decided to hire a culinary consultant for the film, and someone on Favreau's production team suggested he turn to the man who started the food truck craze in L.A.: Roy Choi of Kogi truck fame.
"His life was uncanny how similar it was to the storyline that I wrote," Favreau said. "So much so that I was worried about meeting him, like, 'Is he going to think that I cribbed this from his life?' It was a six-hour meeting that went from restaurant to restaurant as I followed in his footsteps and watched him."
For his part, Choi said he wasted no time training Favreau to take on the role of a head chef.
"He ate like I eat, which is going around each kitchen, tasting, having the cooks fire one dish," Choi said. "Every kitchen I go to you, you pick a random dish, just to test it, just so you have your fingers on every single part of the menu. I think this was the first time he'd ever stepped behind the line."
"Mother sauces"
Soon after, Choi sent the actor to a week of intensive French culinary schooling, where Favreau sharpened his knife skills and learned how to make the "mother sauces": the five sauces crucial to fine cuisine, from Auguste Escoffier's classic cookbook "Le Guide Culinaire."
"I brought him into the kitchen, and he just kind of fit in. I threw him a couple tests, like a case of chives, or a case of onions, or peel two cases of avocados," Choi said. "Just to see where his mind and his situation and his abilities were and how interested he was in these things. He just attacked them. He really became a part of it."
But there's a big difference between being part of Roy Choi's team of cooks and playing a head chef onscreen. Favreau said the role was tough at first.
"The hardest challenge was looking and conducting myself, carrying myself like a chef, because Roy would be on me," Favreau said. "He just kept lecturing me about how I was holding my towel wrong. He says you can tell everything you know about a chef by how he holds a towel."
As Favreau shot key scenes at Hatfield's restaurant in Hollywood, Choi was there to make sure everything looked authentic, down to the knife tattoo Favreau sports on his arm in the film.
"It's like being a DJ. You're timing things, you're concentrating, you're in a flow. I tried to apply that mindset to what I was doing," Favreau said. "There's a tremendous amount of subtext that I had to feed into, and oftentimes Roy was just off camera talking me through what I'm thinking. So he was a great acting coach as well."
Instead of relying on film industry tricks like using fake food or spraying every dish with glycerin to hold up better while filming, Favreau and his crew used real ingredients. The cast and crew happily ate everything afterward. Choi even helped Favreau set up shots, as seen in this behind-the-scenes footage:
I asked Choi what it was like, his first time ever on a movie set, directing the same guy who directed the "Iron Man" movies.
"He gave me the space to just be myself, so once he gave me that space, I forgot that it was Jon Favreau, to be honest," Choi said. "All I cared about was the story, and all I cared about was being Jon's sous chef and making sure that he shines in this role. So in those moments, all I did was directing as I would in a kitchen."
The finished product is a film that's not just about life working in a restaurant, but a film that's also about how food moves people. In one scene, Favreau's character tells his son that a beignet is more than just a delicious treat: It's a food that inspires memory.
I asked the Favreau and Choi if they have a personal equivalent of that beignet, a food that always makes them feel nostalgic.
For Choi, it's a no brainer: Korean short ribs, known as kalbi:
"Everytime I eat kalbi, it brings me back to how I was raised and us as immigrants when I was a young kid. It was a little bit tough here in L.A. when they first came over, and so there were other families here, there wasn't a community yet, we weren't able to get jobs, things were kind of blocked off to us. So we had to create our own sub-economy within each other. The only way that we found a little bit of peace with each other was to go to the parks on the weekend, and we would all bring kalbi and barbecue, and that was kind of our time as Korean-Americans together with other families, just sharing in a little bit of the misery, I guess. That for me always brings back the journey to here and where I am right now."
For Favreau, his love of food is connected to places from his past:
"Honestly, my food memories are more connected to the cities that I've lived in. If I get off the plane, and I'm in Chicago, I go right to the Wieners Circle and get a red hot or a deep dish pizza. If I'm in New York, I have to get a slice of pizza from a real New York pizzeria. There's something about smelling food, smelling perfumes, that trigger subconscious connections with your memory, and emotions come out. I think that there is a genuine relationship that people have, certainly, when you feed people, and I see the pride that Roy and the other chefs I've met have, in what they serve and what it represents beyond just nourishment."
Favreau said he first began to understand that pride on the day Choi taught him how to make a Cuban pressed sandwich on a grill called a plancha. It's a moment they caught on film, and it pops up in the end credits of "Chef."
"He was just giving me my last minute pep talk, and I rolled camera on it. I thought it was nice for people to see what the relationship was like and who Roy was. ... He was sort of the soul behind the food in the movie," Favreau said. "To me, it's the best line in the whole movie. Roy says, 'Nothing exists, but this sandwich, and if you f--k this up, everything sucks in the world.' That is the key to being a chef. It's this myopic, obsessive view about this one task and doing it perfectly."
Firefighters call on past experience to combat San Diego fires
Ten major fires burning in San Diego County have already destroyed at least eight houses, a condo complex and two businesses and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from their homes.
Yesterday, firefighters found a badly burned body in a transient camp in Carlsbad. This is, of course, not the first time the region has battled with massive fires.
