August 31, 2025 • 36 mins
Hour 2: Residents of downtown LA say in a new survey that they want something done about the number of people experiencing mental health crises and committing crimes in the populous neighborhood; and director Peter Jones talks about his new documentary “Fortunate Sons” premiering next week on PBS SoCal which features his classmates from the Harvard School for Boys Class of 1974 as they face their past traumas, their privileged station in life, and their own mortality.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got another hour together on this Saturday night of
Labor Day weekend. Hope you're enjoying it. People living and
working in Downtown LA say they are fed up with
mental health crises on the streets, crime, vandalism, other issues.
They say it's making the living environment unpleasant, and businesses
say it's difficult to operate. The Downtown LA Residents Association
has a new survey out detailing all this, and we're
(00:22):
joined now by the group's co founders, Cassie Horton and
Leslie writings Cassie Leslie, so grateful that both of you
are joining us again to talk about life and existing
in downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
You've got the results of this survey, and the key
stat that stands out to me first is one that
I think is really important because I try to add
this context to a lot of stuff we talk about
on KFI. You asked these seven hundred plus respondents to
rate one through five, with five being very important of
(00:56):
what you think of these issues. Eighty one percent of
the respondent's put number five very important. Acute public mental
health crises and episodes. This is the stuff that doesn't
show up in other statistics. Crime statistics and those sorts
of things. And the way that I can textualize writing metro,
for example, is like, this doesn't show up in the
(01:17):
crime statistics. You cannot quantify how uncomfortable somebody made you feel,
but it is a deterrent to people writing metro. It
is a deterrent to people being in downtown Los Angeles. Cassie,
this looks like a big deal. How big of a
deal is it in your eyes?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, I mean I think that this is really important.
Like you talked about differentiating between what's really happening what's
not showing up in the crime statistics. A lot of
folks focus on violent crime, and that's really important. We
want people to be physically safe, but the reality is
(01:54):
both in terms of the level of human suffering without
sufficient support to meet their needs, and then the actual,
you know, bigger picture community consequences where you know, you
see somebody across the street who is maybe having a
schizophrenic break. You don't know, you know what is going
(02:16):
on with them. You can tell that they're very unwell
and you cannot help, but wonder are they may be
going to put themselves in a position of danger walk
into the street something like that, or you know, I
think it's reasonable to ask might there be some harm
coming my way? I've I've certainly had situations where you know,
somebody threw a bottle at me and I didn't even know,
(02:36):
you know, if they were processing what that experience is.
So naming the difference between somebody facing that kind of
mental health crisis somebody who is homeless on hows who
you know, really just needs a roof over their head
to help them start to move in a positive direction.
Those are two really different things in terms of the
(02:57):
support that somebody needs, and so it's important. But all so,
downtown people walk. You know a lot of people don't
have cars. When people come downtown, they want to be
able to walk from a restaurant to the metro station,
you know, take the metro up to the museum, whatever
it is, and without kind of a welcoming, accessible public
(03:19):
realm where people can move in that way without you know,
worrying about somebody or worrying if they might harm them.
We're in a really tough spot and that deters folks
from wanting to go to that restaurant that they really
like to frequent.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Leslie Lake, a lot of people downtown. As Cassie just mentioned,
I like to walk. I prefer to walk, I prefer
to hop on public transit when possible. But I do
drive a vehicle from the fashion district up here to
the studio in Burbank just about every day, and very
often traffic is completely disrupted, not by drivers, but by
somebody that does appear to be suffering one of these
(03:55):
public mental health crises or episodes in the middle of
the road. It happens. I'm sure it does happen daily.
I see it almost daily. I'm not asking you this
to make the audience laugh or to encourage them to
lack empathy, but can you just illustrate for our listeners
what that term means. What are we seeing in terms
(04:17):
that people will better understand what are these episodes?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
So, I mean, well, I want to frame everything you
know in compassion, right, because what we're seeing downtown it's
very hard. We're not mental health care professionals, so what
you see on the street, you don't really know what
it is.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Right.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Some people are walking around half naked or sometimes fully naked.
Sometimes they're very dirty, they're filthy.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
You know that.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
It's very clear they haven't been cared for taking care
of themselves, they might be incapable of taking care of themselves.
Sometimes it's people who are talking to themselves, shouting to themselves,
speaking to voices that aren't there and we can hear.
Sometimes you know, it's people way on the floor, rolling
around like you know, wandering in and out of traffic,
(05:03):
as you say. And I think it's it's this spectrum
of behavior where it's very difficult. You can't diagnose it
as a you know, lay person walking around living your
life day to day. And so, you know, I think
we kind of view it in the sort of spectrum
of compassion, but at some points, like we have to
do something about it because right now the city and
(05:26):
county isn't doing anything. And so I think if you
start with compassion for the people that need the compassion,
need the care and the treatment to be brought in,
and then you know there's people in there that are
taking advantage of the system, you know what, true will
take care of that as well. But I think right
now this is very important that we do something about
it because it is extremely disruptive and I think it's
very caustic to the social fabric as well, because We're
(05:49):
basically being asked to normal as things that are completely unacceptable,
and you know, walk down the street every single day
has things that you know.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
If we can't do anything about, we don't know how
to us.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
And you know, I just think it's it's really really
bad for everybody involved, you know, for both the people
on the street experiencing it, for the people living downtown,
and I think for society at large.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
You know, it says something really bad about it as.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
A society that we accept that that we tolerate it,
and also that our leaders you ask us to tolerate it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I think it's interesting and correct me if I'm wrong,
Cassie and my own understanding of the situation. I know
this is a problem across La City, across La County.
There is homelessness, There are people who suffer from these
mental health challenges. But it does seem that downtown residents
and businesses are expected to just absorb this situation at
(06:41):
an inordinate rate when compared to neighbors.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, and there's there's a real history and you know
something as Leslie and I are co founders of this group,
the Downtown Residents Association, and folks who live downtown are
very aware that skid is a neighborhood. You know, it
is part of downtown where folks live, where they are housed,
(07:06):
they've been housed for a long time. It's also the
highest concentration of social services, certainly in the greater Los
Angeles area, maybe it may be honestly in the entire nation.
So you know, we've got really we've got care providers
doing really important work to help people get on their feet.
