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2cde16fa7da515ecc2f6adb03035f47b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-17-mn-9989-story.html | Army Sergeant Is Cleared of All Charges of Sexual Abuse | Army Sergeant Is Cleared of All Charges of Sexual Abuse
An Army sergeant was cleared Monday of all charges in the latest court-martial linked to accusations of sexual misconduct at this military training base.
Judge Gregory Varo cleared Staff Sgt. George W. Blackley Jr. of charges that included failing to obey a general regulation, indecent assault, maltreatment and showing disrespect to a fellow noncomissioned officer.
Blackley, 34, of Spartanburg, S.C., pleaded not guilty to all charges. Neither he nor his civilian lawyer was immediately available to comment on the verdict.
Capt. Michael Formichelli, the lead prosecutor in the case, said Blackley’s actions had represented “an abuse of power and sexual depravity.”
Prosecutors accused Blackley of fondling a woman recruit’s breasts at least twice in 1995. The woman, then 18, testified against Blackley at the court-martial Monday.
Blackley denied the incident had occurred and said he had never met the woman. His lawyer argued that it was a case of one person’s word against another’s.
Blackley was also accused of making an indecent tongue gesture to a female officer earlier this year, but the defense argued that Blackley suffered from a bad case of chapped lips, which caused him to lick his lips often.
Blackley was the third sergeant to be court-martialed here as a result of an investigation into trainees’ complaints of abuse, assault and harassment. The Army says the investigation is not related to the rape and sexual harassment probe underway at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
In the other two courts-martial at Ft. Leonard Wood, two sergeants were sentenced to confinement and demoted after each pleaded guilty to charges ranging from assault and battery to misconduct.
Loren Taylor admitted he had consensual sex with recruits and Anthony Fore said he touched several trainees’ breasts. Army regulations forbid all sexual relationships between commanders and subordinates.
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d37444e98f04bdb862eb79637d6b29de | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-19-fo-10446-story.html | L.A. Really Is a Breadbasket | L.A. Really Is a Breadbasket
In response to “Department of New Jerkies” (Cookstuff, Dec. 8), I cannot stand by and watch our indigenous California foods constantly being attributed to other cultures. There is a pervasive attitude here in the Southland that there is no local culture, and that is not true.
When I was a child, I enjoyed our road trips to the edge of L.A., where the people that lived in those dome-shaped houses made of tules would sit by the roadside and sell rattlesnake, halibut, trout and beef jerkies. Salmon jerky would begin to appear only a short distance to the north.
During the 1970s, the Board of Health made a concerted and successful effort to rid our culture of all open-cooked foods. People’s memories are apparently very short, as most of this tradition has been forgotten. I have always maintained the tradition of making fish jerky in my home.
Although it is true that Japan and other countries share many of the same traditions we do, everything that a person is unfamiliar with is not necessarily from somewhere else.
Here is a brief history of foods from Southern California, off the top of my head:
Monte Cristo sandwich invented in the Coronado Hotel in San Diego; margarita invented at the Tail of the Cock in Los Angeles; burritos are indigenous to L.A. and spread from there; Caeser salad, invented by Cesar Cardini in Tijuana; Cobb salad invented in L.A.; Imperial Valley rolls are aptly named; chipotle pepper is a California rancho food.
Those of us that are from here have to put up with a constant humiliation from the newcomers who believe that there is nothing here save imports from other places. How can you ever belong to a place that has nothing to offer of its own?
IRA RUSSELL
Long Beach
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d83d4d876574cc9826825b32f5a74a9b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-21-ca-11174-story.html | Both Queen and Worker B | Both Queen and Worker B
“I’m just trying to stretch 15 minutes out to 20 minutes,” Toni Braxton says of her fame. The sultry soul singer has an endearing way of underplaying her enormous success, which long ago surpassed the 15-minute mark.
Braxton is one of the hottest female artists in the competitive pop galaxy. Her 1993 debut album (“Toni Braxton”) has sold an astonishing 10 million copies worldwide, and the follow-up album (“Secrets”), released in June, shattered any notions of a sophomore jinx.
“Secrets” sales have surpassed 2 million in the United States and continue briskly. With the 28-year-old vocalist having recently embarked on a tour with saxophonist Kenny G (the co-headliners appear at the Pond of Anaheim tonight), the album figures to have plenty of commercial life left.
Nevertheless, Braxton isn’t one to rest on her laurels, and she’s not about to take her good fortune for granted. Despite her hit albums and 10 Top 10 singles, she approaches her career in a refreshingly pragmatic and realistic manner.
“I have to work really, really hard when [the commercial success is] happening, because it may never happen again,” she said in a recent phone interview from a San Jose tour stop. “I feel very fortunate. . . . So many artists have had successful first albums, and I see them on these compilation CDs, and I go, ‘Wow. What ever happened to them?’ ”
Braxton’s success wasn’t quite overnight. She signed to Arista Records in 1990 as part of the Braxtons, a vocal quartet with three of her sisters. The group’s first single bombed, but vaunted R&B; producers Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds were so impressed with Braxton’s low, sensuous vocals--to say nothing of her fetching good looks--that they signed her to their LaFace Records label as a solo artist.
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It didn’t take long for Braxton to strike gold. Featured on the soundtrack album to the 1992 Eddie Murphy film “Boomerang,” “Give U My Heart” (a duet with Babyface) and “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” were both breakthrough hit singles for the up-and-coming vocalist.
But it was her debut album that established Braxton as a soulful chanteuse specializing in mournful, romantic ballads. “Best Friend,” an autobiographical song that she co-wrote for the album, is typically Braxton. It’s about a difficult breakup with a boyfriend that was made worse when her best friend immediately started dating him. Braxton believes her ability to convincingly convey the emotions involved in real romantic experience is a key reason her songs prove so enticing.
“When I wrote the song, it was therapeutic,” she says of “Best Friend.” “Sometimes when you write about things in your life, it makes you feel so much better when you share it with other people and let them know that it’s OK and that you’ve gone through the same thing they’ve gone through. That makes it real to them. It’s like, ‘She’s like us.’ It’s important to me that I don’t have this glass wall between me and my fans.”
The new album contains its share of moody ballads. But there are also tracks that place Braxton in a new light. “Come On Over Here” adds an upbeat dimension to her repertoire. “You’re Makin Me High,” the album’s funky first single, is an unabashedly erotic song capable of raising body temperatures. Braxton--who, as a girl in Severn, Md., wasn’t even allowed by her parents to listen to secular music until she was about 13--says she was initially uncomfortable singing some of the sexually charged lines in the latter song, which was written by Babyface and Bryce Wilson, her current beau.
“I gave my dad the CD single. He didn’t say anything for a few days. [Finally] I said, ‘What do you think about the song?’ . . . He said, ‘Well, it has a very nice beat.’ That’s all he said. I wasn’t going to ask anything else!” she said with a laugh.
Though she is known for her bewitching sexuality and seductive stage attire, Braxton in an interview comes across as appealingly down to earth. She says people are often surprised when they meet her.
“Most people don’t expect me to be as short as I am [5 foot 2],” she says. “They expect 5 foot 8 and bodacious! A lot of people say I look much younger in person, and that I look like a little kid. I have the young guys going, ‘How you doin’? Did anyone ever tell you look like Toni Braxton?’ ‘I go, ‘Oh, sometimes.’ ”
* Toni Braxton and Kenny G perform tonight at the Pond, 2695 Katella Ave., Anaheim. $30-$55. 8 p.m. (714) 704-2500.
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857dbecec8334b5d3c5314f05e655a6b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-27-ca-12818-story.html | Can Artists Run Their Own Spaces and Find ‘True.BLISS.’? | Can Artists Run Their Own Spaces and Find ‘True.BLISS.’?
Have you heard of Bliss? Not many people have--inside the art world or out. An alternative exhibition venue in a residential neighborhood in Pasadena, Bliss has been a well-kept secret these past nine years.
Artist Kenneth Riddle and a changing cast of cohorts, many of them recent graduates from Art Center College of Design, began to use the ordinary bungalow on North Michigan Avenue in 1987 as a place to show their own work. (Riddle lives in the house.) Frequented mostly by artists, their friends and those who heard of the place by word of mouth, Bliss has usually been open only on Sundays and its exhibitions have been held sporadically--often in the summer months, not so often in the winter, and every now and then in between.
Now Bliss is the subject of an exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Hollywood--and a rather odd exhibition it is. Curators Riddle, Andrea Bowers, Mike Mehring and LACE director Brian Karl have created a kind of testimonial dinner without the food.
“True.BLISS.” is an assembly of recent examples of work by four dozen artists whose principal connection to one another is that they have all shown in the Pasadena house. Eclectic is too mild a term of description for the array.
What makes the exhibition odd, though, is not the breadth of variety in the paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, computer animation and mixed-media works brought together for the show--art that also runs the gamut in terms of quality and interest. What’s unusual is the idea of one artist-run exhibition space (LACE) organizing a show in which the subject is the history of another artist-run exhibition space (Bliss).
The work at LACE does stand as evidence that these artists are among those who participated in past Bliss shows, and because the work is recently made we know these artists are still at it. (We also know they’re still working because a good number of them--Judie Bamber, Russell Crotty, Jacci Den Hartog, Sam Durant, Sally Elesby, Diana Thater and at least a dozen more--show with regularity in commercial galleries and museums in Los Angeles and elsewhere.)
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But, finally, it’s the nesting of one kind of artist-run space inside another, older kind of artist-run space that’s the show’s most interesting feature. “True.BLISS.” would have benefited from a more direct and challenging exploration of the differences.
LACE, as everyone in the art world knows, has been through tough times in the 1990s and has labored hard in the past year or so to revive itself. Many obvious factors had played their part in the downturn.
The mid-1980s exodus of galleries westward from downtown L.A.'s warehouse district, where LACE had been located, left the space isolated. The national recession that lingered so long in Southern California made always-scarce arts funds even scarcer. Indifferent internal leadership was damaging. And so on.
Less commented upon in diagnoses of past woes, however, has been the simple fact that the times they were a-changin’. LACE was an artist-run exhibition space of the old-fashioned, 1970s kind--and the 1970s were long gone.
In general, the format of nonprofit, artist-run exhibition spaces had been born for two intertwined reasons. They were designed to provide alternatives to, first, the commercial values of the new American art market of the 1960s and, second, to the status quo traditionalism of art museums.
By the end of the 1980s, though, strict traditionalism was gone from the museums and artist-run exhibition spaces had become feeders of new talent to a newly roaring market.
That is, they were feeders when artists eager for commercial venues weren’t simply ignoring offers of shows at alternative spaces.
The 1980s changed everything. In its aftermath, though, LACE didn’t change--except in rudimentary ways, like moving from the downtown warehouse district to pedestrian-friendly Hollywood Boulevard. One sign of the creakiness of LACE, with its cumbersome, museum-like trappings of membership rolls, exhibition committees, fund-raisers, newsletters and so on, was the emergence of a place like Bliss.
Quick on its feet, beholden to no one but its self-appointed curator (Riddle), marked by an enthusiastic spirit of “my father’s got a barn, there’s costumes in the attic, let’s put on a show!,” Bliss was of significance mainly because it represented a relatively small bunch of artists taking initiative on their own behalf. Which is, of course, the same artistic energy that had gotten LACE off the ground--in a very different way--in 1978.
In the small catalog to “True.BLISS.,” essayist Julie Joyce frets a bit about the limitations commerce can place on art and she cites the noncommercial atmosphere of Bliss as one of its more salient features. But I’m not so sure.
On my half-dozen or so visits to Bliss, I never saw any art that I would have been startled to find being shown in a commercial gallery. The subsequent commercial success (relatively speaking) of many of the participating artists is not surprising.
It’s true that some shows played off the specifically domestic setting for which the work was specially made, such as the time in 1989 when Jennifer Steinkamp projected computer-animated video images of outer space and a swirling vortex on the picture windows that flank the front door of the bungalow. (The format of Steinkamp’s projection also recalled a well-known 1970s video installation, in which Bill Viola projected gigantic images of his own face on the attic windows of his house in Syracuse, N.Y.) But judging from the “Bliss testimonial” catalog and the exhibition, shows like this seem to have been more the exception than the rule.
In fact, Bliss is partly interesting because it immediately preceded similarly inclined commercial venues, such as the original Thomas Solomon’s Garage, which opened in 1988 in a one-car garage in a West Hollywood alley. (A success, the gallery soon expanded into a two-car garage.) Eventually, artists themselves began opening such commercial spaces, like Food House and TRI, which were the source of much of the gallery energy of the early 1990s. The artists who showed at Bliss--most of them barely out of area art schools--often were shown at these commercial venues, too.
“True.BLISS.” would have been a stronger show if it had explored this phenomenon more provocatively, and if its documentary features had been more straightforward and complete. The catalog does feature a short essay on the post-art-school situation of artists today, written by artist and critic David A. Greene, and it’s as bracingly refreshing as a cold shower. (Read it, even if you don’t see the show.) But the exhibition, probably like most honorific endeavors, feels staid and polite.
Finally, though, the questions it raises seem to have more to do with places like LACE than with places like Bliss. The tired old castigations about the ostensible horrors of commerce in the vicinity of art need to be rethought. Foundation grants, program bureaucracies and all the rest do not have an exclusive claim on democratic ideals of freedom. In fact, if you want to turn your living room into an art gallery, they aren’t even necessary.
* LACE, 6522 Hollywood Blvd., (213) 957-1777, through Jan. 26. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
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294698febf69d77534d34d60a6f20b4c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-31-ca-14282-story.html | The Money’s Where the Action Is | The Money’s Where the Action Is
Another year, another record, with the 1996 domestic box office totaling $5.8 billion, almost 9% over 1995. Two special-effects-driven vehicles--"Independence Day” and “Twister"--dominated the year, heading a Top 10 list that, in contrast to 1995’s family-oriented mix, contained five big-budget action films.
The last 12 months have been a bit blockbuster-heavy, with 12 pictures passing the $100-million mark domestically, observed Tom Borys, senior vice president of development at the box-office tracking firm Entertainment Data Inc. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Jerry Maguire” look certain to go over in ’97, he said, and “Michael” is a contender as well.
“We’ve already tied the record of 12 $100-million pictures established in 1994,” Borys said. “Last year at this time we had only seven, though there were more doubles and triples, pictures grossing in the $50-[million] to $99-million range.”
The international market was also flush. Three films--"Independence Day,” “Twister” and “Mission: Impossible"--grossed more than $200 million abroad compared with only one (“Die Hard With a Vengeance”) last year. Bolstered by a host of new theaters, business was up 15% to 20% in Germany and the United Kingdom.
“The foreign market seems to be accepting a more varied menu of our films,” said Jeff Blake, president of Sony Pictures Releasing. “Not only action movies are doing well. From a creative point of view, we can turn out a broader slate of pictures if we’re convinced they’ll travel . . . that hits over here will be hits over there.”
Foreign revenues will be particularly significant for films such as Sylvester Stallone’s “Daylight,” the star-laden “Mars Attacks!” and for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Jingle All the Way,” which had disappointing domestic runs relative to their cost, in each case said to be in the $75-million to $80-million range.
The debate over stratospheric star salaries is still unresolved. Sharon Stone’s “Diabolique” and “Last Dance,” Bruce Willis’ “Last Man Standing” and Jim Carrey’s “The Cable Guy” (with a $60-million domestic gross his first starring vehicle to fall short of $100 million) made a strong case against them. But the investments paid off with Tom Cruise’s “Jerry Maguire” and “Mission: Impossible,” Schwarzenegger’s action-adventure “Eraser,” Mel Gibson’s “Ransom,” the Nicolas Cage-Sean Connery thriller “The Rock” and John Travolta’s “Broken Arrow,” “Phenomenon” and “Michael.”
Whether story or star power drives the market, studios continue to hedge their bets. “Since the star pool is limited, these salaries are the price of poker in this town,” said Wayne Lewellen, head of distribution at Paramount Pictures. “The bar has been raised if you’re playing the game.”
“The First Wives Club” proved to be the sleeper of the year, along with Mike Nichols’ “Cage aux Folles” remake “The Birdcage” and Eddie Murphy’s comeback film “The Nutty Professor,” the only comedies to land in the Top 10. Featuring veterans Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn, the movie was targeted on the long-ignored over-40 female audience, along with “Mother,” “One Fine Day,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces” and “The Evening Star.”
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The potential of an African American audience hungry for positive screen imagery was demonstrated by the $67 million taken in by “Waiting to Exhale,” which became something of a social phenomenon. Although “The Preacher’s Wife,” starring Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington, got off to a slow start, several low-budget niche films proved successful. The hip-hop “A Thin Line Between Love & Hate” ($34 million gross), the female heist movie “Set It Off” ($33 million) and ‘hood spoof “Don’t Be a Menace . . . " ($20 million) returned healthy profits.
Although the animated “Hunchback of Notre Dame” performed below expectations, films distributed by the Walt Disney Co. grossed more than $1 billion for the third straight year, an industry record. Trailing Disney in market share were Warner Bros., either 20th Century Fox or Paramount--the race is still too close to call--and Sony, Universal and MGM.
Cutting into profits were rising production and marketing costs, totaling an average $60 million per film. In addition to the ever-present fast-food tie-ins, 1996 saw a plane drag an “Independence Day” banner above Santa Monica Beach and “Mission: Impossible” star Tom Cruise’s likeness adorn an Apple desktop computer TV ad. Disney, however, backed off its plan to pepper the Hollywood sign with Dalmatian spots.
Since the price of scouting locations, paying support staff and buying media time doesn’t go down, the way to cut costs--and avoid financial disaster--is by cinematic volume control, executives said. Although the number of pictures rose by only seven from the previous year, to 417 from 410, it was still far too many for consumers to consume.
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Because of the need to open by today for Oscar consideration, the glut was particularly intense during the last couple of weeks.
“I’ve never seen so many exclusive engagements so late in the year,” said Tom Sherak, senior executive vice president at 20th Century Fox, eyeing a Christmas Day on which nine new pictures were released. “They can’t all survive . . . and people in New York and Los Angeles, where they open, need psychiatrists to know what to see. I’d like to think that fewer movies will be made down the road, but only time will tell.”
What lessons were learned in ’96?
“Though you can open up a movie any time of the year, some periods can only support one hit,” Blake said. “Though nearly everything that opened in November seemed to work, ‘The Birdcage’ in March and ‘The First Wives Club’ in September cornered the market.”
Lewellen found that adult-oriented films are a breed unto themselves when it comes to holiday time. “Historically, there have been some very good pictures of this type opening between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he recalled. “But, as an industry, we should recognize that it’s a major risk to open a ‘One Fine Day’ or a ‘My Fellow Americans’ before Christmas Day since people are consumed by shopping.”
Sherak, for his part, would advise against releasing a picture when an American Olympics is being staged. “This one became an American event--and that hurt business,” he said. “And because everything was live, instead of tape-delayed, people stayed home to watch. It didn’t harm ‘Independence Day’ very much, but other pictures were hurt and quickly replaced.”
Whether the market will continue expanding, Sherak said, is anyone’s guess. “Next year could be the biggest in the history of the business,” he said. “There are 12 ‘event’ films opening, and if they all work . . . oh my God. In any case, this is not an industry built on negativity. . . . It’s P.T. Barnum, the magic business, not brain surgery. It’s only in the arena of profitability that we have to worry.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Top Domestic Grossing Movies
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Title In Millions 1. “Independence Day"* $306.2 2. “Twister” 241.7 3. “Mission: Impossible” 180.9 4. “The Rock” 134.0 5. “The Nutty Professor” 128.8 6. “Ransom” * 124.6 7. “The Birdcage” 124.0 8. “A Time to Kill” 108.7 9. “Phenomenon"* 104.5 10. “First Wives Club” * 103.4
*--*
* Indicates movies still in theaters.
Source: Times Research
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f93e041f732e7fd03f6ff28d42d174af | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-31-mn-14172-story.html | William B. Walsh; Launched Project Hope in Hospital Ship | William B. Walsh; Launched Project Hope in Hospital Ship
William B. Walsh, a physician who founded the first peacetime floating hospital--which later became Project Hope, an international medical relief organization--has died. He was 76.
He died of cancer at his home in Bethesda, Md.
Walsh founded Project Hope, which stands for Health Opportunity for People Everywhere, in 1958 by convincing President Dwight D. Eisenhower to convert a Navy hospital ship, the Hope, for rendering medical aid to the world’s needy.
The presidential approval, plus $150 of Walsh’s own money, got the plans for remodeling the ship underway.
The ship sailed in 1960 from San Francisco to Indonesia, where it made its first stop at an island of 250,000 residents that had only two physicians. There were no medical facilities on the island.
Walsh got the idea for Project Hope from his World War II experiences in the Navy. He saw how people suffered during the fighting in the Pacific, and was one of the first physicians to treat Japanese civilians in Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb there.
The Hope was retired in 1974, but Project Hope now operates more than 45 health education and humanitarian assistance programs in more than 20 countries.
In 1996, officials said Project Hope’s expenditures totaled more than $110 million, with more than 90 cents of each donated dollar going to aid. Less than 10 cents of each dollar went to administrative and fund-raising costs, officials said.
Walsh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. He also was hailed by President Clinton, who applauded Walsh’s efforts “to teach Third World countries how to tend to their own needs.”
Walsh retired as Project Hope’s president and chief executive in 1992 and was succeeded by his son William B. Walsh Jr.
Another of his sons, John, also was an enthusiastic Project Hope recruit.
“One year we were milkmen and helped make milk out of seawater,” John Walsh recalled. “We had a reconstitution tank in the bottom of the ship where we desalinated the water. Then we had pasteurization and homogenization processes to make milk for the ship and the public health programs on shore.”
In addition to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the senior Walsh received a papal knighthood from Pope Paul VI, the French National Order of Merit and more than a dozen honorary degrees.
A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Walsh graduated from St. John’s University in 1940 and the Georgetown University medical school in 1943.
He is survived by his wife, Helen; three sons; a sister, and six grandchildren.
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be692a399cc379f839856bd41c9d6ee0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-01-ca-14352-story.html | James Woods Is So Good at Being Bad | James Woods Is So Good at Being Bad
James Woods has a wild craving for a cigar, and he has sent a publicist to the hotel suite of Alec Baldwin, his co-star in “Ghosts of Mississippi,” with this message: “Tell Alec . . . if he doesn’t have one I’ll come down and beat the [expletive] out of him.”
Woods is, of course, playing. But few people play nasty and threatening as well as Woods, an actor who has forged a memorable career out of evil, sleaze and moral conflict. With a gift for edgy volatility, and a pair of hard, shifty eyes, he has taken villainy to new levels of subtlety, from his psychotic cop killer in 1979’s “The Onion Field” and his Emmy-winning portrait of Roy Cohn in 1992’s “Citizen Cohn” to his low-life pimp in last year’s “Casino.”
Now Woods adds another classic creep to his collection, playing Byron De La Beckwith, the white-supremacist murderer of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, in “Ghosts of Mississippi.” The trial drama follows Assistant Dist. Atty. Bobby DeLaughter, played by Baldwin, as he brings Beckwith back to trial 31 years after the Evers shooting. Woods, now 49, donned masses of latex to play the seventysomething Beckwith, whose two 1964 trials ended in hung juries.
Woods is openly filled with contempt for Beckwith, known to his friends as “Dee-lay.” He says he declined the opportunity to meet the convicted killer, who is kept in a jail infirmary for his own protection. “This guy is scum, and I don’t want to meet scum,” he says. Woods, who was raised in Rhode Island, speaks at a clip, and he can be as brash and politically incorrect in person as he is on screen. He says he aggressively lobbied director Rob Reiner for the role, which Reiner originally meant for an actor in his 70s, like Paul Newman. Once he won Reiner over, during a meeting regarding another role in “Ghosts of Mississippi,” he then had to adjust to playing a man who speaks in a constant stream of racist slurs. “I say to my black friends, ‘Do you think everybody’s going to be [angry] at me?’ And they say, ‘No, they know why you’re doing it.’ ”
The daily presence on the set of Darrell and Reena Evers, Medgar Evers’ children, didn’t make it easier. “They are nice people, and I’m saying this horrible stuff. So in the beginning, we had this little speech where I said, ‘Look, I gotta do this.’ ” Beckwith’s Mississippi accent, which Woods perfected by watching tapes and working with an accent coach, helped him distance himself from the character. “I imagined I was speaking a foreign language.”
He says it helped that Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Myrlie Evers-Williams, Medgar’s widow, was prone to using the same slurs. “Whoopi says it more than I do, so I got off the hook. I said, ‘Shame on you,’ and she said, ‘I can do it!’ ”
Woods believes it’s important to play evil well, to make people emotionally aware of it. He says he won’t play “cliched or boring” heavies. “I’m so sick of evil being justified. People ask, ‘Why did Beckwith do it?’ Because he’s an evil [expletive]. You know? Period. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. He was a bad guy.”
Because Woods creates such convincing bad guys, audiences often assume he’s feeling the character’s feelings. In other words, to play Beckwith, he needed to get in touch with some inner racism. “You’re so busy building the character,” he says, “that you really don’t think about the things people think you’re thinking about. . . . You think about the walk, the mannerisms, the accent.” He says he tries to find his character’s rationale for evil. “Most bad guys don’t think they’re doing anything bad. Everybody rationalizes what he or she does.”
What he finds trying is playing the victim, he says. “I’ve done parts where I was always getting the [expletive] kicked out of me, and I thought, ‘I hate this.’ I think it’s hard on women in the business, because they’re always playing victims. All those TV movies--the wife is battered, or they have an abortion, or they lose a baby, or the baby is kidnapped. . . . They’re always in a position of being hurt in some way. It’s hard to do that all day long.”
Like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Mississippi Burning” and “A Time to Kill,” “Ghosts of Mississippi” is a story about racial justice that depends on a white hero. Despite the decades-long struggle of Myrlie Evers-Williams to retry Beckwith, the movie revolves around the radicalization of Baldwin’s DeLaughter, who divorces his racist wife as he becomes emotionally entangled in the Evers case. Will that stimulate criticism of “Ghosts of Mississippi,” as it did when “Mississippi Burning” was released in 1988?
“I think I’ll get criticized for doing it,” Reiner says, “but I would have gotten more criticism if I’d done the Medgar Evers story.” Evers, currently the chairwoman of the NAACP, says she supports the film entirely. “I see this as a beginning,” she says.
Woods says he doesn’t understand the criticism. “Why do people think civil rights is a black issue per se? It involves black people being oppressed, or not being elevated as much as other citizens, but certainly--and this is the point of the whole movie--in order for civil rights to be a realized American dream, white people have to change the way they behave in this country. And so this is a great story about that challenge. Bobby DeLaughter is presented as a guy who goes along with the status quo until he’s faced with this, and then suddenly he goes, ‘My God.’ It’s something he hasn’t dealt with in his own life. . . .
“By the way, they’re true stories. Are we supposed to censor ourselves? The D.A. was white. And he stepped up to the plate. He was a white guy who brought justice in a civil rights case involving a black victim.”
Woods grew up in Warwick, R.I., and studied political science with a scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the MIT Drama Workshop, and by his senior year he had appeared in many area productions. He left MIT just shy of graduation, and moved to New York in 1968, where he quickly found acting work off-Broadway. By the early 1970s, he was getting small movie roles, including a spot as Barbra Streisand’s boyfriend in “The Way We Were.” His breakthrough came in 1979 with “The Onion Field,” in which he was so good at being bad that he began winning bad-guy roles in movies such as “Eyewitness” and “Once Upon a Time in America.” While he has played the occasional nice/good guy, he has had to struggle against being typecast as the villain.
“If you have to be typed for anything, better for the bad guy than for anything else,” Woods says. “Because you get to do it forever, and they’re more intriguing parts.” His typecasting also protects him from the press, he says. “I play the edgy characters, and I think that keeps people on their toes. Which is good, because I’m not like that at all, but better that they should think I am and approach gingerly.”
The press didn’t approach particularly gingerly in the late 1980s, when Woods became tabloid fodder for what was called a “real-life ‘Fatal Attraction.’ ” People still identify Woods as the actor who was reportedly harassed by Sean Young, the actress with whom he’d had a fling during the filming of “The Boost.” At the time, Woods was engaged to Sarah Owen. Now, Woods has weathered an unpleasant divorce from Owen.
Woods is currently involved with Missy Krider, an actress recently featured on TV’s “Murder One.” “She’s a really nice person,” he says. “It’s one of the things about her that I really like, is how nice she is, how kind she is.” He says his current romantic life is hardly newsworthy. “I was doing a movie, and Missy was doing one at the same time, and she’d come to my house and try to make dinner, and we’d just be falling asleep. We have to get up again at 5:30 the next morning. And for her it’s worse, because girls have to go in earlier for makeup. It’s brutal.
“You don’t have time to be the bad boy everybody in the press wants you to be. I’m 49 years old. What, am I going to be running around to the nightclubs with a bunch of heroin addicts? Hardly.”
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e655479961091dbfc0d38f89a937b1d4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-01-fi-14382-story.html | Samsung Loses Attempt to Acquire Fokker | Samsung Loses Attempt to Acquire Fokker
Samsung of South Korea lost a chance to revive its failed bid to take over Dutch aircraft maker Fokker when other airplane makers rejected its offer to form a consortium. The three proposed partners--Hyundai, Hanjin and Daewoo--have notified the South Korean government that they will not join Samsung Aerospace Industries Ltd., the Trade Ministry said. Expectations that the rival South Korean companies would join hands had been small. Fokker shut down 90% of its operations and laid off 5,600 workers after its aircraft building operations went bankrupt in March.
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53c61ce718e7d5915aa1bf2e05bdcf0a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-09-mn-16749-story.html | Rep. Becerra’s Trip to Cuba Hits a Nerve | Rep. Becerra’s Trip to Cuba Hits a Nerve
The selection of Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles as chairman of the House Hispanic caucus Wednesday immediately sparked a controversy, as two Cuban American lawmakers angrily resigned from the group to protest the Democrat’s recent meeting with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana.
Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, both Republicans from South Florida, said that they were “personally insulted” by Becerra’s four-day trip to the island nation in December.
Before making the trip, Becerra had been campaigning to head the coalition of Latino lawmakers.
“He can travel anywhere he wants but when you assume a leadership position, you should take into account how your actions affect others,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “I guess he doesn’t care how his actions hurt others.”
Diaz-Balart said that he would not contribute membership dues to the caucus until Becerra “demonstrates minimal respect for the rights of Cubans to be free and calls for free elections for that oppressed island.”
The resignations leave the caucus with 17 members, all Democrats. In the past, the coalition generally found common ground among its Democratic and Republican members on issues such as immigration, welfare reform and English-only legislation. But U.S. policy toward Cuba has been a sensitive topic bubbling below the surface.
Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart are strong supporters of the U.S. boycott of Cuba, a policy coming under increasing scrutiny.
Becerra was on his way to China on Wednesday on a separate trip and could not be reached for comment. But aides said that he had attempted to hear from all sides during his tour of Cuba, everyone from government dissidents to Castro himself.
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c6ab17e8ac0a60a402dac37d6a6dae49 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-12-bk-17740-story.html | Short Book, Long Apology : A JOURNEY TO THE RIVERS: Justice for Serbia.<i> By Peter Handke</i> .<i> Viking: 83 pp., $17.95</i> | Short Book, Long Apology : A JOURNEY TO THE RIVERS: Justice for Serbia.<i> By Peter Handke</i> .<i> Viking: 83 pp., $17.95</i>
For all the divisions that became apparent between their nations once the former Yugoslavia descended into war in 1991, Western European and North American intellectuals were remarkably united in their responses to the catastrophe. In this way, as in so many others, the Croatian and Bosnian wars seem to have recapitulated the experience of the Spanish Civil War more than half a century earlier.
Then as now, the stances of the major outside powers were either frankly to side with the rebels (Franco’s Fascists in 1936; the Bosnian Serbs in 1992) or to remain formally neutral but interpreting that neutrality to mean that the government side (the Spanish Republicans; the authorities in Sarajevo) was to be prevented as much as possible from obtaining the weapons it needed to defend itself. All the while, most intellectuals in these same countries condemned their governments’ policies, taking sides in 1992 with Sarajevo as they had taken sides in 1936 with Madrid. And while there were, of course, no international brigades in Bosnia--perhaps it would have been better had there been--more than a few intellectuals made the dangerous trip to Sarajevo during the siege, and many more became active on Bosnia’s behalf at home.
To say that this was the position of the overwhelming majority of intellectuals is not to say that all writers and artists side with the Bosnian Republic any more than all had upheld the Republicans over Franco. T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound had, with varying degrees of ardor, favored the Fascists in 1936. In the early ‘90s, though a certain number remained neutral or expressed indifference, the list of actively pro-Serb intellectuals was short in every major country except Russia. In the West, probably the best known of these was the Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke. For him, what crimes the Serbs had committed they had been provoked into committing. Germany, he argued, was the real villain of the crisis, with its premature recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence.
As the war continued, Handke, by his own account, grew more infuriated by what he viewed as the way in which journalists in newspapers like Le Monde and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and his fellow writers had lined up against the Serbs. In the end, indignation turned to action, and Handke traveled to Serbia in the fall of 1995. The result is “A Journey to the Rivers,” a travelogue-cum-essay of 83 pages, whose subtitle, “Justice for Serbia,” makes its author’s ideological intentions plain enough.
When the book appeared in Germany last year, it caused a sensation. In the last year, Handke has exploited the ruckus to the fullest, engaging in endless polemics in the French and German press and lecturing and debating the book’s many critics (notably the German writer Peter Schneider, whom Handke singles out for attack in his text) in dozens of forums. As result, “A Journey to the Rivers” has acquired a renown that few travel books, particularly ones that are thin in their arguments and sparse in their reportage, ever receive. Handke’s assiduous self-promotion (he has largely put on hold his other writing to argue his pro-Serb case) and the fact that, given the pro-Bosnian stance of most other writers of Handke’s stature, there is something of a “man bites dog” quality to the book, doubtless help to explain the attention it has gotten.
And some explanation is certainly needed. For as the English translation, capably rendered by Scott Abbott, reveals, there is little in the book that is of much interest except that Handke wrote it and that it takes the Serb side. There is virtually no reporting and only the crudest sort of historical analysis. Although Handke seems disposed to believe the claim that the Serb secession from Croatia was absolutely justified, he never talked to a Croatian Serb leader, let alone attempted to visit the Krajina or Eastern Slavonia regions of Croatia on which the Serbs established their mini-state in 1991.
More astonishing, Handke, so full of opinions about the real nature of the Bosnian conflict about which, he states over and over again, he and not the various reporters who actually covered the war has the truest sense, declined to set foot in Bosnia itself.
Toward the end of “A Journey to the Rivers,” Handke does, indeed, go to the Serb-Bosnian border, but he chooses to stay on the east bank of the Drina River. When he gets there, for a moment his confidence in his view falters. “Isn’t it,” he asks himself, “finally irresponsible . . . to offer the small sufferings in Serbia--the bit of freezing there, the bit of loneliness, the trivialities like snowflakes, caps, cream cheese--while over the border a great suffering prevails, that of Sarajevo, of Tuzla, of Srebrenica, of Bihac, compared to which the Serbian boo-boos are nothing?”
“Yes” is the obvious answer, just as the question damns Handke’s contemptible book more effectively than any critic could possibly hope to do. But he believes, as he puts it, that by recording “certain trivialities,” he is paving the way for reconciliation far more importantly than by what he calls recording “the evil facts.”
It is an assertion to take the breath away, coming as it does at the end of the book. For it becomes clear (as it has not been throughout the book) that Handke appears to believe that his aimless meanderings through Serbia, his splenetic assertions about the foreign press and his ill-informed assertions about the mentality of the Serbs he encounters (whom he caricatures as surely as he defames the reporters whose work he so completely misrepresents) are actually acts of peacemaking.
The truth is that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, except presumably, as he does throughout much of the book, when he’s talking about himself. He came to Serbia knowing nothing about its complicated politics and, to judge by the book, left knowing no more.
The obscenity of his portrayal of the Bosnia he never deigned to visit is clear enough, but what is far sadder is that the people “A Journey to the Rivers” defames most terribly are the Serbs. For as recent events in Serbia have demonstrated, the Serb people are anything but the monolithic nationalists that Handke portrays them as being. Many opposed the war and despised the Milosevic government. But they are nowhere to be found in Handke’s book. He prefers his Serbs as he imagines them, not as they are.
Had Handke visited an opposition leader like Vesna Pesic or asked to have translated for him the broadcasts of the anti-government B-92 radio station, he would, of course, have discovered the complexity of what has been going on in Serbia throughout the war. Had he talked to any of the excellent foreign reporters he castigates in his book, they would certainly have explained just how nuanced and at odds with itself as well as with the outside world Serbia really is.
But since Handke chose not to inquire too deeply and to leave Serbia as he had come, a prisoner of the folkloric cliches about the place he had formed in irritation before he set out, he must have been astonished by the sight of young people demonstrating in the streets of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis against the Milosevic regime and the dark prison that Serbia has become.
Justice for Serbia? Myopia about Serbia is more like it.
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3de9f5569ddadf4a69150b5cb54f4576 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-12-ca-17773-story.html | In Brief | In Brief
A cool, sweet, cocktail-pop confection that never feels like a cream puff? Yes, mainly because singer Nina Persson has taken over half of the writing duties on the Swedish outfit’s third release, a suave mix of bachelor-pad quirkiness and earnest love songs. Demure yet sharp-shooting, Persson begs for lies on the almost criminally catchy “Lovefool,” and delivers a lilting version of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” that actually transcends its initial shock value. The Cardigans play Feb. 20 and 21 at the El Rey Theatre.
*
Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good), four stars (excellent).
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60d639e83f12c8e74fae753d577b6e38 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-14-fi-18349-story.html | Teleport to Buy Internet Provider Cerfnet | Teleport to Buy Internet Provider Cerfnet
Teleport Communications Group Inc., which is owned by a group of cable TV companies, said it will buy Internet service provider Cerfnet from General Atomics and its affiliates in a stock deal worth $66.4 million. Under the deal, New York-based Teleport would acquire General Atomics in exchange for 2.1 million of its Class A common shares. Based on Teleport’s closing price Friday of $31.625, the deal is valued at $66.4 million. General Atomics is a founding participant in the National Science Foundation Network, which later evolved into the Internet. Cerfnet, based in San Diego, is one of the oldest Internet providers, having been set up in 1989. It has 6,000 mainly corporate and professional users. Teleport’s shares gained 87.5 cents to close at $32.50 on Nasdaq.
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f8060064b8f550dea36122e095468aa6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-23-mn-21242-story.html | N.C. Jury Orders ABC to Pay $5.5 Million in Hidden-Camera Case | N.C. Jury Orders ABC to Pay $5.5 Million in Hidden-Camera Case
In a verdict that could limit undercover investigations by the nation’s journalists, a North Carolina jury Wednesday awarded Food Lion Inc. $5.5 million in punitive damages for an ABC News expose on how the grocery chain sold tainted meat and fish to unwary customers.
While the food company’s lawyer said the award “will be an effective reminder to ABC that it needs to follow the laws of this country,” ABC News President Roone Arledge said the decision “should trouble every American--especially every journalist.”
“If large corporations were allowed to stop hard-hitting investigative journalism, the American people would be the losers,” Arledge said.
At issue were the methods used for a Nov. 5, 1992, “PrimeTime Live” report charging that Food Lion employees were selling expired meat and washing chicken with bleach to destroy the smell. To get pictures for their story, ABC’s employees misrepresented themselves to apply for jobs at the stores and used tiny “lipstick” cameras hidden in wigs to film their surroundings.
Food Lion has repeatedly denied in public statements that its stores used unsanitary practices, but the company did not challenge the truthfulness of the broadcast in court. Instead, the chain of more than 1,100 food stores convinced the jury that the ABC staffers had committed fraud, trespassing and breach of loyalty by working as fake employees.
“We hope this jury award today will be an effective reminder to ABC that it needs to follow the laws of this country, and a warning to other news organizations that illegal conduct in the pursuit of sensational videotape will not be tolerated,” said Food Lion attorney Richard L. Wyatt.
Arledge said the network plans to appeal the award.
Mike Cavender, chairman of the Radio and Television News Directors Assn., said he expected some hesitation about the use of undercover reporters.
“It’s certainly an issue that will get more attention now from us, especially since in recent years, juries are less tolerant of these kinds of things from journalists,” he said.
The foreman of the jury, Gregory Mack, told reporters that the award was not intended to “handcuff the media” doing investigative work.
“The media has a right to bring in the news, but they have to watch what they do,” Mack said. “It’s like a football game. There are boundaries, and you have to make sure you don’t go outside the boundaries.”
Mike Wallace, longtime investigative television reporter with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” predicted that most journalists will continue to do investigations, but probably not the way ABC News did in this case.
“There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, wrong with the judicious and prudent use of hidden cameras,” he said. “But I think that you don’t lie. You don’t lie. It’s as simple as that. You want to do a story like that? You get a whistle-blower inside. You put a lipstick camera in his hair or her hair and you get the same pictures.”
As for undercover employees: “I can see the circumstance if there’s a nuclear explosion or a huge terrorist incident. But spoiled fish? No.” Wallace added.
Arledge said that for the “PrimeTime” expose on Food Lion, producers decided that a whistle-blower’s videotape could be suspect because there was a union challenge to the company at the time. “We needed our own pictures,” he said, so ABC employees committed the “minor transgression of falsifying a resume to get a job.”
Arledge also said that the story “concerned the very heart of the issue of what food people eat and was worthy of the highest traditions of crusading journalism.”
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483cc539ca4febaf3e242e8afd501328 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-24-ca-21479-story.html | A Heart-Tugger With a Czech Twist | A Heart-Tugger With a Czech Twist
At the beginning of the beguiling “Kolya,” a middle-aged bassist (Zdenek Sverak) is slyly lifting the skirt of his colleague with his bow as she’s singing “The Lord’s Prayer.” They are part of a quintet of musicians who perform at funerals at Prague’s vast Art Deco municipal crematory.
Sverak’s Louka is a happy-go-lucky, trim, middle-aged bachelor, once with the Czech Philharmonic, who lives in a picturesque garret with great views of the ancient heart of the city. His standard line, practiced mainly with married women, is to pick up a phone and say, “I suddenly felt lonely, and who do you think I thought of?” Deeply cynical about Czech society and politics, especially as Russian tanks commence rolling in at the advent of Czechoslovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution, Louka is determined not to take life too seriously.
Still, he does need a new car, which leads him to agree, for a price, to marry a pretty young Russian woman in order for her to gain Czech citizenship. But no sooner does the transaction take place than she’s off to Germany to join her lover, leaving Louka with her 5-year-old son, Kolya (Andrej Chalimon).
You can pretty much take it from there: the nonchalant Louka suddenly thrust with the responsibility for a bright, adorable child whom he comes to love like a son--and who calls him “Daddy.” We’ve seen this sure-fire, heart-tugging kind of comedy many times over, but Sverak, who also wrote the script, and his director-son Jan, really know how to give it that warm, ironic Mittel Europa charm and subtlety, with a dash of wry political satire.
“Kolya” is a crowd-pleaser like last year’s “Il Postino (The Postman),” and the Sveraks, whose “Elementary School” was a 1991 best foreign film Oscar nominee, play with your emotions with such finesse and shrewdness that you can only admire their skill and go along with them. They never go too far, and they know how to use the tumultuous time in which their story is set to give it edge and poignancy. Members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. apparently thought so too, awarding the film the Golden Globe for best foreign language film; “Kolya” is also the official Czech Oscar entry.
Chalimon is irresistible, and the deft Zdenek Sverak is surely going to score extra points with older audiences simply for showing how attractive a man at 55, silver-haired and bearded, can be. With the further pluses of luminous cinematography and a soaring, emotional score, “Kolya” can’t miss.
* MPAA rating: PG-13, for some sensuality. Times guidelines: The film has some lovemaking and mild sexual innuendo.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
‘Kolya’
Zdenek Sverak: Frantisek Louka
Andrej Chalimon: Kolya
Libuse Safrankova: Klara
A Miramax presentation. Director Jan Sverak. Producers Eric Abraham and Sverak. Screenplay Zdenek Sverak. Cinematographer Vladimir Smutny. Editor Alois Fisarek. Costumes Katerina Holla. Music Ondrej Soukup. Production designer Milos Kohout. Set designer Karel Vanasek. In Czech and Russian, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.
* Exclusively at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500; the Westside Pavilion, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202.
* ALL IN THE FAMILY
Star Zdenek Sverak and his director son Jan are happy collaborators. F22
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83787351b7d780d6d89cef9793d29102 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-26-mn-22388-story.html | Rep.'s Son Charged With Trafficking | Rep.'s Son Charged With Trafficking
The Drug Enforcement Administration arrested the son of Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego) earlier this month for allegedly flying an airplane loaded with more than 400 pounds of marijuana into a small airport near Boston.
Todd R. Cunningham, 27, a San Diego bartender, pleaded not guilty to marijuana trafficking and conspiracy to violate drug laws. Authorities said that on Jan. 17, they saw kilogram-size bricks of marijuana unloaded from a twin-engine plane at Lawrence Municipal Airport in North Andover, Mass.
Cunningham was released Wednesday after posting $25,000 cash bail.
His father, a four-term congressman, said he learned of the arrest Friday night, a week after it occurred, when informed by a reporter.
“As a parent, this is the most anguishing thing that can happen to you,” Cunningham said in a statement. “We love him. If the charges are true, we are disappointed, and he must face his responsibilities.”
Cunningham, a decorated combat pilot and flight instructor, is known in the House for his fiery rhetoric and strong stands on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He has knocked President Clinton for a “cavalier attitude” toward the problem.
“What we need from our policy leaders and law enforcement is a real war on drugs,” Cunningham said in a newspaper commentary last year. “We must get tough on drug dealers, fully fund the war on drugs, and stop drugs at the border.”
He noted that Congress passed a law restricting federal judges from ordering the early release of drug traffickers. “Those who would peddle destruction on our children must pay dearly,” he said.
A DEA agent told the Eagle Tribune newspaper in North Andover that Todd Cunningham is suspected of bringing the shipment from California or another Western state to sell to the two other arrested suspects, Christopher M. Guivas, 21, and Mark S. Ingalls, 23, both of Massachusetts. Cunningham denied that he flew the plane, police said.
Authorities said they received a tip that a marijuana shipment was arriving. DEA agents, state police and officers from the North Andover Police Department were staking out the landing strip when a small plane arrived about 6:45 p.m.
Two men left the craft and later returned with a third man and a van, officials said. Police said they saw the suspects unload boxes into the van. Officers pulled the vehicle over on Interstate 495 and discovered the marijuana, which was wrapped in plastic and boxed.
Randy Cunningham adopted Todd, who is his first wife’s child. The couple divorced in 1973, and Todd, 4 at the time, went to live with his mother in St. Louis.
In 1986, at age 17, he moved back to San Diego to live with Randy Cunningham, his second wife and their two daughters. At that time, the youth was admitted to a drug rehabilitation center for about 11 months. The congressman’s spokeswoman, Lori Gulakowski, said Todd Cunningham had not had any previous run-ins with the law.
Rep. Cunningham is a former Vietnam War combat pilot who won a Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, 15 Air Medals and the Purple Heart for his service. Before being elected to the House in 1990, he also worked as a “Top Gun” flight instructor at the Miramar Naval Air Station.
Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego contributed to this report.
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5685004e5139ba45b936a9f6f95fe3b1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-02-ca-24522-story.html | A MAN OF ‘ACTION!’ | A MAN OF ‘ACTION!’
The Dan Ireland story is pretty darn romantic. One of four children born into a middle-class Portland, Ore., family, he got bit by the movie bug at the age of 5 when his parents took him to the drive-in to see “Them!,” a horror film about killer ants. “I was in awe,” he recalls.
Ten years later, Ireland landed a job as an usher in a Vancouver theater and he never really left that world. Now, after three decades of working in movies in every imaginable capacity, he’s finally made it to the top of the hill. Ireland’s directorial debut, “The Whole Wide World,” was picked up for distribution by Sony Picture Classics last year at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently in limited release.
For the record:
12:00 AM, Feb. 09, 1997 FOR THE RECORD Los Angeles Times Sunday February 9, 1997 Home Edition Calendar Page 91 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 31 words Type of Material: Correction Wrong credit--A Film Clip last Sunday incorrectly stated that Dan Ireland produced the Bernard Rose film “Immortal Beloved.” Ireland served as executive co-producer with M.J. Peckos on Rose’s 1988 film “Paperhouse.”
The film, which Ireland also produced, stars Vincent D’Onofrio and Renee Zellweger in the story of Robert E. Howard, the Texas-born pulp writer who created “Conan the Barbarian,” and committed suicide in 1936 shortly after the death of his mother. Based on “One Who Walked Alone,” a book about Howard published in 1991 by Novalyne Price Ellis, a woman who dated the writer, the film was shot in Austin, Texas, in 1995 for $1.3 million.
“I starved for this film--I made probably $10,000 for five years’ work,” the 46-year-old director says by phone from Miami, where he’s doing promotion for the film.
Raised in Vancouver, Ireland traveled throughout British Columbia as a child, accompanying his father, who worked as a jukebox installer. “My father taught me to love music,” Ireland says, “but I discovered movies myself. By the time I was 8, I was seeing things like ‘Room at the Top’ and ‘The Apartment,’ and was obsessed--I had no idea, however, where it might lead. I never considered acting, for instance, because I had such a strong sense of myself as an audience member.”
Where it was to lead started to coalesce in 1965, when Ireland got that job as an usher at Vancouver’s Vogue Theater. “My first week on the job, I saw ‘Thunderball’ 150 times--and thus began my dissection of what a film is,” says Ireland, an autodidact who never attended film school.
After graduating from high school in 1967, Ireland began working as a manager for the Odeon Theater chain, where he was to remain for seven years. Itching to open his own independent theater where he could program films with a freer hand, he moved in 1975 to Seattle, where, he says, “I stumbled across this glorious old movie palace. I didn’t know a soul in Seattle, but me and my best friend from high school, Darryl McDonald, both had $5,000 saved up, so we moved down there and poured our money into restoring this old vacant theater.”
