Lake Bell talks about balancing personal and professional life in Hollywood; Emergency room physicians say electronic music festivals should not be held on county-owned property; Gigmor is a new website for musicians seeking kindred spirits.
An emergency room doctor weighs in on EDM concerts
Earlier this month in Pomona, two young women died from suspected overdoses at an electronic dance music festival held at the Fairplex -- a property owned by Los Angeles County.
Despite those deaths, L.A. County supervisors agreed last week to allow another EDM festival to go on at that Pomona location over Halloween weekend. The festival’s promoter, Live Nation, did agree to cancel an EDM event that was going to take place there on Sept. 10, and they agreed to certain restrictions for the Halloween event. Among them: limiting attendance to 40,000 per day, and attendees will have to be at least 21 years old.
But last Friday, several L.A. emergency room doctors blasted the supervisors’ decision, saying these events are a threat to public health and safety. Among them was Dr. Brian Johnston, he’s chair of the emergency medicine department at White Memorial Medical Center.
Dr. Johnston spoke with The Frame’s John Horn.
Interview Highlights
Two women died just this month at Hard Summer at the Fairplex in Pomona — both under 21 and apparently died from drug overdoses. As an emergency room physician, what do you see as a doctor when you look at EDM concerts and kids who are coming in from there?
Well, I see a very perilous situation. When they were doing them in the [L.A. Memorial] Coliseum, we saw a lot of kids. I saw 16- and 18-year-old kids with heart attacks ... We had one who came in with a temperature of 108 [degrees], convulsing, destroyed all his skeletal muscles, he damaged his kidneys. He spent 28 days in the intensive care unit and was discharged on hemodialysis. And when I went to the hearings on raves in the Coliseum, there were parents there with kids who had suffered significant brain damage during those events.
What are the kinds of drugs these kids are taking and what are the symptoms of overdosing outside of high temperature?
Well, most of the kids are taking MDMA, methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, which is a sister compound to methamphetamine. They may be taking other things as well. It’s really hard to know, which makes it more difficult to treat them, but that’s the principal one. It has a reputation on the street as being not dangerous, and that’s not true.
Outside of elevated body temperature, what are the symptoms?
They can be having heart attacks, they can be severely dehydrated, they can have convulsions. When you combine that with ongoing, essentially aerobic exercise in a crowd of large numbers of people who are also stoned and not watching out for themselves or other people...
So do you believe why there’s something specific to EDM music and its concerts that makes for higher incidences of these kind of overdoses?
I don’t think the music is to blame. But I do think the venues are to blame. And I’m particularly concerned when local governments — be it at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, or the Coliseum or the Fairplex — lend their venues to these events.
You said in an L.A. Times interview: “The idea of our local government working with the promoters and generating revenue from these events is grotesque.”
I stand by that. I think that’s true.
The L.A. County supervisors are considering a moratorium on EDM festivals on county-owned properties like the fairgrounds in Pomona. Do you think that EDM festivals should be allowed on county property — period?
No, I would ban them. And the Board of Supervisors is concerned about the First Amendment rights of people who want to put these festivals on. I would say that the one legal admonition, the one limit on free speech is: “Don’t yell fire in a theater.” Because you would cause a stampede. I think what [they] are doing is filling the theater and then creating a stampede.
And I think we shouldn’t just count the [attendees] that die — that’s a relatively small number. But we should be looking at the kids who are damaged. Look at the kids who wind up with significant brain damage or loss of kidneys — they don’t make the headlines because they’re not dead.
We reached out to Supervisor Hilda Solis, whose district includes the fairgrounds, but she was unavailable today. She has said that the county is continuing to study whether to continue allowing raves at the fairgrounds.
Lake Bell on the challenges of navigating motherhood, a film career and being a workaholic
Lake Bell is probably best known as an actress, having appeared in the movies “It’s Complicated” and “What Happens in Vegas.” She currently stars opposite Owen Wilson in the new thriller, “No Escape,” and she also acts in the television series, “Childrens Hospital” and “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.”
But Bell is also a director. Her feature debut, “In a World,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival two years ago, and she also directs episodes of “Childrens Hospital.” She is currently developing a screen adaptation of the novel, “The Emperor’s Children.”
In “No Escape,” Bell plays Annie, the mother of two young children. Her family, with Owen Wilson playing the father, is caught in the middle of a violent coup in Thailand, and Bell’s character has to try to get everyone to safety. Bell wasn’t a mom when the film was shot, but she’s a new mother now — and her parenting instincts got a good test while making “No Escape.”
When Bell stopped by The Frame studios, we asked her about the impact that having a daughter has had on her approach to work, the rigorous ways in which she approaches directing, and the importance of family meetings.
Interview Highlights:
How has becoming a mother changed the way you work?
Before my daughter, I definitely was a workaholic. And I still am, and that's a part of the texture of who I am, but I had no idea that I would consider my daughter in every breath that I take. [laughs] That can be exhausting, certainly, and I understand that it's not even sustainable.
I'm only 10 months into being a mom and I'm still trying to navigate how to shift all of my priorities. Right now, they're unabashedly in the direction of my daughter. Like with this press tour, I'm away from her for the longest time that I've ever been, which is five days. I'm still wrestling with it, but yes, every call and every requirement definitely sift through the filter of, Will this take away time from my daughter? And/or: Will this be disruptive to her and her life, or will this enhance it?
So even if a movie like "No Escape" came along now, which would require you to leave the country and go to Thailand for a couple months, I suspect your answer would probably be different now.
I think that little blips of time are actually the most disruptive. Months are almost easier when you have a baby — Oh, we're all moving here for months. But then you have to consider your life partner as well, so my husband would have to up and leave as well. So you're right.