It's also disproportionately where folks come when they're having a
(07:29):
really hard time. It's where a lot of the harm
reduction services are provided related to you know, drug use
and making sure that that is safer. So we're in
and we're in a position where Los Angeles has a
long history of really sending folks oftentimes to downtown to
(07:50):
receive services, and a lot of people not getting their
needs met and they're they're here and they're stuck and
there's no place for them to get housed or whatever
it is, and they're living on the streets. So you know,
I think it's really important to name that skid Row
is a neighborhood, and we often hear from folks living
in skid Row that they don't know how to address
these things either. You know, they're seeing people in there
(08:14):
and in their housing complexes who are really suffering, whether
that be from mental health issues that are untreated or
from you know, potential potential substance use issues that they're
navigating with and their house, but they also aren't getting
that support. So, you know, talking about what's happening downtown
without recognizing that skid Row is a historic, important place
(08:38):
in Los Angeles, but it's also a place where we've
really concentrated these issues in some ways intentionally and in
some ways it's it's been the way that that things
have compounded over time.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
That's that's a reality.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
You know, you can't talk about what's happening downtown without
recognizing skid Row plays an important part in in the
broader neighborhood and but also within the region.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
We'll continue this conversation next as downtown LA residents and
businesses say they want action to clean up the populous
and economically powerful neighborhood, and later, a new documentary takes
us back to nineteen seventy four in Los Angeles and
the group of guys who graduated from the Harvard School
Don Michael Monks from KFI News. We've been talking about
the ongoing challenges facing Downtown La, as illustrated in a
(09:24):
new survey from the Downtown LA Residents Association. Our guest
are the co founders of that group, Cassie Horton and
Leslie Writings. I mentioned earlier that the top concern of
the respondents, or at least the one that was rated
the most as a very important issue, being acute public
mental health crises in episodes. There are also concerns about
actual crimes being committed downtown. There's also concerns about public
(09:48):
urination and defecation, street level open air drug use.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Leslie, I know you.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Also asked the these survey takers to suggest solutions or
to some solutions. What did we find from residents? We
know that the city government has had a difficult time
finding appropriate solutions. What do the residents and business owners
have to say?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Yeah, well, they had a lot to say, and it's
all over the board, and I, you know, to try
and synthesize.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
It all at a very high level.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
I think I think more than anything, what people really
want is action, and I think they want effective results.
I think there's a pretty pretty broad consensus I think
for effective policing.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
I think thoughtful policing.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
Different parts of Downtown have different thoughts on.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
What enforcement of the law looks like, but I think
there's very broad support for thoughtful enforcement of the law.
I think things like open.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Air drug use, things that are pretty clearly illegal, there's
not a lot of tolerance for that, and I think
there's sort of a.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
There's a disconnect. People don't understand why it's tolerated so openly.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
Yeah, I think people just really want to see these
things that are so flagrantly illegal, that are oftentimes perpetrated
in clear sight of law enforcement, you know, out on
the sidewalk front families with children, and.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
People have a very hard time understanding why we're not
enforcing these laws. I mean, drug use is just one
of the more pointing in examples.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
But there's all sorts of things like that that we
see downtown, and it happens across the city. But I
think Downtown, by virtue of our density, because of some
of the populations that are concentrated in downtown, we see
it more frequently. Switch and we're all on the foot right, we're.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
All walking around, so we see it. We're in it.
So yeah, I think people just really want to see
accent and solutions.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Again, I speak to you all as a journalist, but
also has a neighbor. I live down there too, and
the spouse and I. Unfortunately, we've had some conversations recently
about like, what are we what are we doing here?
I mean, if it's not going to get better, why
are we staking our future down here? What are we
going to invest in? If we're looking for a home,
a permanent home someday, why should it be this. I
was also being in the La Times recently, and I
(12:02):
share this just as a sign perhaps that I'm turning
towards cynicism about downtown and I don't like that. But
I was reading this article in the Times about the
old Macy's that I'm so sad we lost. I love
that Macy's. They're turning it into I guess a pickleball
kind of membership club, some kind of weird thing. And
I'm thinking, you know, okay, Downtown is exactly the type
(12:22):
of place that has that population. The folks who are young,
the professional, They might have some money that they could
spend and socialize in that arena. But I think this
isn't going to work because by the time this thing
gets to open, Downtown is going to deteriorate further and
you're going to start losing folks. So talk me off
the ledge. I want to finish this up with both
of you. Talk me off the ledge. Why is downtown
(12:44):
La worth fighting Forecastie, We'll start with you.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Downtown is very much worth fighting for. I'm actually an optimist.
I was just talking to fellow neighbors at one of
our community events yesterday, and I think a lot of
people are really optimistic downtown in terms of why it's
worth saving. It is the historic, cultural, civic heart of
(13:09):
our city.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
It is the welcome that that we put out for visitors.
We have our concentration of hotels, all of this La Live,
the broad the Olympics. It's also extremely socioeconomically and racially
diverse in a way that no other neighborhood is this integrated,
and that is a really important thing. It makes for
(13:31):
a very special place to be to live. It makes
for a vibrancy in terms of the overall cultural experience.
So Downtown is special and there's a reason ninety thousand
people live here. There's also a reason. You know, every
one of your friends, despite what they might be saying
right now about coming downtown, like they like, they probably
have a favorite place downtown, whether that's Grand Central Market
(13:52):
or the Broad or they like to go to Little Tokyo.
Like we are one broader downtown and people love love,
you know, they've got memories down town. So we have
to fight for this neighborhood. And the thing that makes
me really optimistic right now is the residential piece. And
we've talked about this before, but in two thousand, eighteen thousand.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
People live downtown. Right now it's.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Closer to ninety thousand. We did not used to have
a voting block that could say, hey, you know, things
aren't looking good. We need to turn the street lights on,
and we're going to hold you accountable for that if
you don't follow through as our elected leaders. So the
people in downtown really don't want to live anywhere else.
They love a dense, walkable urban environment with this vibrant seat,
(14:35):
and they're very much here to fight for it.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And Leslie, I heard Cassie say, you know that the residence,
the number of residents has multiplied exponentially, But I wonder
if you know, if folks are as strong as they
think they could be, or as much as they know
they could be.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Are they voting enough? Are they engaged enough?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Are we just a bunch of transplants who thought we
were moving to Manhattan, you know, out here on the
West coast, and we're not as engaged as we should be.
But help us out here. Why should we get engaged?
Why should we fight? Why is it worth saving?
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Well?
Speaker 5 (15:06):
Democracy is a participatory sport, right, and that's what we're doing.
And you know, people are attracted to an object in motion,
and I think a little bit of hope goes a
long way. I think that you know, Cassie, you know,
couldn't have said it better.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
All the reasons that Downtown is worth fighting for.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
And I think the people that choose to live downtown,
especially post COVID, when Downtown has you know, hit pretty
hard and it's coming up.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Really want to live downtown.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
They are very bought into the lifestyle and everything downtown
offers because it is the only city and the entire
region really, I guess San Francisco is the only thing close.
So for the most of the safe this is about it.
It's the only city, so they bought in.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
And you know what's funny is when I talk to
people who have.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Moved here since COVID, so they didn't experience downtown sort
of like in its quote.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Unquote prime, like before COVID and its last iteration.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
You know, their soul though, this is great, it's awesome,
you know, whereas you know some of us, you know
ogs who saw you know, where it was on its
rise prior, they're like, oh man, we're struggling, it's like
but these folks who didn't know that, they're like, this
is great, Like, yeah, we can get over. It's a
big deal because honestly, we have it pretty good, like
the concrete that was laid down, the investments that were made.
The difference between downtown when I was growing up in
(16:29):
the nineties versus downtown now is just night and day.