Not one to let any grass grow under his feet, Ireland gave himself a crash course in Seattle’s film community, and by the end of his first year in town, he’d also launched the Seattle International Film Festival, whch was presented under Ireland’d direction until 1986. Premiering the Paul Verhoeven film “Soldier of Orange” at the Festival of 1978, Ireland handled the U.S. sale of the film, and the following year launched I.M.A., an agency representing Dutch actors and directors in the U.S. which operated through 1981.
Offered a job as head of acquisitions for Vestron Pictures in 1986, Ireland moved to L.A., where he was pleasantly surprised that “two weeks after I got to Vestron, they were pointing me in the direction of producing, which is what I’d always wanted to do.”
Ireland’s first assignment--a rather daunting one--was to produce John Huston’s adaptation of the James Joyce short story “The Dead.”
“The idea of getting a film with John Huston off the ground was a dream for me, and working with him was a great experience,” recalls Ireland, who subsequently produced 14 more films for Vestron, among them Ken Russell’s “The Lair of the White Worm” and Bernard Rose’s “Immortal Beloved.”
“I’m enormously proud of some films I did for Vestron, but plenty of others convinced me I could do a better job of directing myself,” he says with a laugh. “And that’s when I started thinking about making my own films.”
Before getting down to business, Ireland had one more detour in store, and it took the form of a job as senior vice president of production for Cineville Inc. While Ireland was at Cineville, an actor named Benjamin Mouton, whom he had befriended during the making of the Ken Russell film “Whore,” gave him a copy of the Novalyne Price Ellis book.
“I read it and asked him if he was thinking of it as a film, and he told me a screenplay had already been written. He then introduced me to Michael Scott Myers who gave me a copy of his screenplay. The book is essentially a train-of-thought memoir, which is a difficult thing to adapt for the screen, and I didn’t see a movie in it. But I was fascinated by the characters, so I decided to help them as a producer.”
In fact, Ireland wound up working on the screenplay for the next four years with Myers, Mouton and actor D’Onofrio--who everyone agreed was the only person who could play Howard. By 1993, it had been decided that the film should be directed by Ireland, who would co-produce with Mouton.
“All this was going on while I was working at Cineville, but I was totally in the closet about it. You can’t say, ‘I’m here to run your production division, and by the way, I have a script'--it just doesn’t fly,” Ireland says with a laugh. “Then in 1994, the company had a really bad year and I was asked if I had any ideas about a new direction to take. I said, ‘Pay me $300 a week and produce my movie.’ They read the script and said it’s a deal.”
The making of the film was such a good experience for all involved that Ireland and D’Onofrio formed a production company that already has several projects in the works.
“The first thing we’re going to do is ‘Weaponsville,’ a black comedy Vincent and I will co-produce for director Tom de Cerchio. Vincent hasn’t yet decided on a script he wants to direct, but my next directing project will be ‘Mona,’ a romantic comedy written by Robert McCaskill that we haven’t cast yet but plan to shoot for $3 million next spring in New York. It’s kind of a variation on the ‘Jules and Jim’ story.
“There’s also a project I read while I was at Cineville that I’m dying to direct. It’s a thing written by James Still called ‘The Velocity of Gary,’ which is best described as the ‘Midnight Cowboy’ of 1990s. It’s an amazing story about a porno star, a hustler and a waitress in New York.
“I’m also rewriting a script by Peter Goldfinger called ‘Maddy,’ which is a sweet story about a guy who doesn’t know how charismatic he is. It’ll be produced by Steve Minsky, who found me. They saw my film and came to me! Isn’t that incredible?”
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50420aa46f1e17d7a9e534369519cd11 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-05-sp-25595-story.html | Baiul Is Fined for Speeding; Drunk-Driving Charge Dodged | Baiul Is Fined for Speeding; Drunk-Driving Charge Dodged
Oksana Baiul, the Olympic champion figure skater who was driving in a 97-mph car wreck on Jan. 12, escaped prosecution on a drunken-driving charge Tuesday and was fined $90 for speeding.
Baiul, a 19-year-old Ukrainian who lives in Simsbury, Conn., was admitted to an alcohol-education program and ordered to perform 25 hours of community service by Superior Court Judge Terence Sullivan in Hartford.
If she completes both, the drunken-driving charge will be dropped.
Baiul, who had also been charged with reckless driving in the single-car accident, pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of traveling unreasonably fast.
Baiul, who won her gold medal at Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994 at age 16, did not speak during a hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes. She had previously apologized and promised never again to drink and drive.
The judge said he couldn’t suspend Baiul’s driver’s license because a blood-alcohol test that showed her level at .16 was administered at the hospital where she was treated, rather than by police.
*
Ryan Kalich, a freshman who started all 13 games at guard for Florida’s national championship football team, faces misdemeanor charges for driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident after an early Sunday accident in which his car collided with one driven by an off-duty police officer in Gainesville, Fla.
*
Bernard Tapie, former government official, tycoon and deputy in the European Parliament, went to a Paris prison after losing his final appeal in a bribery conviction. He was found guilty of offering soccer players money to throw games to Olympique Marseille, the club he owned.
*
A trial date of March 31 was set for Cleveland Indian reliever Jose Mesa. Mesa is charged with with rape, assault and other charges related to a complaint by two women he met at a nightclub in Cleveland Dec. 22.
Baseball
Hideki Irabu, the Japanese pitcher attempting to become a free agent rather than sign with the San Diego Padres, promised his Japanese League team before they sent him to the Padres that he would accept any trade, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. . . . Umpires, players and owners didn’t achieve any breakthroughs during their six-hour meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., instead setting up a task force to examine their differences. The meetings were held to address the umpires’ disappointment with the suspension Roberto Alomar received for spitting at an umpire last season. . . . Outfielder Kevin Bass and the Angels have agreed to terms on a minor league contract. . . . Bob Hamelin homered twice to power Puerto Rico to a 7-4 victory over the Dominican Republic in the opener of the Caribbean Series at Hermosillo, Mexico. Mexico defeated Venezuela, 3-1, in the second game of the double round-robin format.
Miscellany
With Coach Dan Reeves in place and in charge of personnel decisions, Ken Herock has resigned as the Atlanta Falcons’ vice president of player personnel. . . . Brigham Young University linebacker Derik Stevenson, from Diamond Bar and awaiting sentencing on two misdemeanors involving a gun in Utah, withdrew from school.
Steffi Graf, who pulled out of the Pan Pacific Open final against 16-year-old Martina Hingis in Tokyo last weekend because of an injured knee, will not need surgery and may be able to play again in two weeks. . . . World-record holder Le Jingyi of China finished .05 of a second behind winner Leah Martindale of Barbados in the women’s 50-meter freestyle at a World Cup short-course swimming meet in Imperia, Italy. Martindale clocked 25.26 seconds. . . . Venus Lacy, a member of the 1996 USA women’s Olympic basketball team, was in serious but stable condition after a two-car collision that knocked her car through a plate-glass window in Ruston, La. . . . Manchester United, a finalist in The Football Association Cup three consecutive years, was eliminated from the competition this year with a 1-0 loss to Wimbledon in a fourth-round replay at London.
Names in the News
Olympic track gold medalist Michael Johnson became the first athlete to receive the Jesse Owens International Trophy Award for the second time. . . . Ipswich soccer midfielder Adam Tanner was suspended for three months by the English Football Assn. after testing positive for cocaine.
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65fdcdde70921983de64524bb857d9d6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-06-me-25996-story.html | An Invalid Equation | An Invalid Equation
Sen. Dianne Feinstein thinks it would be a good idea to have a joint U.S.-China commission that would trace “the evolution of human rights in both countries over the last 20 or 30 years.” On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that idea. It’s the example of what the commission might consider that is bothersome. The California Democrat suggests the panel “would point out the success and failures--both Tiananmen Square and Kent State.” Tiananmen and Kent State? The twinning of these two events implies a moral equivalency that does not exist.
Oppression in China is not a single event but part of a systematic and pervasive means of control that began decades before Tiananmen and continues to this day. The United States remains an imperfect society, but the rule of law does prevail.
At Kent State in 1970, badly trained National Guardsmen fired at and killed four anti-Vietnam War protesters. At Tiananmen Square in 1989 the regime used crushing force to kill hundreds who were peacefully challenging its claim to exercise total power over all of Chinese life.
Both incidents can be characterized as human rights abuses, but only in the sense that a fender scraped in a parking lot and a multi-fatality freeway crash are both auto accidents.
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f78a7f70cae62301ef71a3550939db91 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-11-me-27890-story.html | 10 Troubled Crossings | 10 Troubled Crossings
Midday can be deceptive at the worst intersection in Orange County.
Cars line up along Moulton Parkway and wait patiently for the light to turn green at Laguna Hills Drive. And on any quiet winter afternoon, barely a rude horn is sounded.
Come rush hour, though, this Dr. Jekyll of an otherwise normal street crossing can suddenly and fiendishly transform into a Mr. Hyde traffic jam--the kind that frays the nerves of most drivers and leaves county transportation officials scratching their heads over what to do about it.
“It’s bad,” said John Keene, an Aliso Viejo father whose 3 1/2-year-old daughter spends several days a week at Aliso Viejo Kindercare, a child-care center right at this corner. “It’s congested all the way; it backs way up.”
That’s why the intersection of Moulton Parkway and Laguna Hills Drive made Orange County’s list of the 10 most congested intersections, according to a report released Monday by the Orange County Transportation Authority.
Other intersections among the worst include three in Laguna Hills--Alicia Parkway at Paseo de Valencia; Los Alisos Boulevard at Paseo de Valencia; and Moulton Parkway at Alicia Parkway. Another is Katella Avenue at Magnolia Avenue at the north edge of Garden Grove.
“Surface streets play an important role in the overall transportation network of the county and intersections are kind of at the heart of that,” said OCTA spokesman John Standiford.
County officials rate the intersections much the way teachers rank students, Standiford said: with grades ranging from A to F.
An A signifies that an intersection is running at no greater than 60% of its vehicle capacity during peak hours, with free-flowing traffic and little or no delay.
An F, on the other hand, means that it’s running at 100% or more of capacity with “stop and go traffic” and “backups downstream,” according to OCTA.
Of the estimated 2,000 intersections in Orange County, according to the report, 34 received F ratings in 1996.
But some relief is in sight.
The good news, said is that about $34.5 million in Measure M funds has already been set aside to improve all but three of the worst intersections countywide.
“The reason we came to the board with this report was to highlight that something is being done about these intersections,” he said.
Planned improvements, some of which are already underway, include re-striping, traffic signal coordination, widening and adding turn pockets and bus turnouts.
“Cities are doing a commendable job at making this a priority and being very aggressive at improving intersections,” Standiford said.
The county’s three intersections that have not yet been funded for improvement are Fairview Street at MacArthur Boulevard in Santa Ana, Magnolia Street at Cerritos Avenue in Stanton and Brookhurst Street at Adams Avenue in Huntington Beach. All three are likely to be fixed in the next few years, Standiford said.
Those changes can’t be made fast enough for some commuters, such as the motorists reflecting recently on their experiences at Alicia Parkway and Paseo de Valencia--the county’s second-worst crossing.
“Sometimes it takes a lot of time to get out of this parking lot,” said Tom Sivcovich, a mail carrier who makes daily stops at Alicia Valencia Plaza at the corner. “I sit here and wait and wait and wait--it gets pretty backed up.”
Like many other commuters, Laguna Hills resident Sam Davis has learned to make the best of it.
“I don’t pay much attention,” said Davis, 48, a sales representative who spends lots of time in his car.
“It’s a fact of life; what are you going to do? Welcome to Orange County.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Car Cramps Thirty-four intersections in Orange County are congested beyond designed traffic load during morning and evening rush hours. Here are the intersections, listed with most congested first: RANK / INTERSECTION LOCATION
1. Moulton Parkway / Laguna Hills Drive, county
2. Alicia Parkway / Paseo de Valencia, Laguna Hills
3. Los Alisos Boulevard / Paseo de Valencia, Laguna Hills
4. Moulton Parkway / Alicia Parkway, Laguna Hills
5. katella Avenue / Magnolia Avenue, Garden Grove / Stanton
6. Jeffrey Road / Portola Parkway, county
7. Birch Street / Bristol Street, Newport Beach
8. Beach Boulevard / Artesia Boulevard, Buena Park
9. La Veta Avenue / Glassell Street, Orange
10. Laguna Canyon Road / El Toro Road, county
11. Bristol Street / 17th Street, Santa Ana
12. Brookhurst Street / Westminster Avenue, Garden Grove
13. Avenida de la Carlota / Paseo de Valencia, county
14. Fairview Street / Edinger Avenue, Santa Ana
15. Warner Avenue / Euclid Street,Fountain Valley
16. Paseo de Valencia / Laguna Hills Drive, Laguna Hills
17. Imperial Highway / La Palma Avenue, Anaheim
18. Oso Parkway / Cabot Road, Laguna Hills
19. Beach Boulevard / Orangethrope Avenue, Buena Park
20. El Toro Road / Trabuco Road, Lake Forest
21. Katella Avenue / Valley View Street, Cypress
22. Fairview Street / MacArthur Boulevard, Santa Ana
23. Main Street / Chapman Avenue, Orange
24. Pacific Coast Highway / Seal Beach Boulevard, Seal Beach
25. Pacific Coast Highway / Warner Avenue, Huntington Beach
26. Tustin Street / Santa Ana Canyon Road, Orange
27. Von Karman Avenue / Alton Parkway, Irvine
28. Moulton Parkway / Oso Parkway, Laguna Hills
29. Brookhurst Street / Warner Avenue, Fountain Valley 30. Irvine Boulevard / Newport Avenue, Tustin
31. Cerritos Avenue / Magnolia Street, Stanton
32. Moulton Parkway / El Toro Road, county
33. Brookhurst Street / Adams Avenue, Huntington Beach
34. Newport Boulevard / 17th Street, Newport Beach
Source: OCTA
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04bb56716f0ed1f3393993c2e9b4aaf4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-13-ca-28403-story.html | A New World | A New World
“This man endured what most men cannot even contemplate,” Sidney Poitier says of the indomitable South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Poitier stars as the man who became an international symbol of freedom in Showtime’s “Mandela and De Klerk,” which can be seen Sunday. Shot on location in South Africa last year, the docudrama chronicles Mandela’s harrowing years as a political prisoner to his election as leader of the new democratic nation in 1994.
Michael Caine plays the Afrikaner South African president, Frederik W. de Klerk, who ended the ban on the African National Congress in 1990 and negotiated Mandela’s release from prison after 27 years. Tina Lifford stars as Mandela’s wife, Winnie.
Poitier, 69, who won the best actor Academy Award for 1963’s “Lilies of the Field,” has appeared in such classic films as “The Defiant Ones” (for which he received his first Oscar nomination), “In the Heat of the Night” and “To Sir, With Love.” He also has directed films and in recent years has starred on television in such movies as “Separate but Equal,” “Children of the Dust” and “To Sir, With Love II.”
Question: Had you ever met Mandela during his U.S. visits?
Answer: When he was here, Mayor [Tom] Bradley had him at City Hall. I was asked to come. I am not a limelight seeker, so I was in the crowd at the back. As he was walking down through [the crowd], suddenly he stopped and saw me about seven deep behind the other people. He said, “Sidney!” I kind of raised my hand and nodded to him, just because I didn’t expect him to stop. He came through the crowd and he greeted me and we talked. Then I saw him again another time at USC.
Q: What made “Mandela and De Klerk” such a special project for you?
A: I was poised to do another picture on South Africa. I had promised someone, pending the outcome of the script, that I would be available for it. It was probably earmarked as a miniseries at that point. It was a very interesting script, but it wasn’t about Mandela. It was about apartheid. It was my feeling, and still is, you can’t dramatize apartheid. Apartheid has to be reflected through the lives of the people.
Sometime after [I turned it down], my agent said he would like to send a script to me. It was this script and it was what I wanted to play--meaning it was apartheid reflected through the life of a person and his compatriots and his time, so that you could get the feel of what his struggle was and the struggle of those he represented.
Q: You made “Cry, the Beloved Country” in South Africa in 1950. What was it like filming there then and going back in 1996?
A: The experience in South Africa in 1950 [made an impact]. I mean, it was stunning in its brutality. The law required that we live 26 miles outside the city [of Johannesburg]. They rented us a farm for that purpose. A car would come and get us in the morning and take us into Johannesburg to the studio. When we were done, we would get in the car and it would take us out of the city and back to the farm.
I was a fairly alert kid when I was that age, so I knew to expect that it would be different from where I came from, but I really wasn’t ready for the extent of it.
So when I went back, I went back with those impressions calcified in my memory. I found what had happened as the result of Nelson Mandela, the ANC and the whole struggle against apartheid was that the country had changed considerably in those 40 years between visits. Terrible prices were paid, but it was worth it from what I saw. I saw the birth of a new nation. I saw a people who had endured and took everything the evil forces of apartheid had designed for them and managed to persevere and win.
Q: What was the response from the South Africans about “Mandela” being filmed in the country?
A: Their response to my being there was, I think, from my exposure to it, terrific. There were some actors who weren’t particularly happy [laughs] that American actors were being brought in to play Mandela and Winnie, and that an English actor was being brought in to play De Klerk. All of that took place before I got there. When I got there, [the supporting roles] had been cast with South African actors. The American and English actors arrived and we went to work because it has been solved by then.
Q: This movie, though, was not officially authorized by Mandela.
A: [Mandela] had written his book [“Long Walk to Freedom”], and his book was optioned by [South African producer] Anant Singh. He was planning to do a movie on Mandela’s book. I don’t know that we stepped on his toes in any way, because South Africa is public domain in terms of drama and Mandela is in public domain. There are many, many approaches to South Africa and the life of Nelson Mandela. Singh had no legal recourse because we were using the Mandela who belongs to the world--the information that the world already has about his life.
Q: Did Mandela ever acknowledge the production while you were filming there?
A: Yes, he invited us--meaning my wife and my daughter and her friend and my assistant--to his offices in Capetown on a morning and called out the press very early. They all came and he introduced me to the press with a very complimentary introduction. I was a little embarrassed by this great man saying such nice things.
Q: Did meeting Mandela previously help you with his accent and his stiff gait?
A: Of course. In my research on him, I found that he had some difficulties with his walking and he had kind of a tilt to his walk. For his speech, since I have never spoken and I cannot speak his tribal tongue, I could only adopt his rhythmic patterns of certain words.
But I spent a great deal of time [during my research] looking into the values of the man, because that’s where he needs to be articulated on film.
Q: Pay-TV networks have a limited audience compared to commercial networks. Are you disappointed “Mandela” won’t be seen by a bigger audience?
A: It’s wonderful that cable is doing it. If it gets a 5 million viewership, that’s 5 million people who will see the flesh-and-blood life unfolding before their eyes.
See, cable knows they are in competition with the mainstream stuff. In order to be competitive, they know there are slices of the American public who will respond immediately to something that is dimensional, direct and honest about their culture and their lives. They look for it on mainstream network programming and they don’t see it. Ninety-five percent of what we see are images that do not give us a dimensional look at the African American culture.
BE THERE
“Mandela and De Klerk” can be seen Sunday at 8 p.m. on Showtime.
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f2f22f34ed52cb063e3f432807998a94 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-14-ca-28469-story.html | An Education for the Teacher in ‘Roses’ | An Education for the Teacher in ‘Roses’
“The Ramona Roses” are the girls at Ramona High School--more exactly the girls who educate Janet Borrus in East L.A. life. In this one-woman show at Theatre of Note, Borrus introduces us to her girls, but so superficial is her presentation that we never really know them as anything more than clever one-liners zipping through the air.
As a P.E. teacher who doesn’t quite know how to play softball or volleyball and must also teach a course in leadership, Borrus recounts her one year of fumbling around. Under Lee Costello’s direction, Borrus’ characterizations of six girls are well-defined and her jokes are well-timed (“I’m gonna have a baby, Miss. I’m 15 months pregnant. You just can’t tell cause I do sit-ups”), but Borrus hasn’t shaped the material into a cohesive, interesting package. Following chronological order without intriguing psychological or emotional development is hardly a good plot device.
Otherwise, it’s hard to tell what’s more frightening social commentary: teenage mothers getting condoms from their gym teacher or the thought of inexperienced and unprepared teachers floating around in the public educational system.
* “The Ramona Roses,” Theatre of Note, 1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 1. $10. (Benefit for Ramona High School, Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m., $12). (213) 856-8611.
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6b36760374c8ab659d1b16e81afd4671 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-15-ca-28827-story.html | A Radiant ‘Emma’ Finds Its Purpose | A Radiant ‘Emma’ Finds Its Purpose
Nope, not dead yet. The homage to Jane Austen in movies and television continues on the A&E; network with “Emma,” Sunday’s swell, nifty rendering of a novel that remains cheery almost throughout, despite its confluence of misunderstandings and miscalculations that lead to fiascoes.
But minor ones, and none irreparable, in this journey to the English countryside of just under two centuries ago for a breezy, feel-good visit with the same genteel, privileged set doted on in last year’s “Emma” on the big screen.
This “Emma” has been adapted for TV by Andrew Davies and produced by Sue Birtwistle (the duo behind 1996’s splendid “Pride and Prejudice” on A&E;). And it’s very nicely and wittily done, indeed, driven by a radiant Kate Beckinsale as Emma Woodhouse, Austen’s indulged but thoroughly appealing 21-year-old heroine, who, deep into the story, says in frustration after her constant matchmaking efforts go awry, “I seemed to have been doomed to blindness.”
Not quite, for as Cher does in the movie “Clueless” (which was loosely based on the Austen novel and was transformed this season into an ABC sitcom), Emma ultimately achieves clarity.
But only after some sightless blunders that begin with her attempt to match her innocent young protegee, Harriet Smith (Samantha Morton), with Mr. Elton (Dominic Rowan), a handsome local cleric who exploits a “God-given opportunity” while riding in a carriage to throw himself at the astonished Emma.
It seems that Emma has misconstrued Elton’s interest in her as interest in Harriet, who later misconstrues kindness toward her by wealthy landowner George Knightley (Mark Strong) as romantic interest. That misjudgment forces Emma to finally confront her own repressed feelings for the older Knightley, her reproachful critic and the wisest soul in this hierarchy of characters.
The cast is very good. And although Beckinsale hasn’t much romantic chemistry with Strong at a point late in the story when she should have, she is irresistible and more effortless in this role than Gwyneth Paltrow was in the theatrical movie. Her tender bud of an Emma is so endearing a snob and meddler that begrudging her these few mismanaged, if well-intentioned people projects is impossible. Rarely is a character so often likable while being so often wrong.
* “Emma” can be seen at 5 and 9 p.m. Sunday on cable’s A&E.;
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4e017d1035a51cbce5998a1a8ff7c2ac | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-17-mn-29690-story.html | Ex-Officials in Mexico Tied to Drug Lord, Report Asserts | Ex-Officials in Mexico Tied to Drug Lord, Report Asserts
U.S. investigators tracing more than $9 million they seized from the Texas bank accounts of a former Mexican deputy attorney general in 1995 have linked him and the family of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to a Mexican drug trafficker, a Mexico City magazine reported Sunday.
The muckraking news weekly Proceso said it based its report on official U.S. government documents detailing witnesses’ testimony in a U.S. civil case pending in Houston against former Deputy Atty. Gen. Mario Ruiz Massieu. Proceso said the documents will be among the evidence presented to a federal grand jury in Texas beginning March 10.
Salinas’ Mexico City lawyer was quoted Sunday as saying the report was “absolutely absurd.”
The magazine gave no indication whether the documents had been filed in U.S. federal court, and their authenticity could not be independently verified Sunday.
If authentic, however, they would be the first indication of direct links between Ruiz Massieu and Raul Salinas de Gortari--the former president’s elder brother--and drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego, who was sentenced to life in prison in Houston last month for smuggling tons of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. and laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds through the U.S. and Mexican economies.
Witnesses testifying against Garcia Abrego during his U.S. federal trial said he had paid millions of dollars in bribes to Mexican prosecutors and police commanders to protect his Gulf cartel’s drug-smuggling operation--corruption of the kind that U.S. officials say helps Mexico’s drug cartels supply up to three-fourths of the South American cocaine sold in the U.S.
But none of those witnesses tied Garcia Abrego to Ruiz Massieu, Raul Salinas or other top present and former Mexican officials. And as recently as last month, Tony Canales, the Texas defense attorney who represents both Garcia Abrego and Ruiz Massieu, told reporters he knew of no evidence linking Garcia Abrego to either Ruiz Massieu or Raul Salinas.
Ruiz Massieu, who has denied any links to the drug trade, does not face criminal charges in the Texas case. He is charged in Mexico with obstructing justice and illegal enrichment and is under house arrest in New Jersey pending an extradition case there.
*
One of the documents published here Sunday cited six meetings between 1990 and 1994 in which the former Mexican prosecutor allegedly received drug money. Proceso said the document is the Spanish-language translation of detailed answers to questions that attorney Canales posed to the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the civil case against Ruiz Massieu.
At one of those meetings in 1994, Proceso said, the documents show that Garcia Abrego was present when Ruiz Massieu allegedly got $2 million to guarantee the drug lord’s freedom. It said Raul Salinas attended another meeting with Ruiz Massieu and drug traffickers at the elder Salinas’ ranch in which $4 million in drug money was paid.
Raul Salinas has been jailed for the past two years on charges he masterminded the murder of a top ruling party official--Ruiz Massieu’s brother. He also was charged with illegal enrichment after investigators linked him to more than $100 million in cash in European bank accounts. He has denied all the charges, and his lawyers insist he has no links to Mexico’s multibillion-dollar drug trade.
Former President Salinas, who is living in self-exile in Ireland, has not been charged with any wrongdoing. The former president denied any ties to drug trafficking in a recent interview with Reforma newspaper, which reported Proceso’s findings in detail Sunday.
But Proceso published what it said were two additional U.S. federal documents that it claimed implicated not only the ex-president but also his father in the drug trade.
Proceso said the additional documents were heavily censored transcripts of FBI interviews with two witnesses, one of them Magdalena Ruiz Pelayo, who Proceso said was interviewed in a U.S. federal prison. The magazine quoted her as telling FBI agents that she personally delivered drug money to Ruiz Massieu and knew of links between drug kingpins and the Salinas brothers’ father, Raul Salinas Lozano.
The magazine said a second witness, identified by Proceso only as “TC,” told U.S. investigators that Garcia Abrego was paying at least $15 million a month in bribes for protection of his drug shipments.
The same witness reportedly described several social gatherings that included not only Ruiz Massieu, Garcia Abrego and Raul Salinas but also the former president during his years in office, from December 1988 to December 1994.
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2962d77ceef22bd4ac4e6686628e0c1b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-23-mn-31595-story.html | Elohim City on Extremists’ Underground Railroad | Elohim City on Extremists’ Underground Railroad
Up seven miles of bad road, past no-trespassing signs nailed to blackjack oaks, sits a major stop on the right-wing extremists’ underground railroad.
It looks more like a low-rent trailer park. Ramshackle mobile homes and polyurethane huts sit willy-nilly on this Ozark mountain, hidden by woods and surrounded by the crackle of gunfire.
It’s called Elohim City, and the name of the armed, all-white enclave of 80 or so religious zealots keeps popping up in criminal investigations.
Four of five white supremacists indicted recently on charges of conspiring to rob seven Midwestern banks have visited or lived there. And two weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh called the Oklahoma compound and spoke for nearly two minutes, phone records show.
Elohim City’s leader is Robert G. Millar, a former Mennonite who brought his flock here 24 years ago. He is 71 and favors kilts and clerical collars. His followers, most of whom are related to him by birth or marriage, call him “Grandpa.” Elohim (pronounced eh-loh-HEEM) is a Hebrew word for God.
Millar is considered one of the most important leaders of America’s Christian Identity movement, a theology common to an assortment of right-wing extremist groups.
The movement teaches that its followers are at war with the U.S. government, that racial minorities are subhuman “mud people,” that Jews are the offspring of Satan and that a “New World Order” endangers freedom.
“It is a religion on steroids,” said Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists through its Klanwatch Project.
Adherents include groups such as the Aryan Nations and the now-defunct Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, or CSA, whose members have been implicated in robbery, terrorism and murder.
People seeking the company of like-minded zealots travel between Elohim City and other extremist encampments, including the Hayden Lake, Idaho, compound of Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler and the Pennsylvania farm of Aryan Nations leader Mark Thomas.
Thomas is one of the four men indicted in the bank robbery case to have visited Elohim City. Two men who already have been convicted of committing some of the robberies took shelter at the compound during the spree, according to court testimony.
The robbers’ intent, prosecutors say, was to finance a war against the government.
Elohim City itself remains unscathed. Millar has never been arrested, and his compound has never been raided.
In the 1980s, residents bearing semiautomatic weapons faced down federal and local law enforcement officers trying to enforce a court order in a custody fight. The officers left rather than risk gunfire. After the Oklahoma City bombing, as rumors spread that the compound would be raided by federal agents, residents were said to have aimed their guns at planes overhead.
Millar is the most powerful person in the Christian Identity movement, said Kerry Noble, a former CSA leader who served more than two years in prison on racketeering and weapons charges after a three-day standoff with federal agents in 1985. Noble said he remains in contact with people in the movement, although he has abandoned its teachings and now advises law enforcement organizations about extremist groups.
“He’s got charisma,” Noble said of Millar. “He’s got money coming from somewhere. He’s respected. He’s well known. Some people say he has spiritual powers.”
Millar moved to the United States in the 1950s from Kitchener, Ontario, after God said, “Thou shalt go to the state called Oklahoma,” Millar told Associated Press.
He followed God’s voice to Oklahoma City, he said, then to Baltimore, where he ran a youth camp. In 1973, Millar returned to Oklahoma with about 18 family members and bought the property they now live on. Today, several of Millar’s eight children and more than 30 grandchildren live there.
According to Noble, Elohim City was not armed until after 1982, when Millar met Noble and CSA founder James Ellison. Until then, Noble said, Millar “hadn’t entertained the concept of a paramilitary outfit of God . . . that God would use a group to bring forth judgment.”
Today, Ellison lives at Elohim City and is married to one of Millar’s granddaughters. Millar “believes that Ellison is the one to lead the right-wing movement. And Robert sees himself as the power behind the throne,” Noble said.
On a recent cold winter day, the children of Elohim City played outside, some barefoot, their faces dirty, the girls’ hand-me-down dresses several sizes too large, with ripped-out hems. Their parents stared angrily and refused to be interviewed. Only Millar and his second-oldest son, John, would speak.
Millar allowed an AP reporter and photographer to attend one of Elohim City’s daily religious services and visit the home of Millar’s youngest son. Then he cut the visit short, saying his flock was fed up with the media.
The compound’s chapel, a bubble of hardened polyurethane decorated with the Confederate and Christian flags, housed a service punctuated by dancing, salutes and lyrics announcing that the time has come to “raise our swords to fight.” A young man wore a shoulder holster containing a semiautomatic gun.
Millar said Elohim City operates a small sawmill and trucking enterprise on its property. Millar’s son Bruce owns a fleet of trucks that he leases to National Carriers Inc., a Kansas-based hauling company that transports general commodities and hazardous materials.
Robert Millar said his congregation just wants to be left alone to practice its religious beliefs of self-denial, hard work and simplicity: “I am just repulsed by people who link white supremacists to Christian Identity.”
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1d83dffc498cd22a9a144c7471fbab55 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-01-mn-33700-story.html | David Doyle; Actor on ‘Charlie’s Angels’ | David Doyle; Actor on ‘Charlie’s Angels’
David Doyle, a popular character actor easily recognized nationwide after his long-running role as Bosley on “Charlie’s Angels,” has died. He was 67.
Doyle, who lived in Encino, died Wednesday night of a heart attack, his agent Ginger Lawrence said Friday.
For the past several years, Doyle had been the voice of the grandfather in the Nickelodeon cartoon series “Rug Rats.” He had recently completed episodes of the television series “Lois and Clark” and “Sunset Beach.”
But the versatile actor is perhaps best remembered as John Bosley, assistant to the mysterious “Charlie,” who relayed the boss’ messages to three beautiful “Angel” detectives. Although the detectives changed, Doyle remained with the hit series for its entire run from 1976 to 1981.
Adept at either comedy or drama, Doyle found steady work in television and motion pictures throughout his long career. But he clearly preferred working in live theater.
“It’s where I began,” he told The Times in 1993. “And theater is a whole other experience. It’s the immediacy an actor appreciates: You don’t have to wait a year for the response. You get it instantly, either in silence or laughs. And you get to show the entire spectrum of a character, do the whole story. It’s a full, complete quilt--much more fulfilling than piecework.”
At the time of that interview, Doyle was directing a West Coast premiere of “I Was Dancing,” a six-character play he had appeared in on Broadway three decades earlier. The play was staged at the Richard Basehart Playhouse in Woodland Hills, where Doyle often performed and had received critical acclaim in A.R. Gurney’s “The Perfect Party” in 1988.
Born in Omaha, Neb., Doyle began acting when he was 10 in a community theater production of “Life With Father.” After prep school in Wisconsin, he attended the University of Nebraska, and then honed his craft at Virginia’s Barter Theater. In 1950, he joined the Neighborhood Playhouse troupe in New York.
After four years in the Navy, Doyle returned to New York and made his Broadway debut replacing Walter Matthau in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” He met his wife, Anne, when both were appearing in “South Pacific” at New York’s Lincoln Center.
Doyle moved to Los Angeles in 1972, noting dryly: “It became obvious I had to come west in order to work.”
He made his motion picture debut in 1963 in “Act One,” and later added such credits as “Love or Money,” “No Way to Treat a Lady,” “Paper Lion,” “Vigilante Force,” “Capricorn One,” “Coogan’s Bluff” and “The Comeback.”
On the small screen, he was in several television movies, including “Blood Sport,” “Archie,” “The Invisible Woman,” “Wait Till Your Mother Gets Home” and “Ghost Writer.”
He starred in the mini-series “The Blue and the Gray,” and appeared in such series as “Murder, She Wrote,” “Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island” and “Hart to Hart.”
Doyle and his wife had been active supporters of Retinitis Pigmentosa International.
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46d2d6319b099689eb183d83ecad773d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-02-bk-33853-story.html | An Impenetrable Man : AMERICAN SPHINX: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.<i> By Joseph J. Ellis</i> .<i> Alfred A. Knopf: 365 pp., $26</i> | An Impenetrable Man : AMERICAN SPHINX: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.<i> By Joseph J. Ellis</i> .<i> Alfred A. Knopf: 365 pp., $26</i>
Over the past 25 years historians and pundits have attacked Thomas Jefferson on several fronts. They have criticized his stance on issues ranging from civil liberties to states’ rights to the French Revolution and have, above all, castigated him for his pseudo-scientific racism and his belief that there was no place for free black people in American society. Fifty-six years ago, Jefferson was, according to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America’s “Apostle of Freedom,” and today liberal commentator Michael Lind likens him to Strom Thurmond, disparaging him as a “Southern reactionary.” Irish journalist and diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien calls him America’s “spellbinding and anarchic racist prophet.”
Historian Joseph Ellis, who previously wrote an admiring study of Jefferson’s political enemy John Adams, has in “American Sphinx” delivered a far more subtle but nevertheless damning blow to Jefferson’s already battered reputation. Rather than focus on such chewed-over subjects as Jefferson’s racial attitudes, Ellis concentrates on Jefferson’s character, which he nicely defines as “the animating principles that informed his private and public life.”
This is a famously elusive quarry. Jefferson was riddled with ambiguities and contradictions; he was an exquisitely complicated man. Henry Adams--whose insights into Jefferson’s career as secretary of state and president remain unmatched--described over a century ago the difficulty of capturing Jefferson when he noted that “a few broad strokes of the brush would paint the portraits of all the early presidents with this exception. . . . Jefferson could be painted touch by touch, with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of its semi-transparent shadows.” Jefferson’s most authoritative living biographer, historian Merrill Peterson, spent more than 30 years pursuing his subject and still was forced to make the “mortifying confession” that “Jefferson remains for me, finally, an impenetrable man.”
Although there are a crop of recent biographies of Jefferson, along with the standard, hagiographic studies by Dumas Malone and Peterson, we have long needed the kind of book that Ellis has written. Few general readers have the stamina to get through Malone’s six volumes, while Peterson’s 1,009 pages are hardly more inviting; those who do take the plunge find that both Malone’s and Peterson’s highly detailed studies, which resemble official biographies, too often miss the forest for the trees. Furthermore, both works are essentially political biographies in which the “life” usually takes a back seat to the “times.” The recent, popular works by Noble Cunningham and Willard Sterne Randall read like synopses from Malone and Peterson and are limited in much the same way as their big cousins. On the other hand, Fawn Brodie’s controversial and now underrated 1974 book on Jefferson suffers from the opposite problem. An “intimate biography,” Brodie’s work leaves unasked and unanswered questions about Jefferson’s place in history and what he means for America.
In many ways, Jefferson has been best revealed not by his full-fledged biographers but by his pen portraitists. Adams, literary critic Leo Marx and historians William Freehling, Stanley Elkins and Eric McKittrick have written elegant and penetrating character studies of Jefferson that are embedded in works on broader subjects. They are all frustratingly brief. In his book-length character study, Ellis wisely chose not to recount Jefferson’s entire life, but instead to concentrate on several episodes, including his membership in the Continental Congress, the first term of his presidency and his final retirement. In so doing, Ellis has illuminated several well-known aspects of Jefferson’s character, most of which are unattractive. Ellis is especially perceptive and persuasive in painting Jefferson as a master of self-deception, rather than as the hypocrite his contemporary enemies perceived. Jefferson, almost pathologically afraid of internal conflict, had a great talent for avoiding unpleasant realities--exemplified in his artful way of disguising the slave quarters on his mountaintop--and for holding steadfastly and sincerely to beliefs his actions contradicted. He had, as Ellis remarks, “the deep deviousness only possible in the dedicated idealist.”
Jefferson’s ideals (usually) engendered in him an optimism peculiar among the founding fathers, but it also made him rigid and doctrinaire. He was at his best on occasions calling for the vigor of simple dichotomies. One important reason for the decline in Jefferson’s reputation is that, once the hagiographic shroud is removed, it’s impossible to ignore these unpleasant aspects of his character and their ramifications for his personality. Even Peter Onuf, who succeeded Peterson as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor at the University of Virginia, writes of Jefferson: “This was a character that, for all its fascination, many present-day scholars find discomfiting, if not repellent. There is something alien and inaccessible about Jefferson--something attributable not simply to temporal and cultural distance.” John Adam’s obnoxiousness is endearing; Hamilton, for all his pseudo-aristocratic disdain, was courageous, generous and charming. Jefferson, however, becomes more self-righteous, humorless and prickly the more one learns about him.
Furthermore, although Ellis doesn’t explicitly make this argument, his assessment reflects a growing sense among scholars that Jefferson’s reputation as a “genius” is in many ways undeserved. As Jefferson’s actual political beliefs--strict construction; direct, participatory democracy--have increasingly been deemed irrelevant or wrong, his reputation has increasingly revolved around his image as America’s renaissance man, exemplified by John Kennedy’s oft-quoted remark to a group of Nobel laureates that they were “the most extraordinary collection of talent . . . that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Jefferson was undoubtedly accomplished in many fields, but in his aesthetic and intellectual tastes, he appears derivative, the overeager provincial at pains to appear enlightened and progressive. He assembled at great expense an undistinguished collection of art that would mark him, as architectural historian Jack McClaughlin notes, as a “gentleman of taste,” and advocated a bill of rights, as historian Gordon Wood points out, not because he had examined the need for one, as had his protege James Madison, but because a “bill of rights was what good governments were supposed to have. All his liberal aristocratic French friends said so.”
Jefferson’s one book--"Notes on the State of Virginia"--is an impressive ethnographic, geographic and zoological compendium, but, as such, has long been of merely antiquarian interest. Along with his speculations on the innate intellectual inferiority of blacks, the “Notes” contains Jefferson’s most lengthy discussions on education, agrarianism and democracy, but these are woefully undeveloped, leaving scholars to puzzle for over a century over the true meaning of his political philosophy. If, as the progressive historians would have it, American politics was a story of the struggle between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, the latter were always at an intellectual disadvantage, since their founder never produced an exegesis of his economic and political thought, as had Hamilton in his “Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” which limned America’s capitalist development, and in his essays in “The Federalist Papers,” a collection that constitutes the most original American contribution to political theory.
The “Notes” is no “Federalist Papers.” Nor is the Declaration of Independence. Throughout his book, Ellis can’t resist taking jabs at what is by far Jefferson’s best-known achievement, clearly siding with Adams, who asserted that the Declaration was merely what it was intended to be--eloquent propaganda, “dress and ornament, rather than body, soul and substance.” Jefferson acknowledged that in writing it, he was “neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment” and that he drew his ideas from “the harmonizing sentiments of the day.” Ellis’ view of Jefferson as a political thinker is summed up in a backhanded compliment, which a liberal commentator could have written about Ronald Reagan: “Jefferson’s genius was his ability to project his vision of politics at a level of generalization that defied specificity and in a language that seemed to occupy an altitude where one felt obliged to look up and admire without being absolutely certain about the details.” “American Sphinx” is a portrait of an intelligent but conventional mind, albeit one with a facility for lending grace to conventionalities.
Although Ellis is a fine historian, he occasionally lapses into anachronism when attempting to explain Jefferson’s political views to late 20th century readers. Specifically, Ellis is stretching when he tries to tar Jefferson with the brush of Newt Gingrich, assuring us that “the Cold War was waged within the intensely moralistic and dualistic Jeffersonian categories of thought.” A tendency to divide the world into good and evil is hardly peculiar to Jefferson. Ellis could equally well blame the Cold War on Manichaeism or Christianity, for that matter.
Similarly, Ellis absurdly claims that “the conservative wing of the Republican Party[‘s]” view of “the American government . . . as our domestic version of the Evil Empire” is also, “pure Jefferson.” Like many modern writers, Ellis is appalled by Jefferson’s anti-federalism. Jefferson was suspicious of the growing power of the federal state, which he believed to be a “government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed corporations,” and he was hostile to what he saw as the concomitant emergence of a market society that would force people to “eat . . . one another.” He championed direct local community involvement in as many political decisions as possible. He was certainly no New Dealer.
To use another anachronism, this Jefferson sounds to me more like the late radical historian William Appleman Williams than a right-wing Republican. But Jefferson, of course, was like neither, and it is difficult enough to pin down his semi-transparent shadows without appropriating him in causes that are not his own.
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4bab59b3249a5e5add899554409bf073 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-07-mn-35658-story.html | Times Wins Polk Awards for Music Industry, Fund-Raising Stories | Times Wins Polk Awards for Music Industry, Fund-Raising Stories
Times staff writer Chuck Philips has won a George Polk journalism award for his detailed accounts of the inner workings of the music industry, and a team of Times reporters has won a Polk award for tracing funding from Asian sources to the coffers of the Democratic National Committee, some of which was in violation of federal law.
“We’re honored that Polk has rewarded these fine journalists,” said Times Editor and Executive Vice President Shelby Coffey III. “Both the team efforts in the funding stories and the individual efforts of Chuck Philips represent a commitment to the fair and probing journalism that our readers want and expect.”
The Times and the New York Times were the only newspapers to win two of the 1996 awards, which were announced Thursday.
Philips, who covers the music industry for The Times, won the award for cultural reporting. Philips has written stories about scandals over lip-syncing and sexual harassment in the music business, the continued use of “payola” to gain air time for records, and shake-ups at Time Warner’s music division.
The team of Times reporters won the award for political reporting. Their stories exposed numerous large contributions to the Democratic National Committee from sources in Tokyo, Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul and Taipei, some of them illegal. The story precipitated the return of more than $1 million and highlighted the issue of the influence of overseas interests in the U.S. election process.
Winners of the Polk awards, established in 1949 in honor of a CBS reporter killed while covering the Greek civil war, are chosen by a committee of faculty and alumni of Long Island University.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Seattle Times, the Progressive, the Buffalo News, CNN, Inside Edition and the Chicago Tribune were also Polk award winners.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony in New York on April 9.
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d3bb410029e0239623da94809b11ce26 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-08-mn-36013-story.html | Scientists Find Undersea World of Antony, Cleopatra | Scientists Find Undersea World of Antony, Cleopatra
Standing on the corniche of this elegant but faded city, it is easy to visualize an ancient panorama:
To the left, built on a small island in the harbor past the Temple of Poseidon, was the palace of the Ptolemaic queen, Cleopatra, who became known as history’s most famous seductress.
To the right was the Timonium, the royal lodge at the end of a jetty where Roman general Marc Antony withdrew in remorse after throwing away an empire in his obsessive love of Cleopatra.
Beyond were the old palace, private harbor and public gardens of the Ptolemys, the pleasure-loving dynasty that ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years.
And standing sentinel in the distance, at the entrance to the Portus Magnus, was the 500-foot-tall Lighthouse of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Now the city where Antony and Cleopatra lived and loved--the international crossroads that was the glittering and cosmopolitan Paris or New York of its day--is slowly being uncovered by a new breed of Egyptian and French archeologists.
Instead of working with shovel, pick and trowel, their tools are underwater cameras and computers, scuba gear and vacuums capable of sucking away centuries of accumulated sand and sediment, revealing fallen columns, sphinxes, obelisks and other debris of the ancient city’s architecture.
Late last year, an underwater archeology team of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities, organized by French marine archeologist Franck Goddio and sponsored by the Liechtenstein-based Hilti Foundation, announced that it had completed the first underwater map of the city’s Eastern Harbor, locating remnants of major buildings and thousands of artifacts from antiquity.
Having correlated their discoveries with a description of the city that Greek geographer Strabo wrote a few decades before the birth of Christ, scientists feel confident that they have identified a substantial portion of the old Royal Quarter of Alexandria.
It is, they say, a landmark discovery that will bring fresh insights into the life of the Roman and Ptolemaic city.
The most prized find was a single paved island, now submerged, that almost certainly bore the palace of the later Ptolemaic rulers, including the dynasty’s last sovereign, the alluring Cleopatra--lover of both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.
“She is still alive and living in this city,” said Ahmed Abdul Fattah, director of Alexandria’s Greco-Roman Museum. “You can never forget her.”
The 380-yard-long island was where Strabo said it should be. On the seabed beside it are huge pieces of granite columns, some nearly 4 feet in diameter, with their capitals lying nearby.
“The size of these columns, their numbers--more than 2,000 pieces have been discovered so far--plus the other artifacts, statues and thrones: These are all proof that there was once a palace there, not an ordinary building,” said Ibrahim Darwish, director of the underwater department in the Egyptian antiquities council.
The mortar used also marks it as Ptolemaic, as opposed to later Roman and Byzantine construction. Further proof is that some pieces had been brought as decoration from Pharaonic temples hundreds of miles to the south.
“It must be the ruler, to have the authority to do this,” Darwish noted. Besides the island, known as Antirrhodus, there is an important peninsula with remains of buildings, four piers and thousands of narrow-necked amphorae, jars used to carry wine or oil by the ancient Greeks and Romans. It seems the most likely site of Antony’s last dwelling.
Within the harbor are several smaller ports, including one related to an older palace of the Ptolemys. There is also the submerged ancient coastline, beautifully paved and once lined by columns.
Before the mapping, an effort that required more than 3,500 dives, “we had a guess more or less about the site,” Goddio said. “Now we will have proof and a perfect idea of these buildings.”
Already sphinxes, stele, statues and obelisks have been found, usually covered over with sediment so they looked at first glance like rocks. But parts of the white pavement were kept free of dirt by the current, appearing now just as they looked in Cleopatra’s day.
So far divers have cleared off promising-looking objects, but much more intensive explorations will begin in May.
“If we make a systematic exploration we will find the foundations of all the temples and palaces,” Goddio predicted.
A momentous chapter of history is being recovered.
Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 332 BC, near the end of his life. After his death, Egypt became the possession of one of his generals, Ptolemy, who began the dynasty that ruled from 332 BC until 30 BC.
At this time, Alexandria flowered into the richest and largest city of the Mediterranean basin, a shining center of Hellenistic and Jewish culture, housing the world’s greatest library and university.
Cleopatra, the most famous Ptolemy, was more a charmer than a beauty, historians agree. She ensnared Julius Caesar and bore him a son. When he was assassinated, she won over Antony, one of the triumvirate ruling Rome and its dominions. Antony was so bewitched that he gave Cleopatra parts of Syria, Phoenicia and Cyprus, and announced that he was divorcing the sister of Octavian, the triumvirate’s dominant figure.
Octavian, the future emperor Augustus, declared war. Defeated first at Actium in 31 BC and completely at Alexandria, Antony fell on his sword. Cleopatra also killed herself, possibly by putting a poison snake to her bosom, rather than be sent in chains to Rome.
Cleopatra’s drama is well known, immortalized by the likes of William Shakespeare and Elizabeth Taylor, but little archeological evidence of her era has been revealed.
“Although we know of the fame Alexandria obtained throughout the world in the Ptolemaic period, we had not discovered any of the buildings that made this fame,” said Fawzi Fakharany, professor of classical archeology at the University of Alexandria.
Amazingly, Cleopatra’s secrets were underwater only a stone’s throw from the heavily trafficked 20th century corniche, hugging the Eastern Harbor in this city of 6 million.
The harbor remains the heart of the metropolis, as it was in ancient times. Smoothly paved stone piers and barriers built by the Ptolemys, though submerged and out of view, still help tame the sea and reduce the swells for the fishing boats bobbing in front of the Hotel Cecil.
Cleopatra’s Alexandria is below the modern city by about 30 feet, Darwish explained.
Earthquakes in the 4th, 12th and 14th centuries sank the part of the city nearest the port and toppled the Pharos lighthouse into the sea. The Mediterranean flooded in and, in a sense, preserved ancient Alexandria in time.