I have something called family meeting, which is what happens when there's anything difficult we have to discuss about the baby, scheduling, and all these new life changes. Like, "I'm feeling stressed, can we family meeting right now?" [laughs] It becomes a verb — I need to family meeting with you.
You're not only an actor, but a filmmaker as well. You've directed your first feature, "In A World," and I believe you're preparing to direct the adaptation of the Claire Messud novel, "The Emperor's Children." It's hard enough for any woman to become a director, and it's harder still for women who have children to become a director. Tell us a little bit about the progression of your career as a filmmaker and where you see yourself going in addition to directing episodes of TV shows like "Childrens Hospital."
Look, the subject of women in this industry is ever-evolving and there's no one answer, like This is how we get more lady filmmakers. But you're right, it's deeply complicated, mainly because women are also mothers, and I'm learning that firsthand now.
Already, to get a great project off the ground, it takes years. It just does. And I have a great respect for the process, which includes the writing process, the development process, the casting, the producing — all of it. Before you're even on set calling Action!, there's so much that goes into making great movies. After "In a World," I just wanted to respect that process, so I had a project that was an original work that a lot of people were telling me to push into production when it wasn't ready, and I just felt uncomfortable with that. At the end of the day, I'm not in a rush. [laughs]
I consider making movies a great privilege, and I also wanted to start a family. So those two things came at the same time, and there are only so many hours in the day. I often joke that women would do a lot better if we had clones of ourselves or we could exist in alternate realities simultaneously, or just not sleep. If I didn't sleep, that would really alleviate a lot of my problems, because I could just write through the night.
We were talking a couple days ago with David Wain and Rob Corddry about "Childrens Hospital," and we talked a little bit about your directing style. They said that you're incredibly well-prepared and you're very efficient. How would you describe your own approach to filmmaking and your relationship to actors and story?
That's nice to hear that they said that. [laughs] I am very academic with my preparation. I like to make a lot of lists, drawings, bird's-eye views of where the cameras will be placed, and some modest but effective storyboarding so that I have a very specific roadmap to follow.
At the end of the day, filmmaking is very chaotic and accidents happen all the time — you can lose a location or someone might not know their words. Whatever it is, it'll cost you time, so I like to have something to look at, because often everything blows up. [laughs]
I think preparation is vastly important for me, but also a deep respect for everybody on that set. That's the name of the game for me. I appreciate every person who is there hustling for the ship that I'm captaining, so I take it very seriously. I check in with everyone from craft service to the second [unit director] to my lead actor, all in the same way. I just want to make sure that everyone's happy, because if everybody ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
Listen to the audio to hear the full interview with Lake Bell
Gigmor: A growing social network for aspiring musicians
So what do the bands Journey and Kiss have in common? You can even add in Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and even Bruce Springsteen for extra credit. Give up? They’re all bands that found members through the classifieds — which, for the edification of you millennials, were small ads in the back of newspapers.
But times have changed, and if you want to find bandmates now you go to the Internet — likely Craigslist, because it’s free. However, if David Baird has his way, wannabes and once-weres can find like-minded souls with his 40,000 members at Gigmor.com.
Gigmor's founder describes the site as: “A directory that you can search based on music criteria, and increasingly we’re a booking engine that people are using to find talent for their venue or event.”
The idea is to let users upload interests, influences, location, level of proficiency and samples of their skills into a profile, which should make finding ska-influenced triangle players in the greater Des Moines area as simple as click-and-search. In many ways, it's like Myspace, but with more bells and whistles.
Baird recalls: “Myspace had between 12 and 15 million music and band profiles, which demonstrates the size of active market of musicians. The tech has evolved — Myspace didn’t have a matching tech, so we can take advantage of the mobile revolution and other advances to do something that’s even better.”
Tabitha Perez is a 21-year-old singer/songwriter from New Jersey who’s just recently signed up. She says the site's capacity for making contacts isn't its only great asset. "I’ve had not-so-great experiences through referrals," she says. "Some people don’t get it. Is Craigslist creepy? Sometimes."
"And being a girl is hard," Perez continues. "When you're a girl musician, lots of people are looking for more than to hear your voice. That was as struggle for me, so I’m really grateful that Gigmor exists now because it adds that level of professionalism that I was needing."
There are competitors out there. Myspace is still up-and-running, and there’s a site called ReverbNation. But Baird says his operation has talent-matching and community features others don’t. There’s even a plan to build some kind of metric that will rate band demos for club owners and give them a score.
And while it might be a cool idea on the nerd side of things, Baird admits it doesn’t sound all that rock and roll. “It's an art form," he says, "and while I’m a tech guy, I’m a big believer in human curation. All we want to do for buyers is filter out the 90 percent of solicitations that are just not relevant. They get hundreds of emails a day, and we can cut those down to the bands that fit their criteria.”
“The idea is fine, it’s all about the execution in my mind,” says Will Shubert, a bluegrass musician from Venice who plays a couple of gigs a month. He’s looked at the site and his only complaint is that, even with 40,000 members, when you spread them out all over the world, the talent pool can get a little shallow in your neck of the woods. Fortunately, Shubert says, "It should be able to work, especially here in Los Angeles where everyone’s a musician… or an actor.”
Finding more members — and also more funding — is the next step. Gigmor is one of the first companies on a new crowdfunding site called Startengine.com, where instead of getting a T-shirt or signed script for your money, you actually buy shares. And if that doesn’t work, Baird says they’ll just keep plugging away. Like the song says, it’s a long way to the top if you want to… crowd-source a social media startup.