So you know, I will say a lot of times
the public discourse around downtown.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Is everything's wrong. Everything's wrong, everything's.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
Wrong, and a lot of it is created right because
for a long time the city and county basically use
Downtown to put everything they didn't want to deal with right.
And they still want to keep doing that, which is
a challenge. But the thing is they're also using downtown
as like their hope for the future because they want
to put the other thing they don't want to deal with,
which is population growth and density.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Right, So they have.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
These two conflicting sides, right, it all downtown, and we
have too. The good site has to win out because
the bad side is morally repugnant and bad and wrong.
We have to take care of people, and that's worth
fighting for. And I think people that live here know that,
and they.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Like it down here. And we're growing because they're the
only place that's grown.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
And rent, thanks to supply, is pretty flat and people
like paying less. So they're going to keep coming and
we get going to get those people registered to vote
and keep organizing them and growing power in downtown.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
And we're off to the races.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
All right, Fine, I'll stay, I'll stay. Hey, you know what,
might they actually lowered my rent fifty bucks last year.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I was shocked. I guess you know. It is a
good neighborhood and you can walk.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Everywhere, and the restaurants and the grocery is right there,
and there are a lot of neighbors and the rooftops
and it's a vibe. Man, But they have got to
clean it up. I mean, we cannot be out there
on our own. It's going to take some government help,
There's no doubt about it. I know you too are
helping to lead the way, along with the rest of
the coalition that makes up the Downtown LA Residents Association.
I'm grateful that you all did this survey. It's very illuminating.
(18:00):
And thanks again for coming on KFI to lament and
to share the love of downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, thanks for having us, and we hope our mayor
and city council member will rally behind us. Residents are
ready to fight with them, and we really need a
champion right now.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Forty six years after they graduated from the Harvard School
now known as Harvard Westlake, the guys all reunited during
COVID on Zoom. Their shared experience their lives since their
school days are now the focus of a new documentary,
Fortunate Suns. It comes out next week. The director is
with us next. The Harvard School class of nineteen seventy
four left their classrooms here in LA and embarked on
(18:39):
the lives they were expected to lead. Born into families
of wealth and influence, they would reunite forty six years later,
during the pandemic where else but over Zoom. The meetings
gave the guys a chance to be vulnerable, to remember,
and to prepare for a real life, in person fiftieth reunion.
It's also the story in a new documentary, Fortunate Suns,
(19:00):
which premieres next Wednesday on PBS SoCal and the director,
Peter Jones, is with us now. Peter, thanks so much
for taking some time for KFI.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
Of course, love k voice of the Dodgers.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
We appreciate that, and a voice of the Chargers also,
so if you're a sports fan, a we're the guys.
Look the film you did, Fortunate Sons was really great.
I enjoyed getting an advanced screening of it. The title
really speaks to who we're talking about here. This is
a film where everybody seemed to be pretty open about
(19:34):
what we might call today privilege. And I thought that
that was an interesting thing to see because I bet
a lot of people in southern California have ideas when
they hear Harvard Westlake, tell me why you put that
front and center?
Speaker 6 (19:46):
You know what?
Speaker 7 (19:47):
I was advised Peter hit it head on the privilege
and lifestyles of the sons of the rich and famous.
As somebody once put it just hit what the dads
were were great overachievers and embedded things, created stuff, and
we grew up in these extraordinary environments. Lead with that
(20:09):
in the beginning of the film, so you see kind
of from where we came. Then it becomes what life
does to everybody, which becomes a universal story because no
matter how.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
Rich you may have been when you were.
Speaker 7 (20:24):
Born, money and stuff can't hide us from reality, illness, addiction,
all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Now we definitely learn in this film the way that
time can be a great equalizer, regardless of where you
come from. When I first started the film, your director's
choice was to open with some of these zoom calls,
which ended up being the motivation for putting a full
film together. I got to admit it was a little
jarring because it takes you right back to five years
(20:55):
ago when that was how every meeting, every communication was
taking place.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Let's start there.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What got you guys back together, I guess at that point,
forty six or so years after graduation, was it was.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Different for all of us.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
We went through COVID quarantine and we had this thing
called zoom where we were able to connect with one another.
Most of the guys hadn't seen one another in forty
six years. Somebody said, well, let's have a regular call
on Sundays, and it kept getting bigger and bigger.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
My high school class of nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
And then one of the guys said, well, we've got
our reunion in four years. Why don't we get Peter
to make a documentary about the zoom calls and then
our reunion. And my comment was, guys, who would care
about a bunch of trivileged white men, as there are
more despised demographic in.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
The America right now.
Speaker 7 (21:56):
A couple of years after that statement, I apologize to
them because I came with judgment, thinking who would care
about all these guys? But when you hear their stories,
you hear their vulnerability, you really care and you're not
looking at their color or their background, They're looking at
their honesty.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
People as they age certainly went through things, But what
we learned was that these folks, even these privileged, fortunate
sons of Harvard Westlake, were going through stuff even back then.
Take us to nineteen seventy four, southern California, the campus
of Harvard Westlake. For those of us who would have
no idea what that life was like.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
Well, you know, I'm a Hollywood guy, and I look
at it in terms of Okay, nineteen seventy four Nixon's resigning,
you have the movie Chinatown and Shampoo, which are about
southern California, written by the same guy, Robert Town who
went to Harvard School. That was in our hands the
(22:58):
idea of like the reaction of living here, and then
the fantasy that was happening with the movie Shampoo, and
then the movie Chinatown, you know, centered right here in
Los Angeles. That's what I remember that, and then Watergate
was happening.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So is there some universal experience that even you as
as a kid who was attending the Harvard School, this
posh institution, this legacy institution, with all of that prestige.
What did you find in your recollection that would have
been a universal experience for folks of your era in
that time?
Speaker 7 (23:34):
Boy, you know, when I started, it was a military academy,
and I was aware of how many military schools there
were around the country for a long long time.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
So I was I learned that that was kind.
Speaker 7 (23:51):
Of a more common than I had thought, So, I know,
that's a strange answer, because after eighth grade it became
more progressive and they got rid of the military.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
What was the school like during that transition that is
featured in the film The Way, I guess one of
the students talks to the secretary and she says, there's
no more uniforms, So that must have been quite a change.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
It was.
Speaker 7 (24:12):
It was literally overnight, you know, and the teachers became.
One of the teachers, my favorite teacher, who turned me
on to the writer Joan Diddion and probably to the
journalism as a career. She said, we wanted to let
you guys find your intellectual independence. So versus just reading
(24:34):
and memorizing and reciting, they wanted us to think for ourselves.
And this was a whole new way of going about education,
and they hired teachers who taught that.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
Way, to which I am very very grateful.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And we're talking to Peter Jones and about his new
film Fortunate Sons, which is coming out on PBS SoCal
next Wednesday. You'll be able to find it, I believe online.