On his first dive last year, Egyptian archeologist Mohamed Abdel Hamid decided to poke around what looked like blocks.
Once cleaned, he said, “I discovered that they were large columns, lying there on the seabed. I had not seen any similar columns in size, except in Upper Egypt.
“For me, it’s an indescribable feeling. I am doing something that is different from what all other archeologists do.”
Another team member, Ashraf Abdel Raouf, recalled his first find, a head from an imperial statue.
In his excitement, “I took off my mouthpiece and screamed under the water,” he said. It felt like “the delivery of a newborn baby.”
Darwish, Hamid and Raouf are three of the 14 Egyptian archeologists who have trained as divers to take part in the exploration.
Goddio sees marine archeology as a rich lode to mine for civilization’s roots.
“Land archeology in Egypt is an endless science, but the coast of Egypt also contains many, many very important sites,” he said.
The Alexandria harbor is the best example.
“Here you have 600 hectares [nearly 1,500 acres] of virtually virgin territory to explore,” he said. “Try to find that anywhere on land--all untouched since the 4th century. It is fantastic.”
A worldwide symposium on marine archeology is to take place here in April, sponsored by the antiquities council, UNESCO and the University of Alexandria. A key topic will be whether to raise to the surface the objects found. Some archeologists favor leaving them, so as not to disturb the site.
One possibility is to clean up the water--the last sewage outlet is due to be diverted in May--and turn the harbor into an archeological diving park for visitors to Egypt.
“This discovery will make a great future for Alexandria as a touristic center,” Fakharany predicted.
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b727238c6761a443185c9947733b16a5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-09-me-36481-story.html | Ben Raleigh; Grammy-Winning Lyricist | Ben Raleigh; Grammy-Winning Lyricist
Ben Raleigh, 83, pop lyricist who won a Grammy for the Lou Rawls’ hit “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing.” Raleigh’s prolific songwriting career included such hits as “Wonderful, Wonderful” recorded by Johnny Mathis. He also wrote the Ray Peterson hit “Tell Laura I Love Her” and the words to the cartoon show theme song, “Scoobie Doo Where Are You?” Another of Raleigh’s songs, his wife Sally said, was “Laughing on the Outside and Crying on the Inside.” On Feb. 26 in Hollywood in a kitchen fire.
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5aad29c3b3909fad1d3a3520851d307b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-10-mn-36728-story.html | Coming Home, Coming Out : Poet and Native Son Frank Bidart Creates Stir in His Return to Bakersfield | Coming Home, Coming Out : Poet and Native Son Frank Bidart Creates Stir in His Return to Bakersfield
Nearly 40 years after he left behind his father’s potato fields to become one of America’s most-acclaimed poets, Frank Bidart came home to Bakersfield last weekend to make peace with the past.
His poetry reading Saturday night was a chance for this agricultural valley to acknowledge at last the extraordinary gifts of one of its native sons. And it was a chance for Bidart, 57, a Wellesley College professor celebrated as a poet’s poet, to find a different Bakersfield from the one he left, one that is open to his work.
But his homecoming, like one of his complex, layered poems, was a bittersweet affair that honored Bidart in a way few poets have been honored, but also publicly revealed his homosexuality to an extended family who knew him only by his nickname “Pinon,” another one of the little Bidart boys.
“It’s one thing to declare my homosexuality in a poem and it’s another to have it in your hometown paper,” he said before the reading. “It’s been painful, but on the other hand, it’s actually better. Now I don’t feel like this event is a fraud any more.”
His tiny fan club here had gone to great lengths to make the event special, even renting a billboard along one of the town’s main drags, proclaiming “Frank Bidart Is Coming Home.” But a few days before the reading, the billboard’s message was drowned out by a Bakersfield Californian story headlined “Frank Bidart returns to town he hated.”
The headline badly misrepresented his conflicted feeling toward a town that both nurtured and stifled him, he said, but even more awkward were the several paragraphs midway through the story that dealt with his sexuality.
While Bidart’s friends and colleagues in Boston and his readers across the country have long known that he is gay, it came as something of a shock to several older members of his wealthy and prominent farming family.
“If I was giving a reading anywhere else, I’m not sure I would have been asked the question. But it was the hometown paper and the reporter thought my homosexuality was relevant to why I left Bakersfield, so I answered it.
“In a way, I ‘outed’ myself. I could have told the reporter no, but I didn’t say that. . . . If someone isn’t going to come to my reading now because I’m gay, I don’t give a damn.”
While this city’s perspective surely has broadened over the years with newcomers from Southern and Northern California taking up residence, it is still a stridently conservative place where private property rights are a second religion and militia groups have found a toehold.
Locals never have had a problem paying homage to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard who changed country and western music with their “Bakersfield Sound.” But the town has had a harder time embracing and keeping its literary talent.
For a child like Bidart growing up in post-World War II Bakersfield, the choices seemed meager. Ever since his grandfather, John Bidart, immigrated to California from the French Pyrenees in the late 1880s, no man in the family had forsaken the farm. A history of Kern County recorded John Bidart in 1914 as “one of the largest sheep men” in the area with a 400-acre alfalfa and corn farm.
The grandfather died in the flu epidemic of 1918, but his seven children and their children carried on, adding more crops and more acreage until today Bidart Brothers is one of the largest diversified farming operations in a county known for its agriculture.
As a young boy, Bidart saw the disapproval that the extended clan, deeply Catholic and private, directed at his parents. His father, a big handsome man who was the family’s black sheep, did not bother to hide his drinking and carousing, and the Bidarts divorced when Frank was 5.
If Bidart knew he was different from the other boys, a “sissy” and a “momma’s boy” in his words, it wasn’t something he felt comfortable sharing with anyone in the family. Both of his parents would die not knowing the truth.
“I knew from the age of 5 that I was gay. It terrified me that I was interested in men’s bodies. It was a big, terrible secret. I felt I was the only person on earth with that feeling.”
*
He also discovered early on his love for the performing arts, and in the absence of live theater or opera, he devoured movies as a kid. As a student at the town’s Garces Memorial High School, he took his first stab at writing poetry. After graduating from UC Riverside, he went to Harvard University for graduate studies, a departure effected both by the pull of cosmopolitan academia and the push of his own secret knowledge of his homosexuality.
At Harvard, he came under the spell of professor Robert Lowell, who was transforming American literature with his so-called confessional family poems.
“I was incredibly lucky,” Bidart said. “I met Lowell at a time in his life where he needed someone like me, someone who was free and wasn’t a yes-man and could act as a sounding board for his work in progress.”
After Bidart grew close to Lowell, and to Lowell’s wife and fellow poet Elizabeth Bishop, he decided to reveal his secret. “I remember I had my heart in my mouth when I told Lowell and his wife that I was gay. I thought they would recoil but they laughed and said, ‘We certainly assumed that you were.’ ”
Already, Bidart was deep into his own grave work about his father and mother, his “argument with the past.” His first collection, “The Golden State,” was published in 1973. Its poems confronted his spiritual wounds inflicted by a father completely helpless to his own demons--an alcoholic and a skirt chaser but also a man who did not pretend to be anything but what he was.
In a poem in which he addresses his dead father by his nickname, Shank, Bidart celebrates his father’s honesty even as he must contend with its shambles. “To see my father lying in pink velvet, a rosary twined around his hands, rouged, lipsticked, his skin marble,” he writes. “Oh Shank, don’t turn into the lies of mere, neat poetry.”
His poetry over the last 20 years--most of it less autobiographical and more meditative, in the voice of tragic characters such as dancer Vaslav Nijinsky--has won virtually every award short of a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize. Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winner, has called Bidart “one of the boulders” of modern poetry.
But back in the San Joaquin Valley of his birth, recognition was grudging. For a long time, the main library in Kern County carried not a single volume of his work, and when an anthology celebrating valley writers, “Highway 99,” came out last year, Bidart was nowhere to be found in its pages.
Enter Lee McCarthy, a local poet and former wife of novelist Cormac McCarthy, who decided to answer the snub by inviting Bidart to his first reading ever in the valley. McCarthy dug deep into her own pockets to rent the billboard hyping the reading.
“I’m probably the only poet in America who’s had a billboard,” Bidart said with a chuckle.
Then the Bakersfield Californian story came out. Several of the younger generation of Bidarts, who had long known that Frank was gay, winced at the thought of his elderly aunts and other members of the conservative community reading the piece.
“Frank has always been careful not to share his works with the older generation,” said his cousin Leonard Bidart. “So the story did cause some discomfort.”
*
Californian writer Joan Swenson said that wasn’t her intent. “His being gay came up naturally in the conversation. I wasn’t trying to hurt him or his family or the Basque community. This is his hometown. There are people who knew this about him. So on one hand, if I don’t put it in, it looks like I’m either stupid or trying to protect him, and from what?”
Bidart said that noting his homosexuality in the story wouldn’t have troubled him, but it came to take up several paragraphs. “I didn’t mind her mentioning it but I’m not sure such a strong emphasis was germane to the piece. And the headline didn’t help.”
McCarthy feared the story would sabotage the reading, and her efforts to erase the years of neglect would be for naught. But Saturday night, the tall, balding Bidart strode into a lecture hall at Bakersfield College that was nearly full of admirers. And he made no concessions, reading a challenging 45-minute poem right out of Greek myth about a king and his daughter and incest.
“People were incredibly nice to me. They were very warm and made a point of saying how proud of me they were,” he said. “In a funny way, I think the story and the controversy made them feel comfortable about asserting their affection and respect. It was extraordinary.”
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402a91b3e188abebd73400889ace829e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-11-mn-37025-story.html | Hanoi to Pay S. Vietnam’s Debts to U.S. | Hanoi to Pay S. Vietnam’s Debts to U.S.
The government of Vietnam has agreed to pay off debts to the United States left by the defeated South Vietnamese regime, a step that could clear the way for normal trading relations between Washington and Hanoi, a senior administration official said Monday.
“We believe it is the kind of agreement that will allow us to more fully normalize relations,” the official said.
By repaying U.S. loans made to keep the embattled South Vietnamese government afloat during the Vietnam War, Hanoi in effect will share the cost of the war waged by the United States and its South Vietnamese ally.
According to U.S. officials, Hanoi will repay loans that financed roads, power stations and food aid such as massive grain shipments, all intended to bolster South Vietnam’s defense. But the agreement does not cover direct military assistance.
Officials said that the debt covered by the pact totals between $90 million and $140 million. The accord was reached last week after years of on-and-off negotiations.
Officials said that Vietnam will have 20 years to repay the loans.
Vietnam’s decision to make the payments, more than two decades after its troops overran Saigon--renamed Ho Chi Minh City--and forcefully unified the country, shows how badly the Communist regime wants to establish normal economic relations with the United States and to integrate itself into the world economy.
Legally, Hanoi assumed Saigon’s debts when it absorbed the South Vietnamese government. As long as loans from the United States were not being repaid, Hanoi was not eligible for commercial assistance through the U.S. Export-Import Bank and could not qualify for most-favored-nation trade status, which would give Vietnam the same low tariffs as most other nations.
The agreement, the most significant pact between the two former enemies since President Clinton established diplomatic relations in July 1995, clears the way for a visit to Hanoi early next month by Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin.
It was the latest in a series of gestures that Hanoi has made in an effort to establish the full range of normal relations with Washington after many years when there had been little more than a dialogue over the fate of U.S. troops missing in action.
According to U.S. sources, Vietnam recently agreed to an American plan to process Vietnamese citizens seeking to enter the United States as refugees, a step that would complete the unfinished business of Vietnamese who last year were forcefully returned to their homeland from camps in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
The United States supported the return of the refugees, despite its usual distaste for forced repatriation, because of pressure from host countries to close the camps. At that time, the United States promised to consider appeals for asylum once the refugees returned to Vietnam.
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fe01c87a198621020fc1d6c7ebc1fbf3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-15-mn-38557-story.html | U.S. Agents Seize Smuggled Arms | U.S. Agents Seize Smuggled Arms
U.S. border agents have seized two truckloads of military assault rifles and grenade launchers that were mysteriously smuggled into this country through the Port of Long Beach and were addressed to Mexico City, officials said.
The Mexican consulate said diplomats have been told the ship with the contraband arms came from Asia.
But U.S. officials declined to reveal the origin of the shipments, which contained thousands of parts of disassembled weapons, or what ship brought them to Long Beach.
“We’re still doing old-fashioned police work, running down leads,” said John Mallamo, the U.S. Customs assistant special agent in charge of investigations in San Diego. “They are obviously weapons of war.”
The arms seizure, one of the largest ever made in the U.S., was made a week ago at a warehouse near the Otay Mesa border crossing. No arrest announcements have been made.
One official said it is possible the arms were meant for Mexico’s narcotics cartels, which are becoming increasingly violent and brazen in an attempt to intimidate the government.
“We’re looking at everything right now,” said the official. “They don’t have the Arellanos [a Mexican drug cartel] name on the address label. The situation Mexico is in right now, you can’t rule it out.”
Luis Herrera-Lasso, Mexican consul in San Diego, said he believed the shipments were meant for the drug cartels.
But officials are also exploring the possibility that the arms were meant to be shipped to another country or even to Mexican rebels.
“There is a revolutionary contingent that exists there that is always looking for arms sources,” said Sgt. Manuel Rodriguez, head of a cross-border liaison team with the San Diego Police Department. “Realistically, a shipment of that size could go to any criminal enterprise down there. The other side is that obviously South American countries are also having some civil discontent.”
Rodriguez added, “Arms are big money in South America.”
The bulk of the weapons were M-2 rifles, the kind used by the American military, which can be fired as automatic weapons. Some of the weapons had pieces missing, leading to speculation that more shipments were planned. Officials said the cargo inside the two trucks had been listed as strap hangers and hand tools.
There are indications some of the arms may have come from Vietnam, sources said. Vietnam is known to have stockpiles of American arms captured during the Vietnam War.
A year ago a smuggled shipment of 2,000 Chinese-made assault rifles, similar to the famed Russian AK-47, were seized in the San Francisco Bay Area. That seizure came after an 18-month undercover investigation by federal agents into alleged smuggling by two of China’s state-controlled arms exporting companies. Fourteen people and a corporate subsidiary of one of the Chinese firms were indicted, federal officials said. Trials are pending.
That cache was brought to the port of Oakland aboard a ship owned by Chinese government-owned China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco), the same company that is caught in a bitter geopolitical dispute involving the Port of Long Beach.
Assistant U.S. Atty. William Schaefer, the federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation, noted that Cosco has not been charged and that no evidence has emerged that the company was part of the smuggling scheme.
In smuggling cases, “you are not going to have charges filed against a company simply based on the fact they were carrying something that was illegal,” Schaefer said. “In this day and age, almost everything is shipped by [sealed] container.”
U.S. Customs officials said Cosco was not the shipping line that carried the two containers seized in Otay Mesa. Cosco operates on 80 acres at the Port of Long Beach. The port hopes to raze the city’s shuttered Naval Station and build a 145-acre cargo terminal for the company by mid-1998.
The plan has met with intense resistance from local residents who oppose U.S. trade with China or fear the terminal will be used for weapons and narcotics smuggling.
Others want to block the project because of the destruction of the taxpayer-funded buildings on the property. And California’s two U.S. senators have asked the White House national security advisor and the Secretary of Defense to determine whether there are “security implications” in leasing land to the company.
The 1996 arms shipment has returned to haunt both the Port of Long Beach and the White House. Wang Jun, the president of the company that U.S. officials believe manufactured the seized weapons, was escorted last year to a White House coffee where he met with President Clinton.
Federal investigators are looking into the coffee meetings, where Clinton met with major campaign donors. Now some Long Beach residents are voicing concerns that the White House influenced the port to sign a lease with Cosco.
At the Port of Long Beach, the nation’s busiest, the U.S. Customs Service often finds itself overwhelmed. With fewer than 135 inspectors assigned to sift through the equivalent of 8,400 20-foot cargo containers that flow through the port each day, the agency is often dependent on tips and intelligence to find contraband.
That too often makes it easy for smugglers of narcotics, weapons or other contraband to falsify shipping manifests or find other methods to slip their cargo into or out of the country, customs officials say.
But when investigators do uncover smuggled goods, they rarely charge the steamship line or terminal operator that handled the cargo. To do so would be the equivalent of prosecuting an airline because it allowed a passenger hiding cocaine in his suitcase to board a plane, port officials say.
Even though officials said that the shipment seized in Otay Mesa was not transported on a Cosco ship, Reps. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Duncan Hunter on Friday asked Secretary of the Navy John Dalton to delay the transfer of the Long Beach naval facility to Cosco until Congress can investigate the company’s role, if any, in arms smuggling. The pair noted that Cosco ships have been detained for violating international safety laws.
O’Connor reported from San Diego, Leeds from Long Beach. Times staff writers Tony Perry in San Diego and Richard Serrano in Washington contributed to this report.
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9bc9ca0f5fc396ec356f656481bbeb49 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-18-mn-39500-story.html | Packaged Meal’s Salt Level Poses Blood Pressure Risk, Doctor Says | Packaged Meal’s Salt Level Poses Blood Pressure Risk, Doctor Says
Lunchables, a package of meat, cheese and crackers sold by the Kraft unit of Philip Morris Cos., contains enough salt to raise blood pressure in certain laboratory rats and may pose a health risk to some humans, a Wisconsin physician said Monday.
Lunchables “may be a dangerous snack for families with a history of high blood pressure,” Dr. Clarence Grim of the Medical College of Wisconsin said at a news conference at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Anaheim.
In reply, Kraft called the Wisconsin study “junk science at its worst.”
“The whole premise of the study is preposterous. . . . This is yet another attempt to unnecessarily frighten American consumers about the food they eat,” Kraft said in a statement.
The Wisconsin medical researchers said their study used three groups of salt-sensitive rats, a special breed “thought to be a good model for salt toxicity in humans.” An estimated 25% of Americans carry a gene that makes them susceptible to higher blood pressure resulting from salt consumption.
One group of rats was fed ground Lunchables containing ham, Swiss cheese and crackers. A second group was fed a ham-cheese-and-crackers diet containing half the salt level of the first, and the third group was fed regular low-salt rat food, which has about one-fifth the salt of Lunchables, Grim said.
“The rats on the Lunchables diet had a 20% increase in blood pressure compared to the third group fed rat chow, and a 10% increase compared to the second group fed a diet containing 50% less salt,” Grim reported.
Along with raised blood pressure, the rats on the ground Lunchables diet also experienced enlarged hearts and kidneys, he added.
Grim said one serving of the Lunchables he used contained 1,780 milligrams of salt, near the 2,000 milligram-level likely to cause high blood pressure in salt-sensitive people and equal to 74% of the daily recommended adult salt intake.
He said Lunchables should carry a label containing “warnings of the toxic effects of salt in people who have high blood pressure or who come from a family with high blood pressure.”
Kraft said the researchers fed “four rats all the Lunchables they can eat for three weeks and then use that to make a sweeping conclusion. Nobody would eat a diet of all Lunchables or any other single food.”
The sodium content of the products is listed on the label and is within government recommendations for the daily value of sodium, Kraft said.
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375bf38c9569a2405758a72c6ce864bc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-20-ca-40343-story.html | Sleater-Kinney Doesn’t Miss Beat | Sleater-Kinney Doesn’t Miss Beat
Post-Liz Phair, post-Bikini Kill, post-Hole, you’d think that the rock world would have gotten used to women in its ranks. But on Tuesday at the El Rey Theatre, as the Portland-based trio Sleater-Kinney opened for the headlining Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, someone was waiting with cultural ice water.
As soon as the three women broke into “Call the Doctor,” the title song from their lauded 1996 album, the visceral high spirits were deflated by a man in the crowd who cussed loudly at Sleater-Kinney frontwoman Corin Tucker. Tucker delivered a few verbal missives and the heckler ignited a fight at the lip of the stage before he was ejected. Tucker seemed to simmer with anger throughout the rest of the show.
Remarkably, the group--singer-guitarist Tucker, potent guitarist Carrie Brownstein (who also sings) and stormy drummer Janet Weiss--overcame the unnerving episode to deliver a set that matched the buzz that has been building around the band since its 1994 formation in Olympia, Wash. Brownstein and Tucker were rooted in the radical feminist Riot Grrrl movement that sprouted around Olympia and that--to the dismay of its founders--became a media curiosity in the early ‘90s.
At the El Rey, Sleater-Kinney dug into the spirit of that movement while shaking off the brand-name cheesiness, and they delivered an even rawer power than they capture on “Dig Me Out,” their electrifying new album that comes out April 8.
The well-honed but defiantly indie-rock album practically shimmies with such accessible touches as hand-claps, Brownstein’s bottomed-out alto chants and even a tambourine.
But Tucker didn’t pull out any ultra-pop props or moves at the El Rey. Rather, the group presented a businesslike set goosed only by Brownstein’s cool, fluid rock-star moves, which bespoke a total delight at being onstage. Some of the good feelings that were sunk at the beginning of the show were buoyed later by cheering family members in the audience, to whom Brownstein dedicated one song.
Even without any overt bows to the crowd, Tucker is a rock-solid performer, and she reveled in the delicious pop elements of her new songs--shackle-busting punk about breaking free from life’s constraints, punctuated with a punchy, Ramones-like “1-2-3-4!”
On “Little Babies,” Tucker sang the lines, “Dum-dum-ditty-ditty-dum-dum-da-dum-do, all the little babies go I-I-I want to,” with straight-faced aplomb. The notable lack of banter was overcome by highly personal songs, from the melodic smart bomb of “Not What You Want” to the celebratory punk yelp of “Words and Guitar.”
Rock fans might have a way to go, but Sleater-Kinney has definitely arrived.
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08e6638880247a91446bd17e3336f4fb | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-23-bk-41062-story.html | IN THE MEMORY OF THE FOREST.<i> By Charles T. Powers</i> .<i> Scribner: 384 pp., $23</i> | IN THE MEMORY OF THE FOREST.<i> By Charles T. Powers</i> .<i> Scribner: 384 pp., $23</i>
The dwindling band of American correspondents who tell us about the world falls roughly into two categories. There are the parachute artists, who buzz around the globe to give us a quick gloss on an election here, a famine there and a war in the next time zone. If people are starving, I must be in Somalia.
Then there is a rarer breed, the journalists who steep themselves in the countries they cover. They learn the language. They read the history. They travel in second-class train compartments, and they sit up late at night, drinking the local alcohol with the local people. They often become more intimately familiar with a country than the diplomats and scholars who are the purported experts, because they are unconstrained by the niceties of protocol.
And when their tours of duty end, they frequently find they have more knowledge of and more passion for the lands they covered than they were able to shoehorn into the daily reports and analyses they filed on the fly. So they write books to try to convey the full truth of what they saw abroad--usually books of reportage, but occasionally novels.
Judging by “In the Memory of the Forest,” Charles T. Powers was an avatar of the latter category of journalist. I use the past tense because the most melancholy paragraph in a novel full of melancholy passages is the short biographical sketch on the back flap of the dust jacket. It informs us that the author died last year at 53. This is his only book.
Powers reported from Warsaw for the Los Angeles Times from 1986 to 1991. If a correspondent could pick from all the foreign assignments of this century, what could be better than being at large in the Soviet bloc during its dissolution? It was a time of public heroism and grand events, best epitomized by the fall of the Berlin Wall. But grand events are not what Powers chose to write about. He gives us, instead, a Polish village, in the early 1990s, which he calls Jadowia and he fills with characters who are neither Communist villains nor Solidarity saints.
Powers’ sense of place is astounding. His knowledge of Poland fills “In the Memory of the Forest” with details that bring the novel alive. He knows how Polish peasants butcher calves and share bottles of vodka. He knows the smell of the bus to Warsaw and the sound the leaves make as clandestine lovers slip away to a rendezvous in the forest.
He knows the way the old party bosses kept people in line and where the bosses are today, “burrowed in like ticks on a sick dog.” He knows the banality of their corruption, and he knows the self-righteous venality of some of the priests and politicos scrambling to take their places. He knows the places where the Jewish cemeteries used to be and what happened to the tombstones. He knows what the Russian trucks are carrying as they lumber through the Polish countryside late at night.
And he knows the Polish soul. He knows that experience has taught most Poles that life comes down to three things: “Your four walls, your little fire. Yourself.” He knows the Poles’ gloomy foreboding that freedom means only the right to choose their overlords--Russian apparatchiks or German businessmen. He knows that most of them have opted, at one time or another, to join a “little choir of silence” rather than speak out about the injustices they have witnessed. And he knows the guilt they feel for doing so.
Powers knows this place and its people so well that he pulls off a rare feat in American fiction: He writes about foreign lands without resorting to American characters. For Powers’ protagonists, who are all Polish, America is a faraway place--a source of baseball caps and “Kojak” reruns--and this distance creates an atmosphere all the more convincing. “In the Memory of the Forest” becomes a difficult book to categorize. The publishers, placing bloody fingerprints on the dust jacket, seem to want to present it as a novel of murder or suspense. And indeed, there is killing in it. The scene in which an old man describes the deaths of a family of Jews in the forest during World War II is powerful enough to evoke the recollection of the killings in a Spanish village in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
But this is no potboiler. It moves slowly--at times too slowly. But while the pacing might have been better, suspense and intrigue are only the context for what Powers wants to explore, which is the battered state of the human spirit in Eastern Europe after half a century of genocide, corruption and misrule.
Powers clearly believed that the Eastern Europeans can move on to a brighter future, provided they confront their past honestly and deal with it constructively. “In the Memory of the Forest” makes brutally clear how painful that process has been and will be.
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0a6ddafb94190e7a1df4bb9033c7685c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-28-ca-43043-story.html | Religious Experience | Religious Experience
Walking in the footsteps of Bach and Handel is nothing new for Rick Wakeman. As a member of the British progressive-rock band Yes during the early 1970s, he literally helped key a new way of rocking that incorporated the grand sweep and instrumental virtuosity of classical music.
In Yes, and in a subsequent series of solo concept albums on historical and literary themes, Wakeman may have borrowed a few licks from classical composers for his flashy sallies on an array of keyboard instruments.
Now, in a new phase of his career--as a composer and performer of Christian music--he has appropriated a major theme famously tackled by Bach and Handel but rarely done in the modern era: a full-scale musical retelling of the life of Jesus.
Wakeman, 47, is spending Holy Week in Southern California, staging the North American premiere of “The New Gospels,” a two-hour oratorio involving a 30-voice choir, an operatic tenor and a narrator--all accompanied by Wakeman’s trademark banks of keyboard technology.
The series of five benefit concerts ends with performances Saturday and Sunday at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa in Santa Ana; they are the latest of Wakeman’s periodic U.S. appearances to raise money for ASSIST Ministries, a Garden Grove-based organization that promotes Christianity in the former Soviet Union. ASSIST’s founder, Dan Wooding, is a transplanted English journalist who befriended Wakeman in the late ‘60s and went on to write an authorized biography of the prog-rock hero.
The Gospel story is “a very dangerous subject to pick--purely because [setting it to music] has been done by so many great geniuses that you’re in danger of comparison,” the tall, affable Wakeman, whose favored conversational interjection is “by cracky,” said Wednesday in a phone interview. He was starting what promised to be a hectic day of reprogramming his keyboards to correct an unexpected technical glitch, and getting other last-minute details right for the U.S. premiere of “The New Gospels” that night at a church in Downey. It was presented Thursday in San Diego and will be repeated tonight at the University of Redlands.
*
“The last thing I wanted is to have people say, ‘He’s trying to do a Bach, he’s trying to do a Handel,’ ” Wakeman continued. “That’s one of the reasons I [steered] away from doing it with an orchestra,” choosing instead to support the piece with electronic keyboards and a modest rock rhythm section. To generate the complex parts in concert, Wakeman will be joined by his keyboard-playing son, Adam.
The story of how “The New Gospels” came about may not be the greatest ever told, but it’s a pretty good one--beginning not in a manger, but 11 years ago in a church in the small English town of Camberley.
Wakeman, a noted drinker and bon vivant in his days with Yes, had recently settled down after some health problems and financial setbacks. For a brief spell in 1980, he found himself sleeping on park benches--a humiliating turn for somebody who had established himself in England not just as a rock musician, but as a regular on British television, where he continues to host comedy series and appear as a guest on quiz shows and talk programs.
In 1985, after that crisis had passed, Wakeman said he felt a need to return to the staunch Baptist faith of his boyhood. The vicar of his church asked if he would give a recital to raise money for a new organ; Wakeman agreed and wrote four short pieces for the occasion based on scenes from the Gospels.
The music called for an operatic tenor, and Wakeman thought of Ramon Remedios, whom he had heard singing in a London production of “Aida.” After the church-organ benefit, Remedios urged Wakeman to develop the fragments into a full-blown piece. Soon, there was an album-length oratorio, dubbed “The Gospels,” which Wakeman recorded and would periodically perform.
Wakeman says, however, that playing the piece was more frustrating than satisfying--he felt it required more fleshing out in all respects. He eventually stopped performing “The Gospels,” determining to rework and expand it when he had the time.
In 1994, Roy Castle, a popular British television entertainer, approached Wakeman about playing the piece at a benefit to build a hospital in Liverpool. Castle’s request had a certain urgency: He was dying of lung cancer and wanted to leave behind the hospital as a legacy.
“I said to him, pretty tactlessly, ‘I don’t have the time, Roy.’ He said, ‘You don’t have the time? I’m not even going to be there to see [the performance].’ I felt very embarrassed.” (Castle died about a month later.)
Wakeman said he found the three months he needed thanks to a little white lie proposed by his wife, Nina: They would tell friends and business associates they were going on a long holiday. Wakeman’s wife and kids indeed took a two-month trip, but he stayed home and, without distractions, finished “The New Gospels.”
When he began to perform it--with Remedios again the featured singer (he is on hand as well for the California dates)--"it was exactly what I’d dreamed it could be. The good Lord works in strange ways--it took a dying man to get this done properly, and it means a lot to me for that.”
Wakeman has performed “The New Gospels” about a dozen times in the U.K., mainly in cathedrals, and the piece has been heard frequently on Christian radio stations there. Besides its live premiere here this week, it is being released in the U.S. on CD and video through Hope Records, a label founded by Wakeman as a vehicle both for his religious music and for other Christian rock and pop acts.
Also newly available on Hope Records is “Simply Acoustic,” an album and video of a 1994 solo piano concert Wakeman gave at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa.
That album offers stripped-down versions of pieces from his elaborate ‘70s solo opuses, as well as a retrospective set of well-known songs he played on during his pre-Yes days as a session pianist--David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars,” and Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken.”
* Rick Wakeman performs “The New Gospels” on Saturday and Sunday at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, 3800 S. Fairview Road, Santa Ana. 7 p.m. Free; but donation requested to benefit ASSIST Ministries. (714) 979-4422, Ext. 757, or (714) 530-6599.
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0fb0180d8840a75251bb7ba338ecbe9a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-29-ca-43107-story.html | Call It Father of ‘Sling Blade’: Video Rides Oscar’s Coattails | Call It Father of ‘Sling Blade’: Video Rides Oscar’s Coattails
Billy Bob Thornton, who this week won an Oscar for his “Sling Blade” script, has seemingly revealed every last detail about his life and the story behind the movie, including his past heart problems, failed marriages and battles with studio executives.
But there’s still more to tell, as video customers may have already learned.
Thornton has seldom talked about a 29-minute black-and-white short he wrote and starred in nearly four years ago. “Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade” features the same memorable character--a mentally handicapped man who killed his mother and her lover--and some of the same dialogue that Thornton later made famous in “Sling Blade.”
Now the short is getting more attention. Its video distributor, anxious to capitalize on Thornton’s Oscar, has shipped 13,000 copies to stores, including big chains like Blockbuster and Tower. The tape, which retails for $24.95, also includes a 13-minute documentary about the making of the short.
With “Sling Blade” still playing at theaters, viewers might be confused by the appearance of a similarly titled video at local stores. But the distributor of “Some Folks” hopes that cineastes and Thornton fans will treat the short as important background for the Oscar-winning movie.
“Fans of independent movies enjoy seeing alternative versions and getting a peek at something being developed,” said Steve Stofflet, who runs the Michigan-based distributor videos.com.
The short plays an interesting and heretofore little-known role in the development of the feature, although Thornton and some of his collaborators on “Some Folks” disagree strongly about just how big that role is.
George Hickenlooper, the Emmy-winning director of the documentary on Francis Ford Coppola and the making of “Apocalypse Now,” “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” argues that the feature script is adapted from the 1994 short, which he directed. He says he has been perplexed by Thornton’s failure to mention the early film when talking about “Sling Blade.”
“I think it’s a little odd . . . that he doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the short in any way, ever,” said Hickenlooper, who is finishing the film “Dogtown.”
But Thornton says the feature script is not based on the short but rather on a monologue from a one-man show, “Swine Before Pearls,” that he wrote and performed at the Tiffany Theater, West Coast Ensemble and other venues starting in 1986. He adds that the main reason he has avoided talking about the short is because of a falling-out he had with Hickenlooper shortly after filming. (Because Thornton did not serve as director or producer on the short, he had little control over its distribution.)
“I would have been glad to have talked about the short if George hadn’t bad-mouthed me all over town,” Thornton said in an interview. “This whole thing is based on the character, and I created that before I ever knew George Hickenlooper existed.” Thornton denies that the short played a key role in developing the feature script. Hickenlooper denies being personally critical of Thornton.
Hickenlooper and Thornton met after Hickenlooper saw and admired Thornton’s acting and writing in the 1992 crime drama “One False Move.” Thornton mentioned his script idea concerning a mentally handicapped murderer, and the pair decided to shoot the story as a short movie.
Hickenlooper and friends raised the $55,000 budget from several investors, including New York producer Adam Lindeman, who kicked in almost half the money. Shooting took place over three days at an abandoned hospital in Lakeview Terrace. Actors J.T. Walsh and Molly Ringwald joined Thornton in the cast. (Walsh reprised his role as a mental patient in “Sling Blade,” although Ringwald, who played a newspaper reporter, did not.)
But not long after filming wrapped in September 1993, Hickenlooper and his writer-star began to argue over the project, especially the editing of a key monologue in which Thornton’s character narrates the story of his mother’s murder. By the time the short debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1994, the two were barely speaking, and they have not kept in touch since. The short, meanwhile, received favorable attention at festivals in Aspen, San Diego and elsewhere. Lindeman says he showed it to Larry Meistrich, who runs a New York-based production company called the Shooting Gallery. (Meistrich could not be reached for comment.) Meistrich and Thornton eventually clinched a deal to make the feature “Sling Blade” for $1.2 million, with Thornton as writer, director and star.
Lindeman, who says Thornton gave him an oral promise for first refusal on any feature script, says he is “very unhappy” with the way the Meistrich-Thornton deal came about and is weighing legal options. Thornton denies having given Lindeman such a promise.
Hickenlooper says that although he would have liked the opportunity to direct “Sling Blade,” he doesn’t begrudge Thornton’s success: “He’s a very talented actor and writer,” he says.
A bemused Thornton, meanwhile, finds the timing of the video release and the ensuing controversy somewhat ironic: “If [“Sling Blade”] had fallen on its ass, this wouldn’t be happening now,” he said.
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6e1c807029bf53ecbf5f553cfd7dd82d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-04-me-45412-story.html | Car Kills Ex-UTLA Chief Helen Bernstein | Car Kills Ex-UTLA Chief Helen Bernstein
Helen Bernstein, former Los Angeles teachers union president and a candidate for a City Charter reform panel, was struck by a car and killed Thursday night as she was crossing Olympic Boulevard on the way to speak to a neighborhood association, police said.
Bernstein, 52, was late for a speaking engagement at the Miracle Mile Residents Assn., said Jeanine Jackson, who attended the meeting. Bernstein was one of several candidates for the panel who were scheduled to speak.
Last November, Bernstein became Mayor Richard Riordan’s first education advisor. Riordan was stunned Thursday night when he learned of Bernstein’s death.
“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” Riordan said moments after getting the news. “I was with her this morning. I’ve never seen her look better. She was so vibrant. A wonderful leader of teachers and school reform. A warm and wonderful friend. I can’t believe it.”
Bernstein was dashing across the street to the meeting and was struck by a car, police and members of the neighborhood association said. Because she was not in a crosswalk, it appeared that the driver was not at fault and he was not cited, authorities said.
“She probably ran across the street like that because she was late,” Jackson said. “She was due to speak at 8 p.m. and was hit by the car at about 8:15.”
Colleagues said Bernstein often ran behind schedule and that it was not unusual for her to be in a rush to keep appointments.
Education officials in Los Angeles and across the state were saddened at news of Bernstein’s death, calling it a major blow to the school reform movement.
“It’s a real loss,” said Los Angeles school board President Jeff Horton. “She [had] such a clear vision about what was going to help to improve the schools, what didn’t work and what did. . . . She was a major asset in trying to make the public school system better.”
Maureen DiMarco, former secretary of child development and education under Gov. Pete Wilson, said Bernstein’s passion for her beliefs was admirable.
“Whether you agreed with her or didn’t agree with her, you never, ever doubted the passion and intensity with which she advocated for the issues,” DiMarco said. “She was incredibly bright, understood issues very quickly and had a very keen political sense. . . . Even people who tangled with her respected all of those characteristics.”
Mike Roos, president of LEARN, the school district’s reform program, said that when he heard about the accident, “I didn’t want to believe it. She was always the best, just smart . . . and acerbic and nice.”
Day Higuchi, who took over the UTLA presidency from Bernstein last June after serving as her vice president for two terms, said he had talked to her Thursday morning.
“The mayor wants to have a big effect on the Los Angeles school system, but it’s really important that the person advising him understand the schools,” Higuchi said. "[Without Helen] I’m sure there are some things that should have been done that won’t be done and some things that shouldn’t be done that will be. But now we’ll never know.”
State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin called Bernstein “a brave, courageous, caring, intelligent leader who was really at the forefront in wanting to change education for children. She cared about standards and credibility and fought for the best for kids.”
Eastin recalled that when she chaired the state Assembly Education Committee as a member of the Legislature, Bernstein insisted that she come to Los Angeles to visit schools. Bernstein took Eastin to the school where she taught, John Marshall High, where Bernstein was beloved.
“She came across as somebody who was tough but she had the original heart of gold when it came to kids,” Eastin said.
School board member David Tokofsky, a former Marshall High teacher elected to the board in 1995 with strong United Teachers-Los Angeles support, said late Thursday, “She was all heart, all passion and heart for what she was doing. . . . Everywhere she went, whether it was counseling or the union, she unleashed other people’s passion, too. The entire teaching force was impassioned by her.”
Bernstein became UTLA president in 1990 and was known as an activist, a firebrand and a feisty adversary of the district.
She was a product of Los Angeles schools and graduated from Hamilton High School in 1962. At UCLA she was active in civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movement.
She worked for a congressman after college, but was frustrated because she felt she was not as effective as she wanted to be in helping to bring about change.
She decided to teach and in 1967 became a history teacher and counselor. She eventually married another teacher and union activist. The couple had one daughter and the marriage ended in divorce.
She became involved in union activities, and when she was UTLA vice president she served as a member of the negotiating team during a nine-day strike in 1989. As a result of the strike, the teachers obtained a 24% pay raise over three years.
Bernstein left the union in 1996 to head a new nationwide network on teachers unions dedicated to nurturing school reform.
She was one of 51 candidates who qualified last month to vie for posts on a 15-seat panel to overhaul the city’s 72-year-old governing charter.
A ballot measure will ask voters to create the panel to rewrite the charter that many city officials contend is out of date.
Riordan, who has led the petition drive, endorsed 10 candidates, including Bernstein.
Times staff writers Richard Lee Colvin, Amy Pyle and Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this report.
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6f42e36e5c07ee970ba1c1b584f97c20 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-06-ls-45822-story.html | Galanos Gowns Dress Up Exhibit Opening | Galanos Gowns Dress Up Exhibit Opening
There are 71 creations in the retrospective exhibition “Galanos” celebrating the 40-year career of American couturier James Galanos at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And surely there were as many more on the women who walked the purple carpet for the museum’s Costume Council’s opening and the gala dinner for 400 at Neiman Marcus.
Galanos admirers came from Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Palm Beach, Fla.
Anyone who owned a Galanos wore it, making for a notable night in Los Angeles social / fashion history. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan arrived early in a long black Galanos for a gallery tour with the designer, and she stood in the receiving line with Galanos and museum director / vice president Graham W. J. Beal.
The exhibition includes three gowns Galanos created for Reagan: one for her husband’s California gubernatorial inauguration in 1967, the draped and beaded chiffon gown worn when the president of France honored the Reagans at Versailles in 1982, and the silver-and-crystal-bead-encrusted gown she wore for Reagan’s presidential inaugural in 1985.
Committee member Kathy Offenhauser wore an elegant Galanos: “Jimmy told me he had wanted my dress in the exhibition, but couldn’t find it,” she said.
Betsy Bloomingdale, Helen Lambros, Judi Tallarico, Frances Brody, Jayne Berger, Ginny Sydorick and Marilyn Lewis all wore Galanos. As did Iris Cantor, who arrived in a brown silk gown 23 years old. Hannah Carter estimated her long silk dress was “at least” 20 years old. Galanos’ sister, Dorothy Chrambanis of Trenton, N.J., recalled that her brother was sketching women’s fashions at age 7. She chose a short black lace, one of many gifts from her brother.
Galanos’ current muse, Natalie Tirrell, was in the spotlight. Three of his former models came from Palm Beach for the event--Maggy Scherer (with her polo-playing husband, Allan), Betsy Kaiser and Jennifer Garrigues--and all extolled Galanos.
Said the majestic Kaiser, in white hammered silk, “Ninety percent of my clothes are Galanos. If I can’t get into them, I send them to museums.” Where? “The Victoria and Albert, the Metropolitan. Los Angeles hasn’t asked me yet, but I will give to them.”
Designers Gustave Tassell, Nolan Miller and Michael Novarese paid homage to the show and its curator, Sandra Rosenbaum. The dinner--planned by Jane Halgren and Costume Council chairwoman Juli Miller, and hosted by Neiman’s John Martens--spread across NM’s second floor. Said Martens, “Galanos is the country’s foremost couturier--a man of great elegance and style.”
The Sunday evening before, Dona and Dwight Kendall entertained more than 50 at a black-tie dinner in their Bel-Air home honoring Galanos and his friends, including Prince Vittorio Alliata di Montereale and his wife, Princess Dialta, and the Costume Council board.
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Lladro: Brothers Juan, Jose and Vicente Lladro made a huge social splash on Rodeo Drive for the opening of their West Coast Lladro flagship store. More than 100 friends and relatives jetted from Valencia, Spain, to join California celebrities. Rodeo Drive was closed off; costumed Valencian dancers flew in to sing and dance. And more than 1,000 porcelain figurines filled three levels of the staircased and domed showroom designed by Juan Vicente Lladro and Ki Suh Park.
Later, limos whisked 400 to the Regent Beverly Wilshire for a dinner honoring the Motion Picture & Television Fund and the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation Children’s Center. The wives of Juan, Jose and Vicente--Lolo, Carmen and Amparo--were joined by 25 other family members and Spain’s Consul General Victor Iban~ez-Martin and his wife, Rosa, of Los Angeles, as well as Lauren Bacall, Tippi Hedren and Tony Goldwyn. Valencia’s minister of the economy, Jose L. Olivas, and his wife, Mercedes, were in the crowd. So were Jose Luis Perez, who oversees Lladro’s U.S. operations, and his wife, Christina, of New York, and Valencia’s Secretary of State Fernando Villalonga.
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April Ides: The USC School of Public Administration’s annual dinner has segued in recent years from March into April. What a night it will be. The “XV Annual Ides of March Dinner” on April 23 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel honors former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and is under the chairmanship of the always-inventive Michael D. Eisner, chairman of the Walt Disney Co. Invitations arrive soon.
Floral Fantasia: Expect nothing less than sensational for the Las Floristas Floral Headdress Ball on April 25 at the Beverly Hilton. The 59th affair with competing headdresses--each a floral masterpiece of hues, shapes and textures--will be highlighted by the Mannequin Parade. Tova and Ernest Borgnine will emcee the whimsy.
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Red-Letter Dates: “An Enchanting Hellenic Night” will be the theme of the International Committee of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. at its 46th annual benefit ball Saturday at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Consul General of Greece Christos Panagopoulos and his wife, Juli, will be in the spotlight . . . Linda Lo Re, president of Giorgio Beverly Hills, has been tapped for another honor: She will be named woman of the year by the Muses of the California Museum of Science and Industry at their luncheon Wednesday at the Beverly Hills Hotel . . . Kathy Hilton, wife of Rick Hilton, chairman of Hilton & Hyland, and a community leader herself, will be honored as woman of the year at the 49th annual two-day Women’s Luncheon of the Sportsmen’s Club / Diamond Circle Wednesday and Thursday at the Beverly Hilton.
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Brilliance: And you thought it was theirs. Van Cleef & Arpels provided celebrities with millions in jewels for the Oscars: Sigourney Weaver, $749,000 in rubies and diamonds; Bette Midler, $278,500; Kristin Scott Thomas, $224,000; Marianne Jean-Baptiste, $1,155,500; Vivica Fox, $1,004,000; Bianca Jagger, $1 million; and Victoria Duffy, $113,550. Imagine the sorrow of returning the baubles to Rodeo Drive.
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41e1a2e77fa91ed40b16953a3d1cf2f7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-06-op-45883-story.html | A Nation of Cults: The Great American Tradition | A Nation of Cults: The Great American Tradition
The cult’s charismatic leader called himself Matthias the Prophet and claimed he was the latest incarnation of the Holy Spirit--a descendant of the ancient Hebrew prophets and patriarchs, including Jesus Christ. He lived communally with about 20 of his disciples--men, women and children--in a fine suburban house adjoining a spacious, well-manicured estate. Every day, the disciples listened intently to Matthias’ furious, meandering sermons about the rapidly approaching Doomsday; and they obeyed his every command, including his rearrangements of the group’s sexual pairings. Not surprisingly, the bearded prophet took the prettiest of the women, the wife of a wealthy disciple, as his personal “match spirit.”
Outsiders suspected that awful things were happening at Mount Zion, the name Matthias gave to the commune. But only after a sickly member of the cult died under mysterious circumstances did local authorities apprehend the prophet and confirm some of the worst of the rumors.
The affair quickly became a media circus. Tabloid newspapers reported sensational details about the cult’s sexual depravity and religious brainwashing. Editorial writers bemoaned Matthias’ alluring fanaticism, and commented darkly about the state of the American psyche. And the public eagerly awaited the prophet’s public trial in connection with his follower’s strange demise.
It all could have happened yesterday, in Waco or in Rancho Santa Fe. Yet, the kingdom of Matthias did not rise and fall in some New Age Sunbelt outpost, but in the town of Sing Sing, N.Y., just north of New York City--in the middle of the 1830s. And though he got more attention than most, Matthias was only one of the dozens of American cult leaders who emerged over the decades following the American Revolution.
Evaluations of more recent cults, including the suicidal Heaven’s Gate group, usually slight America’s rich history of religious eccentricity. Some pundits are quick to blame the 1960s counterculture for spawning interest in outlandish religious doctrines. Others blame television and the Internet. Still others hypothesize that the approach of the year 2000 has led to an epidemic of millennial credulity.
Yet, if these present-minded commentaries contain some truth, they also obscure the deeper American origins of religious cultism. Founded by religious dissenters, the United States has long been a hotbed of sectarian enthusiasm. And the current explosion of millenarianism has yet to match the one that occurred amid the so-called Second Great Awakening after the Revolution--one of the most intense outbursts of religious and pseudo-religious invention since the Protestant Reformation.
Most of the early Americans shamans and seers made a quick impression, only to disappear into obscurity--or, as in Matthias’ case, into ignominy. In the 1790s, for example, a former British army officer (his name is lost to posterity) claimed the gift of prophecy and assembled a divinely inspired political movement in Vermont and Massachusetts--but, just as rapidly, the prophet dispersed his group and was never heard from again. After the War of 1812, a band of religious seekers who called themselves Pilgrims migrated from Woodstock, Vt., (where they won at least 100 converts) to the outskirts of Troy, N.Y., and then moved again, by stages, until they reached the promised land of Missouri and faded into the countryside.
At about the same time, also in Vermont, members of a short-lived sect called the New Israelites, led by a man named Justis Winchell, declared that they had the God-given power to discover “vast quantities” of gold and silver, sufficient “to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem.” A bit later, a self-declared divine monarch named James Jesse Strange ruled over a band of followers, mostly women, on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, until he fell victim to an assassin’s bullet.
Some of the early American sects--most notably the Shakers--enjoyed spectacular growth through the middle of the 19th century before fading into near-extinction. A handful of other sects, however, evolved into major religions. The most famous of these, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (better known as the Mormons) got its start in upstate New York in 1819, when Jesus and God appeared in a column of white fire to the farm boy Joseph Smith. Twelve years after Smith’s first vision, William Miller, a Baptist minister in Low Hampton, N.Y., announced that Christ would return to Earth in 1843, and attracted untold thousands of believers. The Millerites suffered a great disappointment when their leader’s calculations proved faulty, but a number of them regrouped in the 1860s to help found the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Then as now, the cults were hardly monolithic, doctrinally or emotionally, but they shared some common traits. They attracted a diverse following. Matthias’ little group, for example, included a poor ex-slave woman and an Irish serving girl, as well as some of the most favored young members of Manhattan’s mercantile elite. Cults often enforced discipline among the devout by prescribing some sort of unorthodox sexual regimen, ranging from celibacy to polygamy. Their teachings tended to focus on the attainment of some higher state of human existence, prefatory to God’s destruction of the sinful world. And, as recent historians have shown, they translated into a biblical vernacular the widespread hopes, hurts and apprehensions of a rapidly changing America--a new nation experiencing intense commercial development, the demise of traditional aristocratic patriarchy and the rise of what would become familiar as sentimental Victorian sexual norms.