Cal Fire Captain Mike Mohler joins Take Two to talk about how the past has helped firefighters deal with current fires.
Energy Department to stop collecting nuclear waste fee
If you're paying extremely close attention to what you pay for electricity, you might notice a small change in your utility bill. Since 1983, the federal government has been charging a nuclear waste fee, but starting today, the Energy Department will no longer be collecting that money.
Ralph Vartabedian, reporter for the LA Times, joins the show to explain.
Debbie Reynolds' private memorabilia collection headed to auction
In a movie career spanning more than 60 years, Debbie Reynolds has starred in some legendary films... from "Singin' in the Rain", to her Oscar-nominated turn in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."
But it turns out she's not just a Hollywood star, she's also a Hollywood collector. And she's somewhat of a veteran memorabilia dealer at this point.
Reynolds began auctioning off costumes, props, and other Hollywood relics in 2011. Her sale of Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress from 1955's "The Seven Year Itch" brought in $4.6 million back then.
And once again, auction house Profiles in History is set to auction off items from her private memorabilia collection - and this time she's offering up the whole lot. The final pieces from her extensive collection, many of them her most treasured, will be offered up at the Debbie Reynolds dance studio in North Hollywood on May 17 and 18.
Highlights include:
- Harpo Marx's signature top hat and wig
- “Scarlett O’Hara's” pale peach bonnet from Gone With the Wind
- Charlie Chaplin's Signature Bowler Hat
- Elvis Presley’s Grand Piano From His Holmby Hills, California Mansion
- Orson Welles’ Mink Coat From Citizen Kane
- Personal out-take photos from the Star Wars films
Previews for ‘Debbie Reynolds—The Auction Finale’ are going on now at the Debbie Reynolds dance studio. Interested bidders can participate in person, by telephone, by absentee bids, or in real time online at ProfilesInHistory.com.
Take Two spoke to none other than Debbie Reynolds herself, and she described some of the pieces of Hollywood history to be offered and why she's decided to part with them.
Peanut Butter Wolf on new doc about Stones Throw Records
Maybe you've heard of Sub Pop records in Seattle?
They're one of the biggest indie record labels in the country. Famous for discovering artists like Nirvana and Soundgarden, they're the last stop before artists jump ship to bigger commercial labels.
We have our own version of Sub Pop here in Los Angeles. They're called Stones Throw Records and they've been one of the most influential labels in the indie hip hop scene over the past 15 years, releasing music from artists like Madlib and MF Doom.
"Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton" is a new documentary coming out about Stone's Throw:
Chris Manak, also known as Peanut Butter Wolf, is the founder and owner of the label. He joins Take Two to talk about forming the label, right here in Highland Park.
Loyal Japanese 'Godzilla' fans have doubts about US remake
Warner Brothers' latest iteration of the "Godzilla" franchise opens in U.S. theatres today.
The film won't appear in its native Japan until later this summer..., but fans of the colossal creature have had the chance to see the trailer. Let's just say they're not incredibly impressed with what they've seen so far,
The AP's Japan Correspondent Yuri Kageyama took to the streets of Tokyo to talk to Godzilla fans. She says some people there don't think this new Godzilla is a true monster — or Kaiju — like the original.
Even Haruo Nakajima, the actor who wore the original Godzilla suit, told Kageyama that his version of the monster was the best and only true version.
"It's not some cowboy movie," Nakajima told Kageyama. "Everyone asks me to play Godzilla again. My Godzilla was the best."
Not Your Grandma's Science Fair: Teens compete for top honors, prizes in Intel event
The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair began awarding prizes Friday morning to some of the 1,800 high school students from around the world who competed for top honors and about $5 million in prizes.
RELATED: Global science fair shows off teen potential - and classroom flaws
The fair, held at downtown L.A.'s Convention Center, brings science-loving teens from 70 different countries together under the sponsorship of tech giant Intel, and the nonprofit Society for Science and the Public.
"There's not a single vinegar volcano here for those of us who remember that," said Wendy Hawkins, the Executive Director of the Intel Foundation. "These kids have been scientists. They haven't been studying about science, they haven't been filling out bubbles on standardized tests, they've been tackling real problems."
Millions of students competed in regional feeder science fairs to make it to the final science fair. About two-thirds of the students are from the U.S., and there is about even representation between male and female entrants. Hawkins pointed out that young women actually win a disproportionately higher number of awards compared to their numbers in the competition.
One local award-winner, Shreya Ramayya of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School was developing new anti-malarial drugs to combat the problem in areas where the strain had become drug-resistant. Ramayya won an American Chemical Society Award and a scholarship from the University of Sciences in Philadelphia.
Another local rising star, Petra Grutzik, a senior at Redondo Union High School, won an award from the American Psychological Association for her research on a protein called FoxP2, which is found in human and songbird brains and can cause communication disorders in both.
Grutzik said it's not the prizes that made the experience so valuable, but a chance to learn from so many peers who have just as much passion for science as she does.
"It's so much fun to walk up to someone and just have a smile on your face because I just got the autograph from the Nobel Prize winner who invented the green fluorescent protein that I use in my project and to be surrounded by a hundred other people who are also fan-girls over Nobel laureates, it's just so much fun."