After that, I want to talk about high school in
general and why I think it must be quite easy
to find stories among a group of people who attended
(25:10):
high school together. But I'd like your perspective. I was
president of my graduating class. I wanted that more than
anything at that time. What I didn't know at the
time was it is a lifetime curse because you are
the guy who's supposed to put the reunions together. And
this film ends with your fiftieth reunion, and we'll talk
(25:30):
more about that momentarily. But as I've gotten older and
we start to get farther away from the graduation, I wonder,
why do we have to keep getting back together? Is
what is it about spending four years of your adolescence
with folks that keeps you connected in some way for
the rest of your lives.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
We were connected for the rest of our lives, but
we didn't connect because of our experience.
Speaker 6 (25:58):
We're connected by those years.
Speaker 7 (26:00):
But most of the guys hadn't seen each other and
at all.
Speaker 6 (26:05):
It really was the.
Speaker 7 (26:06):
Phenomenon of the quarantine of COVID and be at home
and hey, let's reconnect with our high school class. And
most of the guys didn't know or hadn't seen one another,
so they got to know each other during the four
years between COVID quarantine and our reunion, which was in
(26:27):
May of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
So when you're watching it, you think, look.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
At these guys, but they'd only gotten to know each
other in the prior four years. They had the common
experience that they hadn't maintained the relationships that was created
because of COVID quarantine and zoom.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What was different about talking to these guys at this age,
this many years later, when you think back to how
you almost have been in the cafeteria, on the playing
field in class together all those years ago.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Oh my god. Boys are awful.
Speaker 7 (26:59):
I mean, they're self absorbed, they're competing, they do pranks.
I mean, there's one of the classmates, Franklin Reads was
bullied people. They put salt in his milk and they
would chase him around and beat him up.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
And boys can really be awful in their behavior.
Speaker 7 (27:20):
As we get older, thank god, and especially now in
our sixties, we're not competing with each other anymore, and
we actually have learned to listen and not be spouting
off all the time.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
Listen to me, look at me. It's more, Hey, what
do you think about something?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
We'll continue with Peter Jones and the remembrance of life
in southern California in nineteen seventy four, particularly at the
Harvard School.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Next, this is Michael Monk's Reports.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. Our guest is Peter Jones.
He's an Emmy Award winning filmmaker and he's got a
new documentary called Fortunate Sons. It's described as an intimate,
unguarded portrait about love, loss, redemption, and the lasting bonds
between the men of LA's Harvard School for Boys and
that class of nineteen seventy four. Premier September third on
(28:10):
PBS SoCal. When we meet the guys that you feature,
I was floored. We have an idea that the privilege
and the wealth at that school, you know, is something,
But to hear the connections, I mean, it is the
epitome of let me call my dad about this. A
lot of very well off dads, Hollywood producers. You've got
(28:32):
a guy connected to the Hormel meet family, my Monday Carpool.
Speaker 7 (28:38):
Christopher Hormel's mother drove the carpool and he's the great
grandson of George Hormel, who created in Minnesota the Hormel
meatpacking company. His great great grandfather admitted spam.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
Which got us through World War War two.
Speaker 7 (28:55):
When we're kids, we didn't know from Hormel or from
Greg RePEc and these movie stars and everything.
Speaker 6 (29:02):
It was just for us, the fathers.
Speaker 7 (29:05):
We had no idea what you know, was so exciting
or special about all of that. But Christopher turned out
to be, you know, his dad was a real womanizer,
and he beat up Christopher's mother, and then Christopher at
the end of our little segment in the film acknowledges
his father beat up on him too, and he had
(29:27):
to you know, address that in his own life and
also not want to become when his father not become
a womanizer himself.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
He said, who do I want to be? Didn't want
to be the kind of man his father was.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
How long did it take in these zoom conversations with
your classmates before folks started to open up about some
of those dark memories.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
You know.
Speaker 7 (29:49):
The zoom calls allowed guys because the majority watched the
zoom calls, didn't participate because they were available, you know.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
To watch.
Speaker 7 (29:58):
So there were a lot of guys who were too
shy to even show up on the Zoom Calls, but
I knew some guys that I thought would be interesting,
And some of the characters that we feature the most
are ones that didn't go on the Zoom Calls, but
guys that I had actually met in elementary school, Christopher
(30:19):
Hormel being one of them. The other main character my
best friend Johnny Allison, who told me he had Alzheimer's
in the middle of production of the film. That floored me,
and I had home movies of us as little kids,
but I still when I watched the movie, it still
breaks me up to see us while he's talking about
(30:40):
Alzheimer's and seeing these two little boys playing and going
to Disneyland together.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, that was a really difficult part of the film
to learn about somebody dealing with that, because we all
know how horrible that disease is. I'm wondering, if not
just that individual's diagnosis, but frankly just your age. It's
been a long time since you were in high school together.
Was there any serious confrontation with mortality that perhaps you
(31:05):
had not confronted before.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (31:08):
God, Michael, you know one of my guys, one of
my classmates, who just happened to write a show called
Minami vice and create another one called the Equalizer. He
told me, well, Peter, we've got to have some big
climax at the reunions. It's got to get murdered or something.
I said, Scott, it's a documentary. Something will happen. And
(31:31):
you know it did happen because we lost two of the.
Speaker 6 (31:35):
Main characters that are in the film.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Two of them died in car accidents within nine months
of the reunion, blowing the surprise.
Speaker 6 (31:46):
But yeah, you were saying, did anything happen?
Speaker 7 (31:49):
Yeah, we lost two people and that I cared about
very deeply, and we dedicated the film to them.
Speaker 8 (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
One of those individuals, and according to the notes that
you displayed towards the end of the film, was looking
at at a second home or something up in northern
California and was driving after that and lost his life.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
He was he was driving to the birthday, the third
birthday of his grandson, and he you know, and always
with his kids, we don't turn on the car until
everyone has on their seatbelt. And what's crazy is he
was throwing from the car. We think perhaps he was
reaching for a cell phone or something, because you know,
(32:31):
he hit a tree and he was declared brain dead,
and the whole family converge the next day and they
pulled the plug to let him go. And that was
pretty damn shocking because in the movie he's the great storyteller,
and this happened.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
It was it was really it shattered me.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
You're a Hollywood guy, you are a storyteller. Just out
our audience what we know as some of your work.
Speaker 7 (33:02):
Well, we have in October the centennial of Johnny Carson's birth,
and I am the lucky guy who is able to
finally convince the Carson estate to let me make a
documentary film about the probably for a while the most
famous man in America, the King of Late Night, Johnny Carson.
(33:25):
That became the highest rated documentary in the history of
American Masters on PBS, and I attributed to Johnny Carson
because he had a nightly audience of seventeen million. I
also did a documentary won an Emmy for Judy Garland
Now you can't go wrong with Wizard of Oz and
Dorothy and her amazing life.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
And then I made a documentary.
Speaker 7 (33:48):
About Betty Davis, who will also lived for dramatic life
and was a phenomenal actor.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
American Experience American Masters on PBS. Those are the best.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
Yes they are.