The most startling difference between today’s cults and their early American forerunners is the modern proclivity for mass suicide. In the 19th century, believers hoped to hasten the coming of God’s kingdom by perfecting human life on Earth; at the end of the 20th, there is a tendency to want to leave Earth altogether--to be transported (perhaps by UFOs, the modern equivalent of celestial angels) directly to kingdom come.
But in other respects, the modern cults are best approached not as some bizarre, turn-of-the-millennium outburst but as the latest in a long line of American millenarian movements. Where they will lead is by no means certain. But it should surprise nobody if one of today’s prophets--perhaps the late L. Ron Hubbard--turns out to have been a latter-day Joseph Smith, the founder of a full-fledged respectable religion. And if the outcome of the Matthias cult’s story, among many others, is indicative, we should learn to expect the unexpected from America’s ever volatile sectarian life.
As it happened, Matthias was acquitted of murdering his follower, though he wound up serving time on some lesser charges. He was last seen preaching to Indians in Iowa Territory in the early 1840s.
Yet, that was not quite the end of the affair. After the prophet’s release from jail, his most loyal disciple, the ex-slave Isabella, heard new commandments from God. Some years later, she became a famous advocate of abolitionism and feminism, under a new heavenly name: Sojourner Truth. But that, as they say, is another story.
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b7ee859107194dff5e808dd42c1b1987 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-07-ca-46202-story.html | ‘Selena’: A Symbol of Today’s Cultural Ties | ‘Selena’: A Symbol of Today’s Cultural Ties
My girlfriend loved Selena because the tejano star couldn’t quite roll her Rs in Spanish. I liked her because she wasn’t too proud to resort to English during Spanish-language interviews. “Como se dice cinnamon?” she once asked a Latin American TV reporter without a hint of embarrassment.
After she was murdered, nobody seemed able to place her culturally. Tom Brokaw called the U.S.-born Selena the “Mexican Madonna.” The Mexican music magazine Furia Musical ran an article on how the American singing sensation couldn’t speak Spanish all that well.
The marketing effort for “Selena,” Gregory Nava’s new movie about her life and death, offers Selena as the archetypal American story. And by all accounts it was. She was raised in suburban Corpus Christi, Texas, and became the instrument of her father’s frustrated artistic ambition. She had the dreamy exuberance of a suburban American teen. And, in the great American tradition of violence, her life was cut short by a bullet in the back.
But to Mexican Americans, Selena’s story is also one of the burden of leading hyphenated lives, and of the need to forge a place for ourselves between the dismissive Anglo American and Mexican mainstreams.
Selena Quintanilla Perez was an American girl who preferred disco to rancheras. She made it big singing in Spanish but dreamed of being an English-language “crossover” star.
Not too long ago, when Mexican American identity was still defined more by its roots than its branches, Latino cultural ambivalence was a source of shame for the children and grandchildren of immigrants. Mexicans called their English-speaking, Scooby-Doo-
watching American cousins pochos, which meant something like “watered-down Mexicans.”
But Selena’s tremendous popularity, in both the U.S. and Mexico, is a sign of the times. In her life and success, pocho no longer connotes a marginal position in a culture that was never fully ours but a growing pride in Mexican American hybrid status and the ability to sample and absorb the best from both sides of the border.
The buzz in Hollywood is that a success with this movie of Selena’s life will translate into more English-language, Latino-themed productions. Warner Bros. spent more money than usual trying to reach the Latino market with “Selena,” and the movie opened nationwide on 1,850 screens ($11.6 million).
A box-office hit, however, depends on the picture’s appeal to all audiences. In parts of the country that are rapidly Latinizing, Mexican American hybridity is already reaching the mainstream. In Los Angeles, English- and Spanish-language media are cross-pollinating. The leading 6 p.m. TV newscast in Spanish advertises on KPWR-FM (105.9), the English-language hip-hop station. The Galaxy, L.A.'s soccer team, runs English-language radio ads featuring accented voices. David Letterman’s eighth reason for not moving back to Los Angeles from New York was that after 11 years away from L.A., he finally managed to lose his Chicano accent.
In the movie “Selena,” Edward James Olmos, playing Selena’s father, tells the young Selena how difficult it is to be Mexican American. “We have to know about John Wayne and Pedro Infante,” he says.
But if Selena’s bio-pic hits big, Hollywood studios may realize that the great urban, ethnic American tales are no longer to be found on New York’s docks or in Chicago’s wards but in their very own backyard. Who knows? We may soon be watching movies starring the likes of a Pedro Wayne.
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6bf24b0c3db8e1391c6ec5a65760017c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-12-ca-47825-story.html | Disney Hall Is Dusted With Optimism | Disney Hall Is Dusted With Optimism
To borrow on the name of the latest major donor to downtown’s Walt Disney Concert Hall project, Ralphs/Food 4 Less Foundation, can Disney Hall be Built 4 Less?
A $15-million donation announced this week from the Ralphs/Food 4 Less and Ron Burkle, an executive of Yucaipa Cos., allowed Disney Hall officials to reach $52.3 million in new gifts since December, beating by more than two months a fund-raising deadline imposed by Los Angeles County, owners of the land on which the planned new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will stand.
Even though the county is relying on estimates that the hall could cost $265 million, Eli Broad, a former developer and the unofficial volunteer chairman of the Disney Hall fund-raising effort, estimates the hall can be built for $220 million, a number that includes $50 million already spent on the project.
Broad, chairman and chief executive officer of SunAmerica Inc., also says this cost containment can be done without any design changes to the hall, an undulating structure of limestone curves designed by Frank O. Gehry. Gehry said Thursday that Broad has told him that $22.5 million in design changes proposed in late 1994 and approved by Disney Hall officials may not be necessary.
Broad confirmed in an interview Thursday that redesign costs could offset any savings on materials or engineering.
The hall currently requires $170 million for completion (that doesn’t count what’s been spent), Broad says. To date, project officials have raised $167.3 million, including the latest gifts. (This figure includes the $50 million that has been spent.)
The bottom line is that if the project can be completed for Broad’s estimate, officials have $117.3 million in hand toward the $170 million needed, leaving only $50 million to be raised--instead of the approximate $100 million needed if the cost were to be $265 million as had been expected.
“It means we already have 70% of the money we need to complete the hall,” Broad said. Indeed, Broad’s estimate differs only slightly from one presented in 1994 by Houston-based Hines Interests management company, an independent firm brought in by the Disney oversight group to calculate costs at a time when spiraling estimates caused Los Angeles County to halt the project and threaten to terminate it. A deadline of June 30 was set to raise $52.3 million as an initial demonstration of support. The hall is to be built on county-owned land at First Street and Grand Avenue, as part of the Los Angeles Music Center.
The Hines estimate assumes design changes that save $22.5 million, including eliminating an amphitheater, simplifying the Founders’ Room and eliminating a horseshoe staircase. These were approved in 1995 by Disney officials and the Music Center board. Hines also suggests that $5 million could be saved by changing the building’s exterior materials from limestone to titanium metal, although this suggestion was tabled by officials.
Broad believes the same amount of money can be made up through cost-effective engineering, fewer consultants and tightly controlled management. Broad said Thursday there is no current plan to eliminate the exterior limestone.
The estimate of $265 million also included substantial expectation of extra costs added by the oversight committee. They include $10 million in unexpected costs, a $10-million reserve to pay off contractors and subcontractors after the project was shut down, another $10 million to finance fund-raising and $17.9 million to cover inflation in case of further delays in construction. All that adds up to $47.9 million.
While one Music Center board member called Broad’s estimate “a little overreaching,” Hines senior vice president Colin Shepherd termed Broad’s number “absolutely attainable” and said the estimate is consistent with previous Hines calculations.
“Our process is geared toward coming in on or under budget. Our projects have all been under budget and on schedule,” he said.
Even developer Stuart Ketchum, a longtime Music Center board member who was part of the Disney Hall group that requested contingency costs be included in the estimates, is optimistic about Broad’s estimates.
“I have not talked to Mr. Broad,” Ketchum said Thursday, “but I think there is a good possibility for substantial savings over the original estimate. The apparent success of fund-raising would reduce some of the need for contingencies for inflation. I think it can be done with very tight controls and management, which it did not have before, but it’s not going to be an easy job.”
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27e3ed300460624cd7b09a0dce844dd6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-12-mn-48029-story.html | Nixon Library Halts Plans for Honoring Benefactor | Nixon Library Halts Plans for Honoring Benefactor
Officials of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, Calif., have halted preparations for construction of a $6-million building because of a controversy over anti-Semitic writings of its long-deceased namesake, Nixon benefactor Elmer H. Bobst.
The decision on the Bobst Institute followed an emergency meeting here Thursday by the board of directors of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, a Birthplace Foundation subsidiary and think tank whose image and independence the board considers threatened by association with the Bobst name.
The voting members, who included former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for immediate consultation with the foundation on “problems surrounding creation of the Bobst Institute,” according to center president and spokesman Dimitri K. Simes.
The argument over the Bobst Institute is just one element of an ongoing dispute between Nixon family members and his political supporters over who should control the various institutions that bear the former president’s name.
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Center officials also called for a “meaningful restructuring” of the Nixon foundation, which currently gives even big donors on its board of directors no voice in either budget decisions or foundation policies. Nixon family members have agreed in principle to some restructuring, one source said, “but the devil is in the details.”
While the Nixon Center board voiced unanimous preference for continued affiliation with the Nixon foundation, this will depend on ensuring the center’s independence and reaching an agreement on the Bobst Institute, Simes said.
The emergency meeting, chaired by Schlesinger, was attended by 11 of the 17 board members, with three others voting by proxy, Simes said. The only board members absent were Nixon’s daughters, Tricia Cox and Julie Eisenhower, and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who had a previous speaking commitment.
One of those attending the meeting who asked not to be identified said the board tried to avoid the appearance of giving an ultimatum to its parent body. “But there will be no Bobst Institute if we stay with the foundation,” he said.
Construction of the institute, a gift to the Nixon Foundation by Bobst’s widow, Mamdouha, was scheduled to start this month on the nine-acre site of the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda. Some preparations were already underway but apparently have been tabled for two or three weeks in the face of what one official called a “profound institutional self-examination” over the Bobst matter. The delay is aimed at permitting negotiations between the Nixon daughters, who committed the foundation to the project, and longtime allies of the late president, who are outraged at the prospect of a forced marriage with Bobst’s name.
In one of a series of “Dear Dick” letters to his friend in the Oval Office--letters that surfaced recently among Nixon papers at the National Archives--Bobst states that “malicious” Jews have “troubled the world from the very beginning.”
“We must bear in mind that the majority of the people in this country are anti-Jewish,” he declared in a Sept. 16, 1972, telephone call transcribed by Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods. “We don’t permit them to come into our areas if we can help it--we try to keep them out of clubs, etc. Remember, there are a lot of people who do not like them at all.”
There are more communications in that vein.
Ironically, the Nixon who is still honored by both center and foundation officials was known to rail against Jews himself. The Watergate tapes are filled with Nixonian fulminations against a “Jewish cabal” in such federal agencies as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Internal Revenue Service and “rich Jews” among prominent Democrats who “are stealing in every direction.”
Why are Nixon loyalists now so concerned about Bobst?
“President Nixon said many terrible things, particularly when he felt embattled or emotional, and I do not defend them,” Simes said. “But there is absolutely no evidence that those sentiments ever played a part in either his political appointments or his public policies. You only have to look at the reverence with which he is held in Israel. So we have a public record to weigh against those unfortunate private outbursts. . . .
“Mr. Bobst may well have been just as fair-minded in public life, but we have no comparable public record against which to judge what he wrote. So for many members of the center board, there is a difference. And it is a difference I understand,” Simes said.
While some were willing to accept, if not excuse, Bobst’s sentiments as those of an emotional man in his 80s, others have talked of demanding the return of million-dollar contributions to the Nixon Foundation if the whole Bobst project isn’t scrapped, according to sources close to the controversy.
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7e6c9c4175d5440e6ba897678aa6adac | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-18-ca-49816-story.html | ‘Licensed to Kill’ Looks at Murderous Evil | ‘Licensed to Kill’ Looks at Murderous Evil
What is most surprising--and most provocative--about “Licensed to Kill,” Arthur Dong’s strong and disturbing documentary on men who kill homosexuals, is the way it overturns our expectations. Nothing you’ve heard about the plague of violence against gay men will lessen the shock value of this chilling look at the real face of evil.
Winner of the Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance, “Licensed to Kill” is written, directed, produced and edited by Dong (“Coming Out Under Fire”), a gay man who counts personal experience as the impetus behind this work.
In 1977, Dong explains in a brief voice-over prologue, he was attacked by four gay-bashing teenagers in San Francisco and escaped only by throwing himself on the hood of a passing car. Still attempting years later to understand the roots of this violent behavior, he decided to do “the most difficult thing” and confront men “whose contempt for homosexuals led them to kill people like me.”
“Confront” may not be the right word because one of “Licensed to Kill’s” strength is the coolness of its technique, the almost clinical matter-of-factness of its presentation. Dong never appears on camera and wisely allows the half-dozen convicted murderers he interviews to tell their own stories unimpeded by any kind of hectoring or editorializing.
That does not mean that “Licensed to Kill” is no more than a collection of talking heads. Intercut with Dong’s six prison interviews are various kinds of relevant material, including TV news reports and unsettling police evidence tapes and photos of the murders his interviewees committed.
Equally disturbing are the selections from homophobic statements by prominent fundamentalist leaders, psychotic phone messages of the “Save America/Kill a Fag” variety, a home video of a gay man being viciously beaten up by a neighbor and a police interrogation tape in which a young man calmly describes how he came to stab a gay man 27 times.
But though this material is all relevant and to the point, “Licensed to Kill” is that rare documentary that would fascinate and horrify even if it were nothing but talking heads. Because while Hollywood’s movies have acclimated us to cliched bigots, cardboard monsters like James Woods in “Ghosts of Mississippi” or the white racists in “Rosewood,” it’s a shock to see how various, how unexpectedly well-spoken, how deeply troubled and haphazard the evil that walks our streets can be.
Who would expect to encounter someone like Jay Johnson, an articulate, initially closeted gay man who was raised in a religious, violently anti-homosexual household? Feeling loathing toward all things gay, even “to the extent that I was doing it, I was disgusted with myself,” Johnson was more horrified to discover that his mixed race was a handicap to cruising that made him “unsuccessful at something I already hated.” A series of slayings attempting to frighten gay men off the streets of Minneapolis is what followed.
For some of the prisoners, the murders they committed were almost an afterthought or a whim, the casual byproduct of robberies of gay men who were the classic easy targets. Faced with the choice of a 7-Eleven and its video camera or victims who “because of the fact that they’re a homosexual and they don’t want people to know it, they’re not gonna go report it to the police,” says Donald Aldrich, “who you gonna go rob?”
The most disconnected story belongs to Kenneth Jr. French, a career Army man who killed four people at random in a North Carolina restaurant to protest President Clinton’s relaxing of the ban on gays in the military. And one of the sadder histories is that of William Cross. Raped by a friend of the family when he was 7, he “never felt the same afterward, never felt like I was even a man anymore.” The irrational but deadly result was anti-homosexual rage.
What many of these men have in common, Dong’s film suggests, is the way society’s attitudes in general, and the hostility of fundamentalist religion in particular, gave them an almost literal license to kill, a feeling that slaying gay men meant, as Jeffrey Swinford puts it, “just one less problem the world had to mess with.” “Religion,” muses Jay Johnson, “is a vicious thing.”
To look these people in the face, to hear their horrific but always recognizably human stories, is much more affecting and unsettling than printed summations can indicate. To hear an unrepentant Aldrich coolly comment on the new Texas hate crimes statutes his murder resulted in by saying, “maybe something good will come of this after all,” is to be confronted with the human condition in all its awful complexity.
* Unrated. Times guidelines: considerable profanity, unsettling police photos of murder scenes and victims.
‘Licensed to Kill’
A DeepFocus production. Director, producer, screenplay, editor Arthur Dong. Associate producer Thomas G. Miller. Cinematographer Robert Shepard. Music Miriam Cutler. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.
* In limited release. Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 274-6869.
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68d44d4c677149fbf3b46aa60a2e1b73 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-22-mn-51145-story.html | French President Dissolves Parliament, Sets Election | French President Dissolves Parliament, Sets Election
Taking the biggest political gamble of his term, President Jacques Chirac on Monday night dissolved the National Assembly and asked the French to elect a new Parliament willing to impose more belt-tightening measures on an already restive nation.
“Our economy, our enterprises, employment cannot wait,” Chirac proclaimed. “France needs a new elan. This . . . can only be given by clearly expressed approval from the French people.”
Speaking to his nation on radio and television, Chirac said an official decree would be published today fixing the dates of the two-round election as May 25 and June 1. “My dear compatriots, the moment has come to express yourselves,” he said.
The reason for the early voting that he had once opposed might seem surprising, Chirac admitted. The ruling center-right coalition dominated by Chirac’s Gaullist Rally for the Republic already holds a lock on the 577-seat National Assembly, and voters had not been scheduled to choose a new Parliament until the spring of 1998, when the lawmakers’ five-year terms expire.
By moving up the election date, as France’s president is empowered to do under the constitution, Chirac was evidently trying to prevent a future political crisis rather than extinguish an ongoing one.
A new National Assembly would be able to slash public spending right away, in order to bring France’s public deficit down to the 3% of gross domestic product required by the end of this year for membership in the planned single European currency, analysts said. And the newly chosen lawmakers taking those unpopular steps would not have to face outraged voters next spring.
“Naturally, the government wants to hold elections before wielding the hatchet,” wrote Serge July in the left-wing newspaper Liberation.
Prime Minister Alain Juppe’s ministers have made no secret of the fact that pruning state spending and the ranks of government employees is among their chief priorities. Last year, France’s public deficit was 4.1% of gross domestic product, a level that would disqualify the country for membership in the club of nations issuing the new “euro” currency.
Presaging the theme of the opposition’s electoral campaign, which began on the airwaves right after Chirac’s 10-minute address, Lionel Jospin, first secretary of the Socialist Party, said the Gaullist president and his allies were getting ready for “a new step toward hard capitalism.”
Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, called Chirac’s gambit an unjustified “electoral holdup.”
Though Chirac, a former mayor of Paris who was elected head of state in May 1995, has fallen to dismally low approval ratings in the polls--31%, according to a survey published Sunday--his maneuver is expected to work because voters remain even more suspicious of the French left.
One opinion poll conducted by the conservative Le Figaro newspaper determined that center-right parties would obtain 150 seats fewer than the 473 they now hold in the assembly but that they would retain the absolute majority required to pass most legislation.
But if those estimates are off and the opposition parties won, Chirac would be forced to share power with an opposition prime minister dead-set against many of his policies.
“He is risking big, risking losing his political authority and having to face a very bad cohabitation,” noted Etienne Schweisguth, director for research at the Paris-based Study Center on French Political Life.
Since Gen. Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth French Republic in 1958, the lower house of France’s bicameral Parliament has been dissolved four times previously--by De Gaulle in 1962 and 1968 and by Socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1981 and 1988. But in all those cases, there was either a grave political crisis or acrimony between the president and the Parliament.
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8856235ac9851852507ad8fd81c803f0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-03-ca-54869-story.html | Visiting a Model Neighborhood | Visiting a Model Neighborhood
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JIM QUEALY & THE NOISY NEIGHBORS
“Songs from the Stoop”
Mudfram Records
The cover photo for Jim Quealy’s new album captures the singer-songwriter seated on his front-porch steps, blowing his harmonica. It’s a perfect snapshot because Quealy projects the sense that he enjoys making music so much that he could play happily all by his lonesome.
Fortunately for fans, though, the Rancho Santa Margarita resident got a little help from his friends--the Noisy Neighbors--on this, his second album. The follow-up to his impressive 1995 debut album, “Far From the Real World,” is a winning 10-song collection of heartfelt songs played by a tight, hard-working ensemble that shows no signs of sophomore slump.
At the heart of the seven-piece band’s sound is Quealy’s expressive, grainy vocals and a melodic, freewheeling style that roams between roots-rock, folk, country and rock ‘n’ roll. The players are equally strong whether revving it up for such rockers as “Design Yourself a Love” and “Life Goes On” or slowing it down for the concluding, piano-based ballad “Just Walked Away.”
As a lyricist, the 43-year-old Quealy offers a voice smarting from struggle and pain, yet hopeful for love and redemption. He’s willing to delve into the complexities of the human experience and brings an insightful, seasoned edge to the material.
*
Consider the way Quealy examines paths of desperation that lead to far different destinations. In one number, the somber “Just Walked Away,” a woman finally walks out on her husband because he’s unwilling to be a responsible family man.
The engrossing “Man in Stanville” goes one disturbing step further. Here, a woman plots to kill a “selfish and cruel” husband for his money. She hires a hit man, and sometime after he commits the dirty deed, she falls in love with another man who only has money on his mind. Her fate is sealed when Quealy deadpans: “He knew a man in Stanville / Who could make it look like suicide.”
Still, Quealy doesn’t just wallow in darkness; he embraces the good in life as well. The mood brightens considerably in “These Two Lives,” which celebrates an enduring love that triumphs over numerous obstacles. He rejoices: “They put two lives together / From two lives alone.”
Standing out among the backing musicians is pedal steel guitarist and Dobro player Greg Leisz. The Fullerton-based string ace, known for his solid work with Dave Alvin, Matthew Sweet, k.d. lang and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, adds his distinctive, folksy touch to the cinematic “Man in Stanville” and “Walkin’ Tall,” which effectively exposes one cowboy’s vulnerability.
Sitting for a spell with these noisy neighbors is quite rejuvenating.
(Available from Mudfram Records, P.O. Box 80915, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688.)
* Jim Quealy & the Noisy Neighbors and Sue Hart play tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $12-$14. (714) 496-8930.
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e87003adf7fbe68b236f7771ce55ca55 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-07-mn-56316-story.html | Did Hired Killer Go by the Book? | Did Hired Killer Go by the Book?
The triple murder that took place on this quiet, suburban cul-de-sac of Colonial brick homes makes for a gripping tale of money and evil.
An out-of-work Hollywood sound engineer named Lawrence Horn conspired to have his ex-wife and brain-damaged son killed so that he could inherit a $2-million trust fund intended for the boy. He might not have been caught except for a single pay phone call to his Hollywood apartment from an all-night Denny’s restaurant near his ex-wife’s home on the night she, their son and an overnight nurse were killed.
Checking motels near the Denny’s, police found that James Perry, a Detroit “street preacher,” had registered at one a few hours before the murders, paid with cash and checked out at dawn. FBI agents then traced 138 calls between pay phones near Perry’s house in Detroit and Horn’s Hollywood apartment.
Now this tale of true crime may also make for a true landmark in 1st Amendment law.
When police raided Perry’s home, they learned he had purchased a 130-page mail-order guidebook for murder, “Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors.” Prosecutors showed Perry followed 22 of the book’s recommendations in committing the 1993 murders.
A novel lawsuit, filed on behalf of the dead woman’s sisters, poses a question that ultimately will have to be answered in the Supreme Court: Can a book publisher be held liable for aiding and abetting murder? Or does the 1st Amendment completely shield those who put out not only murder manuals but also books on how to make bombs, poison gas and deadly chemicals that can be used to kill hundreds of persons?
The “Hit Man” book, which has sold 13,000 copies since 1983, is published by Peder Lund, an ex-Green Beret who fought in Vietnam. His Paladin Press, a mail-order house based in Boulder, Colo., specializes in military and self-defense books and includes manuals on how to make bombs, silencers and sniper weapons.
The suit will be considered today by a U.S. appeals court in Richmond, Va. Lawyers for both sides say they will appeal to the high court if they lose.
Lund has a phalanx of powerful allies. Many of the nation’s biggest media companies, which would never consider publishing Lund’s manuals, are nevertheless rallying to his cause out of fear that an adverse court ruling would damage a free press.
The “Hit Man” manual, listed in the publisher’s catalog at $10, does not hide its author’s cold-blooded purpose. It is “an instruction book on murder,” author “Rex Feral” (a pseudonym) announces in the first sentence.
“The professional hit man fills a need in society and is, at times, the only alternative for personal justice,” Feral continues. The killer need feel “no twinge of guilt,” since “the hit man is merely the executioner, an enforcer who carries out the sentence.”
Paladin Press’ catalog also includes “Homemade C-4: A Recipe for Survival,” a book that achieved particular prominence last week when the jury in the Oklahoma City bombing trial was told that defendant Timothy J. McVeigh had ordered a copy. The catalog says C-4 is used “for blowing up bridges [and] shattering steel.”
Police found a copy of Paladin’s catalog at Perry’s home. Contacting the publisher, they learned that Perry had bought two books--"Hit Man” and “Silencers"--and had sent Paladin a check. They never found his copy of “Hit Man.”
Gun Touted in Book Is Cited
During Perry’s trial, prosecutors showed he used the AR-7 rifle recommended by “Hit Man” in murdering Mildred Horn and her son’s overnight nurse. The AR-7 “breaks down for storage [and] is easy to carry or conceal,” the book says. He also drilled out the serial numbers as recommended.
“At least three shots should be fired to insure quick and sure death,” the book advises. “Aim for the head, preferably the eye sockets. Close kills enable you to determine right away if you have successfully fulfilled your part of the contract.”
Mildred Horn and Janice Saunders died from three shots fired at close range into their eyes. Young Trevor was suffocated in his bed.
Police traced money orders from Horn to Perry totaling about $5,000. They could not determine how much Horn had promised to pay Perry once he obtained the trust fund, which he never received.
Perry was convicted and sentenced to death. Horn was later convicted and given life in prison.
Outraged by what he had heard at the trial, Howard L. Siegel, a Rockville, Md., malpractice lawyer who won the settlement that established young Trevor’s $2-million trust fund, conceived the lawsuit. Siegel says he was convinced a publisher should not be allowed to make money on murder manuals.
“I don’t want to hear about the 1st Amendment. You don’t have a right to help criminals commit crimes,” Siegel said. “This is no different than writing down the combination of the safe and giving it to a guy so he can rob a bank. No one would say that was protected by the 1st Amendment.”
Aiding and abetting a crime is a separate criminal violation under Maryland law and can be the basis for civil liability too, he says.
But Siegel knows he is fighting far more than a single publisher of military-style manuals.
“The 1st Amendment has the most powerful lobby around. It’s unified. They always stick together no matter what,” Siegel said.
As if to confirm his point, many of the nation’s premier media companies have lined up on the side of “Hit Man’s” publisher.
Backing ‘Speech at the Fringes’
A coalition of media groups, in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Paladin Press, includes ABC Inc. and the Walt Disney Co., America Online Inc., the Assn. of American Publishers, the Magazine Publishers of America and such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, which is a subsidiary of the Times Mirror Co., the publisher of the Los Angeles Times.
“Allowing this lawsuit to survive,” their brief asserts, will do “serious and substantial” harm to the 1st Amendment. “It is most often the speech at the fringes of American life that defines the freedoms for those at the center,” it says.
Lund agrees the fate of the 1st Amendment rests with his case.
“If we don’t prevail, the 1st Amendment is in tatters,” he said in a phone interview. “A negative decision will affect all of the media: fiction and nonfiction, the Internet, TV and Hollywood. We’re the little guys, but if we lose, the big companies will soon be forced into court by ambulance chasers like Siegel.”
(Siegel refers to Lund in conversation as the “scum on the dark side of the 1st Amendment.”)
Lund’s attorneys argue that if he can be sued, so can authors of murder mysteries or moviemakers whose scenes of crime and violence are copied by real-life killers.
“The material in this book is available from other sources. Perry could have done the same thing without the ‘Hit Man,’ ” Lund says. “And once you start censorship, there’s no way to draw a line.”
But Siegel has also won a key ally in Rodney A. Smolla, a respected 1st Amendment scholar at the law school of the College of William and Mary.
Usually a staunch advocate of free speech and freedom of the press, Smolla switched sides and joined the case against Paladin after reading “Hit Man.”
“This book has no reason for existence other than to assist people who want to commit murder,” he said. “Once that became clear, then it was also clear this was not about freedom of speech, but about participation in murder.”
Lawyers on both sides agree the Supreme Court has never decided a case like this one.
The most commonly cited precedent is a 1969 ruling involving Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader from Ohio. He was arrested after some racist ranting at an outdoor klan rally, but the high court overturned his conviction in a brief, oft-quoted opinion.
Adopting a version of the “clear and present danger” standard proposed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the high court in Brandenburg vs. Ohio said the free-speech guarantee protected a radical speaker from prosecution unless he was inciting others to engage in “imminent lawless action.”
Since books, by their nature, are not inciters of immediate criminal acts, some lawyers say all books--at least those that are not obscene or defamatory--are protected by the 1st Amendment.
Intent Is Viewed as Crucial Element
Next week, however, Smolla will try to convince the appeals court that a clear and principled distinction can be drawn between murder manuals and books that are designed to entertain and inform.
“Intent is the key element,” Smolla argued. “If you intend to assist someone to commit a crime, that is not protected by the 1st Amendment.”
In the preliminary skirmishing, Siegel and Smolla won potentially significant concessions from Paladin’s lawyers. Anxious to avoid probing discovery motions and then a trial, Paladin’s legal team agreed to accept several stipulations suggested by Siegel in exchange for a quick ruling on whether the 1st Amendment shielded the publisher from all liability.
In one, the defendants admitted they “engaged in a marketing strategy intended to attract and assist criminals . . . who desire information and instructions on how to commit crimes.” A second says the “defendants intended and had knowledge that their publications would be used by criminals to plan and execute the crime of murder for hire.”
Paladin’s lawyers, disputing Smolla’s claim that these stipulations tilt the case in his favor, note that others make clear that criminals are not their only readers. Law enforcement experts, mystery writers and “Walter Mittys” have purchased “Hit Man,” they say. Moreover, they add, the publisher did not know James Perry and had no idea he planned to murder Mildred Horn.
So far, Paladin’s tactics have worked. U.S. District Judge Alex Williams Jr. heard the case last year and quickly ruled the 1st Amendment shielded the publisher from all liability.
Although “Hit Man” is “reprehensible [and] is enough to engender nausea in many readers,” the judge said, it is protected speech under Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Judge Williams said he was not willing to “create a whole new category of speech unprotected by the 1st Amendment.”
A ruling against Paladin certainly would threaten a whole category of speech, but some experts in terrorism and the militia movements say it is a category that deserves to be threatened.
They are referring to “how-to” books on explosives, lethal chemicals, poison gas, germ warfare and even nuclear weapons. While these publications are not seen in most bookstores, they are readily available through mail-order houses, such as Paladin.
Neal Livingstone, a terrorism expert who lives in Washington, has collected bookshelves full of what he calls “mayhem manuals"--1,600 titles, including “Undetectable Hand Grenades,” the “Poor Man’s Nuclear Manual” and a Paladin book, “Homemade Semtex,” the powerful, hard-to-detect explosive that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland.
Other books include the recipe for sarin, the deadly gas that was used by a Japanese terror group in the Tokyo subway, and the even more deadly VX gas.
“These books have no purpose other than to teach you how to maim and kill,” he said.
Federal Reach Said to Be Limited
The power of the 1st Amendment is so great, however, that federal officials assert they cannot even monitor publications or computer transmissions that describe bomb-making and poison gases.
“We know this stuff is out there, on Web sites and whatnot, but what can we do?,” said FBI spokesman Steve Berry. “You have 1st Amendment rights here. There is no law against this material, and we’re not in the censorship business.”
After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) tried to make it illegal to disseminate information on explosives if the distributor knows it will be used for criminal purposes.
Although Feinstein called hers a “common-sense” amendment, critics in the House stripped the provision from the anti-terrorism legislation on free-speech grounds. She says she may reintroduce the bill this year.
While the “mayhem manuals” remain a concern, many experts say the Internet poses a greater danger for assisting terrorists and mass killers.
Richard Hrair Dekmejian, a terrorism expert at USC, worries that an attack like the Oklahoma City bombing will be repeated.
“I’m more afraid of mass killers now, of poison gas and bombings,” he said, because of the rise of the militia movements.
“There are limits, and I would favor censorship of information on how to build bombs or make poison gas,” he said. “I don’t think that deserves 1st Amendment protection.”
After studying the many murder manuals in circulation, Livingstone says he too has concluded the free-speech defense has been pushed too far.
“Remember, Justice Holmes thought it was legal to prevent someone from shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” he said. “So why is it illegal to prevent someone from teaching you how to blow up the theater?”
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46a2d2a465f9d8d7599b63069412c6d4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-14-mn-58674-story.html | Prominent Biology Nobelist Chosen to Head Caltech | Prominent Biology Nobelist Chosen to Head Caltech
Caltech, an introspective school known for its academic mastery of the physical sciences, announced Tuesday that Nobel laureate David Baltimore, one of the country’s most prominent and outspoken biologists, will lead the university into the next century.
The school’s trustees formally voted Tuesday to appoint the 59-year-old scientist as president.
In choosing Baltimore, the university has married itself to a controversial scientist and experienced administrator known as much for his clashes with Congress over a federal probe into scientific fraud as for the breakthroughs in virology that earned him the 1975 Nobel Prize. Baltimore was a central figure in a decade-long investigation into a collaborator’s alleged research fraud, which ended last June when his associate was exonerated.
Baltimore, currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will assume the presidency of the school this fall, when Thomas E. Everhart will retire after 10 years as head of the university. Baltimore will be Caltech’s fifth president.
Faculty members involved in the 11-month, nationwide selection process said it signals the school’s intention to play a more prominent role in national affairs and to make its students more aware of the social implications of scientific research, they said.
“It was made explicit to me that they hope that Caltech would have a more visible role in the national debates both because it increases Caltech’s visibility and because they believe it is appropriate for Caltech to do so,” Baltimore said.
Caltech, generally considered one of the world’s leading research centers, has 900 undergraduate and 1,100 graduate students. It manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as several major observatories in Southern California and Hawaii.
Baltimore will head a faculty and alumni that have won 25 Nobel Prizes.
“David Baltimore is perhaps the most influential living biologist, and surely one of the most accomplished,” said Gordon E. Moore, chair of Caltech’s board of trustees. “He is our nation’s leader in the effort to create an AIDS vaccine, and he was a major player in the creation of a national science policy consensus on recombinant DNA research.”
Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health, called Baltimore “a man of incredible vision and scientific insight.” His appointment as president of Caltech is “terrific,” Varmus said Tuesday.
Bruce Alberts, head of the National Academy of Sciences, called it “a wonderful challenge” for Baltimore and a “great opportunity” for Caltech. “David is one of the world’s finest biological scientists. He is extremely creative, energetic, and full of ideas.”
Places like Caltech, Baltimore said, “have a special responsibility to help society adapt to the continually changing opportunities” created by science.
“All Americans--scientist and non-scientist alike--are bombarded daily by an incredible array of scientific discoveries and engineering developments,” he said. “I look forward to working with the Caltech faculty to advise our society as it adjusts to these changing capabilities.”
More important, perhaps, Baltimore’s appointment reflects changing research priorities and the recognition of the overriding importance of biology as a field of scientific endeavor in the coming decade.
“Caltech has committed itself to making biology an important part of its future,” Baltimore said. As one measure of that commitment, the school already has pledged to raise $100 million for biology research, officials said.
“We see biology as a very special field for the future . . . and, all things being equal, we had a preference for a biologist” as president, said Caltech physics professor Kip Thorne, who was the head of the faculty search committee that selected Baltimore.
Moore, when he announced the appointment, said: “In the coming decade there may be rapid and remarkable changes in the relationships between research universities and government, industry and society. Dr. Baltimore is just the right person to lead us into the 21st century.”
Baltimore spent much of the last decade defending a junior associate from fraud charges. That put him at the center of a widely publicized scientific controversy and a series of acrimonious clashes with Michigan Rep. John Dingell and congressional investigators. What some called courage in the face of fierce congressional criticism, others called arrogance and elitism.
Indeed, his high-profile opposition to a congressional investigation of a research colleague forced him in 1991 to resign as the president of New York’s Rockefeller University--which in its intense focus on basic research resembles Caltech perhaps more than any other school in the country--after only two years in office.
While it was apparent that Baltimore had not been involved in any wrongdoing, the Rockefeller faculty asked him to step down because, they contended, he had become a divisive figure. “I learned to take the consequences of my beliefs,” Baltimore said.
However, Baltimore was ultimately vindicated when the charges against his colleague were overturned on appeal last summer and the investigators who brought them were discredited.
Thorne said the faculty selection committee was well aware of the controversy and dismissed its importance to Caltech before approaching Baltimore as a possible candidate earlier this year.
“The only relevance for us was the degree to which these experiences have strengthened his character and given him added wisdom,” Thorne said.
In bringing him to Caltech, the school’s trustees are bringing west a man who is quintessentially of the Eastern Seaboard. Baltimore has spent his professional career almost exclusively at MIT; his wife is a dean of New York University; they summer on Cape Cod; and as an activist, he has played a major role in almost every important Washington science policy debate in biology of the past 30 years--from the safety of genetic engineering and the implications of the Human Genome Project to the search for a cure to AIDS.
Colleagues say his influence is composed in equal parts of research reputation, executive ability and a persistent willingness to lobby on national science policy questions.
John B. Slaughter, a former director of the National Science Foundation and president of Occidental College, said Baltimore’s defense of his colleague in the face of a congressional investigation and his work on AIDS have “shown leadership on many issues where concerned scientists have been involved. He in some ways represents the conscience of the scientific communities.”
Despite his brush with controversy, he is still active at senior policy levels. Only six months ago, he became chairman of the National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee to “reinvigorate” that research effort. And at least several federal science policymakers hope that Baltimore will be able to use the presidency of Caltech as a bully pulpit for the defense of research funding.
“David is one of the acknowledged leaders in biomedical research and has always played a significant role in the affairs of NIH,” said Varmus.
“No doubt the Caltech presidency will give him a platform for being an important spokesperson for all the sciences, which today are under siege in an environment of budget balancing.”
In the short run, Baltimore was cautious about suggesting any changes he might make in the administration of Caltech. As a relative stranger to the university campus, he has almost no direct knowledge of Caltech, save for its reputation for excellence.
“I have the sense of an extremely healthy, exciting, vibrant environment in which to pursue science and technology, and the development of new science,” he said. “I have never spent more than a day or two on campus. I certainly can’t pretend to know the dimensions of the place.
“The key attraction [for me] was the quality and collegiality of the faculty,” he said. “I found them to be people who are quietly and unabashedly devoted to the progress of science.”
Baltimore said he hoped that Caltech would spur greater development of high-tech industries in the Pasadena area and expected to actively lobby to ensure that JPL continues to play a major role in the U.S. space effort.
The move to Pasadena will entail some personal hardship for his family. Baltimore is married to Alice Huang, a respected biologist, who will have to resign as NYU’s dean of science in order to make the move, she said Tuesday.
“I have some hope I could be a virtual dean and finish some of my projects there by computer,” she said. As for his own plans, Baltimore said he intends to maintain his research laboratory at MIT for the near future, to give his colleagues there an opportunity to complete their research projects, while he assumes his administrative duties at Caltech.
“I also plan to maintain a strong presence in Washington and continue as head of the AIDS vaccine research committee,” Baltimore said. “I hope to be able to play a role in the national debates about the directions of science.”
Alberts at the National Academy of Sciences said it was Baltimore’s determination to speak out on policy matters as a university president that he found most encouraging.
“We badly need strong leadership from our university presidents and for them to be a more visible presence,” Alberts said. “I see so many university presidents across the country disappearing from public view because they are so concerned with fund-raising. I hope he can be protected from that.”
Times staff writer Peter Y. Hong contributed to this story.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Profile: David Baltimore
The Nobel laureate, one of the nation’s most prominent and outspoken biologists, has been selected as the new president of Caltech.
Age: 59
Born: New York City
Education: Bachelor of arts, Swarthmore College; PhD, Rockefeller University.
Family: Married to biologist Alice Huang, dean of science at New York University; one child.
Academic Career: Research associate in 1968 at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, where he met his wife; Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty since 1968; founded Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT; member, National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Honors: 1975 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, for his discovery of the enzyme that allows retroviruses, such as HIV, to replicate
Public Service: Head of National Institutes of Health AIDS Vaccine Research Committee, 1996; co-chair of National Academy of Sciences committee on a national strategy for AIDS, 1986
Hobbies: fly-fishing, sail-boarding, reading
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Profile: Caltech
One of the world’s most influential research centers, Caltech is also among the U.S.'s most selective colleges and graduate schools.
* Research: Several of its research programs, including those in astrophysics, astronomy, geosciences and chemistry are ranked first in the nation by the National Research Council.
* Academic Reputation: Its undergraduates have consistently had the highest median SAT scores among U.S. colleges; ranked No. 9 among national universities in U.S. News annual survey.
* History: Founded in Pasadena in 1891 as Throop University, the institute was renamed the California Institute of Technology in 1920.
* Endowment: $1 billion.
* Students: 900 undergraduate, 1,100 graduate
* Faculty: 275 professional, 400 research
* Nobel Prize Winners: 25 among faculty and alumni
* Off-Campus Facilities: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (managed by Caltech for NASA); Palomar Observatory, San Diego; Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii
* Tuition (full time): $18,024 undergraduate, $18,231 graduate
* Prominent Laureates: Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize-winning chemist; Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize-winning physicist; Rudy Marcus, Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
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bc0f8aa8d0cd6ecfb8d21676d5dc2a4a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-15-me-58789-story.html | A Luminary of Science for Caltech’s Presidency | A Luminary of Science for Caltech’s Presidency
Caltech’s decision to name David Baltimore its next president is savvy and significant, for Baltimore has just the right background and talents to help the Pasadena institute retain its footing on the shifting terrain of academic science. The Nobel Prize-winning biologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will succeed Thomas E. Everhart, who is retiring after 10 years as head of the renowned university.
Long a world leader in hard science, Caltech thrived on generous government funding during the Cold War. President John F. Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, for instance, fueled the institute’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and President Ronald Reagan’s notion that space-based lasers could defend the country funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the “Star Wars” missile research that Caltech scientists helped direct in the 1980s.
Since the late 1980s, however, when the Cold War subsided and a new battle against the budget deficit began, public funds for the physical sciences have been drying up. The rising star now is biomedicine, which in recent years has received modest boosts in public funds and major backing from private industry.
The growth has been driven largely by the mapping of the human genome, a mammoth project to discover how our genes act like software to program the body. Baltimore has played a major role in the project, helping give it an interdisciplinary focus that is similar to the spirit of academic inquiry at Caltech.
Baltimore’s experience will help Caltech, traditionally focused on physics and engineering, expand its relatively recent and promising research into neurobiology and developmental genetics. Should Pasadena develop a proposed industrial park for high-technology companies, Baltimore’s experience with such industries could give Caltech a role.
Pure scientists often bristle at the notion of climbing down from their ivory towers to do practical, applied research. They fear they will lose sight of truth while walking on Wall Street. But in establishing private-academic partnerships at MIT, Baltimore has successfully mollified such concerns.
Historically, Caltech has been an insular and introspective campus. But the Caltech faculty committee that selected Baltimore said it wanted a president who would help the institute play a more prominent role in national affairs.
Most university presidents nowadays tend to operate behind the scenes. Baltimore is a welcome throwback, socially outspoken like Clark Kerr and Robert Hutchins, university presidents who in the 1950s and ‘60s helped explain what the sciences mean for civilization.
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45a55bac127b658b4a3571c0e1229ef4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-17-mn-59626-story.html | Nation Suffered as Dictator Drained Riches | Nation Suffered as Dictator Drained Riches
Mobutu Sese Seko may have given up his power, but during three decades the dictator who promised his impoverished African land that he would live on his soldier’s pay salted away a vast secret fortune often estimated at as much as $5 billion.
That huge sum would make him richer than well-known tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch or Ross Perot. It would give Zaire’s longtime ruler the same assessed value as many Fortune 500 corporations.
During Mobutu’s years in power, Zaire’s treasury was plundered, foreign aid--including U.S. taxpayer money channeled through the CIA and other agencies--siphoned off, economic assets such as copper mines and cocoa plantations embezzled from, and bribes demanded and obtained.
The former army general appeared to consider his country--the repository of vast deposits of diamonds, timber, copper, cobalt and other natural resources--to be his private plantation.
“I owe Zaire nothing,” Mobutu has said. “It’s Zaire that owes me everything.”
*
A few years ago, an employee of a U.N. agency based in Geneva recalled, there was an army revolt in Zaire, and Mobutu’s position looked shaky. That night, the employee recalled, he heard the droning of an airplane.
It was the Zairian presidential jet, he later learned, ferrying in a last-minute shipment of coffee for sale in Europe.
“Mobutu could just never steal enough,” the employee said. “He had to have every last bean.”
Mobutu himself told a reporter for Time magazine in 1993 that his available funds “amounted to no more than $10 million.” But that, Mobutu said, did not include foreign real estate holdings or nonliquid assets.
On Friday, hours before the cancer-stricken 66-year-old left Kinshasa, Switzerland ordered a freeze on his luxury villa in Savingy near Lausanne, which local tax authorities valued at $2.75 million.
The Swiss property includes a large house, swimming pools, garages, a tree-fringed pond and a small chalet nestled in a garden.
Under the Swiss order, the estate in the canton of Vaud now cannot be sold or transferred until further notice. The rebels fighting Mobutu had asked that his assets in the country be impounded.
But the decision by Swiss authorities did not affect any of Mobutu’s bank assets that still may be in the country, which at one time were believed to total about $4 billion. And he has plenty of other properties elsewhere.
Those include a vacation home at Cap-Martin on the Mediterranean coast of France worth more than $4 million, an apartment on the upscale Avenue Foch in Paris, numerous properties in Belgium, a home in Madrid, a seaside villa and hotel in Marbella, Spain, and a chateau in southern Portugal that is said to boast a wine cellar stocked with 14,000 bottles of choice vintages.
In Zaire alone, Mobutu owns 11 palaces, a luxury yacht on the Zaire River and a private gold mine that reportedly holds 100 tons of gold spread over 32,000 square miles.
*
The palace he reportedly retreated to on Friday, in his tribal homeland northeast of Kinshasa, is built of marble, has sprawling grounds stocked with lions and elephants, a moat filled with crocodiles, computer-controlled fountains and its own airport.
A recent investigation by the Financial Times newspaper of London found Mobutu to be in possession of at least 20 properties from “Belgium to Ivory Coast, from Switzerland to Morocco,” with a minimum assessed value of $37 million. Mobutu’s real estate holdings may exceed 30 properties.
The newspaper found the precise size of his fortune impossible to determine because “much of the property is held in the names of front companies, business associates and family members not using the Mobutu name.”
Under Mobutu, the Financial Times found, Zaire--a land of 45 million people--was used by the president as little more than a personal piggy bank.
In 1978, the paper said, “the state-owned copper and cobalt giant Gecamines was instructed to deposit its entire export earnings--which by 1989 had reached $1.2 billion--into a presidential account.”
According to two U.S. researchers, Steve Askin and Carole Collins, Mobutu was on the take from foreign private investors and foreign governments and security agencies alike.
“Starting in the late 1960s, presidential appropriations officially consumed 15% to 20% of the government’s operating budget and 30% to 50% of the capital budget,” Askin and Collins also found.
Jose Mutombo-Kady, a Zairian rebel representative in Geneva, has claimed that Mobutu “could pick up the phone and ask the Central Bank of Zaire to bring around $500,000,” and it would arrive.
Nguza Karl-I-Bond, a former prime minister, believes that Mobutu had amassed $4 billion by the late 1970s.
The embezzled and skimmed-off monies were used not only to support Mobutu and his extended family in grand style but also to assure the loyalty of the presidential guard, a large network of political cronies and government officials and friendly foreign politicians.
As Mobutu’s reign reached its twilight, the responsibility of the West--and of the United States in particular--in allowing what is generally considered the greatest act of wholesale larceny committed in post-colonial Africa was being debated.
“At the beginning, we thought Mobutu was the only person who could lead Zaire,” Leo Tindemans, the former prime minister of Belgium, Zaire’s onetime colonial master, told the Financial Times. “We thought he had the talent, capacity and intelligence. . . . Then he changed. He just wanted the money, from wherever he could get it--private companies, foreign governments. He had no feeling for financial policy, but it didn’t matter. He knew the money would keep on coming.”
Between 1970 and 1994, the newspaper said, Zaire received $8.5 billion in loans and grants from Western donors, including multilateral financial institutions.
*
Succeeding U.S. administrations, starting with the Kennedy presidency, backed Mobutu because he seemed a reliable friend.
Americans involved with the CIA’s Zaire-based war against formerly Marxist Angola said the agency made covert multimillion-dollar payments to Mobutu to fund specific military missions, but that the money never went where it was supposed to go.
Although U.S. aid to Zaire stopped after the breakup of the Soviet Union, one preliminary estimate found that Zaire still owes the U.S. $1.5 billion in unpaid loans.
The end of the Cold War struggle for influence in Africa left Mobutu bereft of most of his friends in Washington.
When the rebels led by Laurent Kabila seized control of much of Zaire’s natural resources, they also deprived Mobutu of much of his revenue, and hence much of his influence and power as well.
U.S. officials in Washington have estimated Mobutu’s wealth at $3 billion to $5 billion, but they say it probably peaked a decade ago and shrank substantially as he spent in an increasingly vain struggle to stay in power.
The rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire began legal efforts last week to seize money or assets belonging to Mobutu in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Portugal, Austria and the United States.
In seizing the estate near Lausanne, the Swiss were acting on a request from the public prosecutor of the rebel-held Zairian town of Lubumbashi.
Recovering any assets held by banks may be much more difficult. Rebel alliance official Ghislain Demofik acknowledged that much of that money may never be recovered because it might be in accounts under other names. Some Swiss sources doubt that much of Mobutu’s money remains in their country because banking regulations were tightened in the 1990s to curtail secrecy.
Some Africans say that the greed of the Mobutu years was so enormous that the former leader should not be allowed to slip quietly into exile but rather should be held to account.
