Violinist Bing Wang (pictured) is one of the 120-plus L.A. Philharmonic musicians on a two-week tour of Asia; HBO's "The Jinx" is just the latest documentary to play a key role in a criminal case; hanging out with the dudes at the 14th annual celebration of "The Big Lebowski."
With instruments packed, the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel head for Asia
The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s concert last Friday at the Walt Disney Concert Hall featured John Adams’ film music-inspired composition, “City Noir,” along with Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. It was the final concert before the orchestra's March 16 departure for Asia that includes stops in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo.
While music director Gustavo Dudamel and the orchestra filled the hall with sound, the wide hallways backstage were lined with enormous metal cases, awaiting the instruments to be packed immediately after the concert.
Within hours, over 100 trunks — containing everything from piccolos to harps, kettle drums and double basses — will be muscled into a huge semi, and then driven to LAX to be loaded onto a cargo plane.
“These instrument cases will be loaded like a Jenga game and then put on a pallet,” says Chris Still, who plays second trumpet in the Philharmonic. “It’ll be weighed. It’ll be checked in. Every case has a specific number."
Still’s workday ended at intermission, so he got a head start loading his concert wardrobe into the trunk he’ll share with a few other musicians.
Anything that Still leaves out now won’t make the trip, so he’s double- and triple-checking everything in his wardrobe trunk. “Tail shirts, toothbrush, some snacks, extra socks, electric razor,” he says.
And then there's the trunk for his trumpet. Most instruments will travel between cities on a climate-controlled cargo plane, Still says, but not all of them.
“Some of the cellos that belong in this orchestra are worth more than the plane,” he says. “So those are hand-carried and never let out of the sight of the musicians.”
Prepping the tour
Taylor Saleeby, senior concert operations manager for the Philharmonic, says the tour party is 213 people — that number includes 123 musicians, along with management, staff, stage crew, spouses, children and about 25 patrons.
Saleeby’s been working on putting this tour together for a year now. The planning included an advance visit to all the tour stops. It all kicked into high gear months ago, when musicians filled out forms listing their specific travel needs.
“Some people need to sit on an aisle in an airplane,” Saleeby says. “Some people need a kosher meal. Some people can’t be near an elevator in a hotel room because they’re light sleepers and they need to be well rested for the concerts.”
Chris Ayzoukian, vice president of production for the Philharmonic, says the crew is under immense pressure, going from one city to the next, loading out of a performance and playing rehearsals in unfamiliar halls.
“It’s like in sports where you’re playing an away game where you come in, you shoot around for a little bit and there you go, you’re in front of thousands of people,” Ayzoukian says.
He says tours like this are sketched out years in advance. He’s already finalizing the contracts for next year’s tour, which will be a return to Europe. And he’s working on what comes after that.
Whalebone and other travel restrictions
A new challenge for touring orchestras is the stepped-up enforcement of prohibitions against transporting products made from endangered animals and plants — some of which are traditionally used in stringed instruments and bassoons.
“There are five materials specifically,” Saleeby says. “Brazilian rosewood, Monitor lizard, African ivory. Mother of pearl is a different classification that also needs to be documented. There’s also whalebone. Instruments that contain whalebone will not be allowed to re-enter the country, even if the whalebone was harvested many, many years ago.”
Some bows, Saleeby says, contain whalebone and skin from monitor lizards.
'Waiting for this day'
As the concert ends, the choral hall fills with musicians swiftly packing up their instruments and their performance wardrobes.
Violinist Bing Wang is the orchestra's associate concertmaster. As a Shanghai native she’s especially looking forward to the orchestra’s first-ever visit to mainland China. It’s also the orchestra’s first tour to Asia under Gustavo Dudamel.
“I’ve been waiting for this day and so have the Chinese audiences been waiting for this day," Wang says. "Who can resist Gustavo’s charisma? They just cannot wait for him to be there with his own band.”