Speaker 7 (34:01):
I got to do the producer Samuel Goldwe those real
name which Pool Gelbfish, and he came from Poland.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
In fact, all the major Stutino heads, Louis B. May or,
Samuel Goldwin.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
They all lived within a fifty mile radius in Poland,
and they all happened to come to America to pursue
their dreams. But they all went to a movie theater
and said, there's something to this. So all the movie
mobules came from Poland and invented the American movie industry.
And they were Jewish, and they projected in America that
(34:34):
was all about white cricket fences and beautiful people from
the Midwest. Now that's the miracle of Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I know a lot of people would be excited to
see the Johnny Carson documentary. Hey, put Burbank on the map.
I'm talking to you from Burbank right now, right across
from where he would broadcast. It's all very exciting. Judy Garland,
you know the Samuel Mayer. That's easy. What do you think,
especially here in southern California, will draw folks to see
fortunate sons?
Speaker 6 (35:03):
Oh?
Speaker 8 (35:03):
What will draw them is universal issues like mortality and
watching men being vulnerable with one another and opening up
watching through the film we've watched.
Speaker 6 (35:18):
I watched the audience at the premiere, not the screen.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
And everybody was riven because they're hearing people tell the
most intimate things about themselves to each other and to me.
Speaker 6 (35:31):
And when somebody is being.
Speaker 7 (35:33):
Honest about their life, it's riveting and it's just engaging
and you want to.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
Know, oh, what's going to happen next to that person.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Peter Jones is the Emmy Award winning filmmaker who has
just put out Fortunate Sons, an intimate, unguarded portrait about love, loss, redemption,
and the lasting bonds between the men of LA's Harvard
School for Boys class of seventy four. We now know
it Harvard Westlake. Peter, congratulations on this beautiful film. I'll
look forward to watching it again on the premiere. Thanks
(36:07):
for spending some time with me and KFI.
Speaker 6 (36:09):
Thank you, Michael.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
That's it for this edition of Michael Monks Reports. We'll
be back next week for another look at the week
in news, and you can find me all week long
bringing you those headlines right here on KFI. Revisionist History
with Malcolm Gladwell is next. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend
and thanks for keeping it right here on KFI AM
six forty
We've got another hour together on this Saturday night of
Labor Day weekend. Hope you're enjoying it. People living and
working in Downtown LA say they are fed up with
mental health crises on the streets, crime, vandalism, other issues.
They say it's making the living environment unpleasant, and businesses
say it's difficult to operate. The Downtown LA Residents Association
has a new survey out detailing all this, and we're
(00:22):
joined now by the group's co founders, Cassie Horton and
Leslie writings Cassie Leslie, so grateful that both of you
are joining us again to talk about life and existing
in downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
You've got the results of this survey, and the key
stat that stands out to me first is one that
I think is really important because I try to add
this context to a lot of stuff we talk about
on KFI. You asked these seven hundred plus respondents to
rate one through five, with five being very important of
(00:56):
what you think of these issues. Eighty one percent of
the respondent's put number five very important. Acute public mental
health crises and episodes. This is the stuff that doesn't
show up in other statistics. Crime statistics and those sorts
of things. And the way that I can textualize writing metro,
for example, is like, this doesn't show up in the
(01:17):
crime statistics. You cannot quantify how uncomfortable somebody made you feel,
but it is a deterrent to people writing metro. It
is a deterrent to people being in downtown Los Angeles. Cassie,
this looks like a big deal. How big of a
deal is it in your eyes?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, I mean I think that this is really important.
Like you talked about differentiating between what's really happening what's
not showing up in the crime statistics. A lot of
folks focus on violent crime, and that's really important. We
want people to be physically safe, but the reality is
(01:54):
both in terms of the level of human suffering without
sufficient support to meet their needs, and then the actual,
you know, bigger picture community consequences where you know, you
see somebody across the street who is maybe having a
schizophrenic break. You don't know, you know what is going
(02:16):
on with them. You can tell that they're very unwell
and you cannot help, but wonder are they may be
going to put themselves in a position of danger walk
into the street something like that, or you know, I
think it's reasonable to ask might there be some harm
coming my way? I've I've certainly had situations where you know,
somebody threw a bottle at me and I didn't even know,
(02:36):
you know, if they were processing what that experience is.
So naming the difference between somebody facing that kind of
mental health crisis somebody who is homeless on hows who
you know, really just needs a roof over their head
to help them start to move in a positive direction.
Those are two really different things in terms of the
(02:57):
support that somebody needs, and so it's important. But all so,
downtown people walk. You know a lot of people don't
have cars. When people come downtown, they want to be
able to walk from a restaurant to the metro station,
you know, take the metro up to the museum, whatever
it is, and without kind of a welcoming, accessible public
(03:19):
realm where people can move in that way without you know,
worrying about somebody or worrying if they might harm them.
We're in a really tough spot and that deters folks
from wanting to go to that restaurant that they really
like to frequent.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Leslie Lake, a lot of people downtown. As Cassie just mentioned,
I like to walk. I prefer to walk, I prefer
to hop on public transit when possible. But I do
drive a vehicle from the fashion district up here to
the studio in Burbank just about every day, and very
often traffic is completely disrupted, not by drivers, but by
somebody that does appear to be suffering one of these
(03:55):
public mental health crises or episodes in the middle of
the road. It happens. I'm sure it does happen daily.
I see it almost daily. I'm not asking you this
to make the audience laugh or to encourage them to
lack empathy, but can you just illustrate for our listeners
what that term means. What are we seeing in terms
(04:17):
that people will better understand what are these episodes?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
So, I mean, well, I want to frame everything you
know in compassion, right, because what we're seeing downtown it's
very hard. We're not mental health care professionals, so what
you see on the street, you don't really know what
it is.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Right.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Some people are walking around half naked or sometimes fully naked.
Sometimes they're very dirty, they're filthy.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
You know that.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
It's very clear they haven't been cared for taking care
of themselves, they might be incapable of taking care of themselves.
Sometimes it's people who are talking to themselves, shouting to themselves,
speaking to voices that aren't there and we can hear.
Sometimes you know, it's people way on the floor, rolling
around like you know, wandering in and out of traffic,
(05:03):
as you say. And I think it's it's this spectrum
of behavior where it's very difficult. You can't diagnose it
as a you know, lay person walking around living your
life day to day. And so, you know, I think
we kind of view it in the sort of spectrum
of compassion, but at some points, like we have to
do something about it because right now the city and
(05:26):
county isn't doing anything. And so I think if you
start with compassion for the people that need the compassion,
need the care and the treatment to be brought in,
and then you know there's people in there that are
taking advantage of the system, you know what, true will
take care of that as well. But I think right
now this is very important that we do something about
it because it is extremely disruptive and I think it's
very caustic to the social fabric as well, because We're
(05:49):
basically being asked to normal as things that are completely unacceptable,
and you know, walk down the street every single day
has things that you know.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
If we can't do anything about, we don't know how
to us.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
And you know, I just think it's it's really really
bad for everybody involved, you know, for both the people
on the street experiencing it, for the people living downtown,
and I think for society at large.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
You know, it says something really bad about it as.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
A society that we accept that that we tolerate it,
and also that our leaders you ask us to tolerate it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I think it's interesting and correct me if I'm wrong,
Cassie and my own understanding of the situation. I know
this is a problem across La City, across La County.