“The world should take steps to set up an international tribunal to try Mobutu; otherwise this encourages impunity,” Tito Rutaremara, a member of Rwanda’s parliament, said after a conference in Lisbon on the subject of Central Africa.
Other participants said that if Mobutu flees to Morocco or France, as some expect, he should be extradited back to Zaire.
“People who appropriate collective goods should be tried,” said J. Victor da Silva Angelo, U.N. resident representative in Tanzania.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Property From Belgium to Brazil
Mobutu Sese Seko’s fortune has been estimated at as much as $5 billion. His property empire is said to encompass at least 30 real estate holdings at minimum combined value of $37 million.
Belgium: Nine properties
France: Cap-Martin, Paris
Portugal: Algarve
Morocco: Marrakech
Brazil
Switzerland: Savigny
Spain: Madrid, Marbella
Senegal: Dakar
Ivory Coast: Abidjan
Zaire: 11 properties
South Africa: Johannesburg
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72a0a3586a7b9a8fa8327b90223644d0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-18-mn-60152-story.html | Senator’s Wife Pulls Plug on Fire Hydrant | Senator’s Wife Pulls Plug on Fire Hydrant
Catsup heiress Teresa Heinz got her indoctrination into the rough-and-tumble of Massachusetts politics last year, when a newspaper published a picture of her car parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant.
The license plate--"HZ57,” for “Heinz 57"--was a dead giveaway.
Now some Bostonians believe they’ve gotten a return lesson in money and political power: Heinz and her husband, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), have paid to have the hydrant moved around the corner.
“This both improves the pictorial environment and frees up a parking space,” Kerry’s spokesman, Michael Meehan, said in defense of the move.
Not everyone is happy.
“I’ve lived on Beacon Hill for 47 years and never have I known somebody to get a hydrant moved at their will,” said Peter Thomson, president of the Beacon Hill Civic Assn. “You know why they did it: Because [city officials] jump through hoops when a high-power politician calls up for it.”
The hydrant sat in front of the multimillion-dollar townhouse that Heinz and Kerry own in Beacon Hill’s fashionable Louisburg Square--perhaps the most exclusive area of Boston’s most expensive neighborhood.
After Heinz parked her white Jeep Cherokee in front of the hydrant last year, someone called the newspapers. The resulting picture was an embarrassment for Kerry, who at the time was running for reelection against Gov. William F. Weld.
Heinz, the widow of Heinz catsup heir John Heinz, a senator from Pennsylvania who died in a helicopter crash in 1991, ended up defusing the situation by joking about it at a St. Patrick’s Day political roast.
Carrying a plastic fire hydrant, the woman whose fortune is estimated at $860 million apologized for being late.
“I was out finding a parking space,” she told the crowd. “And I couldn’t find one, so I made one.”
Last week, it was no joke. After receiving a permit from the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, Heinz and her husband hired a private crew to move the hydrant that was in front of their house around the corner, to another side of their property.
They also are paying for sewer and sidewalk work in the area around their house. Kerry’s office won’t disclose the project’s cost.
Steve McDonald, spokesman for the Fire Department, said the request was approved by the neighborhood’s district chief, who went to the site and found that the move would not block anyone else’s parking or affect the department’s firefighting ability.
“It’s not common,” McDonald said. “But the fact is, anyone can request it, and if it’s reasonable and they’re willing to pay for it, it’s usually not a problem.”
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030971dfdadfe98765e9748496989f34 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-19-ca-60345-story.html | The Sad, Strange Journey of Johnny Depp’s ‘The Brave’ | The Sad, Strange Journey of Johnny Depp’s ‘The Brave’
Without Johnny Depp, “The Brave” probably never would have become a movie and certainly wouldn’t have been one of the official selections in the International Film Festival this year.
The difficult idea underlying the film--about a man so desperate to help his family that he agrees to die in a snuff film for $50,000--touched a chord for Depp, who was deeply moved by the theme of sacrifice for family.
“I felt driven to do this movie,” said Depp, 33, who directed, co-wrote and starred in the film. “This was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It just about ripped me to shreds.”
But the film also has another meaning to Depp. It may end up costing him nearly $2 million because the actor agreed to pay for more than a quarter of the film’s budget out of his own pocket.
Financed initially through the pre-sale of international rights, the film has yet to find a distributor in the U.S. Many companies will be even more wary of the film because of a series of devastating reviews this week after the film was screened here.
*
Variety called the film “a turgid and unbelievable neo-western.” Screen International was even more brutal: “Depp’s ignominious directorial debut crawls across the screen for two hours like a snail. Narratively inept and dramatically empty. . . . “
It is remarkable that the film, marred by tragedy and backed by two first-time producers, Charles Evans Jr. and Carroll Kemp, got made at all. Its tortuous path is a lesson in the international film marketplace, where art and commerce enter a complex dance before a film gets to the screen.
It also illustrates the first rule of movie-making for artists: Never risk your own money.
The script for “The Brave,” by Paul McCudden based on a book by Gregory McDonald, found an interested reception in Hollywood when it was first shopped around in 1993, despite the dark idea underlying it.
Evans and Kemp, who founded the small production company Acappella Pictures, seized on it as their first project because they thought the idea was one that was so compelling “you couldn’t forget it,” Kemp said.
The two young producers worked on the project with Aziz Ghazal, the manager of the USC film school stock room, who had optioned the novel from McDonald. Ghazal wanted to direct the film, and Evans and Kemp were able to persuade Disney’s Touchstone pictures to give him a shot at it, even though he was a first-time director.
On Dec. 1, 1993, shortly before work on the film was to begin, Ghazal bludgeoned to death his 13-year-old daughter and his estranged wife. He also killed himself, though his body wasn’t found for a month.
With the would-be director missing and suspected in the brutal murders, Touchstone dropped the project almost instantly.
“Multiple homicides were not something we expected when we opened our company,” said Evans.
The project seemed likely to end there. Evans and Kemp, who by that time had invested about $500,000 in the project, were undeterred. “When you’re a first-time producer, you can’t hear the word ‘no,’ ” Kemp said.
Kemp, 31, a law school graduate who had worked at InterTalent agency, and Evans, 34, who wrote and directed a film while at USC film school, arranged to get the project to Depp.
“I didn’t particularly like it,” said Depp. “But I liked the idea of sacrifice for family. And I kept thinking of things I’d like to add.”
*
By early 1994 Depp had decided he wanted to rewrite the film and direct it. He knew he would have to star in the film to find financing, but he insisted on total creative control, including final cut on the movie, a rarity for first-time directors.
In 1995, Kemp and Evans came to Cannes with the project and with Depp, who was particularly hot in the international marketplace because of the success of “Don Juan de Marco.” Two other Depp vehicles were in the market that year, “Ed Wood” and “Dead Man.”
The timing was perfect. International distributors are always interested in properties with major American stars attached, and as Evans says, “Cannes is a plastic bubble of competition.”
Advised by Ken Kamins of talent agency ICM, which both represents Depp and is active in financing of independent films, the producers held an auction. “Almost every company made a bid. It became the hot film at Cannes that year,” said Kemp.
Majestic, an international sales company, bought the rights for all international distribution for $5 million, roughly the estimated budget of the film. (Typically, filmmakers raise only part of their budgets from international pre-sales and have to rely on expensive bank financing to bridge the rest.)
Based on the strength of Depp in various markets, the company in turn sold those rights to individual distributors for nearly $9 million, sources said.
At that point, Depp had what he wanted: financing for a film that he believed in and total control. He rewrote the script with his brother, D.P. Depp.
He also asked his friend Marlon Brando to take a key role as the man who pays for the snuff film.
Depp said he knew almost immediately that he would have to commit his own money to the project, and he made that decision in “a split second.” In effect, Depp had to guarantee that he would pay for any costs over the film’s budget of about $5 million.
“I knew we’d go over $5 million,” said Depp, even though he and Brando were paid scale for their work on the film. “This picture is bigger than people think. We had to build a huge garbage heap . . . 500 tons of junk is very expensive.”
Jeremy Thompson, an experienced British producer who has worked extensively with director Bernardo Bertolucci, was brought in by Majestic to be executive producer.
At that time, Depp could have found a U.S. distributor willing to finance any overages on the film, but that would have meant giving up control. “I didn’t want to give up U.S. distribution [because a U.S. distributor] would badger me beyond belief.”
Depp recognizes that a film like “The Brave,” which won’t be backed by a large advertising budget, is dependent on positive reviews. But he says, “I couldn’t care less [about the reviews]. . . . I didn’t make this film to entertain people. I’m not an entertainer. . . . I hope people really love it or really hate it.”
Depp says he has “a feeling that American reviews will be scathing.” But he won’t make changes in the film to please critics or to get U.S. distribution, which he now owns.
“I’m prepared to listen if there’s a problem with length,” Depp said, but rather than be forced to make changes, “I’ll put it in a vault and let it sit.”
Several executives representing American distributors said that although their companies weren’t interested, they expected someone to buy distribution rights--though not for $2 million--if for no other reason than to develop a relationship with Depp for future projects.
The $2 million is a lot of money to Depp, though he is hardly impoverished. He is in great demand as an actor and could earn $6 million or more depending on the role he accepts.
During an interview at the Carlton Hotel this week, director Jane Campion (“The Piano”) comes by to say hello to Depp and both talk about wanting to work together. “I think she’s the most beautiful woman,” Depp says after she leaves. “She has thousands of years of wisdom in those eyes.”
Depp said he would consider directing again, but for the moment he looks forward to acting only. “It’s a cakewalk,” he said. “It’s a very privileged existence to shoot for a few minutes and then go back to your trailer and make phone calls or whatever.”
As for the young producers, they were simply thrilled to have had their first film selected for competition in Cannes.
Evans, whose uncle is longtime Hollywood producer Robert Evans and whose father is Charles Evans, a real estate magnate who has bankrolled several film projects, dismisses the reviews and points to the “standing ovation Saturday night in the Palais. . . . My dad was there with tie askew, crying. That really meant a lot to me.”
The two already are working on their next project, “The House of Mirth,” starring Dustin Hoffman.
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e10cf26f1cd2653dfa93ee1900f8e765 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-25-me-62290-story.html | Vegas Landscapers Betting on Palm Trees | Vegas Landscapers Betting on Palm Trees
Tom Chacon considers himself a recycler. He sends his “spotters” out across the West, counting on them to buy and uproot prized palm trees from people’s back yards and bring them to Las Vegas--a city that’s gone mad for palms.
“The palm tree business is a booming business in Vegas. Vegas is a hot spot. For how long, I don’t know,” said Chacon, owner of TC Enterprises, a Fontana, Calif., based palm tree company that also has operations in Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Those beautiful palm trees can be seen just about everywhere in Las Vegas. Their big leaves wave on the Las Vegas Strip, almost all the major resorts and most housing developments. While palms may be plentiful, what it takes to get them to this gambling mecca is another story.
“It’s phenomenal,” said Ray Hoffman, division manager at Cedco Landscaping in Las Vegas. “It’s just unbelievable. Every project that we’re doing requires palm trees.”
Hoffman believes the craze started eight years ago when the Mirage opened with palm trees planted outside and preserved palms gracing the lobby.
Now every casino wants palm trees.
“It’s really a craze. It’s a fad too,” Hoffman said.
Demand is so high here that landscaping companies have palm tree “spotters,” who patrol neighborhoods all over the western United States looking for palms sprouting from yards and homeowners ready to bargain. Spotters usually work on commission, so spotting is a daily business.
“Usually they think there’s some kind of a catch,” said Hoffman, who employs eight or nine groups of spotters. “People are leery. We just want your tree!”
Spotters look in yards, fields and nurseries for palms and can offer up to $1,000 per tree. The hardest palm to acquire, the Canary Island palms, are worth the most money.
After a tree is spotted and if the homeowner wants to sell, a permit is obtained and the tree is inspected for accessibility. If it has had enough water and has few scars, it is uprooted from the yard by crane and then a substitute tree is put in its place.
The whole process, plus transporting the tree to Las Vegas by truck, costs about $4,000.
“Every day, when I’m out driving around town, I’m always photographing them, looking in people’s yards,” said Hoffman, who keeps a log book of palm transactions and photographs of palms people want to get rid of.
Chacon started his company 15 years ago before the palm craze hit. His business is booming now, especially in Las Vegas, where 60% of the company’s jobs are.
“I like the idea of recycling or saving something that people are sometimes going to cut down, and putting them in an area and watching other people enjoy them. And, of course, you make money doing it,” he said.
His spotters have also gone as far away as Texas and Florida to find palms.
“It’s all about being intense, being a hunter,” said Chacon, whose company found palms for several Las Vegas resorts, including the Stratosphere Hotel, Santa Fe Hotel & Casino and Sunset Station.
“A lot of people don’t want to get rid of their trees, but a lot of people do. So it’s hit and miss,” he said.
Las Vegas’ palm trees give the city an upscale Palm Springs look and are increasingly popular because they take the heat well and make a dramatic impression, Hoffman said.
Ken Lambert, project manager for Clark County, said resorts are spending more money on landscaping to entice tourists to their properties.
Two years ago, owners of Strip resorts approached the county about sprucing up the barren medians along Las Vegas Boulevard. They wanted the landscaping to complement the aesthetics of their hotels.
Lambert said all the resorts agreed that the tropical theme was something that would be a good tie-in.
Along with 1,000 lights, 1,500 palm trees were planted along four miles of the Strip medians. The $15-million project, funded entirely by the private sector, was completed last year. Most of the palms were located by spotters.
There are some hazards, though, to the beauty of the palms.
“Sometimes you get people who drive a car into one. It’s only happened a couple of times,” Lambert said.
Some of the older trees could cost $11,000 to replace, he said.
For those homeowners thinking their palms will bring in big money, Chacon warns that not all palms are worth money, especially if they are too difficult to remove.
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201364fe9af9460584c2935c2d2e4da9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-25-mn-62353-story.html | $1-Million Gift to City Focuses Attention on Nondescript Motel Dweller | $1-Million Gift to City Focuses Attention on Nondescript Motel Dweller
For the last three years, employees at the Leesburg, Va., Best Western Motel knew him merely as Irwin, a quiet, elderly gentleman who lived there with a large dog.
He usually wore a cap, soiled bluejeans and a jean jacket, and town residents often mistook Irwin for a farmer.
So when Irwin Wayne Uran, 71, walked into town hall this month and wrote out a $1-million check, town officials didn’t know what to make of the donation.
“He didn’t seem to be real rich,” said Jewell Emswiller, a Town Council member. “He looked like your next-door neighbor.”
Before depositing the check, town officials quietly began investigating Uran’s background and, to their surprise, discovered that they had one very wealthy man living at their Best Western.
“He’s estimated to be worth between $300 million to $400 million,” said Town Council member Joseph Trocino. “But I don’t want to say too much because I don’t know what kind of visibility he wants.”
Uran may be one of Leesburg’s more eccentric residents as well. “Anyone who has great wealth is eccentric,” he said. “You have to be.”
Uran, who has an average build and looks young for his age, won’t say exactly how much he’s worth. When told of Trocino’s comment, he responded with a smile and said: “I used to be worth $500 million.”
He did say he walked away with about $70 million after taxes last year from the sale of Guardsman Products Inc. of Grand Rapids, Mich., a company in which he owned a 32% share.
News reports of the sale said the company sold for $250 million and confirmed that Uran owned 32%.
But Uran says he’s never owned a house, a yacht or many other material things associated with wealth. He has rented apartments or lived in hotels all his adult life.
“My father once said, ‘Don’t invest in real estate,’ and I haven’t,” he said, noting that his money is tied up in stocks. He says his stocks include 2 million shares of Coca-Cola.
Uran says he came from a wealthy family in New York. He says he got his start as a stockbroker and invested all the money he could in the market during the last 50 years. He has kept moving during much of that time, living in Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere. Three years ago, he says, he moved to Leesburg from Santa Clara, Calif., mainly to be closer to the horses he keeps near Upperville and to indulge his interest in Civil War history.
Although he says he’s generally happy, there is one thing he can’t buy and desperately wants: an heir.
Uran, who says he has no children, has placed personal ads in magazines throughout the country. “At this point in my life, pride is expensive,” Uran said. “I’m not embarrassed.”
One ad that ran recently in the San Francisco Bay Guardian begins:
“Wanted: Tall, female, white, well-educated, university graduate, or veterinarian, under 35, extensive knowledge of horses, exotic animals, to be mother of our children, for happy contented life together, by well-educated, wealthy, affectionate, much older man.” He wouldn’t say how many responses he gets.
Part of his desire to build a family late in life, he says, springs from his inability to reconcile with a sister and brother after a fight over their mother’s will.
“It breaks my heart to talk about my family,” Uran said, on the verge of tears. “I enjoy what I do right now, and I’m happy, but there is no social life here. I’m looking to meet someone so I can have children.”
Yvonne Arthur, Uran’s younger sister, who lives in New York, declined to talk about her brother. “Our life is not an open book,” Arthur said. “He gave the money, so he should belabor with it. Let the rest of us out of it.”
The $1-million donation to Leesburg, which Uran says he made because he likes the community, was placed without restrictions but isn’t without controversy.
Uran has filed two lawsuits in Loudoun County Circuit Court in Leesburg, which await trial. One lawsuit involves a dispute over a cat, a goat and horse blankets that Uran wants from a former girlfriend, Laura Nelson.
Nelson, a lawyer who lives in Loudoun County and a former assistant dean of George Mason University’s law school, wouldn’t comment.
Her attorney, Richard R. Saunders, contends that Uran is trying to influence the jury through publicity about his gift. The case is set for trial July 8, and it will be heard by a jury--at Uran’s request.
“I find it all a bit strange and somewhat coincidental,” Saunders said. “Why now? And why the town?”
Uran said he sued because he badly wants the return of the cat, which he says was given to him as a pet, and the goat, which he says he bought for himself.
He also has filed suit against the Middleburg Humane Foundation over the possession of three horses.
He says he loves animals. For recreation, he drives to a farm near Upperville where he boards 40 mustangs, three zebras and two rare donkeys.
He vehemently denies donating money to sway a jury.
“It has nothing to do with it whatsoever,” Uran said, noting that he recently began donating publicly after years of anonymous gifts. “I’ve given all my life, and now I want to come out and take credit for it. I like living here. That’s why I gave.” He also says he wanted to provide an example of giving for people to follow.
Uran said he would like to give away as much of his wealth as possible before he dies, instead of leaving it to a foundation, where “all the money would go to lawyers.”
“Let’s just say the $1 million is just a drop in the bucket,” Uran said during an interview in the motel lobby. “There’s more where that comes from.”
Since publicity of the Leesburg gift, however, Uran has been inundated with telephone calls and faxes from people seeking money. He unplugged the telephone in his room and says he may not publicize future gifts.
The tiny motel room where he has spent the last three years is sparse, with only bare essentials--a bed, a television and a love seat.
In recent months, the small sofa has doubled as a trophy case of sorts, where he has placed plaques and thank-you notes from people and organizations he has helped, including a poster by students at Leesburg Christian School.
“You see, this is my life now,” Uran said.
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7c8423e3e9fe2754ea3be6afa44a3e10 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-26-ca-62611-story.html | Are Films Using Names in Vain? | Are Films Using Names in Vain?
There is a growing trend of using the names of great authors in the titles of films--"Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” are examples. Sincethe authors are dead and can’t sue the socks off the producers, I can’t help feeling that someone should speak up on their behalf about the use of their names to sell products.
The latest film is “Rudyard Kipling’s Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo” (“Thin ‘Mowgli and Baloo’ Goes Back to the Jungle,” May 16). I believe the late Mr. Kipling deserves an advocate, and I also think that unsuspecting audiences, especially children, who appear to be reading less and less, deserve to know that what is in this movie and others touting literary greats in their titles are not the products of the masters whose names they appropriate.
Let me make it clear, though, that I am not a literary purist. I have no problem with adapting literature for the screen, and I do not believe that it is important to “be true” to the literary source.
I also have no argument with artistic borrowing. Shakespeare stole his stories, and Mozart wrote variations on themes by other composers that were better than the originals. In fact, much of the canon of great literature and music could not have been created if artists in earlier centuries had benefited from the representation of competent Hollywood lawyers.
In the end, movie adaptations only need to do two things: They should entertain with good stories well told, and they should be honest in their billing and not use deception to get me to buy a ticket.
The most recent “Jungle Book” incarnation is the fourth movie I have seen springing from the Kipling classic. The 1942 original and the 1967 Disney cartoon versions fell short, but they were movies and made no pretense of being honest to Kipling.
When Disney released the live-action version in 1995, I was drawn into the theater because of Kipling’s name on the marquee. Surely, I thought, this means they are really going to try to make the master’s stories come alive on the screen.
Silly me.
The only thing Kipling contributed to that piece was his own name and the names of a few characters. The characters themselves, along with the story, had no resemblance to anything Kipling wrote.
The latest version seems to be even more cynical in its marketing, hoping to profit not only from the fame of Kipling but Disney’s as well. In this case, the credits of the movie cite a specific story from the “Jungle Books” collection, “Kaa’s Hunting,” as the source of the screenplay.
But it is shameful and revolting to sell lesser efforts to the public under the name of a great storyteller whose works it appears they have never read, much less followed. If you’re going to do a loose adaptation based vaguely on some names of characters once appearing in a story by Kipling, fine. But don’t put a Mercedes logo on your dune buggy and sell it to me as an S class sedan.
It would be wonderful if Hollywood showed restraint in using the names of dead authors out of respect for their artistry. That, of course, is more than we can expect since respect can’t be enforced with contracts and punitive damages, and respect doesn’t show on the bottom line. But truth in packaging is something the public can and should demand, and possibly something the government should enforce in movie titles as it does in canned goods.
Copyright law allows me to quote from another author’s piece to an extent, but if I take too much and publish it as my own, the courts will find me liable. What then of those who take too little of an author and use his or her name to sell their own inferior product? It is also ethically wrong and deceptive to audiences to use dead authors’ names like this, because literary and cinematic art forms are so different.
Shakespeare was a great master of two difficult forms--plays and poetry. Kipling’s stories survive on their power to evoke imagery that makes us feel as if we have been to exotic places and experienced amazing adventure. But how these men would have approached the much different craft of screenwriting we can’t know. I personally think they would have done it much better than those who have been usurping their names recently.
Perhaps the greatest harm that can come from this trend, and a strong argument for exercising some control to stop it, is that as mediocrity tries to raise itself by associating with greatness in name only, the effect is more to cheapen the great works than to make the shoddy better.
So our young, having seen “Rudyard Kipling’s Second Jungle Book,” which is based, so the credits claim, on “Kaa’s Hunting,” may someday find themselves faced with the opportunity of actually reading Kipling’s version--a riveting tale in which a young boy learns great lessons about life. “Nah,” I can hear kids saying, “saw the movie. Pretty lame.”
Who could argue with them?
But here’s a recommendation: For less than the price of admission, and for a little more than it costs to rent the Disney versions, you can buy paperbacks of “The Jungle Books.” Read “Kaa’s Hunting” with your children. You’ll find there’s more to masterful storytelling than marketing gimmickry.
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39f11b53b48d238db8b23ba19676f593 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-26-ls-62598-story.html | An Evening of Bob Dylan, a Tribute to Tolerance | An Evening of Bob Dylan, a Tribute to Tolerance
Jonathan Dolgen wanted Bob Dylan. Jonathan Dolgen got Bob Dylan.
Dolgen, chairman of Viacom Entertainment Group, received the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award on Wednesday at the Beverly Hilton with Bob Dylan as the headline entertainment.
“I love Dylan,” Dolgen said. “He’s one of the great American cultural influences since the war. He’s the poet of my generation without question.”
Though Dolgen’s enthusiasm makes it terrifying to imagine what a prolonged car trip with him and his CD collection would entail, the musician played well to a crowd pretty much split between show business execs and the center’s older Jewish supporters.
Cutting-edge comedian Chris Rock had a harder time. His comedy recalls the urban styles of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy. The words “obscenity laced” have been used more than once to describe his act. A number of the people here were probably not his core audience.
The dinner raised more than $1.6 million for the center’s work. “Anyone who reads a newspaper knows hatred did not die with Hitler in the bunker,” said dean and founder Rabbi Marvin Hier. “It’s in every community. We’re interested in promoting and teaching human dignity.”
Besides Dolgen, honored at the dinner were Col. Richard Seibel, the liberator of the Mauthausen concentration camp; Army chaplain Rabbi Abraham Klausner, who counseled Dachau survivors; Dr. Ruth Gruber, who reported on Holocaust victims struggling to reach what was then Palestine; Rudolph Patzert, the captain of a ship that brought refugees to Palestine; and Clifton Truman Daniel, who represented his late grandfather, the president who recognized Israel.
The dinner was co-chaired by Michael Douglas and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Among the 1,000-strong crowd were Sumner Redstone, Sherry Lansing, Sid Sheinberg, Harrison Ford, Nicolas Cage, Kurt Russell, Melissa Etheridge and the honoree’s parents, Abe and Selma Dolgen.
“It’s not possible to imagine any problem in the world being solved without tolerance,” Dolgen said. “This is a fundamental prerequisite, a minimum requirement for life on the planet.”
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17343e01c412bd4c71b2d8afc96eb98a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-01-ca-64393-story.html | From ‘Boys Town’ to the God Squad, a Hollywood Life | From ‘Boys Town’ to the God Squad, a Hollywood Life
Bobs Watson seemed destined for a lifetime in pictures, moving or otherwise. He was the youngest of nine siblings, all of whom were child actors. He appeared in 125 films before he was 10; screen roles for the nine Watson children ultimately topped 1,000.
All of his five older brothers became press photographers--his brother Delmar owns the largest known archive of historical Los Angeles photographs--and their uncle George “Rally” Watson had been the first staff photographer of The Times.
But on Jan. 18, 1966, with more than three decades of lucrative film and TV work behind him, Bobs (his real name) chucked the celluloid world to become an $1,800-a-year minister with the United Methodist Church.
The career change, puzzling to many who knew him, was the result of his experiences nearly 30 years earlier on the set of “Boys Town,” the classic 1938 MGM drama starring Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy, who won an Academy Award for his role as Father Flanagan. Watson’s performance at age 7 as the endearing ragamuffin Pee Wee won the hearts of viewers across the nation and led to a lucrative contract offer from Louis B. Mayer.
He ministered until 1993, when he left, saying wanted to devote more time to raising funds and speaking on behalf of Boys Town, which serves 27,000 disadvantaged children nationwide each year.
Now, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer, he spends his days in his Los Angeles home working on his memoirs, hoping to leave his three sons, Christian, Timothy and Patrick, with a better understanding of his life, beginning as a child of Hollywood in the 1930s.
“The house I was raised in was about 600 feet from Mack Sennett’s studios and offices [near] Echo Park,” Watson recalls. “As a result of being so close to the studios, my dad started out renting horses for the silent movies for $2 a day.”
And jobs for the kids weren’t far behind.
“They’d literally say to my dad, ‘Hey Coy, have you got any kids about so tall?’ ” Watson recalls, holding his hand a few feet off the ground. “He’d come home and pick out one of the kids that the part would be for. . . . They weren’t all major films--a lot were one-, two- and three-reelers--but we always had at least bit parts with some lines.”
Watson’s first role came at age 6 months, in “Riding to Fame” in 1931. By age 7 he had worked on more than two dozen films, having demonstrated an easy ability to cry on command, providing memorable performances in “In Old Chicago” (1938) and “On Borrowed Time” (1939).
Soon after came the part that changed his life.
“When we were making the film I didn’t realize that all [the orphans at Boys Town] had to eat was what they grew there; I think they only had one kind of vegetable,” recalls Watson, 66, who lives in Los Angeles. “It was also a time when simple acts of kindness were taken to heart. There was one boy whose job was to meet us every day. I always called him ‘Ants in the Pants.’ When we left, he gave me his one prized possession, a bag of marbles with a hole in it, which I still have 59 years later.”
Through “Boys Town,” Watson got to meet the real Father Flanagan, who coined the phrase, “There is no such thing as a bad boy.” Whenever he talked to the children, Watson recalled warmly, he would kneel down to their eye level. “Since that time, I can never look at a child without seeing them through the eyes of Father Flanagan. He was many things, but mostly, he was a man who didn’t care what denomination you were,” Watson says. “I was a 7-year-old Methodist but all he saw was a boy who, like all boys, needed to be loved.”
Tracy shared many qualities with the man he portrayed, including eyes that could look “right into your soul,” Watson recalls. “Having to look into his eyes, with the magnitude that he had, he was such a loving, caring character who profoundly influenced me. Whenever I would try to picture a ‘man of God,’ I would always think back to Spencer Tracy and Father Flanagan.”
Following “Boys Town,” MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer offered Watson a six-year contract for $265,000, an enormous amount of money at that time. His father sought counsel from Tracy, who had become a close friend.
“Don’t do it. If you sign him under contract, then they will own him and he will no longer be your child,” Watson recalls Tracy telling his father. “I think my dad is the only man who ever said no to Louis B. Mayer.”
Watson continued to work before being drafted into the Army, where he made training films and appeared in more than 600 shows. After his discharge he made “The Bold and the Brave” with Rooney, and had numerous film and TV roles.
Still, Watson remembered the experiences of “Boys Town” and began to question his priorities, remembering this as his calling to enter the ministry. “I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “I was called to it and when you’re called, you have to respond.”
Over the next three decades, he served as a Methodist minister in Las Vegas and Southern California, using his acting expertise, props, make-up or jokes to dramatize his Scripture readings.
In 1988, Watson returned to Boys Town for the first time, joining Rooney for the 50th anniversary of the making of the movie. In 1990, he delivered the dedication sermon for Boys Town’s $5 1/2-million chapel, and on Nov. 16, 1991--his 61st birthday--he helped celebrate the organization’s 75th anniversary.
For Watson, being part of Boys Town again was like coming home. At the same time, however, he became increasingly discontented with the politics involved in being a minister, and in 1992 ended his active ministry after 31 years. In some ways, Watson’s career duplicated that of his role model, Father Flanagan, who was also known for challenging rules and belief systems that he felt did not apply.
Now reflecting back on his dual careers, Watson says, “I feel sometimes that I’ve lived about six lifetimes. I’ve been honored and kicked around in the dirt but it’s always been a tremendous learning process as an individual. . . . Acting is understanding people’s feelings and I am able to do that with great depth. That’s been both a blessing and a curse.”
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2282b5e40e2136a780f6c969e106e5d3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-01-op-64514-story.html | Defend Against the Shadow Enemy | Defend Against the Shadow Enemy
The destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York shocked Americans. But those tragedies would have been far worse if nuclear, biological or chemical materials had been involved. After cochairing a yearlong study for the government, we believe it is increasingly likely they will be.
For 40 years, Americans lived under the fear of Soviet nuclear attack. The end of the Cold War reduced the prospect of a nuclear holocaust, but ironically, prospects of a nuclear explosion inside the United States probably have increased. And it is not just the nuclear threat. Terrorists worldwide have better access to anthrax, ricin or sarin than to nuclear materials. So far, we have been lucky. But we should not wait for a another Pearl Harbor to awaken us to the fact that there is no greater threat to our security than terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction.
Skeptics may call us alarmists. Nuclear technology has been around for 50 years and chemical and biological agents for nearly a century, yet terrorists have rarely turned to them. Conventional high explosives are easier to obtain. Moreover, terrorists seeking to promote a cause run the risk of a moral and political backlash if the destruction they wreak is disproportionate to their cause.
But recent years have seen the rise of a new type of terrorist less interested in promoting a political cause and more focused on retribution or eradication of what they define as evil. Their motives are often a distorted form of religion and their imagined rewards are in the next world. For them, weapons of mass destruction, if available, are a more efficient means to their ends.
Such devices are becoming more available. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the rise of the mafias in Russia have increased the smuggling of nuclear materials. Chemicals and biological agents can be produced by graduate students or lab technicians. General recipes are readily available on the Internet.
Our overriding recommendation is to give the threat of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction the highest priority in U.S. national security policy. Of the threats that could inflict major damage to the U.S., such terrorism is the threat for which we are least prepared.
The nation needs a national response program, directed by the White House. The program must be coordinated and integrated across the entire federal bureaucracy. And end-to-end systematic strategy to counter this threat must address all phases of a potential terrorist attack, from detection and prevention to response. Such a strategy must include and coordinate program initiatives by all involved departments and agencies.
To this end, we recommend that:
* Policy direction be clarified at the White House level by a committee chaired by the vice president.
* Interagency and interdepartmental coordination and integration be handled by deputies of the involved organizations.
* The program be supported by a long-term funding strategy.
* The program be managed by a single director and supported by a technical and systems planning staff.
* An independent advisory board of outside experts be appointed by the president to monitor and advise the program.
* A joint legislative oversight committee be appointed.
The very nature of U.S. society makes it difficult to prepare for this security problem. Within recent memory, we have not had to battle a foreign invading force on U.S. soil. Because of our “Pearl Harbor” mind-set, we are unlikely to mount an adequate defense until we suffer an attack. Because the threat of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction is amorphous (rogue states, transnational groups, ad hoc groups or individuals) and constantly changing, it is difficult to make predictions and preparations. However, given the current geopolitical state of the world, there is every indication that terrorism will be the most likely physical threat to the U.S. homeland for at least the next decade.
Only if we go beyond business as usual and respond in a broader and more systematic manner do we stand a chance of dealing with this problem before the horror of another Pearl Harbor.
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4afd3422b029905a1450e80485f58de9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-02-fi-64933-story.html | New Medium Is His Message | New Medium Is His Message
Roger Black, one of the most influential designers in print media, spent the 1970s and ‘80s shaping the looks of such magazines as Esquire, Rolling Stone and Newsweek.
But the 1990s delivered something previous generations of designers only dreamed about: a new medium that offers a new creative landscape. The Internet, Black says, is the first medium “that puts designers in the driver’s seat.”
So in 1994, Black launched Interactive Bureau, a Web site design firm with offices in New York and San Francisco.
Early clients included USA Today and the Discovery Channel. Lately, the 48-year-old guru has been working with high-profile sites such as MSNBC and @Home Network, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company providing content to cable TV Internet services.
Online publications have been critical of Black, portraying him as a carpetbagger trying to drag out-of-date analog sensibilities into the digital age. But Black has been unfazed, and this year he released a book called “Web Sites That Work"(Adobe Press).
On a recent rainy morning in Silicon Valley, he spoke with Times Silicon Valley correspondent Greg Miller about the good and bad of Web site design. Wearing all black, and surrounded by modular black furniture, he spoke in quick bursts, pausing occasionally to illustrate points by calling up Web sites on his computer.
*
Question: In your book, you say that Web sites are even more dependent on good design than other media, including print. Why?
Answer: Mostly it’s because we haven’t defined the medium yet.
In television, there are viewers; in print, there are readers. But I don’t think anybody likes the term [computer] “users.” The fact that we’re not sure of the nomenclature is an indication that we’ve not defined the medium. We don’t know what it is.
Design is trying to Band-Aid the medium together. Design is the way you lead people to whatever the content is. In books or magazines or TV, people take the navigation for granted. You know how to surf channels or turn pages. On the Internet, you just keep thrashing.
[Black opens a parody Web site, https://www.superbad.com, full of nonsensical graphics and pages randomly linked to one another.]
See, this is making fun of the navigation problem. Design is attempting to strap together little pieces of medium and make it clear to the user what’s going on. It’s the first medium where the designer is in the driver’s seat. That’s not true in print, and certainly not true in film.
*
Q: Is the Web an entirely new frontier in design, or do the old rules still apply?
A: Both. It is a totally new frontier, mostly because of the interactivity. But since we haven’t understood what it is, all we’ve got are the old rules.
*
Q: What are the most common mistakes of Web site design?
A: The No. 1 mistake is people don’t put content on the surface. Time after time you get sites that just say, “Welcome.” Oh, shut up!
It takes so long to go to a page that if there’s no reward, if you don’t get a chuckle or get some useful information, it’s not worth it. You feel like you’re wasting your time.
Maybe the No. 2 problem is too much on the surface. I was at a conference where someone offered this sarcastic advice to designers: “When you’re designing a page, always use the fastest processors, the biggest monitors and a T1 line.”
But designers often do use those things, and when you go home and you only have a 14.4 modem, forget it. It’s a real annoying thing to use the Internet right now.
*
Q: So there’s either too much content or not enough. Is that why you argue that the Web desperately needs editors?
A: That’s the whole thing. A lot of experts think that people want to be their own editors on the Web. I don’t know where they get this. Editors are essential, because they filter. People want more editors!
I don’t believe push technology will change the way we get news, because it’s all commodity news bathing you. [Push technology enables computer users to have information delivered to their PCs, instead of retrieving it themselves.] It doesn’t offer any perspective. You get that from editors.
*
Q: But that sounds like the traditional, top-down mentality that so many of the Web’s founders revile. Online publications have been very critical of you for suggesting these things.
A: This is what I call the Marxist-Leninist attitude. So much of this reminds me of SDS [Students for Democratic Society, a leftist group] in the ‘60s. It’s so much inflexible ideology. If you diverge from the party line, go join the Trotskyists. These people tend to be very elitist.
*
Q: But are they wrong?
A: They’re not entirely wrong. Take chat. It can be fun to follow chat, and there are newsgroups that are really informative. But if you step out, then try to go back, there are 258 postings you missed. What are you supposed to do?
Wouldn’t it be great if an editor could tell you all you really need to read is No. 201 and you’re done, or provide a summary.
Suck.com [https://www.suck.com], one of my favorites on the Internet, is a very fast look at whatever is interesting to [the site’s creators].
The problem is that the Internet is everything that can be digitized. It is not top-down, it is not democratic, it’s both. It’s not a visual medium or a text medium, it’s both.
*
Q: But in addition to calling for editors, you also say in your book that personalization and customization will be key. Aren’t these incompatible in some ways?
A: Nicholas Negroponte [of MIT’s Media Lab] said, “I can’t imagine anything more boring than ‘The Daily Me.’ ” And it’s true. You’re probably not going to be happy if you get full personalization.
We have to account for random, interesting stuff. I have no interest whatsoever in information about insurance companies, unless they suddenly stop writing earthquake insurance.
At MSNBC, we want to personalize it so that you can cut out some of the stuff you don’t want. But in essential places, [MSNBC editors] are doing the programming. You come to MSNBC, if you like it, because you are either entertained or you appreciate its editorial values.
*
Q: What advice would you offer companies creating Web sites?
A: Know what you want to do with your Web site. Are you going to sell goods? Then how are you going to do that? Are you going to use it as a promotional tool? Then how are you going to do that? Think it through.
Levi’s can’t really sell jeans on the Internet, although they are doing some specialized sales. So for the most part, it is a promotional site. They have made it a fashion magazine with street fashion and cute, young Levi’s wearers. They’ve got content.
*
Q: What are your favorite Web sites?
A: It changes. Right now I like Levi’s [https://www.levi.com], Superbad.com and RGA.com [https://www.rga.com], even though they’re a competitor of ours, because of the way it moves and disguises download times. I really loved the old Discovery Channel Web site, but now it’s gone. They violated all the rules, and put too much content on the home page.
*
Q: What are the really bad sites on the Web?
A: Almost 80% of them fall in that category. There’s a deep pit of awful Web sites out there.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Black’s Web Design Tips
Do’s
* Put content on every page.
* Stick to “primary” colors: white, black and red.
* Make everything as big as possible.
* Customize.
* Surprise viewers.
Don’ts
* Don’t confuse the viewer.
* Never design pages that require scrolling
* Don’t use a lot of text.
* Don’t use tiny type.
* Don’t make oversize pages.
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bb987bb55d28de4f4b7e5d14aa853a05 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-04-me-65483-story.html?_amp=true | Pico-Aliso Residents Fear Being Left Out of the New Mix | Pico-Aliso Residents Fear Being Left Out of the New Mix
The detailed architectural drawings and optimistic pronouncements of the city Housing Authority promise a new future for Los Angeles’ largest public housing project, a collection of fading apartments infamous as one of the city’s toughest and most violent neighborhoods.
After the rubble of Pico-Aliso in Boyle Heights is carted away, a new Pico-Aliso will rise and a “mixed community” of homeowners, renters and senior citizens will be established. No longer will Pico-Aliso be a series of overcrowded tenements for the poor.
What has been less said--and what is an underlying premise of the Housing Authority plan--is that not all of the 543 families living in Pico-Aliso will have homes in this new, lower-density community. About 150 fewer units are being constructed than are being destroyed.
Demanding guarantees that they will be able to move into the new Pico-Aliso soon after it is completed, 65 families in the projects have refused to cooperate with Housing Authority efforts to relocate them during construction.
“They’ve lied to us,” said Manuela Lomeli, a 20-year resident of the projects. “Where are they going to put everyone who wants to come back? They can’t.”
For months now, the dissenting residents have organized a persistent resistance to the government plan. They speak of their love for and ties to a dilapidated and dangerous neighborhood that so many others disdain.
“My children were born and raised here,” said Lomeli, the mother of two teenagers. “Even though they say this is a bad area, it hasn’t affected us. I want to live in my community. I love my community. There’s a communication between people here, they care about each other.”
Still, Lomeli and her fellow protesters don’t dispute that the new Pico-Aliso will be a better place to live. A $50-million federal grant will help create a park and a child-care center. The old brick buildings will be replaced with townhouse-style apartments. There will also be 81 single-family homes clustered around landscaped courtyards, along with 60 units that will be reserved for senior citizens.
The project is scheduled for completion in December 1999.
Xavier Mendoza, the Housing Authority official overseeing the redevelopment, says it “gives us an opportunity to deal with the problem, which is too many people in one place, in a very high density, in old buildings arranged like barracks.”
Despite the numbers gap, Housing Authority officials insist that no current resident will be denied a home in the new Pico-Aliso. Their relocation plan assumes that a large number of the current residents will leave voluntarily.
About 120 residents have agreed to leave the projects on a temporary basis under the condition that they can return when the construction is completed, officials said. Vouchers issued under the federal government’s Section 8 subsidized housing program will pay their rent in the private sector. Housing Authority spokesman George McQuade said he believes a large number of these residents will eventually change their minds and decide they do not want to return to Pico-Aliso.
“Research shows that when they go out to those areas [with Section 8 assistance], they don’t come back” to housing projects, McQuade said. “They like the lifestyle, they make new friends.”
The dissenting residents dispute this argument. If the new Pico-Aliso is anything like the model neighborhood officials are promising, the residents say, everyone will want to come back.
“It’s not that we want to stay living the way we are,” said Carmen Mendoza, who raised three children in her two-bedroom apartment. “After 16 years of living in an old apartment, I’d like a new one. We just want there to be more houses, houses for everyone. We want [the Housing Authority] to guarantee houses for everyone, in writing, but they won’t do that.”
Officials say they will give residents a guarantee, provided they agree to be temporarily relocated. Those tenants who do sign “transfer amendments” to their leases--authorizing the Housing Authority to temporarily move them out of Pico-Aliso--are given a “Certificate of Guaranteed Return.”
Housing Authority officials acknowledge, however, that the guarantee may entail being placed on a long waiting list for an open apartment if, as expected, the new Pico-Aliso is filled to capacity.
Last week, residents were told that if they did not sign the transfer amendment by 3 p.m. Friday they would not be eligible to live in the new Pico-Aliso project. Officials said similar ultimatums had been issued twice before.
By Friday’s deadline, 65 families had still refused to sign, officials said.
Earlier in the week, about 30 protesters held a meeting at a home on Gless Street, just across the street from the projects. On a muggy night, the men and women crowded into a narrow living room, spilling onto the porch outside as they asked questions of attorney David Etezadi of the California Mutual Housing Assn., who has agreed to represent them.
“The Constitution gives you the right to due process,” Etezadi said, mixing English and Spanish terms. “Un procimiento justo.”
Two residents provided simultaneous translation for the handful of English speakers present.
“I know a lot of people are afraid,” said Elaine Diskand, 54. “They said if we don’t sign this, they’re going to give us 90 days to move out. I think that’s horrible, that’s an outrage. I’m going to start crying. If they kick us out of here, I’ll be homeless.”
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2f5df1879bee2b2ba96e59fa7ce07ddc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-05-ca-133-story.html | The Talk of L.A. en Espan~ol | The Talk of L.A. en Espan~ol
When Humberto Luna took his first job in radio, he worked in Los Angeles but the office was in Tijuana. So five days a week Luna would record his program here and the tapes would be driven across the border and played the next day in a Mexican studio that broadcast the show back to Southern California.
It was a complicated format that gave new meaning to the term “drive-time radio show,” but it turned out to be a lucky break for Luna. At the time, the L.A. market had just a handful of Spanish-language stations and none of them was hiring 20-year-olds with no experience in radio and even less understanding of English.
A lot more than the address on Luna’s business cards has changed in the intervening 30 years, however. Los Angeles, with 17 stations, is now the largest and fastest-growing Spanish-language radio market in the country, and Luna, who came to L.A. in 1968, has gone from being a pioneer to the country’s best-known Spanish-language radio personality.
Now he’s hoping that fame will aid him in another groundbreaking endeavor--establishing a Spanish-language presence in talk radio at KTNQ-AM (1020), his home for the past 20 years. Although other Spanish-language stations, such as KWKW-AM (1330), have experimented with talk shows in the past, KTNQ is the only one outside Miami and New York currently using the format full time. And as host of the morning show, Luna’s performance will go a long way in determining the station’s success.
“Our goals in the morning are to inform and to help if we can,” says Luna, whose frequently copied mix of staged routines, topical humor and improvisation changed little when the station dropped music last year. “I think the people in the morning want entertainment [so] . . . I talk about things in the news, jokes, gossip. I try to have a complete variety, but funny. To help people wake up with a smile.”
So far, the station has weathered the switch well. In the most recent Arbitron survey period, KTNQ was the sixth-most-listened-to AM station overall and the top-rated AM station broadcasting in Spanish. Individually, Luna’s program ranked fourth among drive-time AM shows and first in Spanish.
Nevertheless, Luna is not completely sold on the new format. Audience members are still not used to talk radio, he says, and have enough problems of their own without having to tune in and listen to other people complain.
But, he concedes, with much of the Latino community feeling besieged as a result of Proposition 187, attacks on immigration laws and bilingual education, and violent crime throughout the region, talk radio can become a vital resource.
“The people have to express their feelings, their needs,” he says. “It’s an escape valve, talk radio. It’s a place to send out messages, to speak out about what’s going on.”
But asked later if he liked his job, Luna’s enthusiasm waned again. “I have a contract with this station,” he replied flatly if diplomatically.
And it’s apparently a very good contract. Although Luna denies published reports that put his salary at $1 million a year, he hints that he’s not too far from that mark.
Ideally, Luna says, he’d like an equal mix of music and conversation on his show. “Sometimes with the music you can find a song that has something more interesting to say then what you have to say,” he explains. Still, he admits the advent of Spanish-language talk radio was a healthy and inevitable result of the L.A. market’s explosive growth, a boom fueled by a Latino population that has increased nearly 500% since 1970.
“Let’s compare it to restaurants,” he says. “If there are 20 restaurants, they can’t all be selling hamburgers, taquitos and enchiladas. For all of them to succeed . . . each one has to have a distinct dish. So each station has to choose a distinct format to succeed. And the benefit is for the listener, because now the listener has the option to change to whatever they want.”
In a comfortable but simple office not far from the tiny studio from which he and two assistants broadcast each weekday morning, Luna, 48, weaves in and out of character, giving crisp, pointed answers in a variety of voices--but just one language. “I’m more comfortable in Spanish,” he says.
The walls, however, bear testament to a celebrity that is not limited to one tongue or even one country. Among the mementos on display are certificates, in Spanish, from the government of Zacatecas, his home state in Mexico, and the government of Baja California, while in English there are proclamations from Los Angeles County, the California State Assembly and no fewer than six from the city of Los Angeles.
And if the office had windows, visitors would be able to look out on the nearby Hollywood Walk of Fame, where Luna’s career has been recognized with a star. And radio is only one part of that career now. Two years ago Luna was asked to re-create his radio act for television, the result being a daily one-hour show entitled “La Hora Lunatica,” which airs throughout the U.S., Mexico and Central America. (Locally the program can be seen weekdays at 2 p.m. on KVEA-TV Channel 52.)
Success, however, can breed complacency, a pitfall Luna has so far managed to avoid. Which may be one reason why, despite his reservations about talk radio, Luna has nonetheless embraced this latest challenge.
“Now I’m doing something different,” he says. “I have to do something distinct.”
Angels on the Airwaves: The Anaheim Angels, who play just a few blocks from one of the densest concentrations of Latinos in Orange County, are planning to resume broadcasting their games in Spanish next season after a six-year hiatus.
“Since the acquisition of the club [by Disney], it has been a top priority of the franchise to get back into Spanish broadcasting,” said Bob Wagner, director of advertising and broadcast sales for Anaheim Sports, which took over day-to-day management of the club a year ago. “It’s a cornerstone to our whole Hispanic marketing plan.”
The Angels have already received numerous demo tapes and resumes from experienced broadcasters and the club is deep in negotiations with three radio stations, although Wagner refused to name them.
After a 10-year run, the team suspended Spanish-language broadcasts in 1991 for what was thought to be financial reasons. At the time, broadcasters Ruben Valentine and Cos Villa called home games live for Tijuana-based XPRS-AM (1090) but did not travel with the team. Wagner says the club’s new management is committed to having its Spanish-language announcers at all 162 games next year, making the Angels just the fourth major league club--after the Florida Marlins, San Diego Padres and the Dodgers--to broadcast all its games in Spanish.
“We . . . want to treat it as equal to the English-language broadcast,” he says.
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90c669692e8eb30f7a7087ba2ee7704e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-06-me-709-story.html | An A+ Flunks the Helms Test | An A+ Flunks the Helms Test
To almost all eyes, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld seems right for the job of U.S. ambassador to Mexico. He is a nationally important political figure and a dedicated free-trader, committed to NAFTA. Having built his public career as a prosecutor, he understands law enforcement and is sophisticated on immigration issues. He speaks Spanish. And even though he’s a Republican, he is a friend of the president and has direct access to the White House, which would be an advantage in dealing with the United States’ most complex bilateral relationship.