Violinists have the option of taking their instruments on board but Wang is choosing to pack hers anyway.
“I had a minor accident in the past where the case fell out when someone opened the compartment, and I freaked out,” she recalls. “From then on, I almost feel safer having it travel in the trunk because having it fall out of the compartment was a horrific experience for me.”
The goal
Even with brisk sales of tickets and CDs, taking a big orchestra around the world is logistically and economically prohibitive. So why do it? What’s the goal of a tour like this?
“We assess the success of a tour in a couple of ways,” Ayzoukian says. “The most important way is artistically — has the orchestra grown? You can really sense it when the orchestra comes back and is playing a different way as an ensemble.”
Still says orchestra members learn a lot about each other during the tour — for better or worse.
“You learn who gets up at 5 a.m. to exercise, you learn who likes to be alone to read, you learn who eats a lot of sugar," Still says. "You know everything about these people by the end of the tour. It makes us a better orchestra."
This story has been updated.
'The Jinx' joins list of documentaries intervening in legal cases
Andrew Jarecki, director of HBO’s documentary series, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst," spoke to ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday about a scene in which Durst appears to admit to three killings in Sunday’s final episode of the series.
After appearing on a couple of network morning shows Monday, Jarecki and his co-producer, Marc Smerling, issued this statement:
Given that we are likely to be called as witnesses in any case law enforcement may decide to bring against Robert Durst, it is not appropriate for us to comment further on these pending matters.
Durst, an estranged member of a New York real estate dynasty, was arrested in New Orleans on Saturday in relation to the death of his friend, Susan Berman, in Los Angeles in 2000.
The developments in "The Jinx" series highlight the critical role that documentary producers and filmmakers in recent years have played in investigating unsolved cases, or helping free people who were wrongly convicted.
In the final episode of "The Jinx," Durst — who also is a suspect in the disappearance of his first wife and was acquitted of killing a neighbor in Texas — was heard seemingly confessing to the murders.
After finishing a videotaped interview for "The Jinx," Durst was recorded muttering to himself in a bathroom, apparently unaware that he was still wearing a wireless microphone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLqyFgz86RA
Durst will soon be brought to Los Angeles, where he has been charged with murder in the Berman case. His lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, told the Los Angeles Times:
There has been rumor, innuendo and speculation for a number of years, and now we’re going to get our day in court on this.
While it is far from clear what will happen to Durst in the Berman case, or in the disappearance of his first wife, Kathie Durst, "The Jinx" is the latest example of journalists and filmmakers intervening in legal cases.
"Serial"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O8Dzz8KzqQ
Most recently, Sarah Koenig, the host and co-producer of the podcast, “Serial,” helped a man convicted of murder in Maryland get a chance to appeal his case.
Adnan Syed is serving a life sentence for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend. The series — a spin-off of "This American Life" — re-examined Syed’s case and uncovered evidence that wasn't used in his defense. The deadline for Syed to file his arguments for appealing his conviction is March 23.
"The Thin Blue Line"
One of the first examples of a documentary affecting a legal case is “The Thin Blue Line,” Errol Morris’ landmark 1988 feature documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNL5A4D0G4g
“The Thin Blue Line” looked at the case of Randall Dale Adams, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering a Texas police officer. But Morris’ film suggested that witnesses in Adams’ trial committed perjury. Adams — who came within a few days of being executed — was released from prison about a year after the film came out, after serving 12 years for a murder he didn’t commit.
“Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX_GPuL6sWM
“Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” is one of a series of documentaries made about a killing in Arkansas. The 1996 film, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, examined the murder of three eight-year-old boys, and the teenagers convicted of killing them in what was alleged to be a Satanic crime. Each was sentenced to either death or life in prison. The “Paradise Lost” films highlighted problems with the forensic evidence used to convict the teens. In 2011, all three were released.