There is homelessness, There are people who suffer from these
mental health challenges. But it does seem that downtown residents
and businesses are expected to just absorb this situation at
(06:41):
an inordinate rate when compared to neighbors.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, and there's there's a real history and you know
something as Leslie and I are co founders of this group,
the Downtown Residents Association, and folks who live downtown are
very aware that skid is a neighborhood. You know, it
is part of downtown where folks live, where they are housed,
(07:06):
they've been housed for a long time. It's also the
highest concentration of social services, certainly in the greater Los
Angeles area, maybe it may be honestly in the entire nation.
So you know, we've got really we've got care providers
doing really important work to help people get on their feet.
It's also disproportionately where folks come when they're having a
(07:29):
really hard time. It's where a lot of the harm
reduction services are provided related to you know, drug use
and making sure that that is safer. So we're in
and we're in a position where Los Angeles has a
long history of really sending folks oftentimes to downtown to
(07:50):
receive services, and a lot of people not getting their
needs met and they're they're here and they're stuck and
there's no place for them to get housed or whatever
it is, and they're living on the streets. So you know,
I think it's really important to name that skid Row
is a neighborhood, and we often hear from folks living
in skid Row that they don't know how to address
these things either. You know, they're seeing people in there
(08:14):
and in their housing complexes who are really suffering, whether
that be from mental health issues that are untreated or
from you know, potential potential substance use issues that they're
navigating with and their house, but they also aren't getting
that support. So, you know, talking about what's happening downtown
without recognizing that skid Row is a historic, important place
(08:38):
in Los Angeles, but it's also a place where we've
really concentrated these issues in some ways intentionally and in
some ways it's it's been the way that that things
have compounded over time.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
That's that's a reality.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
You know, you can't talk about what's happening downtown without
recognizing skid Row plays an important part in in the
broader neighborhood and but also within the region.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
We'll continue this conversation next as downtown LA residents and
businesses say they want action to clean up the populous
and economically powerful neighborhood, and later, a new documentary takes
us back to nineteen seventy four in Los Angeles and
the group of guys who graduated from the Harvard School
Don Michael Monks from KFI News. We've been talking about
the ongoing challenges facing Downtown La, as illustrated in a
(09:24):
new survey from the Downtown LA Residents Association. Our guest
are the co founders of that group, Cassie Horton and
Leslie Writings. I mentioned earlier that the top concern of
the respondents, or at least the one that was rated
the most as a very important issue, being acute public
mental health crises in episodes. There are also concerns about
actual crimes being committed downtown. There's also concerns about public
(09:48):
urination and defecation, street level open air drug use.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Leslie, I know you.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Also asked the these survey takers to suggest solutions or
to some solutions. What did we find from residents? We
know that the city government has had a difficult time
finding appropriate solutions. What do the residents and business owners
have to say?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Yeah, well, they had a lot to say, and it's
all over the board, and I, you know, to try
and synthesize.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
It all at a very high level.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
I think I think more than anything, what people really
want is action, and I think they want effective results.
I think there's a pretty pretty broad consensus I think
for effective policing.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
I think thoughtful policing.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
Different parts of Downtown have different thoughts on.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
What enforcement of the law looks like, but I think
there's very broad support for thoughtful enforcement of the law.
I think things like open.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Air drug use, things that are pretty clearly illegal, there's
not a lot of tolerance for that, and I think
there's sort of a.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
There's a disconnect. People don't understand why it's tolerated so openly.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
Yeah, I think people just really want to see these
things that are so flagrantly illegal, that are oftentimes perpetrated
in clear sight of law enforcement, you know, out on
the sidewalk front families with children, and.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
People have a very hard time understanding why we're not
enforcing these laws. I mean, drug use is just one
of the more pointing in examples.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
But there's all sorts of things like that that we
see downtown, and it happens across the city. But I
think Downtown, by virtue of our density, because of some
of the populations that are concentrated in downtown, we see
it more frequently. Switch and we're all on the foot right, we're.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
All walking around, so we see it. We're in it.
So yeah, I think people just really want to see
accent and solutions.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Again, I speak to you all as a journalist, but
also has a neighbor. I live down there too, and
the spouse and I. Unfortunately, we've had some conversations recently
about like, what are we what are we doing here?
I mean, if it's not going to get better, why
are we staking our future down here? What are we
going to invest in? If we're looking for a home,
a permanent home someday, why should it be this. I
was also being in the La Times recently, and I
(12:02):
share this just as a sign perhaps that I'm turning
towards cynicism about downtown and I don't like that. But
I was reading this article in the Times about the
old Macy's that I'm so sad we lost. I love
that Macy's. They're turning it into I guess a pickleball
kind of membership club, some kind of weird thing. And
I'm thinking, you know, okay, Downtown is exactly the type
(12:22):
of place that has that population. The folks who are young,
the professional, They might have some money that they could
spend and socialize in that arena. But I think this
isn't going to work because by the time this thing
gets to open, Downtown is going to deteriorate further and
you're going to start losing folks. So talk me off
the ledge. I want to finish this up with both
of you. Talk me off the ledge. Why is downtown
(12:44):
La worth fighting Forecastie, We'll start with you.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Downtown is very much worth fighting for. I'm actually an optimist.
I was just talking to fellow neighbors at one of
our community events yesterday, and I think a lot of
people are really optimistic downtown in terms of why it's
worth saving. It is the historic, cultural, civic heart of
(13:09):
our city.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
It is the welcome that that we put out for visitors.
We have our concentration of hotels, all of this La Live,
the broad the Olympics. It's also extremely socioeconomically and racially
diverse in a way that no other neighborhood is this integrated,
and that is a really important thing. It makes for
(13:31):
a very special place to be to live. It makes
for a vibrancy in terms of the overall cultural experience.
So Downtown is special and there's a reason ninety thousand
people live here. There's also a reason. You know, every
one of your friends, despite what they might be saying
right now about coming downtown, like they like, they probably
have a favorite place downtown, whether that's Grand Central Market
(13:52):
or the Broad or they like to go to Little Tokyo.
Like we are one broader downtown and people love love,
you know, they've got memories down town. So we have
to fight for this neighborhood. And the thing that makes
me really optimistic right now is the residential piece. And
we've talked about this before, but in two thousand, eighteen thousand.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
People live downtown. Right now it's.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Closer to ninety thousand. We did not used to have
a voting block that could say, hey, you know, things
aren't looking good. We need to turn the street lights on,
and we're going to hold you accountable for that if
you don't follow through as our elected leaders. So the
people in downtown really don't want to live anywhere else.