Mexico’s diplomats and governing officials like him. As governor of Massachusetts he has encouraged scientific and university exchanges and garnered support among other governors for the successful U.S. bailout of Mexico after the 1994 peso collapse. Understandably, the overall reaction was highly positive when President Clinton announced he intends to nominate Weld as ambassador to Mexico.
Enter Sen. Jesse Helms. “I don’t think that he is ambassador quality,” said the North Carolina Republican, “and neither do a great many of the conservatives and Republicans in the state of Massachusetts.”
The current ambassador, Jim Jones, is leaving the post by the end of this month and that gives the nomination some urgency: This is not a position that can sit vacant for long. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms can do a great deal of harm by pursuing an ideological vendetta against the moderate Republican. But such an agenda must not derail what looks like a good choice. President Clinton should call Helms’ bluff and make the nomination.
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a0979646be8958575c9b34042e464808 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-08-fi-1265-story.html | High Test Score Proves His Failing | High Test Score Proves His Failing
Robert Jordan is a little too smart for his own good.
He took an exam to become a New London police officer but wasn’t called back for an interview because he scored too high.
Yes, that’s right, too high.
He recently filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination based on intelligence.
“I know I would be a good cop, but I had the misfortune of selecting too many correct answers,” said Jordan, 46. “What kind of a message does this send to children? Study hard, but not too hard?”
Deputy Police Chief William C. Gavitt and the city’s attorney, Ralph J. Monaco, said candidates who score too high could get bored with police work and leave not long after undergoing academy training that costs about $25,000.
“We are looking for bright people,” Monaco said, “but we’re not looking for people that are so bright to an extent that they’re not going to be challenged by the job.”
The intelligence exam, developed by Wonderlic Personnel Test Inc. of Libertyville, Ill., is widely used among employers, including some Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of police departments. Each year, it is given to nearly 3 million people nationwide.
Wonderlic said New London is not alone in screening out potential employees deemed too smart, but it wouldn’t identify any of those employers. If there are any, they are not exactly coming forward to say they don’t hire smart people.
At McDonald’s Corp., which does not use an intelligence test, many executives started out flipping burgers, spokeswoman Malesia Webb-Dunn said. “A college education certainly isn’t a hindrance,” she said.
At Latella’s Carting Co., a Connecticut trash hauler, supervisor Lisa Latella said, “To be very honest, we would hire anyone.” But she said a college-educated person would probably want a higher salary than the company could offer.
New London hot dog vendor Murray Zionts, 42, has two years of college credits but said she’s not bored with her job. “You have a lot of interaction with people,” she said with a smile. As for hiring someone with a college degree, she said: “I don’t care if they’re a professor. If they want to come work for me, that’s fine.”
But New London shoe salesman Charlie Dailey, 38, who spent one year at college, said he sometimes feels overqualified. “The little guys never get the credit,” he said. “It’s the managers who get all the credit.”
Jordan, who sells insurance and is a part-time security guard, has a bachelor’s degree in literature from a correspondence college and was admitted to law school at Quinnipiac College in Hamden but dropped out after a year.
He scored a 33 on the test, which measures a person’s ability to learn and to solve problems. (Two other applicants who scored even higher were also rejected.)
Jordan’s score gave him the equivalent of an IQ of 125. Such a score would be expected of a chemist, electrical engineer, administrator or computer programmer, said Charles F. Wonderlic, president of the test company.
The average score nationally for police officers as well as general office workers, bank tellers and salespeople, is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104. New London police interviewed only those candidates who scored 20 to 27.
In contrast, the neighboring community of Groton uses the exam only to screen out those who test low in intelligence.
“I go for the highest score on the Wonderlic that I can get,” said Police Chief Wilfred Blanchette Jr. “My instructions are, ‘You give me a list of people who are above this number.’ Let me figure out if they’re going to get bored or not.”
Experts in the field of industrial psychology said that studies on job satisfaction do not support New London’s policy.
“If we make it a practice of ruling out people based on superior intellectual abilities, we may be eliminating people who would become our police chiefs,” said Robin Inwald, director of Hilson Research in New York, one of the nation’s leading test developers for law enforcement agencies.
Frank J. Landy, author of the book “Psychology of Work Behavior,” said job satisfaction is determined not just by how challenging the work is but by factors such as salary, recognition and relationships with co-workers.
“The notion that the individual is too bright is goofy,” he said.
On the streets of New London, the case has been a little embarrassing for members of the police force.
“There have been jokes about it, but we’re intelligent enough to overlook that,” Patrolman John Clark said. “The city should feel safe. The people of New London respect us because we’ve proven ourselves over the years.”
This week, a man walked up to a patrolman on the street with an outstretched hand and said: “I’m proud to know you’re dumb enough to be a police officer.”
The man, who would not identify himself, said he was only kidding. Many citizens are questioning the hiring policy, though.
“A policeman’s job is not the easiest job. They have to be able to think. I’d rather have a person who scored higher on the test,” said Jim Rondeau, an insurance claims manager.
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61220525c5c1d4cdf449ed4f32cb8e09 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-12-me-2688-story.html | Fall Injures Alleged Tagger | Fall Injures Alleged Tagger
A 19-year-old fractured his spine after apparently jumping about 100 feet from a freeway pylon where he became stranded early Wednesday after painting graffiti, the California Highway Patrol said.
Daniel Supple of Woodland Hills plunged off the San Diego Freeway pylon and onto a steep embankment near the Skirball Center Drive exit about 5:45 a.m., said CHP Officer Karen Faciane.
Doctors at UCLA Medical Center, where Supple was taken, did not release information on whether his spinal injuries will lead to long-term complications, hospital spokeswoman Ruthie Marek said. He was scheduled to undergo surgery for two broken ankles and a broken left arm Wednesday night, Marek said. Supple was listed in fair condition.
A CHP official said law enforcement agencies had been tracking Supple as a suspected graffiti vandal for at least 18 months. Supple had been arrested as a juvenile on graffiti charges but was not convicted, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said.
CHP investigators said Wednesday that they believe that Supple climbed over the railing of the overpass onto a concrete pylon, probably with the help of an accomplice. But after allegedly spray-painting a tag, “OZIE,” on the bridge, “he saw no way down, so he opted to jump,” Faciane said.
“I don’t know what could be so important that he had to go up there,” she said, “but then again, I’m not 19.”
Supple was arrested at the hospital on suspicion of felony vandalism, a CHP official said.
The “OZIE” tag, which could be plainly seen on the overpass from the freeway, was painted in black and white letters, framed by red flames. Also part of the design was a second, smaller “OZIE YR 97" and a red “78" inside a heart. Supple was born in 1978.
The suspect is believed to have previously caused $68,000 in damage to Caltrans property by spraying “OZIE” in numerous locations, said CHP Officer Armando Perdomo, a spokesman for a CHP graffiti task force.
Perdomo said Supple is believed to have formerly used the moniker “HAWK.”
Supple graduated from Stoneridge Preparatory School last year. He had transferred there from Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, where one of his classmates was Kevin O’Shaughnessy.
O’Shaughnessy, now 18 and still a close friend of the suspect, said Supple was intelligent and an outgoing athlete. “He did things like BMX biking because it was a thrill, but he is very levelheaded, always thinking,” said O’Shaughnessy, 18, of Tarzana. “He had a lot going on. He thought a lot about everything.”
O’Shaughnessy said Supple had a longtime interest in drawing and was often seen sketching human and animal figures. He also was interested in stylized lettering .
Maria Arnold, director of Stoneridge Preparatory School, said she remembered Supple as a smart and energetic boy who loved basketball and “art, especially fancy lettering with colorful pictures--they didn’t look like the kinds of graffiti you usually see.”
Arnold said she took a liking to Supple even though “he wasn’t an angel” because he was “always lovely, polite and full of life.” Often when she went to school basketball games, she recalled, “He would say, ‘This basket is for you, Mrs. Arnold!’ and he would make it. That was the kind of kid he was.”
The only trouble that Arnold can remember Supple getting into was before his graduation, when he and his friends draped toilet paper all over the school. “I caught them and they cleaned it up right away,” she said. “Like most young people, he did things that may not be appropriate, but T.P.-ing the school, that was just a joke.”
Supple attended Santa Monica City College after graduating from Stoneridge but left that school and got a job as a driver for a car messenger service, O’Shaughnessy said. He had been unemployed in recent months, his friend said.
“I saw him two weeks ago, and he was telling me he was finally starting to get his life situated,” O’Shaughnessy said. “He just had regular kid problems, like not knowing who he was.”
LAPD Det. Craig Rhudy said that all freeway bridges and signs--particularly the San Diego Freeway in West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley--are popular sites for taggers because of their visibility.
“Higher places allow more people to see it, which means more recognition and notoriety,” Rhudy said. “It also stays up there for a longer time because it’s harder for the people who paint over it to get to.”
When O’Shaughnessy was asked why he thought his friend risked climbing onto a freeway pylon, he said, “I think because he enjoys the thrill, and for the art aspect. It was like a roller coaster.”
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11031bbfd7a7b1a78e79bc338ab447bc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-14-me-3395-story.html | Church Rebuilding Project Shifts Focus | Church Rebuilding Project Shifts Focus
The National Council of Churches--which has taken the lead in assisting predominantly black churches burned in a spate of fires since 1995--is moving into the second phase of its Church Rebuilding Project.
The transition is being marked by a convocation of pastors of burned churches and denominational leaders from across the country gathered for a three-day meeting in Washington this week.
The newest efforts will move the council beyond the construction of new churches into what its officials hope will be the rebuilding of communities by addressing issues of racial justice. A variety of initiatives have been proposed, ranging from racism education to employment training and partnering with local reconciliation efforts.
A federal task force reported this week that racism was but one of several reasons for the rash of fires at 429 houses of worship. However, National Council of Churches officials have focused on helping 90 churches they believe were burned in fires prompted by racist motivations.
One of the key components of the second-phase plans is cooperation on public advocacy issues with a variety of organizations, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
Jackson, in a speech Monday to the convocation, warned against what he called “touchy-feely” racial reconciliation.
“If we’re going to reconcile, let it be on some agenda of structural substance,” he said.
Jackson suggested it might be time once again for large, public demonstrations to mobilize congregations to be politically active. He suggested actions similar to the “freedom rides” that crisscrossed the South in the 1960s, or interracial marches representing “a coalition of conscience.” “Don’t let these folks convince us that marching does not work,” he said. “We must begin to act again.”
*
The Rev. Bennett W. Smith, president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, echoed Jackson’s sentiments in a speech later in the day.
“You’ve got to go back into your community and organize your church into a social and political action team,” he told the pastors of burned churches. He urged them to withdraw their personal funds from banks that do not give them loans to rebuild their churches, and to recommend that blacks do not deal with insurance companies that refuse to insure new churches.
But even as plans were being made to move beyond solely rebuilding churches, some representatives of the dozens of burned churches at the meeting said they were still dealing with problems others had faced a year ago when the National Council of Churches helped bring the church-burning issue to national attention.
Gloria Fountain, secretary of New Calvary Church of God in Christ in Camden, Ark., said members of her congregation, whose building burned last July, felt mistreated by authorities who made them feel like possible perpetrators rather than victims.
“They really harassed us,” she said. “Three of us had to appear before a grand jury two weeks ago.”
The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the national council’s general secretary, said such complaints are “much more isolated” since council representatives and pastors of burned churches met a year ago with federal officials who oversee FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents. But she said newly voiced concerns will be raised again with federal officials.
Some pastors at the meeting continued to report frustration in the process of rebuilding--from having fires ruled accidental in communities fraught with racial tension to having several banks deny them rebuilding loans.
“We’re living through holy hell here,” one pastor said.
*
As council staffers reached out to pastors seeking assistance, the Rev. Daniel Donaldson stood to paint a brighter picture.
Donaldson, pastor of Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Fruitland, Tenn., recounted how his church was destroyed by arson in December 1995 and received help from Southern Baptists, the national council and other volunteers.
“We rebuilt a half-million-dollar church and right now we are debt-free,” he said, garnering applause. “There are a lot of groups out there willing to help and work. Everything that is out there is not all negative.”
Campbell also spoke optimistically about the opportunities for new cooperation in the second phase of the council’s plans.
“I think we have the possibility for partnering in the religious community, certainly beyond the membership of the National Council of Churches,” she said.
She noted that the ecumenical council of 33 mainline Protestant and Orthodox Christian denominations received its largest donation to its Burned Churches Fund from the Roman Catholic Church, and had Unitarian Universalists actively involved in the process of giving grants to burned churches.
*
Campbell said the council raised $7.5 million in cash and received other in-kind assistance from a variety of religious and nonreligious sources that was used mostly to help rebuild the 90 churches helped in the first phase of the project.
Now, she anticipates the council will depend primarily on churches and synagogues for financial support of the proposed “National Religious Partnership for Racial Justice.”
“Our goal is to create communities where burning any house of worship is intolerable and universally condemned,” reads a proposal for the project’s second phase.
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07453d074d348bffe04082bc74fdd47f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-15-mn-3689-story.html | Tears of Joy Flow as Pratt Is Reunited With Mother | Tears of Joy Flow as Pratt Is Reunited With Mother
This was the day that all of his neighbors here had prayed for, his supporters had fought for and that he never doubted would arrive.
On this day, as former Black Panther Party leader Elmer Gerard “Geronimo” Pratt returned home to the Louisiana bayou of his youth, he broke through a wildly cheering crowd and sprinted into his 93-year-old mother’s house for a quiet reunion.
Once inside Saturday, he asked more than a dozen relatives to leave the room so that he could speak to her privately.
“I wept like a baby when I saw my brother on his knees in front of my mother,” said Jack Pratt, an older brother.
So eager was Pratt, 49, to see his mother, Eunice, he nimbly climbed through the sunroof of the limousine that had brought him from the airport. He bounded across the hood and quickly waded through the crowd into the cinder-block house.
He had not seen his mother since 1974, when she took a Greyhound bus from Louisiana to visit him at Folsom Prison, where he was serving a life term for a murder he insists he did not commit.
Pratt was freed on bail Tuesday after that conviction was overturned--a decision that is being appealed by Los Angeles prosecutors, who insist that Pratt committed the crime. Among Pratt’s first words after his release were: “I got to see my mama. I’m a mama’s boy.”
Pratt made no public comments about his 20-minute meeting with his mother, who is alert but frail and is unable to speak clearly.
When Pratt invited his relatives back into the room, the family reunion was on in earnest. Men and women held him in long embraces, and tears flowed freely as friends told him how much they had prayed for the day he could return home.
Rosemary King, who changed Pratt’s diapers when he was a baby, was there with a gift of pralines and a family heirloom--"a very old” metal ashtray shaped like the state of Louisiana.
*
An old high school buddy handed him a “catfish kit” and a T-shirt reading “Blue Devils Forever” from Sumpter Williams High School, where Pratt played quarterback.
He was back in the bayou where he had been an altar boy at Holy Eucharist Roman Catholic Church--where he first earned money shining shoes and going to the store for the likes of Miss Virginia, Mr. Pete and Mr. Frye.
This is where he played with his boyhood friend Lawrence “Pud” Brooks on the levee at the end of the street, where he rode out howling hurricanes while his mother read Shakespeare, Longfellow and Poe to her children gathered around her as the rain drummed on their tin roof. His grandmother started the first school for black children in Morgan City.
On Saturday, still savoring the taste of his first week of freedom after spending more than half his life in prison, Pratt greeted his hometown crowd with an emotional speech delivered in the rhythm and cadence of a sermon.
“I came to see my mama and my homefolks,” he said, as they shouted back their approval. “It wasn’t easy getting here. We had to turn a case of injustice to justice.”
He told the crowd that he was whipped and tortured in California’s prisons. “I told them they were wrong,” he said. “I didn’t do nothing. They didn’t care. I said OK. I’m going to keep on until the truth comes out. I ain’t no murderer.”
Now that the truth has come out, Pratt said, “the people want answers. And there will be answers.”
Pratt was convicted in 1972 of murdering Caroline Olsen and critically wounding her husband, Kenneth, during a robbery on a Santa Monica tennis court. Pratt has always maintained that he was innocent and that he was in the Bay Area attending Black Panther Party meetings when the crime occurred on Dec. 18, 1968.
*
Retired FBI Agent M. Wesley Swearingen supports Pratt’s contention, saying the bureau had him under surveillance and knew he was in Oakland the evening of the murder. Pratt has said over the years that he was targeted for “neutralization” by the FBI’s infamous counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey reversed Pratt’s conviction May 29, ruling that Los Angeles County prosecutors had suppressed key evidence favorable to Pratt that could have led to a different verdict. Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is appealing Dickey’s decision.
Garcetti’s appeal was far from the minds of the ecstatic throng who turned out Saturday. They were thrilled that Pratt was back home in the town where he has always been known simply as Gerard.
Here on the banks of the Atchafalaya, where Pratt’s late father, Jack, taught him to shoot water moccasins when he was a child, the neighborhood lay out a spread of jambalaya, red beans and rice, barbecued chicken and crayfish.
Friends came from New Orleans, Patterson, Lafayette, Centerville, and they brought signs letting him know they were there. Four network television trucks were parked outside the Pratt home, and their crews were joined by dozens of amateurs wielding video cameras.
Pratt told the crowd that he really didn’t want such a lavish homecoming. “I wanted to see my mama. I’m scared of making her nervous because she’s an old lady now. But I got to accept the love that’s coming at me.”
He introduced Johnnie Cochran Sr., his attorney’s 80-year-old father, a native of Shreveport who had traveled with Pratt to Louisiana from Los Angeles on Saturday.
“We just want to thank you for all your love and all your prayers, and keep hope alive,” Cochran said, standing on a kitchen chair in the Pratt front yard.
Someone in the crowd yelled: “And thank God for Johnnie Cochran!”
Pratt aimed his next remarks at the scores of teenagers and younger children in the crowd: “Without the older people making a way for us, we wouldn’t be here today. I want you to know that you got to stop disrespecting the elders. You got to start listening to them.”
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c2665ad59831c70219ae5016374716c1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-16-me-3899-story.html | Game Effort : Artificial Water Holes Bring Relief to Wildlife Left High, Dry in Forest | Game Effort : Artificial Water Holes Bring Relief to Wildlife Left High, Dry in Forest
How does somebody get a drink around here?
For humans, it’s just a short stroll to the refrigerator for a pitcher of iced tea or can of soda. Anyone living in this desert that is Southern California needn’t exert any more effort finding water than turning on a faucet or twisting a bottle cap.
But for animals living in local forests, finding drinkable water is a crucial daily quest. On the fringe of civilization, just miles from humanity’s pools, ponds and automatic sprinklers, many creatures go thirsty. The continuous pumping of ground water for agricultural and residential use has sucked some water tables dry, causing some surface ponds to drain away.
To make matters worse, in dry years like this one (the last local rainfall of any significance came in January, according to the U.S. Forest Service) animals face an even more withered environment.
To make up the lack, the Santa Clarita Valley chapter of Quail Unlimited, a national conservation group, along with the U.S. Forest Service, has been building artificial water holes or “guzzlers” in the parched hills of Los Padres National Forest.
“At the turn of the century, this area had nice surface water sources,” said Maeton Freel, a Forest Service wildlife biologist who works in Los Padres. “In dry years water also was available from underground sources that wildlife was able to get to. Those aquifers produced better vegetation and foliage that also provided moisture. Much of that is gone.”
The Santa Clarita chapter of Quail Unlimited is made up of mostly of hunters but leaders of the group say that nonhunters and other conservationists belong to the 140-member organization that has banded together to help save wildlife.
On Saturday, about 25 members gathered in the wilds of Los Padres to raise forms and pour cement to help build their fourth and last guzzler of the year. In the past four years, they have built 22 guzzlers.
“Conservation out West is all about water,” said the group’s vice president, Bruce Kenyon. “Back East, they have all the water their animals need, but we have to focus on creating water sources because there just aren’t enough.”
The group constructs different guzzlers for big and small game. Pheasants, wild turkeys, quail, rabbits and raccoons use the small-game guzzlers and another type is built for deer, mountain lions, bears and bobcats.
Small-game guzzlers look like drained wading pools about 16 feet across.
A cement basin catches water in the winter and stores it in 900-gallon underground tanks to be used during summer months. Water is diverted to big-game guzzlers, which are connected by pipes about 15 feet away, and look like troughs. The water level in the big-game guzzlers is controlled by a float, much the way a toilet tank works.
Small animals and birds get to the water by walking down a ramp and drinking from a small reservoir underneath the unit’s cement cover designed so only smaller animals can fit, not the larger creatures that prey on them.
John Nelson, one of the group’s habitat experts, said a unit used by a different chapter once trapped a thirsty coyote.
“The coyote got in and drank too much,” Nelson said. “He drank so much that he was too fat to get out.”
The group says it does much to ensure the safety of the animals. The access ramp has a rough surface so paws and claws won’t slip on slick cement. Brush piles are collected nearby so smaller creatures have someplace to hide in case a red-tail hawk or prairie falcon perches nearby.
Most important, every effort is made to veil the guzzlers from would-be vandals or unscrupulous hunters, Kenyon said. Freel said there have been instances where hunters have set up blinds near the guzzlers and picked off game while they drank.
Nelson said that kind of hunting is not only illegal but disdained by legitimate hunters.
“People who say we do this just so we have more game to hunt are wrong,” said Michael Brinkman, the group’s spokesman. “All kinds of animals use our guzzlers. We’re happy to see coyotes and skunks or even kangaroo rats use them. This is about conservation, not about hunting.”
There is nothing sweeter then hearing the “chuck-chuck-chuck” of the chukar, an orange-beaked upland bird, Nelson said, as it drinks from one of the guzzlers he helped build.
“It’s definitely a labor of love,” he said.
It costs about $1,900 to build each guzzler. The group raises money by holding fund-raisers, shooting contests and dog-training clinics and donates all the labor, about 790 hours a year, group leaders said.
The Forest Service contributes matching funds and also helps with some of the construction, according to Freel.
Brinkman said it would cost the Forest Service about $10,000 to build a guzzler itself.
On Saturday, near the Lockwood Valley region of the park, volunteers were busily working among the shrubs and scrub oak and pine trees in a remote section of the forest. Richard Howell, a U.S. forest ranger, said the guzzlers are already having an effect on the growth of wildlife populations.
“We have wildlife in areas we didn’t have before,” Howell said. “We check the guzzlers and find footprints of animals that were not previously known to inhabit the area. The guzzlers aren’t just servicing animals that live here, they are helping animal populations expand.”
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2d16f0ec11eca3130a2f5d4dc8e88eeb | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-17-mn-4191-story.html | Girl Killed in Botched Holdup at McDonald’s | Girl Killed in Botched Holdup at McDonald’s
A gunman opened fire during a thwarted robbery at a McDonald’s restaurant Monday, killing a 9-year-old girl before an off-duty police officer mortally wounded him, authorities said.
The gunman entered the restaurant through the employees entrance about 3 p.m. and handed a note to the manager, who then told employees they were being robbed, police said.
An off-duty Barstow officer eating in the restaurant tried to confront the gunman, who opened fire, Police Lt. Jim Lindley said during a news conference late Monday.
It was not clear why the gunman started shooting. But during the gun battle that ensued, the officer shot the gunman, who was airlifted to a hospital, where he died.
Lindley said the 25-year-old gunman had a lengthy criminal record. He did not release identities of the gunman or the victim.
A security camera showed the shot that killed the girl came from the gunman, not the officer, Lindley said.
The McDonald’s was in Barstow Station, a popular stopping point for travelers. In addition to the restaurant, it includes an ice cream and candy shop and gas station in a building that resembles an old-time train station.
Barstow, 120 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is at the junction of Interstates 15 and 40 in the Mojave Desert.
It was not the first fatal shooting at a McDonald’s restaurant in California this year.
On June 8, a man apparently involved in a child custody drop-off allegedly shot the mother, with the children standing nearby, outside a crowded McDonald’s restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga.
Last December, a 17-year-old was killed and two people were injured when a former employee went on a shooting rampage at a Vallejo McDonald’s.
In San Ysidro, 21 adults and children were shot to death in 1984 in a rampage by James Oliver Huberty, who was shot to death by police.
Calls to McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., were not returned after business hours Monday.
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b1300ba3282c8fdd8077317fc7b15f48 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-27-ca-7249-story.html | John Travolta and Nicolas Cage get under each other’s skin--literally--in John Woo’s return to form, ‘Face/Off’ | John Travolta and Nicolas Cage get under each other’s skin--literally--in John Woo’s return to form, ‘Face/Off’
John Woo is known for a cinema of violent delirium so breathtaking it plays like visual poetry, and “Face/Off,” though his third film in Hollywood, is the first to expose mainstream audiences to the master at his most anarchically persuasive.
But, as those who’ve seen the director’s cult favorite Hong Kong movies like “A Better Tomorrow,” “The Killer” and “Hard Boiled” can testify, Woo is also known for the sincerely sentimental underpinnings of his work. Bonding between men links all his films, which classically feature an emotional connection between the hero and the villain that’s the strongest one on screen.
Which is why, though it was written by the team of Mike Werb & Michael Colleary before either one had seen the Hong Kong films, “Face/Off” is a kind of ultimate John Woo movie. Its tale of identity-switching takes the director’s usual themes to their logical extreme, resulting in a delicious inside-out double-reverse movie that’s as outrageous and over the top as anyone could want.
For “Face/Off’s” title refers not only to the inevitable confrontation between good and bad but to a literal switching of physical identities as well. It’s a film that demands that its stars play two roles, one nestled inside the other like interlocking toy dolls, a task
been handled so persuasively by John Travolta and Nicolas Cage that they’ve inspired Woo to do his best work in years.
The director, who didn’t seem to be quite hitting his stride with his first two American films, “Hard Target” and “Broken Arrow,” here offers a demonstration of action as it should be done. In its best moments, “Face/Off” practically mainlines fury, leaving audiences no time to think or even breathe.
With an offbeat sense of humor, an eye for small visual touches and a weakness for white doves added to an intuitive grasp of the mechanics of large-scale pyrotechnics, Woo ensures that no one’s eyes will be leaving the screen when he’s spinning his apocalyptic web.
After a brief prologue set six years ago that establishes the reason for the enmity between Sean Archer (Travolta) and Castor Troy (Cage), “Face/Off” moves up to the present, with Archer as the driven, humorless leader of the usual supersecret government anti-terrorist team.
Archer’s main target is, no surprise, Castor Troy and his sniveling sociopath brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola). Castor is no bargain either, establishing himself early on as a showy and bombastic homicidal maniac, a terrorist-for-hire whose huge gold-dipped handguns decorated with custom-made dragon grips are the least flashy thing about him.
Castor and Pollux get defanged in “Face/Off’s” initial action sequence, coming out on the short end of a tussle with Archer, an unhappy man who has let his relationships with wife Eve (Joan Allen) and pouty teenage daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain) deteriorate in his manic quest to nail his nemesis. “It’s over,” he tells Eve after the battle, but we know better.
It turns out that no one but Castor, who’s in one of those movie comas, and Pollux, who’s in prison, know exactly where the pair have planted a poison gas bomb that will decimate Los Angeles in just a few days. The only way to save the city is for Archer to assume Castor’s identity and worm the info out of the imprisoned Pollux.
We’re not talking a fake driver’s license here. Thanks to an experimental surgical procedure involving something called a “morpho-genetic template,” Archer, in a sequence that owes a lot to Georges Franju’s indelible “Eyes Without a Face,” manages to disappear behind Castor’s face and inside his body type. Everyone assures him it’s reversible but it’s still awfully creepy.
*
Creepier still is what happens when, for no apparent reason, Castor wakes up and, because it’s the only one not spoken for, ends up grabbing Archer’s face and body. So both men, each looking like his own worst enemy, try to complete the jobs they started when they looked like themselves.
“Face/Off’s” script is not strong on dialogue or conventional plausibility, but its themes are sound, and one of its more intriguing ones is how flummoxed Archer and Castor are by having to live the lives of their hated opponents. Imprisonment and dissipation in no way agree with Archer, and Castor, despite sharing a bed with Archer’s wife and leering at his daughter, finds married life is more complex and onerous than he anticipated.
Cage and Travolta are equally successful with their double-barreled roles, and in fact both do better playing the self-loathing that comes with being a frustrated personality in an unwanted body. Travolta, when in the grip of Castor’s persona, even gets to make some disparaging comments about his own chin. It’s that kind of movie.
It’s safe to say that Joan Allen, not usually found in films of this sort, will not get a third Oscar nomination for her work as Archer’s sorely tried wife, but it’s precisely her skill at making her character both grounded and believable that is essential in giving “Face/Off” what reality it has.
Not surprisingly, it’s John Woo, able to provide a nautical sequence that shames “Speed 2" plus carnage choreographed to Olivia Newton-John singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” who is the real star of “Face/Off.” It’s difficult to describe the jolt his films deliver when he’s on, and he is on with a vengeance here.
* MPAA rating: R, for intense sequences of strong violence, and for strong language. Times guidelines: glimpses of a man without a face.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
‘Face/Off’
John Travolta: Sean Archer
Nicolas Cage: Castor Troy
Joan Allen: Eve Archer
Gina Gershon: Sasha Hassler
Alessandro Nivola: Pollux Troy
Dominique Swain: Jamie Archer
A Douglas/Reuther, WCC Entertainment, David Permut production, released by Paramount Pictures. Director John Woo. Producers David Permut, Barrie Osborne, Terence Chang, Christopher Godsick. Executive producers Michael Douglas, Steven Reuther, Jonathan D. Krane. Screenplay Mike Werb & Michael Colleary. Cinematographer Oliver Wood. Editor Christian Adam Wagner. Costumes Ellen Mirojnick. Music John Powell. Production design Neil Spisak. Art director Steve Arnold. Set decorator Garrett Lewis. Running time: 2 hours, 18 minutes.
* In general release throughout Southern California.
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f3e37deda2217a4a0e2cf1efa2ada20f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-02-me-18769-story.html | The Rock ‘n’ Roll Doc Practices Medicine and Music | The Rock ‘n’ Roll Doc Practices Medicine and Music
Patients don’t fret if they have to wait for their appointment with Dr. Stephen Patt.
But they can if they want to.
All they have to do is walk from the doctor’s medical waiting room into his musical practice room.
That’s where they can finger the strings of a used Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Goldtop Melody Maker or strum an ancient Rickenbacker, Gretsch flattop or 150 other vintage guitars.
One moment Patt is a medical doctor tending to the aches of patients. The next he is the Guitar Doc, ministering to the angst of serious rock ‘n’ roll musicians.
The front part of his medical office on National Boulevard on the Westside is a retail showroom filled with old guitars, amplifiers, picks and strings. In the corner is a soundproof practice room where musicians’ amplified riffs and rumbles won’t bother anyone.
The back half contains Patt’s reception area and waiting room, examination room and office.
Rock ‘n’ roll sets the tone there, too.
On one side of Patt’s desk are framed medical certificates and diplomas from places like the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine. On the other are glossy, autographed photos of famed guitarists.
A giant poster signed by legendary electric guitar innovator Les Paul is displayed in the doorway leading from the medical side to the musical side.
“We try to keep our priorities straight,” said Patt, 46. “My medical practice is the most important part of this. But it’s hard to abandon a whole part of your life.”
Indeed. Before becoming a medical doctor, Patt was a guitarist in the 1960s and ‘70s for such rock ‘n’ roll stars as Edgar Winter and the Chambers Brothers.
*
His first stage gig was as a 12-year-old in Baltimore. As a teenager he played folk music and country-rock with a succession of bands, including Northwind. At 17 he was a staff member at the Woodstock festival (“I got to hand out rubber checks to the stars,” he says). He joined the Edgar Winter band in 1968.
After touring and recording with the Chambers Brothers in the 1970s, Patt reluctantly realized that music wasn’t going to provide the income needed to raise a family.
Following the lead of his father, a surgeon, and an uncle who was Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey’s personal physician, Patt enrolled in medical school in 1976. He helped put himself through school playing rock ‘n’ roll gigs.
For the 16 years he has practiced medicine, Patt has continued to be just as comfortable with a wah-wah pedal at his foot and a pick in his hand as with a stethoscope around his neck.
He writes a monthly product review column for Vintage Guitar magazine and frequently plays in pickup bands.
This month, he played rhythm guitar before a sold-out crowd at Billboard Live on the Sunset Strip with veteran rockers Lee Sklar (bassist with Jackson Browne and James Taylor) drummer Mike Baird (Ry Cooder band) and guitarist Jon Butcher.
About a third of his patients, like Butcher, are in the music business, according to Patt. Some, like guitarist Bruce Michael Paine of Venice, are also customers.
“I buy strings, picks and pedals from him,” Paine said. “When I go for a doctor’s appointment, I’ll go in his guitar shop and sit and noodle while I’m waiting.”
*
Paine, a veteran band member and stage performer, said he switched to Patt after tiring of physicians “who don’t quite understand some of the ailments common to this industry--nerves jangled over being up all night and whatever, certain things you do with your hands and fingers that cause carpel tunnel syndrome, hearing loss.”
Patients such as Imbi Rebane who are not musicians never realize there is a guitar shop in front. The Los Angeles student didn’t hear a sound the other day as she stopped in for a checkup.
But a few feet away in the soundproof room, Eric Weinthal was trying out a 1942 Gibson L-5 arch-top. Although the guitar store is normally open only on Saturdays or by appointment, the Toronto filmmaker had stopped in when he noticed that the storefront door was open.
Patt came out to show him some other guitars. “Did you see the white Penguin over there? Isn’t it beautiful?”
From the back, medical receptionist Deia Craine buzzed. A patient’s test results were ready.
As Weinthal strummed in the background, Patt talked with the lab and then called a Santa Monica hospital to alert the staff that the patient would be arriving within the hour.
Hanging up, Patt continued his conversation without missing a beat. “Isn’t that cool? Eric Clapton would like it. It’s pretty playable for a 1950s guitar. A year ago it was turned into a Penguin.”
*
The phone rang again. A patient was on the line this time. “The lab tests show you have a little problem with your blood,” Patt said. “You’re a little anemic. Your kidneys are fine, your liver’s great. Your cholesterol is wonderful.”
When the call was over, he turned once more to Weinthal, who was fingering a different guitar.
“Doesn’t that one resonate great? It’s from the early ‘30s. It’s a predecessor to the electric guitar,” Patt explained. “It’s got a metal resonator inside to amplify the sound.”
Along with the vintage guitars in the store, Patt has a $325 glider chair on display that is designed to improve the circulation of bluegrass players who sit for hours at a time with their instruments.
He also has a vintage Honda motorcycle sitting in the front window. It’s something designed to improve Patt’s peace of mind.
“My wife and I and our two kids live in Topanga Canyon. The motorcycle is my way to get through traffic and get home in case of a fire up there,” he said.
Old rock ‘n’ roll guitarists are a plucky bunch.
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9597167b90888bddf533dd5c83b8a64e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-03-bk-18833-story.html | VIRGINIA WOOLF.<i> By Hermione Lee</i> .<i> Random House: 867 pp., $39.95</i> : ART AND AFFECTION: A Life of Virginia Woolf.<i> By Panthea Reid</i> .<i> Oxford University Press: 570 pp., $35</i> | VIRGINIA WOOLF.<i> By Hermione Lee</i> .<i> Random House: 867 pp., $39.95</i> : ART AND AFFECTION: A Life of Virginia Woolf.<i> By Panthea Reid</i> .<i> Oxford University Press: 570 pp., $35</i>
To write a fresh and engaging new life of Virginia Woolf is no mean feat. For Hermione Lee to do so, the “official” biographer, taking over from Quentin Bell, whose award-winning 1972 “Virginia Woolf” is still considered among the most stylish biographies of the century, seems an act of virtuosity along the lines of ax juggling or handcuffed escapes from tiger cages. Letters, diaries and other major materials for such a biography have been in the public’s hands for over 10 years. The details of Woolf’s private life--her periods of mental illness, her feminism, her childhood tragedies and sexual abuse--are better-known and more exhaustively debated than those of any other modernist writer. Readers can hold firm opinions on these matters, siding with one biographer or another, or adhering to some personal insight into Woolf’s character or motives. And to complicate matters, another substantial Woolf biography has appeared this summer to compete with the official biography.
Although there is new material in the Hermione Lee biography, and much astute commentary, its strength lies not in revelation but in artful layering of the past and present. By the end, Lee has devoted as much attention to Woolf’s lively posthumous presence--the Woolf of our making--as to the writer herself. It is Hermione Lee’s breadth of awareness, her willingness to expand the conventional boundaries of a life in the search for a richer and more faceted Virginia Woolf, that distinguishes her biography from its predecessors and contemporaries, including the recent “Art and Affection” by Panthea Reid. Both new Woolf biographies are hefty and well-researched. Both offer carefully considered arguments. But Reid is still engaged in the search for demons that characterized Woolf biography from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. In the Reid biography, the figures around Virginia Woolf are defined in relation to her, existing chiefly as helpers or antagonists. Her husband, Leonard, is cast as a sort of good shepherd, benevolently overseeing Woolf’s emotional balance, while her sister Vanessa Bell shifts between helpless incompetence and cruelty. It is a sad trick of mortality that Woolf’s friends and family could not know that their future importance would rest on their relations with her. They dared to neglect her, at times, or to complain she made mischief, or to criticize her in letters that have now made their way into print, permanent records of passing irritation. They dared, in fact, to press on with their own puny lives, and posterity has judged them harshly.
Although the best parts of Reid’s book address Woolf’s middle age, when her relationship with her sister no longer preoccupied her, the bulk of Reid’s argument hinges on sibling rivalry. Like other scholars of recent years, Reid explores both the fruitful and defeating aspects of the sisters’ championship of their own artistic spheres. “I cannot remember a time,” Vanessa wrote after Virginia’s death, “when Virginia did not mean to be a writer and I a painter.” The sisters kept up a playful antagonism on the subject, often managing to displace personal jealousy with the theoretical competition between painting and writing. Reid uses Leonardo da Vinci’s term paragone to describe the tension between their respective arts and, by implication, their respective paths in life. The difficulty is that Reid takes Virginia’s side in the conflict with Vanessa, perpetuating and even furthering an opposition that was at least partly a family joke. There is not a bitchy remark anywhere in Vanessa’s letters that escapes inclusion here. Even Virginia’s 1913 suicide attempt and its aftermath are plotted to highlight Vanessa’s selfishness and brutality. Bertrand Russell once complained that Lytton Strachey’s biographical style didn’t lend itself to strict accuracy: He “would always touch up the picture to make the lights and shadows more glaring.” Readers familiar with Woolf and her circle may find that Panthea Reid favors the same contrasting brush work.
The decision to publish the Reid biography this summer, when the long-awaited, much-publicized Lee biography was due to appear, tells us much about the perceived market for Virginia Woolf material. At least eight full-length biographical studies of Woolf have appeared in the past 15 years, and at least two more biographies are now scheduled for publication. The fascination with Woolf’s life is an essential part of her legend, continually remarked on in the press and joked about at scholarly conferences. Given the current glut, it may be hard to believe that in the 30 years after her suicide in 1941, there was almost no biographical information available to readers. But this, too, is part of the legend that Lee draws on: the story of Woolf’s slow return from critical disfavor in the 1940s and 1950s.
Woolf’s husband and publisher, Leonard Woolf, was in a unique position to influence this recovery. Acutely aware of the antagonism to his wife’s work after her death (and the larger antagonism to the Bloomsbury Group, her immediate milieu), he developed a long-term strategy for the revival of her reputation. Only the best-known novels, like “To the Lighthouse,” would be kept in print, even during the war, when the Hogarth Press could publish almost nothing else. He carefully parceled out her essays and short stories, too, releasing only what he felt the market could bear. In 1953, against his better judgment, he began to publish selections from her personal writings: an expurgated, heavily abridged edition of her diaries, followed three years later by a similarly sanitized version of her correspondence with Lytton Strachey. Neither volume ignited a fascination with Virginia Woolf. But thanks in part to the Women’s Movement, a readership for her novels had been growing (Leonard liked to quote her rising sales figures to hostile critics), and when the Quentin Bell biography finally appeared, it was rapturously received. Reprints were so rapid that Bell could not even insert a small correction until the seventh print run.
Many readers, however, especially women, were disappointed that Bell chose not to address Virginia Woolf’s thought or writings in any detail, and this is one reason that rival biographers have flourished. His decision seemed to suggest that Woolf’s novels were too difficult for common readers, or even that her work was not central to her life. Along with the family flavor of the official biography (Bell was Virginia Woolf’s nephew), Bell’s reluctance to address the writing sparked an enduring controversy among scholars.
Lee’s own 1977 study “The Novels of Virginia Woolf” announced itself as an attempt to refocus attention on Woolf’s work: “This is not a book about Bloomsbury, lesbianism, madness or suicide,” she insisted. The critical squabbling left readers with a fragmented vision of Virginia Woolf, and little consensus of her literary merit. In America, for instance, Woolf has long been regarded as a major writer, but she is still routinely derided in the English press, where her popularity with American readers is considered potent evidence against her.
“There is no such thing as an objective biography,” writes Lee in the opening pages of this biography, “particularly not in [Woolf’s] case. Positions have been taken, myths have been made.” Lee’s awareness of the Woolf legend crackles like an electrical current under the surface of her primary narrative. Approaching the fraught subject of Woolf’s sexual molestation by her half-brothers, for instance, Lee admits, “it is impossible to think about this story innocently, without being aware of what has been made of it.” Although she names her opponent only in the end notes, Lee’s discussion of the subject can be read as a submerged running argument with Louise DeSalvo, whose provocative book on Woolf’s childhood sexual abuse portrayed the Stephens as a pathologically dysfunctional family. Given the popular success of DeSalvo’s book (it is the best-selling Woolf book since the Quentin Bell biography), Lee knows that when she counters DeSalvo’s views, she is challenging not only a single influential scholar but a powerful and appealing version of Woolf’s childhood that has taken hold in the popular imagination. Lee ends by convincing us that what is important is not what actually happened to the young Virginia, or even our most plausible interpretations of events as they have come down to us in the written record, but what Woolf herself made of them in her fiction and essays.
Lee’s treatment of Woolf’s close friend and early love interest, Violet Dickinson, is similarly colored by her awareness of what previous scholars have made of it. Another writer might have despaired of saying anything original on this matter--Panthea Reid, for instance, dismisses it with a sentence or two on Virginia’s craving for maternal affection--but Lee establishes her own views through contrast with earlier accounts of the relationship. “Because Violet was dropped [by Woolf],” she argues, “she has been treated subsequently as a negligible, comic figure, the benevolent object of a youthful ‘crush’ and a lingering reminder of Hyde Park Gate days. But what she gave Virginia Stephen at a time of great vulnerability was very important. Violet enabled her to behave freely, childishly, like a daughter or a favorite pet or a sweetheart. . . . She provided a space in which Virginia could curl up or hurl herself about, and be as egotistical and demanding as her dying father.” This is not a radical revision but an enlargement of sympathy; it is both a rational and an intuitive gesture, typical of Lee’s generosity toward her subject, and of her fundamental sensibleness.
Perhaps the best example of this sensibleness is Lee’s chapter on Woolf’s “madness,” in which she throws into question much of what Leonard Woolf and Quentin Bell had written about Woolf’s recurring episodes of physical and emotional breakdown, though without casting blame on either writer. Like other biographers, she describes the psychiatric biases of Woolf’s day and lingers on the quietly tormenting “rest cure,” so often prescribed for troublesome gifted women. But she also speculates about possible physical causes, such as undiagnosed tuberculosis, for Woolf’s susceptibility to contagious diseases, as well as her severe mood swings.
Turning to the original sources, Lee found that almost the only surviving contemporary documents on Woolf’s mental illnesses are her drug prescriptions. She looked into the neuropsychiatric effects of the drugs Woolf was given and discovered that some of them, under some conditions, mimic the mania that Leonard Woolf described as a phase in his wife’s illness. “Even in light of these different, and changing, readings,” Lee concludes reasonably, “we cannot, I think, be sure what ‘caused’ Virginia Woolf’s mental illness.
“We can only look at what it did to her, and what she did with it. What is certain is her closeness, all her life, to a terrifying edge, and her creation of a language which faces it and makes something of it. This is a life of heroism, not of oppression, a life of writing wrestled from illness, fear, and pain.”
Passages like these are not so very different from what readers might have expected of Bell, had he been born a woman in the late 1940s, for he is of course one of the biographers with whom Lee invites comparison. Hers is a more rigorous and intellectual effort, but tends, like his, toward a middle course in interpreting Woolf’s life and writings. The middle has shifted considerably in the last 25 years, however, so that Lee’s approach is matter-of-factly feminist, while Bell’s managed to enrage many bright women. He is the better writer, perhaps, but she is the better scholar. More importantly, she brings her dazzling knowledge of Woolf’s texts and drafts to bear on the writer’s life, providing in the new authorized biography the blend of life and work--the full life, in other words--that Quentin Bell could not, or would not, attempt.
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b5a4a845511c531579aee492e63c3edc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-04-ca-19253-story.html | 90% of ‘187' Is Based on Schoolteachers’ Reality | 90% of ‘187' Is Based on Schoolteachers’ Reality
In Kenneth Turan’s review of “187" (Calendar, July 30), he says the most disheartening line in the film is the final disclaimer, which states, “a teacher wrote this movie.” I, for one, have to disagree, because I was that teacher. I wrote the screenplay for “187" two years ago out of desperation. When Trevor Garfield (Samuel L. Jackson) enters a classroom and finds that all the textbooks have been thrown out the windows, that’s not fiction. It actually happened to me. In fact, 90% of what you see in “187" either happened to me or to other teachers.
The divisive atmosphere in certain high schools is most definitely real. About three years ago, I had a student threaten to kill me and my family. I had him arrested. About a week later, the district attorney called me out of class to talk to me on the phone. He asked if I would be willing to testify against the student in a court of law. I said “yes,” but was surprised they were pursuing the case. The D.A. told me there were mitigating circumstances--the student had stabbed a teacher’s aide the year before. This young man was in my classroom for 15 weeks, and no one had ever told me that he had stabbed someone. I should have been told.
I have always thought of my screenplay as a wake-up call, like a mirror held up to our school system in an effort to expose its worst elements. Why not paint a more hopeful picture? That has already been done, to no avail. The public school system continues to decline year after year. I wanted to write a cautionary tale about a good man who is destroyed by his environment. A story like this is not always pleasant to watch. But maybe it will get people’s attention. I think it already has.
Frank Capra once said, “Only the daring should make films. And only the morally courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow man for two hours and in the dark.” What is disheartening to me is when a teacher dares to stand up and speak the truth, and some people don’t believe him.
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acb961af0691df1055207f31bd862d3d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-06-fi-19780-story.html | Sunstone Buying Stake in 17 Hotels to Double Its Size | Sunstone Buying Stake in 17 Hotels to Double Its Size
Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc. said Tuesday that it planned to acquire a stake in 17 hotels, a deal valued at $322 million, which would more than double the size of the real estate investment trust.
“We think this deal will separate us from the smaller guys,” said Joe Biehl, chief financial officer. It’s the company’s largest acquisition yet, and company officials say it will provide them with additional avenues to expand.
San Clemente-based Sunshine plans to acquire Rochester, Minn.-based Kahler Realty Corp. from its parent, New York investment firm Westbrook Partners.
“Through Westbrook’s contacts, we have the opportunity to acquire other properties,” said Robert Alter, Sunstone chairman and chief executive.
As part of the deal, Westbrook will gain a 13% stake in the company--making it the largest single shareholder--and it will gain a seat on the fledgling REIT’s board.
The transaction is expected to close in October subject to regulatory approvals, company officials said.
Sunstone, which owns mid-priced hotels like Holiday Inns and Hampton Inns, has been nicknamed the “hotel doctor” by industry analysts for its niche of buying up less attractive or poorly managed properties and renovating and rebranding them to turn a bigger profit.
Alter said Sunstone plans to spend the next 18 to 21 months renovating and rebranding many of the Kahler hotels.
“We want to get in strong franchise brands,” he said. “We expect to upgrade our customer base and rate.”
Kahler owns five hotels in the Salt Lake City area, including the 351-room Salt Lake City Hilton and four hotels with 1,329 rooms surrounding the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Occupancy at the 17 Kahler properties in Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Texas and West Virginia averaged 69.1% in 1996, and Kahler earnings reached $28.1 million last year on revenue of $124.7 million.
Sunstone’s funds from operations grew 195% this quarter from the same period last year to $6.2 million.
Alter said he plans to retain many of Kahler’s 3,100 employees.
When the acquisition is complete, the company will have a market capitalization of more than $700 million, more than 10 times the size of its public offering in August 1995. Since then, the company has been growing rapidly, adding 21 hotels to the 10 it already owned.
To acquire Kahler, Sunstone will pay Westbrook $95 million in cash, issue $57 million in new stock and assume or retire about $170 million in debt, company officials said.
It also has agreed to pay Westbrook a $16.5-million bonus, if Kahler’s assets exceed certain performance goals, the company said. Alter said he expects the deal to break even and begin making a profit early next year.
Sunstone is one of 14 hotel REITs around the country, which sells shares in the properties it owns. Analysts say these REITs can be more aggressive than corporations in making acquisitions and renovations, because they do not have to pay income tax and do not have to repay traditional bank financing.
These REITs have been prospering in the last couple of years as occupancy and room rates have increased nationwide, after a long recession.
“Things have been shooting right back up. The number of rooms is still lower than demand,” said Burl East, an analyst with Chicago-based Everen Securities.
Alter said Sunstone has negotiated several other Southern California hotel purchases.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Sunstone Hotel Investors
Headquarters: San Clemente
* Business: Hotel real estate investment trust
* Chairman/CEO/president: Robert A. Alter
* Hotels owned: 30 upscale and mid-priced hotels in Western U.S.