“Capturing the Friedmans”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGrD_vVE5bQ
Long before he directed “The Jinx,” Andrew Jarecki made a documentary called “Capturing the Friedmans.” The 2003 film profiled a New York man named Arnold Friedman, and his son, Jesse, who were convicted of child molestation in the 1980s. Arnold Friedman committed suicide in prison. Meanwhile, Jarecki maintained that Jesse, who pleaded guilty, was innocent. Jarecki used his research, long after the film was released, to make his case. Jesse Friedman was freed on parole in 2001 after serving 13 years. Jarecki is still fighting to clear Friedman’s name.
But Andrew Jarecki’s series about Robert Durst is different. In this case, the film could help bring charges against the subject of the series. It also raises questions about what information a filmmaker should or should not share with law enforcement officials, and when in the process that should happen.
Lebowski Fest: White Russians, bathrobes and bowling
If this weekend you noticed a preponderance of people in bowling shirts and bathrobes drinking White Russians and talking about the aesthetic qualities of rugs, don’t worry — it was just Lebowski Fest, the annual celebration of the Coen brothers classic, "The Big Lebowski."
What started as a one-off event 14 years ago has since grown into an industry unto itself. But what happens when a cult film starts to hit the mainstream?
For fans of the film, you either get it or you don’t. Kalif Fuller, dressed in bathrobe and a Dude t-shirt, is waiting at the doors of the Fountain Valley bowling alley two hours before it opens. When asked how much other Lebowski merchandise he owns, he confesses:
It's in the low eight or nines, but I've got a buddy who's got every single edition, DVD, shirts and posters, so he's in the high 80s.
By 8:30pm several hundred people have flooded inside, and those in costume really tie the room together. For non-fans, deciphering who’s who can be complicated. There are bath-robed unemployed stoners, scissor-wielding nihilists, ferrets, Vietnam vets and, in one case, a former TV western writer in an iron lung.
But this is not just an American thing. Tom Greenough is from Wales, and in his country a family member has made some of the movie's dialogue part of the official record.
My brother is a speech writer for the government and managed to sneak some Lebowski quotes into a speech that you’ll see on TV.
While the bowling alley where they shot the movie has been torn down, Lebowksi Fests are going strong with five or six events this year. They plan to expand to London in the fall. There’s even a store in New York called The Little Lebowski Shop, where owner Roy Preston — a good man, and thorough — says they sell pretty much everything movie related.
We have T-shirts, bumper stickers, [and] books on "The Big Lebowski." There are Lebowksi condoms… the Jesus character, Jesus condoms.”
Biff Bang Pow is a company in Simi Valley that's been making Lebowksi action figures for 10 years. And while they’ve just re-upped their deal to expand into things like Lebowski car shades, owner Jason Lenzi says you still have to be careful.
As a geek, I want to turn people on to stuff, tell your friends, but you don’t want it to go top five, because then it’s not as special.
Back at the event, Liz Flores says that for her first fest she came dressed as a toeless nihilist, but that proved too exhausting. So this year she’s Maude, the Dude’s special lady friend, in full Valkyrie mode. She shares the same concerns as Jason Lenzi.
I’m looking at the line, a lot of people not in costume, people here to be here, not dressed up. I’m not hardcore, but I love the movie so I want to be a part of it. If it gets too big it’s gonna ruin it.
William Russell started the fest in Kentucky in 2002. It’s run as a break-even enterprise and he’s taken steps to keep it a natural, zesty enterprise just for the fans — business aggression will not stand.
We’re not some faceless corporation. We’ve been approached by corporations and told them no. It was a powerful liquor company, they offered a lot of money, but it’s not about the money.
As for the Coen brothers, well, if they think it’s over the line, the only time Russell heard from them was when he asked if they’d sign off on a movie fan book. He remembers: “We approached them, they replied with one line: you have neither our blessing or our curse.”
Which went on to become the epigraph of the publication, proving, perhaps, that the Coen brothers also abide.