They love a dense, walkable urban environment with this vibrant seat,
(14:35):
and they're very much here to fight for it.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And Leslie, I heard Cassie say, you know that the residence,
the number of residents has multiplied exponentially, But I wonder
if you know, if folks are as strong as they
think they could be, or as much as they know
they could be.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Are they voting enough? Are they engaged enough?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Are we just a bunch of transplants who thought we
were moving to Manhattan, you know, out here on the
West coast, and we're not as engaged as we should be.
But help us out here. Why should we get engaged?
Why should we fight? Why is it worth saving?
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Well?
Speaker 5 (15:06):
Democracy is a participatory sport, right, and that's what we're doing.
And you know, people are attracted to an object in motion,
and I think a little bit of hope goes a
long way. I think that you know, Cassie, you know,
couldn't have said it better.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
All the reasons that Downtown is worth fighting for.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
And I think the people that choose to live downtown,
especially post COVID, when Downtown has you know, hit pretty
hard and it's coming up.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Really want to live downtown.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
They are very bought into the lifestyle and everything downtown
offers because it is the only city and the entire
region really, I guess San Francisco is the only thing close.
So for the most of the safe this is about it.
It's the only city, so they bought in.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
And you know what's funny is when I talk to
people who have.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Moved here since COVID, so they didn't experience downtown sort
of like in its quote.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Unquote prime, like before COVID and its last iteration.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
You know, their soul though, this is great, it's awesome,
you know, whereas you know some of us, you know
ogs who saw you know, where it was on its
rise prior, they're like, oh man, we're struggling, it's like
but these folks who didn't know that, they're like, this
is great, Like, yeah, we can get over. It's a
big deal because honestly, we have it pretty good, like
the concrete that was laid down, the investments that were made.
The difference between downtown when I was growing up in
(16:29):
the nineties versus downtown now is just night and day.
So you know, I will say a lot of times
the public discourse around downtown.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Is everything's wrong. Everything's wrong, everything's.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
Wrong, and a lot of it is created right because
for a long time the city and county basically use
Downtown to put everything they didn't want to deal with right.
And they still want to keep doing that, which is
a challenge. But the thing is they're also using downtown
as like their hope for the future because they want
to put the other thing they don't want to deal with,
which is population growth and density.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Right, So they have.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
These two conflicting sides, right, it all downtown, and we
have too. The good site has to win out because
the bad side is morally repugnant and bad and wrong.
We have to take care of people, and that's worth
fighting for. And I think people that live here know that,
and they.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Like it down here. And we're growing because they're the
only place that's grown.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
And rent, thanks to supply, is pretty flat and people
like paying less. So they're going to keep coming and
we get going to get those people registered to vote
and keep organizing them and growing power in downtown.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
And we're off to the races.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
All right, Fine, I'll stay, I'll stay. Hey, you know what,
might they actually lowered my rent fifty bucks last year.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I was shocked. I guess you know. It is a
good neighborhood and you can walk.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Everywhere, and the restaurants and the grocery is right there,
and there are a lot of neighbors and the rooftops
and it's a vibe. Man, But they have got to
clean it up. I mean, we cannot be out there
on our own. It's going to take some government help,
There's no doubt about it. I know you too are
helping to lead the way, along with the rest of
the coalition that makes up the Downtown LA Residents Association.
I'm grateful that you all did this survey. It's very illuminating.
(18:00):
And thanks again for coming on KFI to lament and
to share the love of downtown Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, thanks for having us, and we hope our mayor
and city council member will rally behind us. Residents are
ready to fight with them, and we really need a
champion right now.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Forty six years after they graduated from the Harvard School
now known as Harvard Westlake, the guys all reunited during
COVID on Zoom. Their shared experience their lives since their
school days are now the focus of a new documentary,
Fortunate Suns. It comes out next week. The director is
with us next. The Harvard School class of nineteen seventy
four left their classrooms here in LA and embarked on
(18:39):
the lives they were expected to lead. Born into families
of wealth and influence, they would reunite forty six years later,
during the pandemic where else but over Zoom. The meetings
gave the guys a chance to be vulnerable, to remember,
and to prepare for a real life, in person fiftieth reunion.
It's also the story in a new documentary, Fortunate Suns,
(19:00):
which premieres next Wednesday on PBS SoCal and the director,
Peter Jones, is with us now. Peter, thanks so much
for taking some time for KFI.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
Of course, love k voice of the Dodgers.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
We appreciate that, and a voice of the Chargers also,
so if you're a sports fan, a we're the guys.
Look the film you did, Fortunate Sons was really great.
I enjoyed getting an advanced screening of it. The title
really speaks to who we're talking about here. This is
a film where everybody seemed to be pretty open about
(19:34):
what we might call today privilege. And I thought that
that was an interesting thing to see because I bet
a lot of people in southern California have ideas when
they hear Harvard Westlake, tell me why you put that
front and center?
Speaker 6 (19:46):
You know what?
Speaker 7 (19:47):
I was advised Peter hit it head on the privilege
and lifestyles of the sons of the rich and famous.
As somebody once put it just hit what the dads
were were great overachievers and embedded things, created stuff, and
we grew up in these extraordinary environments. Lead with that
(20:09):
in the beginning of the film, so you see kind
of from where we came. Then it becomes what life
does to everybody, which becomes a universal story because no
matter how.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
Rich you may have been when you were.
Speaker 7 (20:24):
Born, money and stuff can't hide us from reality, illness, addiction,
all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Now we definitely learn in this film the way that
time can be a great equalizer, regardless of where you
come from. When I first started the film, your director's
choice was to open with some of these zoom calls,
which ended up being the motivation for putting a full
film together. I got to admit it was a little
jarring because it takes you right back to five years
(20:55):
ago when that was how every meeting, every communication was
taking place.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Let's start there.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What got you guys back together, I guess at that point,
forty six or so years after graduation, was it was.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Different for all of us.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
We went through COVID quarantine and we had this thing
called zoom where we were able to connect with one another.
Most of the guys hadn't seen one another in forty
six years. Somebody said, well, let's have a regular call
on Sundays, and it kept getting bigger and bigger.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
My high school class of nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
And then one of the guys said, well, we've got
our reunion in four years. Why don't we get Peter
to make a documentary about the zoom calls and then
our reunion. And my comment was, guys, who would care
about a bunch of trivileged white men, as there are
more despised demographic in.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
The America right now.
Speaker 7 (21:56):
A couple of years after that statement, I apologize to
them because I came with judgment, thinking who would care
about all these guys? But when you hear their stories,
you hear their vulnerability, you really care and you're not
looking at their color or their background, They're looking at
their honesty.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
People as they age certainly went through things, But what
we learned was that these folks, even these privileged, fortunate
sons of Harvard Westlake, were going through stuff even back then.
Take us to nineteen seventy four, southern California, the campus
of Harvard Westlake. For those of us who would have
no idea what that life was like.