* Latest purchase: 17 additional hotels for $322 million
* Formed: 1995
* 1996 revenue: $15.1 million
* 1996 net income: $5.6 million
* Status: Public
* Exchange: New York Stock Exchange
Source: Sunstone Hotel Investors; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
What is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)?
Pronounced: “Reet”
Definition: Combines capital of many investors to acquire or provide financing for real estate; similar to a mutual fund in that investors obtain benefit of diversified real estate investment portfolio under professional management; most are publicly traded on major stock exchanges.
Investors: Individuals, pension funds, endowments, insurance firms, trusts and mutual funds
Types of REITs
Some invest in a variety of properties while others specialize, for example, in hotels, shopping centers, apartments or health care facilities. REITs can be also grouped by investment strategy:
* Equity: Owns real estate; revenue comes principally from rent
* Mortgage: Loans money to real estate owners; revenue comes from interest earned on mortgage loans; some invest in residuals of mortgage-based securities
* Hybrid: Combined strategies of both equity and mortgage REITs
Who Determines a REIT’s Investments?
Board of directors or trustees; directors elected by, and responsible to, shareholders; directors appoint management personnel
How Are REITs Managed?
Professional management is hired and periodically reviewed by the REIT’s board of directors. REIT managers are selected based upon their real estate background and expertise.
How Do I Invest in a REIT?
Shares may be purchased through stock brokers or, in some cases, from individual REITs. Contact the National Assn. of Real Estate Investment Trusts for a free listing of all publicly traded REITs, with exchange symbols, and a list of available education publications, as well as a list of mutual funds that primarily invest in REITs. NAREIT: (800) 3NAREIT
Source: National Assn. of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT); Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
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0e6e3c1772465334e72fe07652d751f4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-12-me-21826-story.html | Tougher Rules for Teachers of Child Actors Applauded | Tougher Rules for Teachers of Child Actors Applauded
Ask any of those cute little tykes who grew up before our eyes on “Flipper” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and countless other TV series: Acting careers don’t last forever.
That’s why former child actors and leaders of the Screen Actors Guild were rejoicing Monday over new state regulations they say will improve the education that young performers receive in classrooms set up at television and movie studios.
State officials disclosed a plan to toughen requirements for teachers who work with child actors by requiring them to have multi-subject, secondary-level teaching credentials as well as special training in labor law.
In recent years, instructors with as little as a single teaching credential in a non-academic subject such as physical education could be licensed to teach in trailer classrooms at studio lots all over town.
Complaints that studio schools were being “dumbed down” prompted a lawsuit by the studio teachers union that has led the state’s Department of Industrial Relations to set new standards, which will be announced today.
Former child actors have lobbied for the tougher requirements, arguing that most pint-size actors grow up to be unemployed unless their education has readied them for life outside of lights and cameras.
“Maybe five out of 100,000 will make it,” said Paul Petersen, former child star from “The Donna Reed Show” who now assists 400 other former actors through a Gardena-based program he runs that is called “A Minor Consideration.”
“Name me 20 former film stars who are still in front of the camera and I’ll be astonished,” Petersen said. “By definition, a childhood career comes to an end. That’s why education is the core.”
Nineteen-year-old Chris Allport--who started acting at age 7 and graduated to voice-over work as he got older--said studio teachers make or break young actors.
“You have to have a good one or you get left way behind,” said Allport, a Simi Valley resident who now attends Cal State Northridge.
“I have a lot of friends who are behind. I don’t know how they will turn out,” Allport said. “I’m preparing for the day the industry doors close. I hope it doesn’t happen. But I’m preparing.”
Former child actress Jeanne Russell, who played Margaret on the series “Dennis the Menace,” said actor Roddy McDowall warned her mother to make certain she got a good education in studio schools.
“He told my mother about his transition,” said Russell, 46, now a chiropractor in North Hollywood. “I thought I’d always be an actress. But luckily I was able to go on and keep up with other students later.”
State officials said letters from former child actors about the importance of studio school helped motivate them to boost teaching requirements. They said the rules will be implemented over a three-year period to give current studio teachers time to comply.
Of the state’s 430 licensed studio teachers, 211 will need to obtain additional training, said state Labor Commissioner Jose Millan.
“We could not ignore that sentiment,” Millan said Monday. “We’re beefing up academic requirements so studio teachers will have to have an academic credential in either English, math, social studies or foreign language.”
In the past, teachers “with PE credentials would be tutoring algebra,” Millan said.
“We’ve seen the errors of our ways. Studio teaching is different from [regular] classrooms. Things are accelerated and fast-paced.”
Rosalie Zallis, senior policy advisor for Gov. Pete Wilson and who helped work out the new regulations, said Monday the change will end confusion over studio teacher certification without putting new pressures on film studios.
Officials of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, who helped hammer out the new rules, were unavailable for comment.
But actor Fred Savage--whose “Wonder Years” role made him a child star--said he’s investing in his education, even as he starts a new NBC series next week.
Now 21, he is a junior majoring in English and creative writing at Stanford University.
“I want to be an actor,” Savage said Monday. “But I want to be prepared for life.”
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5d68dfdc30c379816119fffd453d51e5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-13-mn-21959-story.html | Jeri Gray; Dancer and Actress in Films, TV | Jeri Gray; Dancer and Actress in Films, TV
Jeri Gray, 72, dancer and actress whose career ranged from Harlem’s Apollo Theater to television. Gray, whose real name was Jeruth Persson and who was often called “Ms. Jeri,” danced at several Eastern theaters in her youth, including Broadway appearances with Sammy Davis Jr. in “Mr. Wonderful.” More recently, she had appeared in the feature film “Short Cuts” and in guest roles on the television series “Martin,” “Sister, Sister,” “Fresh Prince,” “Sinbad” and “A Different World.” She was also in videos starring Janet Jackson, Elton John and Milton Berle. On Friday in Los Angeles of a heart attack.
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9a822efe90a4cd0acb43af76cac26d61 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-13-sp-21977-story.html | Favre: NFL Lied About Alcohol Ban Review | Favre: NFL Lied About Alcohol Ban Review
In his forthcoming book, quarterback Brett Favre details his addiction to painkillers and says the NFL lied at the Super Bowl by saying it was still reviewing his request to have his alcohol ban lifted.
In “Favre: For the Record,” the two-time most-valuable-player of the Green Bay Packers acknowledges publicly for the first time that, with the league’s approval, he drank alcohol during Super Bowl week.
Favre wrote that he’d been cleared in December to drink but that he too lied about his status to avoid distractions.
Favre, banned from drinking alcohol after he admitted he was addicted to Vicodin and spent 46 days at a drug rehab clinic before the 1996 season, said he had a few drinks on the Friday night before the Super Bowl but that he was discreet about it.
In other news, Favre’s teammate, defensive end Reggie White, defended Denver Bronco linebacker Bill Romanowski, whose hit that broke Carolina Panther quarterback Kerry Collins’ jaw last weekend is being reviewed by the league for disciplinary action.
“If anything needs to be changed, I think the rules need to stop being changed to benefit the offense,” White said. “That’s exactly what’s happening. And I will be very upset and disappointed, even though the guy’s not on my team, if the NFL fines Bill Romanowski.”
Collins’ jaw was broken, sidelining him for six weeks.
*
Philadelphia Eagle Coach Ray Rhodes will decide soon whether Rodney Peete or Ty Detmer is his starting quarterback. “We don’t want to wait a long time because we’ve got to get our team together,” Rhodes said.
*
The Chicago Bears signed free-agent defensive tackle Mark Spindler, who was recently released by the Seattle Seahawks. In another move, the Bears waived wide receiver Haywood Jeffires, who had joined the team as a free agent last month after 10 years in Houston and New Orleans.
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b9f8af2278102d388e3364986f471fef | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-16-ca-22880-story.html | ‘Subway Stories’ Doesn’t Quite Get There | ‘Subway Stories’ Doesn’t Quite Get There
In the bowels of New York’s subway system, a young woman, on the phone with her dying mother, breaks into a gospel tune. An itinerant sax player listens awhile, then improvises wailing accompaniment. As the woman leaves, a cantor enters, chanting reverently. The sax player adjusts accordingly.
In this snippet of HBO’s “Subway Stories,” the filmmakers capture a fleeting sense of New York’s subterranean transit system, where lives collide and spin apart to the rhythms of clickety-clacking trains, soulful musicians and a million shouted conversations. But there are too few such moments in this star-studded project, which premieres Sunday at 10 p.m.
These 10 short films--hitched together like subway cars--are based on true tales from underground, which were submitted during a 1995 HBO contest. The project was orchestrated by actress Rosie Perez (“It Could Happen to You”), filmmaker Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and his producing partner, Edward Saxon, based on Perez’s idea.
They put together separate teams for each movie, enlisting such actors as Bonnie Hunt, Christine Lahti and Jerry Stiller, such writers as John Guare (“Six Degrees of Separation”) and Albert Innaurato (“Gemini”) and such directors as Demme and Abel Ferrara (“Bad Lieutenant”).
It’s a great idea, and the films--shot in the subways--effectively depict the tunnels as a darker, eerier version of the aboveground world. Problem is, most of the stories--selected from more than 1,000 entries--derail halfway through. Nor, in the overall perspective, are they arranged in a particularly dramatic structure.
“Sax Cantor Riff"--featuring up-and-coming Motown star Taral Hicks as the singer and Kenny Garrett as the sax player--is one of the best pieces. So is “Manhattan Miracle,” an almost wordless drama in which Gregory Hines must make a snap decision when he sees a pregnant, despondent young woman (Anne Heche) on another platform, preparing to throw herself onto the tracks.
Mercedes Ruehl delivers a wryly sexy performance in “Underground” as a mysterious, sunglass-clad woman who mothers, then . . . well, let’s just say “does more” with a bruised and bloodied teen angel (Zachary Taylor). And Stiller is an enigmatic presence as a man who rides the “5:24" every morning, providing unerring stock market predictions to a quizzical young Wall Street type (Steve Zahn).
The other films in this hour-and-a-half montage begin promisingly, then falter, including “The Red Shoes,” with Lahti and Denis Leary as a rider and panhandler who end up in an altercation; “Love on the A Train,” in which Perez and Michael McGlone are strangers conducting a silent romance with their bodies pressed together at a standing-room pole; and Jonathan Demme’s own “Subway Car From Hell,” in which the clownish Bill Irwin encounters a malevolent hot dog vendor, jammed subway cars and a noxious, abandoned substance.
*
“Subway Stories” premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on HBO. It has been rated TV-MA (may not be suitable for children under the age of 17).
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798d7285b9ad20f4c952da9a1297d7af | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-17-me-23367-story.html | Next Best Thing to Graceland | Next Best Thing to Graceland
The distance between Northridge and Memphis can be calculated in measures other than miles.
But to the crowd that marked Saturday’s 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death by flocking to a quiet San Fernando Valley street to see a copy of the singer’s Graceland mansion, such details are beside the point.
“I’ve admired Elvis all my life,” said Mary Tribble, 49, of Granada Hills. “It’s nice to have something around here so we can remember him.”
Elvis impersonator Danny Uwnawich said he built the Georgian-style mansion at Parthenia Street and Zelzah Avenue to honor Presley. He calls it Melody Land.
The house features a heart-shaped swimming pool, a 1958 Cadillac Coupe de Ville in the driveway and even a Jungle Room decorated with deer and other animal heads reminiscent of one of the King’s collections.
Uwnawich, 42, opens the house for tours each year on Jan. 8--Presley’s birthday--and on the anniversary of his death.
“It’s for all the people who can’t go all the way to Memphis [Tenn.],” Uwnawich said.
Those who stood in line for as long as two hours to get a tour Saturday said the wait was worth it.
“I thought it was very interesting,” said Elliott Carmen, 45, of Canoga Park. “I was intrigued by all the jewelry.”
Uwnawich, who resembles Presley both on and off the stage, began impersonating him as a 13-year-old in his native Louisiana. The two finally met in 1973 while both were performing in Las Vegas.
Over the years, the Northridge man crisscrossed the country armed with sideburns, jumpsuits and a 22-piece orchestra, finally accumulating enough money to build his $3-million, 8,000-square-foot Graceland West in 1991.
During the Northridge earthquake in 1994, however, the house was badly damaged. The chandeliers came crashing down, marble and glass shattered, and the walls cracked. He moved out--staying on the road performing or at friends’ homes until he was able to move in again last year.
“There’s no more repairs,” he said. “All we need now is more furniture.”
Meanwhile, Elvis fans crowding the street were welcomed by a sign at the gate reading: Welcome to Melody Land.
They were admitted in small groups to admire, among other things, the velvet furniture and items Elvis owned--such as gold records on the walls, a jumpsuit, rings and even a pair of glasses on display in a case.
“It’s just like a museum,” said Mark Stradley, a construction worker from North Hills.
“I like the bathroom” on the second floor, said JanaePorfilio, 14, of Van Nuys. “It has two TVs and a huge bathtub.”
When Danny U, as he is known, came down from his bedroom dressed in a black outfit, the visitors surrounded him asking for autographs or to take pictures with him.
*
Some gave him presents of Presley memorabilia.
“This is me, my sister and my sister-in-law with Elvis,” Don Kirst, a 51-year-old mortgage inspector from North Hills told Uwnawich handing him a copy of a photograph taken in 1968. He said the photo was taken in front of Presley’s Beverly Hills rental house at a time when Presley was filming the movie, “Live a Little Love a Little.”
Outside, people admired the Coupe de Ville and shared Elvis stories.
“I’m one of the few people left that saw [Presley] on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ ” Ginny Boyle, of Chatsworth, told a group of people, allowing only that she is somewhere between 16 and 100 years old.
“That’s when [Sullivan] told him, ‘We’re not going to show you from the waist down.’ ”
John Meraz, 53, there with wife Jana, 47, remembered idolizing the entertainer as a kid: “I used to carry around books about Elvis. He was a truck driver. He was even an usher at the movies.”
“I idolized the guy because of the way he grew up--his rebellious nature,” said Randy Bernstein, who impersonates Elvis at the Ventura Boulevard restaurant where he works as a waiter.
Meanwhile, Uwnawich’s own impersonating career came to an end Saturday night with a performance at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, where 1,000 people were expected.
At 42, he said he wanted to quit imitating Elvis at the same age Elvis died. Instead he will pursue a career in acting and record his own music, he said.
“I feel kind of sad,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for a long time . . . but everything has to come to an end.”
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c31b2fc3587cd08d985c030c994e21b1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-17-me-23369-story.html | Deadly Blast a Proving Ground for Live TV | Deadly Blast a Proving Ground for Live TV
Since the film industry moved west shortly after the turn of the century, Los Angeles has been on the cutting edge of what has come to be called the information age. And, though it is seldom recalled, the first convergence of live television and disaster--a staple of today’s TV news--occurred in response to the city’s most deadly industrial accident.
Television made its American debut at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Within a year, Paramount had dispatched the brilliant Klaus Landsburg to build an experimental TV station--W6XYZ--in Los Angeles. Landsburg, who had invented a widely used FM radio receiver while in his teens, fled his native Germany shortly after the Third Reich classified his pioneering work on radar and sonar as a national secret. In 1936, however, Landsburg had participated in experimental television broadcasts of the Berlin Olympics.
*
He arrived in Los Angeles with an unequaled technical background and an abiding belief--gleaned from his Berlin experiment--that live television had the power to fundamentally alter people’s understanding of the world around them.
There were 350 home television sets in Los Angeles on Feb. 20, 1947, when Landsburg’s system was put to its first great test. At 9:45 a.m., a vicious chemical blast at the O’Connor Electro-Plating Co. ripped apart a four-block area in the manufacturing district on Pico Boulevard between Stanford Avenue and Paloma Street, leaving 17 dead and 150 injured.
Within minutes, W6XYZ reporter Dick Lane--later an institution on local TV--was broadcasting live from the scene to a tiny but transfixed audience.
The explosion that destroyed or damaged 116 buildings had opened a crater 22 feet wide and 6 feet deep. The blast shattered windows across a 1-square-mile area and was felt as far away as Long Beach and the San Fernando Valley.
Mayor Fletcher Bowron was soon on the scene, comparing the disaster to the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, which caused 102 deaths and thousands of injuries.
Relatives of the dead, injured and missing gathered amid the confusion. Among them were the families of the plating company’s chief chemist, Robert M. Magee, 35, and his assistant, Alice Iba, 22, whose bodies were never found.
As telephone and electrical wires dangled in the street, police picked through evidence, finding body parts.
A twisted 15-foot pipe had been hurled over a four-story building, landing a block away, where it killed a 10-year-old boy riding his bike.
Trembling switchboard operator Edna Aukerman was left sitting in her swivel chair out in the open, surrounded by shards of glass.
A young man visiting the plant with his salesman father struggled to safety as firefighters pulled the body of his father out of the rubble. Others workers were bleeding and moaning; some were tinted green by chemicals.
Father Luis Antlitz, shaken by the blast at nearby St. Turibius Catholic Church, sprinted four blocks to the scene, holding up his long brown Franciscan robes. He and four other clergymen began anointing victims with holy oil.
The O’Connor Electro-Plating Co. had been in business in the same one-story brick building for almost 20 years. The plant was managed by Robert J. O’Connor, son of the company’s founder. O’Connor knew little about chemistry, so he had hired Magee, who presented impressive credentials. But in truth, Magee had been working as a foreman at a local dairy and was only an aspiring chemist without even a high school diploma.
*
For almost a year, Magee worked on a revolutionary process for polishing aluminum, anxiously waiting to get it patented. He was using a mixture of 140 gallons of perchloric acid and 70 gallons of acetic anhydride, nearly as volatile as nitroglycerin. It was imperative that the acid be kept under refrigeration. But an hour before the blast the refrigeration unit broke down. About the same time, as investigators later surmised, Magee apparently inserted a plastic rack into the solution, triggering the blast.
The coroner’s inquest found no criminal negligence on the part of the O’Connor family and laid responsibility for the devastation on Magee.
The City Council later passed an ordinance giving the fire and health departments more power to regulate dangerous chemicals. Two days after that, W6XYZ, the first station on the scene, was granted a commercial broadcast license as KTLA-TV Channel 5.
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2be816cdd6326347aa930e2aeed82605 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-21-fi-24408-story.html | Gateway Overtakes Apple in Education Field | Gateway Overtakes Apple in Education Field
Gateway 2000 Inc. overtook Cupertino-based Apple Computer Inc. in the second quarter as the No. 1 provider of desktop and portable computers in the U.S. educational market, according to Computer Intelligence, a market research firm. North Sioux City, S.D.-based Gateway, which sells solely through mail order, commanded 22.4% of the educational market in the quarter. Apple had 11.6% and International Business Machines Corp. had 7.7%. Shares of Gateway 2000 rose 31 cents to close at $40.31 on the New York Stock Exchange. Apple rose 19 cents to close at $24.63 on Nasdaq.
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f7e3735ed4e0ba3ec257a9198f2a6425 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-24-me-25513-story.html | A Blow Against Bureaucracy : SPECIAL REPORT * A couple who built a small house with their own hands ended up with criminal records and a $1.5-million fine, but now they’ve won . . . | A Blow Against Bureaucracy : SPECIAL REPORT * A couple who built a small house with their own hands ended up with criminal records and a $1.5-million fine, but now they’ve won . . .
With the clarity of hindsight, it is easy to see that Kathleen Kenny blew it when she fashioned the little red house out of a dilapidated chicken coop--without taking out a building permit.
In the five years since the transgression came to light, she has been in a war of attrition with the county and state, losing at almost every turn.
Kenny and her companion, Arthur Starz, Midwest transplants who thought they had found the ideal life in rustic Topanga Canyon building small affordable houses with their own hands, now have criminal records--16 building code violations--and a Coastal Commission fine that is somewhere around $1.5 million and growing by $1,000 every day.
Throughout their conflicts with the bureaucracy, the couple has maintained that they followed every instruction to the letter, spent thousands of dollars and turned in voluminous documents, which public officials routinely dismissed as inadequate or lost.
In contrast, county and state officials characterized Kenny and Starz as scofflaws who complained constantly but made no effort to obtain permits and refused to cooperate with inspectors.
But the couple held onto the belief that they would one day be vindicated if they could tell a jury their side of the story.
Improbably, they were right. Using the little-exercised civil provision of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows individuals to seek damages for corrupt government actions, the couple finally got their chance last month to show that they were victims of government fraud.
In a verdict that stunned legal pundits, a jury found that two county building officials defrauded the couple in a racketeering enterprise designed to extort money for building permits, and awarded them $33,000 in damages.
They had no lawyer to guide them through the dense procedures of U.S. District Court and the RICO law, a challenge for the best attorneys.
“For a person acting on their own behalf to win, it’s a coup of the first order,” marveled Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, the principal author of the RICO statute.
Among the most stunned were lawyers for Los Angeles County, who declined to discuss the case while they consider a number of options, including whether to appeal or to pay the damages.
*
The eight-day trial, in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, proved as odd an event as the five-year soap opera that led up to it.
Kenny, a tense woman with a silvery-gold ponytail and a penchant for thinking out loud, argued points of law, questioned witnesses and addressed the jury with a halting and sometimes tearful delivery, raising frequent objections from Deputy Los Angeles County Counsel Paul Yoshinaga.
At the outset, Judge Consuelo B. Marshall delivered what seemed a crushing blow to the couple’s case, ruling that they could not introduce thousands of pages of exhibits or call any witnesses other than the four defendants and themselves.
In retrospect, the ruling may have been a boon to Kenny by focusing her case.
Kenny, who was once an insurance fraud investigator, set out to prove fraud--that the county officials used their position of authority to extort money from the public in exchange for permits.
Taking the stand herself, Kenny testified that the couple spent more than $14,000 on filing fees and reports trying to get a permit for the red house without success. She argued that the defendants conspired to withhold the permit because she and Starz refused to pay bribes and went public with their story.
Kenny managed to air the most damaging of the excluded exhibits by handing them to the defendants on the witness stand to help them refresh their memories.
The technique had its maximum effect with the central defendant, associate building engineer Grant Lawseth. At first, Lawseth denied having performed any professional duties on behalf of people with whom he had business relationships.
But when handed documents by Kenny, he admitted to conducting building inspections, and in some cases to writing letters of support to the Coastal Commission for business associates, including a developer who purchased a lot from him for $115,000 more than he paid for it.
*
“He looked fishy all over the place,” said juror Rusty Tollitson, a buyer for Cal State Pomona College. “He looked like he had other people intimidated and he ran the whole show. Some of the things he said were ridiculous.”
The source of the couple’s legal saga is a 724-square-foot cottage. It is one of three houses Kenny, 55, and Starz, 58, built on Cave Way, a leafy, one-block lane above the Topanga town center, famed locale of artisans, longhairs, New Age seers, rugged individualists and, of late, upscale movie studio hands.
For the other two, built on vacant lots, they obtained the array of approvals required by county agencies such as health and planning, as well as the California Coastal Commission. A permit from the commission is required because the area is in a coastal zone.
They say they believed that no permit was necessary for the red house because they built--following a commonly exercised Topanga tradition--on the foundation of an older structure variously described as a chicken coop or a hippie flophouse, or both.
Among the many bootlegged structures that dot the Topanga landscape, the red house attracted no attention for a year until a county inspector showed up in April 1991, referring to “their problem.”
Over the next eight months, he returned eight or nine times. Although he never cited the house, he repeatedly urged Kenny to contact a certain architect who could help them, Kenny testified.
Confirmed do-it-yourselfers, the couple were not interested in a pricey consultant. They began tape-recording the inspector, capturing his urgings that they “get in the system” and “go for the ride.”
Their recalcitrance eventually brought them face to face with Lawseth, an official Kenny said she had come to think of as “the Wizard of Oz” because of his reputed power to get things done while remaining out of public sight.
In an acrimonious meeting, Lawseth told Starz: “You’re in a lot of trouble.”
But Kenny had a plan to fight back.
*
The Balance Sheet awoke Topanga one December morning with a howl of anger. The eight-page newsletter, mailed to 3,000 residences, promised to expose the “good old boy network . . . that appears to control the town by two means: the power to reward and the power to harm.”
In several installments, Kenny identified property owners she thought had been rewarded with quick approval of building plans and those harmed by long delays.
The March Balance Sheet probed the question, “Who Is Grant Lawseth?” It detailed numerous real estate activities of the brusque, gravelly voiced inspector and alleged that he used his position to “treat his friends” and “trick his enemies.”
Soon, Lawseth and four other county officials showed up with two sheriff’s deputies and a search warrant.
The same day, the Coastal Commission, which had also been the butt of the Balance Sheet, served the couple with a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in fines for building the red house without a coastal permit.
Then the district attorney filed 16 counts of misdemeanor building code violations--as serious as building a house without a permit and as small as illegally installing a water heater. In yet another lawsuit that is still pending, Lawseth accused Kenny and Starz of defamation, alleging damage from about 40 statements in the Balance Sheet.
They were found guilty in May 1994 of the building code violations. But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Albracht’s sentence was notably lenient.
“Heaven forbid the Building and Safety Department should descend and inspect my house, your house, or anybody’s house,” Albracht said, criticizing the system for giving inspectors too much discretionary power.
He sharply rejected the prosecutor’s insistence on jail time, saying he considered the couple honest idealists who “didn’t want to do the dancing you have to do to cooperate with Building and Safety.”
Still, he fined each $2,500 and put them on probation with an order to obtain the proper permit.
But they weren’t done in court yet. They still had to defend themselves against the Coastal Commission lawsuit.
Six months later, after seven weeks of testimony, Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney issued a 125-page ruling finding Starz’s “blatant” disregard for the Coastal Act to be “the most serious type of violation which, if allowed to go unsanctioned, would lead to a breakdown of the controls established in the Coastal Act.”
She fined the couple $1,000 a day--state lawyers had suggested $10,000 a day--retroactive to the construction of the house, for a total of $798,000 on the day of the ruling.
In their bleakest moment, glimmers of hope began to appear.
For one thing, Albracht repeatedly denied the district attorney’s demands to jail the couple or to order them to raze the red house, noting Topanga’s widespread and largely unprosecuted illegal housing.
“Somehow the thought of putting these two otherwise law-abiding people in jail because they have . . . a very well-built, neat, clean structure . . . surrounded virtually by junk and people living in trees and under bushes . . . strikes me as being incongruous and illogical,” Albracht said.
And the Los Angeles County auditor-controller’s office had opened an investigation into the couple’s claim that they were victims of governmental fraud.
An investigator concluded that Lawseth engaged in conflicts of interest by approving inspections for his own business associates, that associates of Lawseth and others in the Calabasas building office paid lower fees than others, that some permits were processed in improbably short times, and that some projects lacking required fire protection were nonetheless approved by Lawseth.
But once again, vindication eluded the couple.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Seki said his office concluded that the report identified some alleged crimes, but that the statute of limitations had expired and that other allegations were not sufficiently documented.
The RICO case was the idea of Venice lawyer James Fosbinder, who specializes in battling government abuse.
*
Its chances, considered by legal experts poor from the start, dimmed when the star witness, a Santa Monica builder who claimed to have paid $75,000 in bribes to county building officials, died before he could testify.
Then a falling out with Fosbinder early this year left the couple without an attorney and they couldn’t find a replacement.
For legal advice, Kenny turned to the Internet, digging into federal procedures available in cyberspace after each day’s hearing to find counter-arguments to the many defense motions for dismissal.
Despite the improbable victory, Kenny made mistakes that may have cost her.
In closing arguments, she spoke eloquently of feeling downtrodden for defending her rights. But she neglected to suggest a dollar value for the wrong.
The jurors struggled with the damage question, Tollitson said. Those favoring a much higher figure were not able to persuade others who saw the couple as partly responsible for their own problems, Tollitson said.
The $33,000 they awarded is inconsequential compared to the fines the couple owe. An attorney for the Coastal Commission said officials do not believe it is a good use of taxpayer money to attempt to collect the fine because the couple doesn’t have the money to pay it, but that it remains in effect.
For Kenny, the vote of confidence from the jury was worth more than money.
“I didn’t think we were going to prevail,” she said. “We did it just to see it through to the end.”
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81bfeb2070b268f2f7c591c2b658f84f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-24-me-25614-story.html | Hubbard Textbooks | Hubbard Textbooks
* Rena Weinberg’s column (“Education Is the Real Issue,” Aug. 3) about L. Ron Hubbard’s textbooks had a serious error. The materials which Weinberg refers to were reviewed in July 1996 and did not pass legal compliance. Therefore the books should not be in use in any California public school.
During the past year, Bridge Publications has submitted proposed revisions to address the legal compliance concerns. However, until completely corrected versions of the books are reviewed, there is no final consideration for approval. We have not received corrected published materials. The materials currently for sale are not approved for legal compliance.
RUTH McKENNA
Chief Deputy Superintendent
for Educational Policy, Curriculum
and Department Management
Sacramento
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72df3c30828dd32cac47e5c2a147b145 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-25-mn-25772-story.html | Hoffa Calls for Carey to Quit Teamster Post | Hoffa Calls for Carey to Quit Teamster Post
With his seemingly revitalized union embroiled once again in controversy and allegations of corruption, Teamster President Ron Carey faced a demand Sunday from his defeated rival that he abandon his post.
Two days after a federal monitor said the union’s 1996 presidential election must be rerun because the Carey campaign received illegal contributions, challenger James P. Hoffa said Carey should be disqualified and that an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate. Carey denied knowing about the financing irregularities and indicated that he will not step aside.
Offering Sunday television viewers the rhetorical equivalent of Mike Tyson versus Evander Holyfield, Hoffa and Carey angrily, and heavy-handedly, attacked each other’s leadership at a time when the Teamsters are on the cutting edge of efforts to recapture the power and prestige organized labor had lost in recent decades.
But even though their arguments centered on the union election and this month’s successful strike against the United Parcel Service, the underlying struggle remains shadowed by the past, by the era when Hoffa’s father made the International Brotherhood of Teamsters synonymous with iron-fisted control and unrepentant corruption.
The younger Hoffa, appearing on three news interviews, said on “Fox News Sunday”: “Carey should step aside--be removed and disqualified from the race because this is a burgeoning scandal and right now he is an illegitimate person in the position of president. He has not been elected by the members. The election has been thrown out. His term is over.”
“This is the most egregious conduct we’ve ever seen--wide-scale, broad scheme of embezzlement that was intentional to put this money in his campaign,” Hoffa said in another appearance, on ABC-TV’s “This Week.”
*
Carey, on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” said Hoffa is “a real pro in terms of smear and distortion.”
And, Carey said, Hoffa, a union lawyer, has “never negotiated a contract, he has never walked a picket line, he’s never been elected to any position in this union.”
As for the allegation of money-laundering and illegal contributions, Carey said: “You have people you trust and in every organization you have those that step over the line.”
Hoffa said his opponent should have been more on top of the union’s operations, if he indeed was not aware.
Carey, running for reelection after his upset victory as a reform candidate in 1991, defeated Hoffa by fewer than 4 percentage points in balloting concluded in November. His spokesman said he had no intention of quitting.
On Friday, Barbara Zack Quindel, a court-appointed labor monitor, ruled that Carey operatives obtained $221,000 in illegal contributions, including some from union accounts, to pay for pro-Carey mailings to many of the union’s 1.4 million members. She also found that Carey’s campaign manager, Jere Nash, spent some working afternoons during the union campaign as a consultant to President Clinton’s election organization.
The report took the shine off Carey’s triumph in leading the UPS strike, gaining a company agreement to reduce its reliance on part-time workers and give up its effort to wrest the workers’ pension fund from the union.
Quindel said Carey has cooperated with investigators, and she refused to remove him from office.
That, coupled with the comparatively modest scale of the irregularities, demonstrates how much the Teamsters have changed. When Hoffa’s father ran the organization, the union’s problems centered on a long history of multimillion-dollar financial irregularities, including schemes to defraud its pension fund, as well as strong-arm tactics, ties to organized crime and murder.
*
Hoffa’s father, James Riddle Hoffa, disappeared in 1975. He had served prison time for jury-tampering and misusing union funds. Four of the last six union presidents have been indicted on charges of federal crimes; three have been convicted.
It was against this background that Carey, then the obscure leader of a New York local of United Parcel Service workers, won election as the national president of a union that had grown to represent not just truck drivers, but also loading-dock workers, other laborers, those in the service industries and public employees, including law enforcement officers.
The union’s members, Carey said, “don’t want to go back to the corruption and the weakness of the past.”
Carey said he would have no problem with the appointment of an independent counsel, if U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno seeks to have one named.
Federal law allows the appointment by a judicial panel of an independent counsel to avoid potential conflicts of interest in a Justice Department investigation.
*
Among the allegations facing the union is a report in the Washington Post that consideration was given within the Democratic National Committee to the idea that party contributors could give money to Carey’s campaign if union funds would then be passed along to the Clinton organization. Such a process could presumably help both bodies avoid federal financing restrictions.
Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who serves part-time as the Democrats’ chairman, said on “Meet the Press” that he had seen no records indicating such a plan was ever implemented.
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c60212ff092d52d0f01b4abfd266914c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-30-ca-27410-story.html | Blue Mama Plays Music With a Wink and a Smile | Blue Mama Plays Music With a Wink and a Smile
It’s not unusual to find an aspiring blues band playing with gritted teeth, as if strain and visible sweat, rather than ancestry, could vouch for its right to drawl and bend notes. One suspects that, if the members of Blue Mama ever grit their teeth, it would be to stifle the urge to collapse in laughter.
“Saturday Night Suburbia” is roots music with a wink, played by veterans who view their performance not as a test of authenticity but as a reason to have some fun with the form. The band’s fundamental humor and musical vitality come nonstop, making this 19-song, hour-plus excursion go by like an express train through a sleepy burg.
Musical humor seldom works without seriously good performances, and Blue Mama’s ensemble of South Orange County stalwarts get blues music (and tangential country, pop and R&B; strains) right before they twist it. Key contributors are Tim Horrigan, playing an insouciant barrelhouse piano and lively organ; guitarists Joe Lehr and Dennis Roger Reed, and Marty McPhee, who dabs on raspy splashes of Chicago-blues harmonica.
Sometimes the humor is in the playing itself, as in the goofy but still nicely motivating syncopated percussion on “Blue to Blue” or in the dumb, slobbery fuzz-guitar solo Lehr lobs into “Tonight, Tonight” like a big spitball. More often, the fun comes through in the spirit of the band and in the wry singing and songwriting. Reed is the most prolific writer among a consortium of near-equals.
The lyrics usually turn on pithy witticisms, and the vocal performances back them up with just the right tone: a note of long-suffering, good-humored complaint that’s as integral to the blues as such anguished soliloquies as John Lee Hooker’s “Serve Me Right to Suffer” or B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.”
Whether they’re hilariously snake-bit, on “Blue to Blue,” or chagrined for being far too trouble-free for proper blues men, Blue Mama’s singer-songwriters play the angles the form affords.
“I’m trying to live the blues, gets a little harder every day / Tryin’ to live the blues, good fortune gets in my way,” Lehr rasps with deadpan annoyance in “Tryin’ the Blues.”
Mainly, though, Blue Mama is preoccupied with sex. Reed aptly cites TV’s impossibly alluring illusions as the source of today’s sexual hang-ups (“TV Girls”) and instead pledges his prurient interest to an Old Master in “Peter Paul Rubens.” A nifty acoustic-chugger knockoff of Nick Lowe, this may be the funniest song about sex and art since the Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso.”
Peter Paul Rubens was a master of dark and light,
Back in the 1600s, he chose his models right.
He painted ample, naked women, lordy what a beautiful sight.
I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.
A few songs are delivered in earnest. “Mackenzie Breaks” is a good representation of early-'70s country rock a la Jackson Browne. “A Different Brenda,” an anthem with a catchy country-Beatles mixture, puts the Blue Mama knack for phrase-spinning to work in a more serious context. Horrigan plays a manipulative boyfriend who deservedly gets dumped, leaving him to mull, dejectedly, “It was the best of times, for even the worst of wines / And I must have had too many when I saw her on the street the other day.”
(Available from PlasticMeltdown Records, P.O. Box 403, San Clemente, CA 92674, or (714) 493-1883.)
Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.
* Blue Mama plays with Miller’s Bluestime on Sept. 6 at Lookers, 24921 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point. (714) 488-3106.
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2c763853f1253899e39ea1db5fea5e1c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-31-mn-27505-story.html | New Genetic Study Links Whale, Cow | New Genetic Study Links Whale, Cow
Cows are more closely related to whales than to pigs, says a genetic study that suggests a new place for whales in the evolutionary family tree.
Prior studies have indicated that whales, along with dolphins and porpoises, are rather closely related to hoofed mammals with an even number of toes. That group includes pigs, hippos, camels, cows, deer, giraffes and sheep.
The previous studies implied that a cow is more closely related to a whale than to a horse.
But even-toed mammals were thought to be more closely related to each other than any of them were to whales. The new study challenges that idea. It says hippos and cud-chewing mammals like cows, sheep and deer are more closely related to whales, dolphins and porpoises than they are to other even-toed mammals like pigs and camels.
The work is presented in the Aug. 14 issue of the journal Nature by scientists from Japan. They reached their conclusions by studying details of genetic material.
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eb76d4c72510fcdf5a9364a42e42fa3d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-02-fi-59640-story.html | National City to Buy First of America Bank | National City to Buy First of America Bank
Consolidation in the banking industry took another step forward Monday when National City Corp. said it will acquire First of America Bank Corp. in a stock swap worth $7.1 billion, a deal that would bring together two big Midwestern bank holding companies.
A definitive agreement between the two calls for a tax-free exchange of 1.2 shares of National City common stock for each share of First of America common.
Cleveland-based National City and Kalamazoo, Mich.-based First of America together would serve more than 8 million households in six states. Their combined assets would total $74.4 billion.
“This represents a logical and attractive expansion into familiar territory that is culturally and demographically similar to our existing markets,” National City Chairman David Daberko said in a statement.
National City said the companies expect one-time, merger-related, pretax charges of $350 million and an expense reduction of $243 million, or 30% of First of America’s operating expenses.
In a conference call, Daberko said the deal is expected to reduce earnings by 2% in 1998 but add to earnings by 5% in 1999.
First of America’s stock jumped $14 to $72.75 on the New York Stock Exchange, still short of the $80.10-per-share value under the deal. National City fell $3.94 a share to $62.81 on the NYSE in a decline that Daberko said was not unexpected.
Stocks “will inevitably trade down in the early days of banking transactions like this,” he said. “The arbitrage gets set up between our stock and their stock.”
As a result of the merger, 700 jobs would be moved to the Kalamazoo area, and a net reduction in the number of total jobs is also expected. National City executives said turnover among “back office” employees will facilitate some of the reductions.
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5c88bfd2e43898b5eb32e06366d6cb18 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-02-mn-59755-story.html | Curfews Cited for Drop in Juvenile Crime Rate | Curfews Cited for Drop in Juvenile Crime Rate
As increasing numbers of American cities step up enforcement of youth curfews, more than 90% of cities surveyed find the controversial laws a useful tool for police officers, with several California cities reporting dramatic decreases in juvenile crime, according to a national report released Monday.
And all 72 surveyed cities that have daytime curfews--also known as anti-truancy laws--report more children in school and fewer under arrest. Overall, 53% of surveyed cities that have imposed curfews in the last decade credit the laws for recent drops in juvenile crime.
In Hayward, east of San Francisco, officials say their night and day curfews have cut youth crime in half. San Jose has seen a 23% drop in the number of children who are victims of crime, while Inglewood reports a 40% reduction in juvenile offenders since 1994, when it imposed curfews of 10 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on weekends.
“It’s a parent-support tool. Ultimately, that’s its real value,” said Steven H. Staveley of La Habra, head of the police chiefs association in Orange County, where all 31 cities have nighttime curfews.
“Not every kid who violates curfew or daytime truancy ordinances ends up being a crook,” he added. “But . . . if they get zinged for it early on, we have less likelihood they’re going to feel they’re getting away with something and ultimately get into more egregious and more violent behavior.”
A separate study by the Los Angeles Police Department credited the city’s 1995 anti-truancy law with a 20% to 45% drop in daytime burglaries, shoplifting and car break-ins. A night curfew has been enforced only sporadically.
“There were a number of drive-by shootings, kids were being cut down. We have seen a dramatic decrease in that kind of activity,” Inglewood Police Lt. Hampton Cantrell said Monday. “Nighttime traffic, walking on the streets, nighttime parties--we have pretty much eliminated those.”
The broad survey--347 cities responded--by the U.S. Conference of Mayors did not include a statistical analysis of the effect curfews have had on crime. Rather, it canvassed opinions of city and police officials, and offered a largely anecdotal view.
About a third of the nation’s 1,010 cities with more than 30,000 residents participated in the survey. Of those, 88% said curfew enforcement helped make streets safer; 83% said curfews helped curb gang violence. Only 23% said they had found it difficult or expensive to implement the laws.
Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, disputed the survey’s findings, noting that “crime statistics are just down all over, in cities that have curfews and cities that don’t have curfews.”
The newly popular ordinances--which the ACLU has challenged in court--violate the rights of youths as well as parents, she said.
“Parents have the right to set limitations on their own children and should be involved in seeing that their rules and restrictions are carried out--not Big Brother, not the state,” Ripston said. “This is an attempt to get at juvenile crime because the other solutions are too hard. This is just the easiest way out for a community.”
Though an appeals court handed the ACLU a victory in June by striking down San Diego’s tough curfew law, the city immediately passed a narrower law fashioned after one that has won a federal court’s favor. The next legal battle comes in Monrovia, where Rosemary Harrahill is leading a group of parents in fighting that city’s daytime curfew.
Harrahill, who teaches 16-year-old Jess and 14-year-old Ben-Joe at home, said she resents the police requirement that her sons carry fluorescent-orange cards to signify they have permission to be outside. She said the boys were stopped 22 times over nine months as they walked home from the public school where they take one or two classes.
“It’s ridiculous. When in history has a specific class of people been singled out and numbered?” Harrahill said. “There is something much more insidious in these curfews than what is on the surface--it’s control. We have shades of a police state coming.
“I object,” she added. “I object roundly to this persistent, unnecessary government interference of my kids constantly having to prove themselves. There is no presumption of innocence in a curfew. Everybody’s guilty.”
But to the surprise of the mayors’ task force on youth violence, only 14 of the cities in the survey said their ordinances are being challenged in court. Rather, it appears the curfew fad is growing--and gaining popularity.
The proportion of cities surveyed that have curfew laws has jumped to 80% from 70% in a similar survey two years ago. In 1995, a third of the cities characterized their ordinances as “very effective.” That exact question was not posed in this year’s survey, but nine of 10 cities responding said enforcing a curfew is “a good use of police time.”
In California, 50 of the 58 cities that took part in the survey have nighttime curfews, and 29 have daytime restrictions as well. Many of Los Angeles County’s 88 cities--including Santa Monica, Long Beach, Compton, Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena--have curfew laws, but no complete list is available.
San Francisco and Richmond, Calif., were among the few cities surveyed that criticized curfews.
Kimiko Burton, director of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s criminal justice council, wrote that the city’s curfew was ineffective because crime happens mainly during the day.
“Curfews treat all youth as violators,” said officials of Richmond, a city of 93,000 on the San Francisco Bay. “It turns off good kids and is unfair to them.”
Nearly a quarter of the cities reported increased costs due to curfew enforcement, with San Jose estimating a price tag of $1 million. But mayoral assistant Kevin Pursglove said it was money well spent.
“The main problem was kids congregating in large numbers in the downtown area, a real magnet for kids from the city and the suburbs,” he said. “You still see a lot of young people out there, but once police officers make contact, they start going home.”
Only 23% of the survey respondents reported any problems implementing their curfew. Denver officials said a proposed detention center caused an uproar in a middle-class neighborhood; Chicago complained that judges do not take curfew cases seriously; and Cincinnati questioned whether black youths were unfairly targeted by the law.
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f2fe6fa497c975c242cd11c6a0be0502 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-06-fi-61073-story.html | Wal-Mart, Kmart Remove ‘Smack’ Album | Wal-Mart, Kmart Remove ‘Smack’ Album
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest retailer, yanked a controversial album by the British rock act Prodigy from 2,300 stores on Friday because of objectionable lyrics contained in a song called “Smack My Bitch Up.”
This is apparently the first time Wal-Mart has pulled a record based on the content of its lyrics after it already was on the shelves. The decision is certain to have a significant impact on sales because the company is one of the largest sellers of records in the country.
Kmart, the giant Troy, Mich.-based mass merchandiser, also pulled the recording from its 2,100 stores late Friday. Both retailers decided to take the album off their shelves following a report published Wednesday in The Times.
“Smack My Bitch Up"--a tune that critics say glorifies domestic violence--was released last week as a single on Madonna’s Maverick label, which is half-owned by Warner Bros. Records, a subsidiary of Time Warner. The song is also included on Prodigy’s Time Warner-distributed “The Fat of the Land” album, which debuted in April at No. 1 on Billboard’s national pop chart and has since sold 2 million copies in the U.S.
The controversy underscores problems with the system used by record companies and retailers to monitor and label music with potentially offensive lyrics. Some albums, mostly by rap groups, have become lightening rods for criticism while seemingly offensive lyrics by rock groups frequently slip under the radar.
Janice Rocco, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, applauded Wal-Mart and Kmart for pulling the record.
“Given their internal policies on monitoring lyrics, it is the only appropriate thing to do,” Rocco said. “It sends a message to women and men who shop at their stores that these companies do not want to be a part of the problem in our culture that perpetuates violence against women.”
Warner Music continues to back the song, which Prodigy says has nothing to do with domestic abuse, and blames The Times for instigating the controversy.
“In the past five months, we have not received a single complaint about this recording from anybody,” said Bob Merlis, senior vice president of worldwide corporate communications for Warner Bros. Records. “In fact, the album was critically acclaimed around the country. . . . In my opinion, the L.A. Times seized on an opportunity and in essence created the news--and then covered it.”
NOW’s Rocco disagreed. “It was Time Warner that released an incredibly offensive recording with an equally offensive marketing campaign. The company made some very poor business decisions in this matter, and I felt compelled to comment on them.”
Rocco said NOW intends to request a meeting next week with the top brass at Time Warner to discuss the content of the company’s product. On Friday, Richard Parsons, president of Time Warner, said, “If NOW wanted to meet with executives from Time Warner’s businesses, Time Warner would be glad to do that.”
Prodigy producer Liam Howlett has denied that the group’s song is about hitting women. “ ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ is a phrase [that means] doing anything intensely, like being on stage--going for extreme manic energy,” Howlett said.
That interpretation isn’t apparent in the song, which repeats the lyric a dozen times, or in the 3,000 Warner-financed promotional posters making the lyric into a slogan for display in record stores.
The album, one of this year’s best-selling titles around the world, contains no parental warning sticker indicating that it includes explicit or potentially offensive lyrics. Sources say that officials at Maverick and Warner Bros. determined that the album’s lyrics did not merit a parental advisory.
Nevertheless, the companies, with Prodigy’s approval, manufactured an alternate version of the record’s artwork--one that obscured the word “bitch” on the CD jacket--to be sold to mass merchants that refuse to stock albums with lyrics or cover art they deem objectionable.
Wal-Mart, Kmart and other mass merchandisers refuse to carry recordings with parental warning stickers. The companies do not have their own lyric review committees, but rely on record companies and distributors to identify potentially offensive music. Typically, record companies sanitize potentially offensive songs for mass merchandisers by bleeping out obscene language and toning down racy artwork.
The amended version of Prodigy’s album artwork was shipped to Wal-Mart and other mass merchandisers, but contained a CD with exactly the same lyrics as the original album. When it was called to their attention, Wal-Mart and Kmart officials listened to the recording and decided the lyrics to “Smack My Bitch Up” would offend its customers.
“This thing should have been stickered product, and, if it had been, we would have never carried it to begin with,” said Kmart spokesman Dennis Wigent.
Sources said that about 700,000 copies of the amended album have been sold to U.S. retailers since April. It is unclear how many of those records were sold to Wal-Mart and Kmart, but both companies said they plan to cancel reorders for more copies and ship back whatever they pull off the shelves. A representative for Target said the Minneapolis-based discount chain was reviewing Prodigy’s lyrics on Friday and would make a decision about it next week.
Thousands of independent record stores and record retail chains, such as Musicland and Tower, have no intention of pulling the Prodigy album or single. They note that the lyrics on Prodigy’s recordings are no worse than any of dozens of stickered albums containing violent and sexually explicit lyrics released by Time Warner and its competitors.
“Smack” also continues to be played uncensored on about a dozen stations across the nation, including KROQ, the top rock station in Los Angeles. By contrast, KKBT, the top hip-hop station in Los Angeles, voluntarily bleeps violent and sexually explicit words--including “bitch"--in every rap song it broadcasts.
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00684ed7157681ee163dd75660caa5d9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-10-fi-62414-story.html | Cycle of Success | Cycle of Success
Heads bowed and eyes closed, the cyclists sway from side to side, their legs pedaling madly as they visualize themselves sprinting down a mountain slope with a pack of other racers.
Leading the way is Johnny Goldberg, the founder of Spinning, the fitness craze that transformed the ho-hum stationary bike into an international phenomenon.
Goldberg, better known as Johnny G, describes Spinning as his spiritual gift to the world. But with the help of his partner, John Baudhuin, he also has turned Spinning into a profitable venture, capitalizing on the public’s insatiable demand for new ways to stay fit.
With Spinning’s success, however, has come challenges. First, there are the competing companies eager to carve a piece of the growing indoor-cycling market. Then, there are the headaches and expensive legal costs of defending the Spinning trademark.
“Johnny created this whole industry,” said Mark Eckhardt, a program director at Voight by the Sea in Santa Monica, which uses a rival brand called Spin Cycle. “So like any king, he’s going to want to protect his kingdom.”
The Spinning duo have been able to cash in on their trademarked concept through retail sales, an extensive instructor training program and royalties from Schwinn Cycling & Fitness. Schwinn manufactures the Johnny G Spinner Pro, which performs more like a road bike than a traditional stationary cycle. They also have licensing agreements with Polar heart-rate monitors, Gu energy gel and Chiquita bananas, and they recently signed a deal with Nike Inc., lending the Spinning name to an indoor-cycling shoe.
Sales are up in all three divisions of Goldberg and Baudhuin’s Santa Monica-based company, Mad Dogg Athletics. This year, the company expects to draw $1 million from its clothing and accessories division; $1 million from its instructor training division; and $1 million from various licensing royalties.
“Our business has doubled every year,” said Baudhuin, adding that there are about 3,200 health clubs in 55 countries now offering Spinning, including 1,000 clubs in the United States. The vast majority of the Spinners are sold to health clubs.
But last year, Reebok, Keiser and Body Bike USA introduced their own indoor fitness bikes and programs in the United States. Although Baudhuin said the Johnny G Spinner Pro still has about 85% of the market, the added competition has prompted Mad Dogg Athletics to become even more vigilant about defending its turf.
“This is our brand name, and we spent 10 years developing and perfecting the Spinning program,” Baudhuin said. “It’s essential for us not to allow any of our competitors to take advantage of all of the efforts we put into this.”
Mad Dogg Athletics now spends about $25,000 a month in legal fees, mostly to ensure that its many trademarks, including the use of the terms “Spinning” and “Spinner,” are not violated in worldwide markets.
Baudhuin compared the company’s predicament with that of Rollerblade’s. Just as the public associates in-line skating with “Rollerblading,” people across the globe have come to know indoor cycling as “Spinning.” As a result, Mad Dogg Athletics has to be a stickler about trademark issues, because so much of its business is generated by licensing the Spinning name to other companies.
Joan Wenson, who has worked with Body Bike, said Mad Dogg Athletics’ effort to defend its trademark is a point of contention in the fitness industry.
“They’re trying to hold on to the Spinning term, but that word has been around for years,” she said.
Competition from Reebok, Keiser, Body Bike and others also has meant that the creators of Spinning can’t depend on their name alone. If they are to maintain their dominant place in the industry, they must stay on the cutting edge of cycling technology and programming because buyers are becoming more choosy.
Stacy McCarthy, general manager of the Frogs Athletic Club in Encinitas, said her club still uses Johnny G Spinner Pros, but that two other clubs in the chain now use Reebok’s bikes.
“Before, Schwinn was the only game in town,” she said. “But now, health club owners are shopping around because there are lots of bikes to choose from.”
Eckhardt said Voight used to have Johnny G Spinner Pros, but switched to the European-made Spin Cycles in 1995. He considers the Spin Cycle to be a better-performing bike with more features.
Baudhuin said it would be “foolish to say the other companies don’t pose a threat,” but he believes the Schwinn bike and Goldberg’s program are so far ahead of others in quality and innovation that Mad Dogg Athletics will remain the market leader for many years to come.
For instance, he said, Schwinn has worked out many of the kinks in its bike that other companies are only beginning to run into. And next year, Mad Dogg Athletics plans to introduce upper-body-strength equipment that can be incorporated into Spinning classes.
“What’s different about our company from our competitors is that we’re not involved in other markets,” Baudhuin said. “We spend 100% of our time trying to make Spinning better.”
Kathie Davis, executive director of IDEA, The Health and Fitness Source, a San Diego-based organization for fitness instructors and personal trainers, believes the entrance of new players in the indoor-cycling market ultimately has benefited consumers.
“Whenever there’s competition, it makes the products better,” she said.
Spinning has become a ubiquitous part of many health clubs’ regimens, but it began simply as a grass-roots effort by one man with a passion for cycling, fitness and motivational thinking.
Goldberg began developing the Spinning program in the early ‘80s, while training on a stationary bike for the 3,100-mile Race Across America. He designed an indoor cycle that resembled a sleek, black racing bike placed on a stand. While many stationary bikes have computer controls, Spinners rely on a manually controlled tension knob that adds resistance, to mimic hill riding.
With his unique bike in tow, Goldberg began teaching Spinning first at his own studio and then at the former Voight Fitness and Dance Studios in West Hollywood, where he met Baudhuin.
After taking Goldberg’s Spinning classes, Baudhuin, an accountant by day and an avid cyclist by weekend, convinced Goldberg that they should market the idea together.
“I saw this person who had a really fantastic idea, but wasn’t in a position to capitalize on it,” Baudhuin said.
After forming Mad Dogg Athletics in 1992, the two began manufacturing the bikes themselves in Goldberg’s garage.
“At the end of 1993, we came to the realization that we weren’t very good bike builders,” Baudhuin said. “We could have started our own manufacturing company to build bikes. But what makes Spinning special is the energy we put into the program. That’s what we wanted to focus on.”
After pitching the concept to various equipment manufacturers, Mad Dogg Athletics signed a deal in 1994 with the Colorado-based Schwinn, which now manufacturers and sells about 2,000 Johnny G Spinner Pros a month.
“Everyone looks at Spinning today and says it’s a great thing, but back in 1993, we couldn’t get anyone but Schwinn to believe in what we were doing,” Baudhuin said. “Many companies didn’t even want to talk to us.”
The turning point came in June 1994 when Rolling Stone magazine named Spinning the hot exercise. At the time, Spinning had been available at only four U.S. health clubs. However, oncethe buzz about Spinning began to spread, health club owners around the world began clamoring for Johnny G Spinners.
The big issue when it comes to Spinning now boils down to one question: Will it last?
The fitness industry tends to be fickle when it comes to new trends. But Baudhuin and Goldberg believe Spinning will be around for the long haul because it relies on such a basic concept, the bike.
“There’s also no impact on the joints,” Goldberg said. “We climb hills that don’t exist, and we make it challenging by adding resistance. I think Spinning will be around a long time because it’s a worthy addition to the smorgasbord of training, and we have a special place for bicycles in our life.”
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89dccfa582412959d365feb9d7475161 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-12-ca-63148-story.html | ‘Hugo Pool’ Doesn’t Reflect Well on Downeys Jr. and Sr. | ‘Hugo Pool’ Doesn’t Reflect Well on Downeys Jr. and Sr.
We hate to hit a man when he’s down, but what a week for Robert Downey Jr.! On Monday, a judge orders him to jail for six months for violating probation on past drug offenses, and today, “Hugo Pool” opens, putting on public display one of the worst performances he or any major star has recorded on film.
It would be better for all concerned if the movie were being shown only in Downey’s cell. Being forced to watch himself playing Franz Mazur, a punch-drunk, homicidal, tongue-tied Dutch film director, in this woebegone farce would be tough love indeed.
Mazur is one of the many oddball customers being serviced by Hugo Dugay (Alyssa Milano, from TV’s “Who’s the Boss?”), a self-employed Los Angeles pool cleaner, who awakes one day in the midst of a drought to a backlog of 44 jobs. To get them all done, she enlists her drug- and alcohol-addicted father, Henry (Malcolm McDowell), who devotes most of his sober moments to spouting verse that rhymes with “ring-dang-do,” and her mother, Minerva (Cathy Moriarty), an addicted gambler who’s trying to earn enough money to pay off her bookie (“Gong Show” emcee Chuck Barris) without having to sleep with him.
Early on, Henry is sent to the Colorado River to steal enough water to fill a mobster’s pool, while Mom tags along with Hugo, serving no discernible purpose. Along their separate ways, Henry picks up a companion (Sean Penn), whose blue shoes Henry takes for the Holy Grail, and Hugo and Minerva pick up a client named Floyd (Patrick Dempsey), a mute, keenly spirited man in a wheelchair who is in the final stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
At this point, at least halfway through the movie, “Hugo Pool” becomes what it’s really intended to be, an ode to unconditional love. Hugo, a young woman with no prior romantic illusions, falls in love with the sensitive Floyd and begins to shed the lunatics around her to focus on him.
The director, Robert Downey Sr. (“Putney Swope” and not much else), co-wrote the script with his wife, Laura Downey, who died of ALS at the age of 36 and whose “beautiful absurdist sense of nonsense,” he says, inspired the spirit of the film.
Downey’s sentiment is admirable, but “Hugo Pool” doesn’t transcend the intimacy of the memory he’s honoring. If Floyd were the central character of the story, being amused by the absurdist nonsense, we might at least appreciate the humor vicariously. As it is, the audience seems limited to the director’s inner circle.
That circle includes Robert Downey Jr., who has been appearing in his father’s films since he was 5, and maybe his manic, presumably improvised performance here is the sort of thing that rocked the Downey household. But given the actor’s off-camera adventures, it’s hard not to regard it as the work of someone who’s not thinking straight.
* MPAA rating: R, for language and sex-related material. Times guidelines: sex scene inappropriate for younger audiences.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
‘Hugo Pool’
Robert Downey Jr.: Franz Mazur
Malcolm McDowell: Henry Dugay
Cathy Moriarty: Minerva Dugay
Sean Penn: The Leprechaun
Alyssa Milano: Hugo Dugay
A Downey/Ligeti production, released by BMG Independents, in association with Northern Arts Entertainment. Director Robert Downey. Producer Barbara Ligeti. Screenplay by Robert Downey and Laura Downey. Cinematographer Joseph Montgomery. Editor Joe D’Augustine. Costumes Jocelyn F. Wright. Music Danilo Perez. Production design Lauren Gabor. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.
* Exclusively at the Mann Westwood, 1050 Gayley Ave., (310) 289-MANN; and Edwards University, 4245 Campus Drive, Irvine, (714) 854-8811.
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4e28d3347a4f35bb06bf0b6c0d7b8319 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-12-me-63344-story.html | Driver Charged With Murdering 2 in Crash | Driver Charged With Murdering 2 in Crash
His name is Kelly Dean Eastman. Her name was Kimberly Dawn Ellis. As horribly bad luck would have it, they ended up with more in common than their initials.
Eastman is the suspected drunk driver with a prior DUI conviction who authorities say killed Ellis and her Pepperdine University law school classmate in a head-on collision on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu earlier this week. Two of Ellis’ friends in the car were injured.
On Thursday, Eastman, who suffered minor injuries, was charged with two counts of murder and one count of driving under the influence and causing death. The 37-year-old was ordered held until a Monday arraignment in lieu of $2.1 million bail.
“Everyone here believes that both of these young women are with their Creator,” said Douglas Kmiec, a visiting professor at Pepperdine who taught property law to all four students. “It is the only thing that helps us make sense of the senseless.”
Ellis, 22, and her regular study group--Jeannine Gregory, 22; Mark Gallagher, 23; and Samantha Dolginer, 22--hunkered down in the library Tuesday night to prepare for the next day’s exam on civil procedure. They had weathered their criminal law test earlier that day.
The friends decided to take a study break with a ride to McDonald’s just before 7 p.m. Ellis drove her car with Gallagher next to her, Gregory in the back seat behind her and Dolginer in the rear on the passenger’s side.
According to the police report, Eastman told authorities that he left his carpenter’s job in Culver City about 3:30 p.m.
He went to a nearby driving range for an hour and then stopped for a dinner that included two martinis, he told police.
Authorities said Eastman was en route to his Malibu house-sitting job at 7:05 p.m. when a woman called 911 to report that a minivan was weaving and stopping in traffic.
Sheriff’s deputies alerted by the 911 call had almost reached Eastman when they saw the crash: His minivan swerved into the oncoming lane, plowing over the hood of the students’ car and crushing the driver’s side of the vehicle, authorities said.
Gregory, of Walled Lake, Mich., was pronounced dead at the scene. Ellis, of West Covina, died on arrival at UCLA Medical Center.
Gallagher, of San Diego, was treated for bruises and a possible concussion at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance, and Dolginer, of Los Angeles, was in good condition at UCLA.
“There was nothing left of [Ellis’] car,” said sheriff’s investigator Hugh Wahler. “The roof is on the trunk because it was just peeled back.”
A portable Breathalyzer test at the scene measured Eastman’s blood-alcohol level at 0.14%, well above the legal limit of 0.08%, Wahler said. A blood test later at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center pegged Eastman’s alcohol level at 0.22%, the investigator said.
“He said he hit a bump in the road and steered to correct his vehicle,” Wahler said. “He didn’t really remember.”
Eastman was convicted in Utah in 1992 of driving under the influence.
Professor Kmiec said Gregory, a confident, popular, aspiring entertainment lawyer, followed her Michigan boyfriend to Southern California. “She was a leader who didn’t campaign for leadership,” Kmiec said. “She just had that as a natural quality.”
Ellis, he said, was wide-eyed and enthusiastic. She often approached him with questions after class but always prefaced them by asking if she was interrupting him or if he had time for her.
In contrast to Gregory, who sat in the back of the room and waited to be called on before delivering a well-prepared answer, Ellis--also a top student--sat in the second row.
“If she understood, you could see her nodding her affirmation as she hurriedly took her notes down,” Kmiec said.
The professor was just finishing dinner at his Pacific Coast Highway home Tuesday when his doorbell rang. It was his neighbor, covered in blood.
She told him that there had been a horrible accident down the road and that she held the driver’s hand until police arrived.
“She said, ‘I fear these were Pepperdine students,’ ” Kmiec recalled. “Those words echoed in my mind.”
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ac1d3577530f392db76daa614f29de2a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-14-me-64014-story.html | Ex-Prosecutor Says Monroe Dumped Robert Kennedy | Ex-Prosecutor Says Monroe Dumped Robert Kennedy
Did Marilyn dump RFK? . . . Cher dumps her contractor. . . . Tamagotchis vs. Giga Pets
Before she died, Marilyn Monroe wasn’t heartbroken over being dumped by a Kennedy; she was the one doing the dumping.
So asserts John W. Miner, the former prosecutor who investigated the screen siren’s death for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. He made his assertion during a telephone interview after filing a libel suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against a supermarket tabloid.
Miner claims in his suit that the National Examiner misquoted him last year on the circumstances of Monroe’s demise. Secrets held for 35 years about her death could emerge as Miner tries to set the record straight, his attorney Paul S. Sigelman said.
Chief among them are the contents of two tapes Monroe allegedly made at home just days before her death. Miner said that only he and the troubled star’s psychiatrist heard those tapes before they were destroyed.
Among the nuggets Miner said they reveal: Monroe’s death could not have been a suicide, despite the coroner’s official finding that it was.
On the tapes, Miner said, Monroe talked about her plans for the future--and, yes, about President John F. Kennedy and his younger brother. “She mentions them all right,” Miner said in the interview. “According to what she says on the tape, it was Monroe who bounced Robert Kennedy.”
Miner, now in his late 70s, said police botched the investigation of Monroe’s death from an overdose of barbiturates in August 1962. He attended the autopsy, he said, and later listened to the secret tape recordings that he said were eventually destroyed by the actress’ psychiatrist, who died 30 years ago.
Court papers say Miner had promised the psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, that he would never disclose the contents of the tapes. But Miner said he recently received permission from Greenson’s widow to bare the secret after published reports speculated--falsely, Miner contends--that Greenson and the Kennedys had been involved in Monroe’s death.
Miner is seeking unspecified damages from Globe Communications, which publishes the National Examiner.
Michael B. Kahane, Globe’s vice president and general counsel, said the suit was not filed in time to meet the one-year statute of limitations. And, he said, although the wording in one paragraph of the article may have been unclear, any mistaken impressions were removed by a clarification in the next week’s edition.
AND YOU THOUGHT THE SPELLINGS HAD PROBLEMS:
Dumping your contractor isn’t quite in the same league as dumping a Kennedy, but that’s exactly what Cher did over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. She went so far, the suit alleges, as to call the sheriff to remove the contractor’s employees from the site.
Edwin Magana and his ARYA Group contend in the lawsuit that Cher and her handlers duped the firm into thinking it would be the designer and general contractor for a 16,000-square-foot beachfront home she is building in Malibu. Instead, the suit alleges, Cher had planned all along to dump the contractor after stealing its building design ideas and luring away subcontractors to finish the job.
The breach-of-contract suit also accuses Cher of stopping payment on a $221,000 check and refusing to pay “hundreds of thousands” of dollars to cover the firm’s other expenses. “Trampling on another person’s rights and reneging on a contract is wrong, even if your name is Cher,” said ARYA lawyer Allan Browne.
The project originally was to be a $5-million “spec” house that would be sold at a profit, the suit says. But later, Cher decided to build her dream house on the site.
“Unfortunately, the dream changed several times and became a nightmare for ARYA due to Cher’s easily changeable whim,” states the suit, which says the home’s theme underwent mutations “from Mediterranean, to Moroccan, to Venetian, with several variations within each theme.”
Cher’s publicist referred calls to her business manager, who could not be reached.
YO, GANGSTER THIS: A federal judge has dismissed civil racketeering allegations against Sylvester and Frank Stallone by an independent production company that had accused the brothers of throwing Sylvester’s star power around like a couple of thugs.
FM Entertainment, which made a film with the brothers about golfing hit men, had accused them of civil violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
But U.S. District Judge George H. King found that neither a corrupt organization nor a pattern of racketeering existed in this instance. However, he sent the rest of the case back to Los Angeles Superior Court, where Sylvester Stallone first filed suit over the marketing of the film, called “The Good Life.” Still to be decided are allegations in the company’s suit that the star didn’t meet his contractual obligations and charges in his suit that the firm hyped his cameo appearance as a feature role.
“My client is very pleased,” said Sylvester’s attorney, Marty Singer.
TOY STORY: Two corporations that have competed in the marketplace for the hearts and minds of consumers with their “virtual pets” now are duking it out in federal court in Chicago. Illinois-based Tiger Electronics is asking a judge to sort out its copyright and trade infringement dispute with Bandai America, based in Orange County.
Tiger filed suit in Chicago, asking a judge to declare that it had the right to make the toy after it received a letter from Bandai warning that Tiger was infringing on Bandai’s copyright. According to court papers, Tiger was successful selling its version, which was less expensive, in the United States, while Bandai was still trying to meet consumer demands in Japan.
Bandai--maker of the immensely popular, egg-shaped Tamagotchi toy that created a sensation in Japan a year ago--contends in its countersuit that Tiger’s Giga Pets undercut its American market with a cheaper, copycat product. Bandai is seeking an injunction barring Tiger from what Bandai alleges are deceptive and unfair trade practices.
But Tiger asserts that its Giga Pets are different enough to be a separate product.
The Tamagotchi toy adopts a chicken-and-egg motif, announcing on its packaging, “If it’s not an egg, it’s not the original Tamagotchi,” the court records say. Giga Pets, on the other hand, come in many incarnations, with names such as Compu Kitty, Digital Doggie, Micro Chimp, Floppy Frog and Virtual Alien.
Bandai attorney Stephen T. Owens declined to comment, but Tiger lawyer Debra Stanek said that settlement discussions are continuing and that her client hopes to work things out.
BUMPER CARS: Even though he wasn’t the one allegedly doing the drugs--or even the driving--Robert Downey Jr. is named as a defendant in a civil complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court over a vehicle crash.
And if that weren’t bad enough, the lawsuit was filed the same day that Downey was jailed for violating his probation in a drug case.
Attorneys at the Glendale law offices of William Salle say the timing of the suit was pure coincidence. Under a law that makes a vehicle’s owner liable for the actions of someone else driving it, Downey was named a defendant in the suit, sparked when his Land Rover crashed into the Jeep of the firm’s client.
The Jeep, driven by 43-year-old Sunny Park, was damaged beyond repair in the accident March 8. Park’s suit alleges that Downey was negligent for letting actress Lynette Marde Walden drive his vehicle while intoxicated by painkillers.
Downey “knew Walden was a known drug abuser, and knew or should have known that Walden would consume drugs immediately prior to operating the vehicle,” the lawsuit states.
Park was hospitalized with neck and back injuries after the crash in the Westlake area west of downtown L.A. The suit alleges that Walden was driving more than 53 mph around a curve where the posted speed limit is 20 mph.
Downey’s publicists said they were unaware of the suit.
BATTLE OF WILLS: Finally, 12 years after it began, the sad legal battle over the will of wealthy Beverly Hills matron Hermine Weinberg has been laid to rest.
The case ended quietly with lawyers reaching a confidential settlement to a legal malpractice case that reopened the family’s wounds over the woman’s suicide.
Attorneys for her multimillionaire husband, William, who was divorcing her at the time of her death, and the prestigious New York-based law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom announced the settlement as a third week of testimony began.
Weinberg had sought $100 million from his lawyers, including former MGM studio head Frank Rothman, claiming they had blown the case, covered up their mistake and then convinced him to settle by giving $35 million to charity.
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dbaaec6987f88494448736a0208619a0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-17-fi-64925-story.html | NFIB Leads Effort on Tax Reform | NFIB Leads Effort on Tax Reform
Jack Faris, head of the National Federation of Independent Business, wants to junk the nation’s tax code, all 7 million confusing words of it, and start over.
Toward that end, Faris chose highly symbolic Independence, Mo., from which to launch a petition drive in September. He seeks signatures from 1 million Americans for his effort to abolish the Internal Revenue Service tax code by Dec. 31, 2000.
“If we don’t lead the charge, who is going to lead it?” Faris said on a recent swing through Los Angeles to promote the campaign.
Faris argues that setting an expiration deadline would force Congress to rewrite the code quickly. He suggests Congress use as a model the nation’s first income tax code, from 1913, which consisted of a one-page form, 14 pages of tax law and a top tax rate of 7%.
“We are asking Congress to write two new tax codes: a sales tax and a flat or fair income tax with few or no deductions and very few rates,” Faris said.
The NFIB, which has one of the biggest budgets ($84 million in 1998) of any small-business advocacy group in Washington, has set aside $1.2 million to finance the petition drive. An Internet site with information on the campaign has been set up at https://www.not4irs.org
In October, Faris threw a Washington news conference at which Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and others in Congress made a show of signing the NFIB tax petition.
If all of it smacks of tilting at windmills with Faris as Don Quixote, it’s because simplifying the tax code is probably the modern-day version of the impossible dream.
A simplified tax code would put more than 25,000 lobbyists out of work. They labor daily on Capitol Hill to ensure that tax breaks continue for corporations, industries and trade groups. Millions of tax attorneys and accountants who earn livings decoding jumbled tax regulations would scream at the possible loss of their jobs. And small-business advocates themselves are not in agreement over which taxes should be left in place.
Some oppose a national sales tax, arguing that retailers would suffer from higher prices. Others insist such a tax would be a relief from complicated value-added taxes that are imposed throughout the production process and are, in effect, hidden taxes. Those who have worked for years to get improved home-office and medical deductions for small businesses might be reluctant to dump all their hard work for a simpler tax code.
Most of the small-business organizations in Washington endorse the NFIB’s campaign in theory but are not joining the effort to gather signatures. It could be that with the folksy, personable Faris--who showers listeners with down-home metaphors such as “amending the current tax code is like dressing a pig in silk"--the campaign seems more like a membership drive. Some see it as a way for the NFIB to bolster the influence of the 650,000-member organization, already a force on Capitol Hill.
Indeed, some congressional insiders say throwing a bomb and shouting, “Scrap the tax code!” is easy to do. The real work is in building a consensus to figure out what the new tax code should contain.
Tax reform is a hot issue. Some stabs at reform were made this year, but the real effort is expected to start when Congress reconvenes Jan. 27. The impetus is the horror stories of IRS abuse revealed during recent congressional hearings.
For Ernest Howard, who heads the Hollywood-Beverly Hills arm of the 12,000-member Los Angeles chapter of the California Society of CPAs, the horror stories were nothing new.
“Basically, I help the kind of people you saw testifying before Congress,” said Howard, a certified public accountant and owner of a Playa del Rey accounting firm.
Small businesses are targeted for audits, Howard said, because IRS officers with limited training are intimidated by expert tax attorneys that large corporations command. But small-business owners--who are busy with daily operations, typically have less tax documentation and can’t afford high-priced tax help--are easy pickings.
For example, a Venice health trainer who ran a business from her home--grossing $30,000 a year and netting as little as $10,000--was relentlessly audited for three weeks by an IRS employee here who finally succeeded in getting her to pay $1,000 in back taxes.
She probably was singled out for the audit, Howard said, because the IRS zeros in on returns with income lower than the neighborhood average. That means that if you’re self-employed, you have a much higher chance of being audited, Howard said, especially if you live in areas such as Encino, Venice and Santa Monica.
With tax law there often are no right answers, Howard added. Congress will pass a law, give a mandate to the Treasury Department to interpret it and in many cases, regulations are not written. Businesses then are at the mercy of IRS officers or must interpret complex court cases.
“Something enormously simpler than what we have now is desperately needed,” Howard said.
A simple tax code could also spur economic growth, Faris says. Under the current tax paperwork burden, small businesses spend about $724 in tax-advice costs for every $100 paid in taxes, a total of $28.6 billion spent nationally to pay only $3.9 billion in income tax.
Although CPAs like Howard earn their living from tax advice, change would benefit them, too, and he doubts tax professionals would oppose the NFIB’s drive for IRS simplification.
Said Howard: “If we had a powerful growth economy, it wouldn’t be hard to get going and do financial statements, business planning, management advice and other things to help small business succeed and grow.”
*
Vicki Torres can be reached at (213) 237-6553 or by e-mail at vicki.torres@latimes.com
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e442acb7764ddb20540dc98bbfcda603 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-18-mn-65497-story.html | Dam Destruction in N.C. Shaking Up Northwest | Dam Destruction in N.C. Shaking Up Northwest
At 11:19 a.m., the barrier began to give way with just the faintest clang of metal striking concrete. But in political terms, the sledgehammer that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt took to the Quaker Neck Dam on Wednesday echoed clear to the Pacific Northwest.
Babbitt’s predecessors built reputations by damming rivers, not opening them up. But the work of his sledgehammer and a more effective 3,000-pound wrecking ball--along with a federal regulatory agency’s decision last month to remove a small hydroelectric dam in Maine--sent an unambiguous message to the West:
The unquestioning support the federal government once offered for dams is no longer as solid as the concrete, steel and earth structures themselves, especially if their destruction can restore natural habitat.
That shift is most important in the Pacific Northwest, including the vast Columbia River watershed, where salmon are threatened.
“I believe it’s coming at us. The message is sinking in,” said Bruce Lovelin, executive director of the Columbia River Alliance.
The association of utilities, industries, farmers and others is dedicated to protecting the towering federal and privately owned dams that, beginning nearly a century ago, transformed agriculture, industry and transportation throughout the Northwest region with massive projects providing hydroelectric power and irrigation from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Four years ago, Babbitt’s dream was to lean hard into a dynamite plunger and thus become the first secretary of the Interior to reduce to rubble a massive dam of the great Northwest watershed.
The quiet rolling hills on the outskirts of Goldsboro, planted each year with tobacco and cotton, offer none of the scenic drama of Washington state’s Olympic forests and ravines. And his sledgehammer lacked the punch of dynamite.
Nevertheless, the scaled-down attack left the Interior secretary satisfied, at least for the moment.
“We’ve gotten into a way of thinking,” Babbitt said in an interview, “that the dams are like the pyramids of Egypt: We don’t know when they were built, and we think they’ll last forever. But we shouldn’t be blinded by the presumption that nothing changes.
“What it underlines is that each place, each dam, is a site-specific reflection of culture, history, expectations, economic consequences and environmental benefits, all of which change over time,” he said.
The dam, 260 feet across and only 7 feet high, was completed across the Neuse (pronounced “noose”) River in 1952 to assure that there would be an ample supply of water during periods of drought to cool the condensers of a Carolina Power & Light Co. coal-fired electricity generating station.
But a 7-foot dam, minuscule by Western standards, may just as well be 200 feet high for most fish; they can’t jump it to reach their historic spawning pools.
So it is being replaced by a channel-blocking weir, a metal structure that will back up just enough water in a canal to meet the cooling needs while leaving the river itself free.
By removing the dam and clearing the debris from the river (an approximately two-week, $180,000 project that is being paid for by state, federal and private funds), engineers and scientists figure the breach will open a vast watershed--75 miles of the Neuse and more than 900 miles of tributaries--to the striped bass, American shad, hickory shad and short-nosed sturgeon. The fish spend most of their lives in the Atlantic Ocean until they migrate through the brackish Albemarle and Pamlico sounds and then upstream into the North Carolina hinterland to spawn.
“The striped bass population on the whole East Coast has improved dramatically during the past few years, and there’s every reason to think we’ll see a significant improvement on the Neuse River,” Buzz Bryson, a power company biologist, said.
That pleases Allen Mitchell, a 38-year-old mechanic at the power plant.
“I used to sit on the [river] banks with my grandfather. He’d tell me of the days of grandeur; the nets were so full they couldn’t get ‘em in the boat,” he said.
Then came the dam, he said, and the catch went from 500 fish to 15.
Official surveys bear him out.
The year before the dam was built, said Mike Wicker, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, commercial fishermen landed 700,000 pounds of fish from the Neuse. Last year, the catch was 25,000 pounds.
Across the breadth of the United States, there are nearly 75,000 dams. Perhaps none carries the symbolism of the Hoover Dam, steeped in the anguish wrought by the Great Depression, against which it offered the hope of jobs and agricultural bounty.
Or the Grand Coulee Dam, of equal emotional impact for its role in World War II, when it turned out power cheap enough to run the electricity-hungry aluminum factories crucial to building warplanes.
Most dams, however, are privately owned and offer neither such scale nor history.
David Brower, a noted conservationist, once said: “If you are against a dam, you are for a river.” That said, dams still often carry the status of a cultural icon, with which one tinkers only gingerly.
“Dams represent one of those features of human accomplishment that are a very tangible demonstration of our ability to conquer nature. So taking them out cuts very sharply against the grain,” said John Leshy, the Interior Department’s solicitor long involved in legal efforts surrounding dams and waterways.
Just 10 years ago, talking about removing dams would have been heresy among government officials. And only about 20 dams have been removed in recent years, most of them small structures in the upper Midwest destroyed for either environmental or safety reasons.
Only one dam, the structure in Maine that the federal Energy Regulatory Commission targeted, has been singled out for destruction against the wishes of its owners.
But now, dams are under increasing attack, a senior Interior Department official said, because environmentalist goals have broadened from pollution control and preservation of natural resources to a more aggressive restoration of wildlife habitat.
And with several hundred federally issued operating licenses for dams up for review in coming years, “the case will be hard to make to allow some of them to continue,” the official said.
Katherine Ransel, an attorney in Seattle for American Rivers Inc., a river advocacy group, has grown accustomed to Babbitt expressing his goal of presiding over the destruction of the two large dams blocking Washington’s Elwha River.
Congress has begun appropriating money to study such a course, but their demise could be years away.
She took heart from the steps taken in North Carolina.
“The relevance is, we’re not talking about it anymore. We’re doing it.”
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6e44be2a0ffa399727037b26b4d8a622 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-19-mn-261-story.html | Surrender Ends Texas Day-Care Hostage Crisis | Surrender Ends Texas Day-Care Hostage Crisis
A gunman who took dozens of children and several adults hostage at a day-care center released his last two captives--his son and stepson--Thursday night, then surrendered, ending the 30-hour siege.
No one was hurt.
James Monroe Lipscomb Jr., 33, gave up shortly after 9 p.m. CST, Police Chief Bruce Glasscock said. There were no terms of surrender, he added.
“He was tired,” the chief said. “The children were getting tired, and I think he started thinking about the welfare of the children.”
Lipscomb surrendered after freeing his 5-year-old son, James Lipscomb III, and 7-year-old stepson, Xavier Jones.
Earlier Thursday, Lipscomb released his last adult captive and a little girl from the Rigsbee Child Development Center.
Televised images of the 2-year-old girl, clutching a teddy bear and with her arm around the neck of a woman who was carrying her, angered Lipscomb and he cut off talks with police for two hours.
By noon, though, telephone contact had resumed. The girl was identified by relatives as his goddaughter.
“The suspect saw the exchange of the hostage to the relative, and as such we have had a setback in the negotiations,” Glasscock said Thursday morning.
He refused to elaborate on what disturbed the gunman.
By nightfall, Glasscock reported that negotiations were back on track.
On Thursday night, authorities said 78 children and five adults were in the day-care center at one point but that an undetermined number of children and adults escaped as the standoff began. Lipscomb then gradually released the rest until just his son and stepson remained.
His brother, nephew and a neighbor identified him as the husband of day-care center worker Kris Lipscomb, who apparently was in the first group to escape the center.
Kris Lipscomb’s sister, Joan Shaw, said the couple’s three-year marriage has been stormy. “I don’t know what snapped. They had marital problems, but everybody has,” Shaw said.
Attorney Ron Danforth, who says he has represented various members of the family for four years, confirmed that Kris Lipscomb had filed for divorce.
Police said James Lipscomb had tried to rob someone outside the nearby Plano Bank & Trust on Wednesday afternoon, shortly before he stormed the day-care center in this suburb north of Dallas.
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c324b2c1f13646c08e509b995d227e27 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-21-ca-853-story.html | It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This | It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This
In the often cloistered world of architecture, two gargantuan events momentarily held the public’s attention in 1997: the long-anticipated opening of Los Angeles’ $1-billion Getty Center and the stunning success of Frank O. Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. And both grew out of Los Angeles’ fertile architectural culture, the Getty because it is here, the Guggenheim because a Los Angeles architect designed it.
As a national phenomenon, the Getty’s public opening Tuesday marked a major shift westward in the country’s cultural landscape. As architecture, its scale and ambition may seem overwhelming, but Richard Meier, the Getty’s architect, handled a daunting task admirably. Debates will continue into the next millennium over the strategies that formed the center, yet there is little doubt that the museum--the heart of the place--is both a remarkable space to view art and a wonderfully composed urban event. The center is also, for Meier, the culmination of a lifelong effort to hone his version of Modernism to perfection. It is his greatest civic work and an important moment in the city’s history.
As for the Guggenheim? It might not be an overstatement to say that Gehry’s design marks a turning point in both the career of one of the world’s great living architects and in the rich history of 20th century architecture. At Bilbao, which opened in October, Gehry’s exuberant, explosive forms wonderfully juggle movement and stillness, great art and everyday life, intimate spaces and an industrial scale.
Looking back, many of Gehry’s earlier works seem to anticipate this moment: a giant, undulating gallery evokes Gehry’s long-standing, idiosyncratic love of fish forms. The museum’s curvaceous atrium echoes an earlier design for a Prague office building. But Bilbao stands apart. Gehry’s achievement is in creating a language for a new culture, one that convincingly elevates banal everyday objects--and hence everyday life--to become great art. This is a mature work by a master. It defines the closing of our century as much as the utopian works of the early Modernists defined its beginnings.
And now it seems Gehry may finally bring that mature genius home to roost. After years of delays, controversy, bad planning and cost overruns--Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall seems to be back on track once and for all. The long-troubled concert hall project got sudden support from a group of business leaders, politicians and cultural figures.
Museum of Contemporary Art Director Richard Koshalek presented a lavish show of concert hall models at the downtown art institution in 1996 that did much to boost the fund-raising effort. Tireless billionaire businessman-developer Eli Broad spearheaded a fund-raising drive that has raised $168 million in just a year, 80% of the money needed to complete the hall. And this month, Disney Chief Executive Officer Michael Eisner announced the latest of the donations, a $25-million “challenge gift” from Disney that essentially guarantees that construction will start up again, as is now planned, in the summer.
The journey wasn’t smooth. Over the summer, Gehry and Broad argued over whether the architect should be allowed to complete the hall’s still-unfinished working drawings or whether they should be turned over to another firm. Gehry, it was decided, will complete the drawings. After all, the results are what matters, right?
A few blocks away, in another monumental achievement, Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo unveiled his design for the new seat of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, at a ground blessing ceremony in September at the cathedral’s downtown site. This project too had its share of controversy: More than a year ago, church leaders tried to have the old landmark St. Vibiana Cathedral demolished early one morning, without permits, to make room for a new scheme. In the end, a new site was chosen along downtown’s Grand Avenue, overlooking the Hollywood Freeway.
A blessing in disguise? The placement has allowed Moneo to connect the church to what many hope will one day become the city’s major “cultural corridor” connecting the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Colburn School of Performing Arts, Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center and Moneo’s cathedral. And the new site’s scale--5.8 acres--has allowed Moneo to create an introverted courtyard scheme whose cool, balanced forms mask a radical redesign of traditional cathedral plans. Moneo is a profound thinker. His design is the real thing, not slick image. (In fact, it is hard to think of another city that can boast such a convergence of architectural talent right now.)
Meanwhile, on the other coast, New York’s Museum of Modern Art finally ended a yearlong hunt for a suitable design for a proposed expansion that will double the size of the legendary museum’s galleries. The winner was a shocker: Yoshio Tanaguchi, a 61-year-old Tokyo-based Modernist who has never built outside of his native Japan. MOMA had been determined to find a fresh face: It rejected veterans like Gehry, Meier, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster early on because it wanted to uncover a younger generation of architects. Then the museum rejected rising stars like Rem Koolhaas, 53, because his design was too threatening. What it chose, in the end, was above all safe. Arduous search, no risks, solid design.
Two smaller projects also bear note: L.A.'s Frederick Fisher’s recently completed design for New York’s P.S. 1 in Queens brilliantly transforms a former public school into a 125,000-square-foot contemporary art space by preserving the Romanesque Revival building’s raw, labyrinthine interior and adding a tough exterior courtyard composed of tall concrete walls and an imposing entry stair. And in Seattle, Steven Holl’s small, jewel-like Chapel of St. Ignatius, set on a formerly dreary lot on the Seattle University campus, is a beautiful balance of urban and spiritual themes. Go see them.
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cf630affa90f2236ef397b8dc291f652 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-23-fi-1359-story.html | MGM Says It Was Outbid for Film Library | MGM Says It Was Outbid for Film Library
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. said it didn’t buy a film library with about 1,000 titles from Consortium de Realisation SAS because it was outbid by PolyGram NV, which bought the library early this month. Craig Parsons, an MGM spokesman, said the Santa Monica-based film studio had offered a bid that was “close to $100 million under” the $225 million that Netherlands-based entertainment company PolyGram paid for the library of 1,051 films. The library includes “When Harry Met Sally” and “City Slickers.” Consortium de Realisation, or CDR, was formed in 1995 to dispose of assets split off from French banking company Credit Lyonnais. MGM, which went public in November, said in documents it filed with federal regulators that it was considering purchasing the library. It has a 4,000-title movie library that includes films such as “Midnight Cowboy” and “Rain Man.”
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d863378ffa6b52141bfdae366979fd44 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-28-me-2937-story.html | James M. Nabrit Jr.; Rights Leader | James M. Nabrit Jr.; Rights Leader
James M. Nabrit Jr., an educator and leader in the civil rights movement who argued and won one of the country’s landmark desegregation cases and later served as president of Howard University, died Saturday. He was 97.
A son, James M. Nabrit III, said Nabrit had been under treatment for an infection at his home in northwest Washington when he became seriously ill and was taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
In addition to serving as Howard’s second black president, from 1960 to 1969, Nabrit was dean of the university’s law school for 10 years. From 1965 to 1967, he took leave from Howard to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Nabrit was part of the nucleus of lawyers who in the 1940s and ‘50s led a determined attack on laws that supported segregation. Those efforts eventually brought about a legal revolution that transformed American society.
Nabrit joined Howard’s law school faculty in 1936, and two years later began to teach the first formal course in civil rights law at a U.S. law school. During his tenure, the law school served as a strategy center for the attack on the system of law that maintained a segregated society.
One of the milestones in Nabrit’s career and the nation’s legal history was the case he took to the Supreme Court in the early 1950s that successfully challenged the segregated system of public education in the District of Columbia.
The case, Bolling vs. Sharpe, was argued along with the celebrated Brown vs. Board of Education case. In Brown, argued by Thurgood Marshall, the high court ruled that segregated public education in the states violated the Constitution. The Bolling case applied to the District of Columbia, which Congress governed.
The cases were argued and reargued before the Supreme Court at the same time, and the decisions in each were handed down simultaneously.
“We were all happy,” Nabrit’s son recalled. “There was a general feeling of euphoria, tempered by the understanding that it was going to be tough to make the whole Jim Crow system change.”
James Madison Nabrit Jr. was born Sept. 4, 1900, in Atlanta, the oldest of eight children of a clergyman. He received a bachelor of arts degree in 1923 from Morehouse College in Atlanta, and four years later he received a law degree from Northwestern University law school in Chicago.
In breaks from law school, he began a career as an educator, teaching at Leland College in Baker, La., from 1925 to 1928. After obtaining his law degree, he held the post of dean of the Arkansas State College for Negroes, in Pine Bluff, from 1928 to 1930.
He then practiced law in Houston, handling about two dozen civil rights cases, several involving the right to vote in primary elections. Nabrit was credited with helping to abolish the so-called white primary election in Texas.
As part of the process of organizing the civil rights law course he taught at Howard, Nabrit gathered more than 2,000 cases on the subject from all over the nation. Study of the arguments and the rulings in these cases was pivotal to the development of the strategy for the attack on segregation through the courts.
As president of Howard, Nabrit withdrew from direct participation in the movement to topple legally sanctioned segregation. But he made it clear that his convictions had not changed.
In addition to his son, a former associate director-counsel of the NAACP legal defense and educational fund, he is survived by two brothers and three sisters.
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cd273067993d9c5d5a20ad8ec6a69174 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-01-ca-8496-story.html | The Outer Limits of Fun : ‘Men in Black’ takes the alien theme, twists it in hip directions and adds some cool sight gags. | The Outer Limits of Fun : ‘Men in Black’ takes the alien theme, twists it in hip directions and adds some cool sight gags.
Go ahead, admit what you’ve always suspected: A certain percentage of people met in daily life are so strange, so out-and-out weird, they have to be aliens from another universe. Now, at last, comes a major motion picture that dares to tell you it’s all true.
Wised-up and offhandedly funny, “Men in Black” introduces us to the super-secret government agency, known as MiB for short, that makes those aliens toe the line. Starring the inspired pairing of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, “Men in Black” is a genially twisted riff on the familiar alien invaders story, a lively summer entertainment that marries a deadpan sense of humor to the strangest creatures around.
Based on obscure comic-book material, “Men in Black” has maintained the energy and sass of the form while taking on, in Ed Solomon’s screenplay, a hipster attitude that extends to the protagonists’ ever-present black suits and the Ray-Ban sunglasses they always wear.
Barry Sonnenfeld is an excellent director for this point of view, and “Men in Black” is a blend of the strengths of his previous films, the knowing humor of “Get Shorty” and the visual razzmatazz of “The Addams Family.” And Sonnenfeld also oversaw the smooth blending of the different comic styles of the picture’s two leads.
Jones, as his dead-on reading of the most memorable line in “The Fugitive” revealed, has a definite flair for gruff, acerbic humor. His Agent K is a no-nonsense government operative who suddenly shows up at a routine Border Patrol investigation of a suspicious truck near the Texas-Mexico line. One of its passengers, it turns out, has come from a lot farther than Cuernevaca.
In the meantime, James Edwards (Smith), a New York City cop with a glib, engaging cockiness, is doing his best to chase down a suspicious person with the unnerving, practically extraterrestrial, ability to just about leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Though MiB boss Zed (Rip Torn) is worried about Edwards’ insouciance, K admires his perseverance and is soon recruiting the cop to sever all human contact and join “the best of the best of the best” as Agent J. But not before a whole lot of explaining is taken care of.
Unbeknownst to most people, the planet Earth has volunteered its services as a safe zone where political refugees from other galaxies can live in peace, “kind of like Casablanca without Nazis,” in K’s helpful phrase. Mostly they’re law-abiding citizens, but MiB is around to hold the line when they turn rogue, which means using outlandish weaponry on some pretty weird individuals.
*
A good deal of the fun of “Men in Black” is joining Agent J as he gets acquainted with the variety of wacky aliens masquerading as humans that form K’s beat. Created by four-time special-effects Oscar winner Rick Baker, with an assist from Industrial Light & Magic, these include beings that sprout new heads like weeds, intergalactic emperors tiny enough to live in hollowed-out skulls and much larger and more formidable beings.
Though its charm is in its attitude and premise (and Danny Elfman’s rousing score), “Men in Black” does have a serviceable plot that kicks in when a rusty flying saucer crash-lands in a rural area.
Out comes an unseen-for-now creature who promptly rips off (literally) the ill-fitting skin of a local resident named Edgar (Vincent D’Onofrio) and lurches around Manhattan looking for the Arquillian galaxy, one of the treasures of the universe. That search involves considerable mayhem, which is where the boys make contact with the city’s deputy medical examiner, mistress of sang-froid Dr. Laura Weaver (Linda Fiorentino).
“Men in Black” is set in New York at the suggestion of its director, a native son, and that sets up inventive use of such landmarks as the Guggenheim Museum, the old World’s Fair grounds in Queens and the Battery Park vent room for the Holland Tunnel, plus the expected jokes about what percentage of cabbies are not of this Earth.
Hard to ignore because it’s partly unexpected is the film’s slime factor. “Men in Black” has periodic moments of gross-out humor that will not be to everyone’s taste, and when Edgar the invader finally reveals himself, he turns out to be more disturbing and off-putting than the film’s genial tone would have you expect.
But mostly what you get with “Men in Black” is the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Kings of Cool in a world where inconvenient memories get erased and supermarket tabloids offer the most reliable alien tips. It’s not the traditional world where only the bad guys wore black, but you already knew that, didn’t you?
* MPAA rating: PG-13, for language and sci-fi violence. Times guidelines: Some of the monsters are more disturbing than funny.
‘Men in Black’
Tommy Lee Jones: K
Will Smith: J
Linda Fiorentino: Laurel
Vincent D’Onofrio: Edgar
Rip Torn: Zed
Tony Shalhoub: Jeebs
An Amblin Entertainment production in association with MacDonald/Parkes productions, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Barry Sonnenfeld. Producers Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald. Executive producer Steven Spielberg. Screenplay Ed Solomon. Cinematographer Don Peterman. Editor Jim Miller. Costumes Mary E. Vogt. Music Danny Elfman. Production design Bo Welch. Art director Thomas Duffield. Set decorator Cheryl Carasik. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.
* In general release throughout Southern California.
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e2d2bb1fa9f59bc832bd355f4edfaa0b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-01-sp-8649-story.html | Struggles Continue for Seles | Struggles Continue for Seles
Monica Seles’ sad trek through a sport she used to happily dominate took another wrenching turn Monday when she lost in the third round on a cold, sunless day.
Sandrine Testud of France defeated second-seeded Seles, 0-6, 6-4, 8-6, thwarting Seles’ attempt to win the one Grand Slam tournament title she has not claimed.
With only seven of the 16 seeded women remaining, top-seeded Martina Hingis appears to have little between her and the title. Mary Joe Fernandez is the only American left, making this the first Wimbledon since 1936 in which so few American woman have advanced to the fourth round.
Seles, once the standard bearer for American women, has recently suffered through injuries, setbacks and indifferent results. Taking the long view, this season hardly mars Seles’ career. She has a 333-46 match record. But tennis operates in the now, and Seles has not won a tournament in a year. Should she go this entire season without winning one, it would be her first without a title.
It’s uncertain whether Seles is merely slumping, fading or even if defining what’s happening with her game is her greatest concern.
The illness of her father--and coach--Karolj Seles, has hit her hard. He is home in Florida, battling a recurrence of stomach cancer.
Some see Seles’ situation as similar to that of Pete Sampras, whose coach and best friend, Tim Gullikson, died of brain cancer in May, 1996. In handling that loss, Sampras lost his way in tennis for a time. Understandably, Seles’ attention is not fully on her career.
Karolj Seles has always been easy to spot in the players’ box during his daughter’s matches--he was the one always smiling. He made tennis fun for his daughter. And he and Esther Seles are among the few tennis parents who applaud the winning shot of an opponent.
To be at Wimbledon without him has been a strain on Seles. She has tried to make do with thrice-daily phone calls. And the counseling has been two-way.
For Seles and a few other players, Wimbledon is more than the most important tennis tournament in the world. It is two weeks’ worth of microscopic attention to what she wears, how she appears and what she says.
This is the tournament where, in 1992, a “grunt-o-meter” measured the volume of Seles’ grunts as she hit the ball. It is where, in her absence in 1991, it was speculated that she was pregnant. She was dubbed, “WimbleMum.”
This time around, Seles has been besieged again. The tabloid newspapers have hectored her about her weight.
She has been called fat outright in news conferences. At other times code words are used, such as “fitness.” Headlines have referred to Seles’ “weighty” problems, and stories have been written saying that she has taken refuge in food in order to deal with her father’s illness.
Photographers have been particularly attentive when Seles serves. Every day after she has played the papers run photos of Seles’ exposed midriff during service. She took to wearing a towel around her waist during changeovers to obscure the view.
Seles, 23, admits to not being at her ideal weight, but has been hurt and puzzled by the obsession with her appearance, correctly noting that seldom are the male players analyzed for weight gain, the clothes they wear and whether or not they are attractive.
“To me, it’s hurtful when they ask me [those] questions and put words in my mouth that I haven’t said,” Seles said in an unusually hushed news conference. “My dad taught me to take all that in good spirits. He said, ‘They do that to everybody. Sometimes it’s your turn.’ I felt a few times that it was not fair, the articles I read a couple of days ago, but I know it comes with the territory. For some reason they pick on me more than others.”
Seles’ struggle on the court Monday, after an impressive start, was typical of her play this season. She was tentative and immobile, and once Testud steadied her own game, she waited for Seles to disintegrate.
Seles had begun so well, winning the first set at love and running seven consecutive games. Testud, ranked No. 23, was opportunistic in winning the second set but, again, Seles would have been expected to respond.
She did, briefly. She held a 5-2 lead in the third set and was serving for the match at 5-3 but was broken after an overrule changed a 15-15 score to 0-30. Seles became unsettled.
“It didn’t come at a great time,” she said of the overrule. “But I shouldn’t have let it bother me that much, to have carried it that long with me. I was mumbling to myself a little bit in that game and the next game too.”
Testud broke to go up 5-4 and held to make it 5-5. Seles held her next service game, then held a match point but missed a backhand passing shot, losing that opportunity.
Testud broke again to go up, 7-6, and on her own serve fired two aces, the second on match point.
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