Speaker 7 (22:36):
Well, you know, I'm a Hollywood guy, and I look
at it in terms of Okay, nineteen seventy four Nixon's resigning,
you have the movie Chinatown and Shampoo, which are about
southern California, written by the same guy, Robert Town who
went to Harvard School. That was in our hands the
(22:58):
idea of like the reaction of living here, and then
the fantasy that was happening with the movie Shampoo, and
then the movie Chinatown, you know, centered right here in
Los Angeles. That's what I remember that, and then Watergate
was happening.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So is there some universal experience that even you as
as a kid who was attending the Harvard School, this
posh institution, this legacy institution, with all of that prestige.
What did you find in your recollection that would have
been a universal experience for folks of your era in
that time?
Speaker 7 (23:34):
Boy, you know, when I started, it was a military academy,
and I was aware of how many military schools there
were around the country for a long long time.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
So I was I learned that that was kind.
Speaker 7 (23:51):
Of a more common than I had thought, So, I know,
that's a strange answer, because after eighth grade it became
more progressive and they got rid of the military.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
What was the school like during that transition that is
featured in the film The Way, I guess one of
the students talks to the secretary and she says, there's
no more uniforms, So that must have been quite a change.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
It was.
Speaker 7 (24:12):
It was literally overnight, you know, and the teachers became.
One of the teachers, my favorite teacher, who turned me
on to the writer Joan Diddion and probably to the
journalism as a career. She said, we wanted to let
you guys find your intellectual independence. So versus just reading
(24:34):
and memorizing and reciting, they wanted us to think for ourselves.
And this was a whole new way of going about education,
and they hired teachers who taught that.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
Way, to which I am very very grateful.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And we're talking to Peter Jones and about his new
film Fortunate Sons, which is coming out on PBS SoCal
next Wednesday. You'll be able to find it, I believe online.
After that, I want to talk about high school in
general and why I think it must be quite easy
to find stories among a group of people who attended
(25:10):
high school together. But I'd like your perspective. I was
president of my graduating class. I wanted that more than
anything at that time. What I didn't know at the
time was it is a lifetime curse because you are
the guy who's supposed to put the reunions together. And
this film ends with your fiftieth reunion, and we'll talk
(25:30):
more about that momentarily. But as I've gotten older and
we start to get farther away from the graduation, I wonder,
why do we have to keep getting back together? Is
what is it about spending four years of your adolescence
with folks that keeps you connected in some way for
the rest of your lives.
Speaker 6 (25:51):
Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
We were connected for the rest of our lives, but
we didn't connect because of our experience.
Speaker 6 (25:58):
We're connected by those years.
Speaker 7 (26:00):
But most of the guys hadn't seen each other and
at all.
Speaker 6 (26:05):
It really was the.
Speaker 7 (26:06):
Phenomenon of the quarantine of COVID and be at home
and hey, let's reconnect with our high school class. And
most of the guys didn't know or hadn't seen one another,
so they got to know each other during the four
years between COVID quarantine and our reunion, which was in
(26:27):
May of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
So when you're watching it, you think, look.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
At these guys, but they'd only gotten to know each
other in the prior four years. They had the common
experience that they hadn't maintained the relationships that was created
because of COVID quarantine and zoom.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What was different about talking to these guys at this age,
this many years later, when you think back to how
you almost have been in the cafeteria, on the playing
field in class together all those years ago.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Oh my god. Boys are awful.
Speaker 7 (26:59):
I mean, they're self absorbed, they're competing, they do pranks.
I mean, there's one of the classmates, Franklin Reads was
bullied people. They put salt in his milk and they
would chase him around and beat him up.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
And boys can really be awful in their behavior.
Speaker 7 (27:20):
As we get older, thank god, and especially now in
our sixties, we're not competing with each other anymore, and
we actually have learned to listen and not be spouting
off all the time.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
Listen to me, look at me. It's more, Hey, what
do you think about something?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
We'll continue with Peter Jones and the remembrance of life
in southern California in nineteen seventy four, particularly at the
Harvard School.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Next, this is Michael Monk's Reports.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. Our guest is Peter Jones.
He's an Emmy Award winning filmmaker and he's got a
new documentary called Fortunate Sons. It's described as an intimate,
unguarded portrait about love, loss, redemption, and the lasting bonds
between the men of LA's Harvard School for Boys and
that class of nineteen seventy four. Premier September third on
(28:10):
PBS SoCal. When we meet the guys that you feature,
I was floored. We have an idea that the privilege
and the wealth at that school, you know, is something,
But to hear the connections, I mean, it is the
epitome of let me call my dad about this. A
lot of very well off dads, Hollywood producers. You've got
(28:32):
a guy connected to the Hormel meet family, my Monday Carpool.
Speaker 7 (28:38):
Christopher Hormel's mother drove the carpool and he's the great
grandson of George Hormel, who created in Minnesota the Hormel
meatpacking company. His great great grandfather admitted spam.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
Which got us through World War War two.
Speaker 7 (28:55):
When we're kids, we didn't know from Hormel or from
Greg RePEc and these movie stars and everything.
Speaker 6 (29:02):
It was just for us, the fathers.
Speaker 7 (29:05):
We had no idea what you know, was so exciting
or special about all of that. But Christopher turned out
to be, you know, his dad was a real womanizer,
and he beat up Christopher's mother, and then Christopher at
the end of our little segment in the film acknowledges
his father beat up on him too, and he had
(29:27):
to you know, address that in his own life and
also not want to become when his father not become
a womanizer himself.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
He said, who do I want to be? Didn't want
to be the kind of man his father was.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
How long did it take in these zoom conversations with
your classmates before folks started to open up about some
of those dark memories.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
You know.
Speaker 7 (29:49):
The zoom calls allowed guys because the majority watched the
zoom calls, didn't participate because they were available, you know.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
To watch.
Speaker 7 (29:58):
So there were a lot of guys who were too
shy to even show up on the Zoom Calls, but
I knew some guys that I thought would be interesting,
And some of the characters that we feature the most
are ones that didn't go on the Zoom Calls, but
guys that I had actually met in elementary school, Christopher
(30:19):
Hormel being one of them. The other main character my
best friend Johnny Allison, who told me he had Alzheimer's
in the middle of production of the film. That floored me,
and I had home movies of us as little kids,
but I still when I watched the movie, it still
breaks me up to see us while he's talking about
(30:40):
Alzheimer's and seeing these two little boys playing and going
to Disneyland together.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, that was a really difficult part of the film
to learn about somebody dealing with that, because we all
know how horrible that disease is. I'm wondering, if not
just that individual's diagnosis, but frankly just your age. It's
been a long time since you were in high school together.
Was there any serious confrontation with mortality that perhaps you
(31:05):
had not confronted before.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (31:08):
God, Michael, you know one of my guys, one of
my classmates, who just happened to write a show called
Minami vice and create another one called the Equalizer. He
told me, well, Peter, we've got to have some big
climax at the reunions. It's got to get murdered or something.
I said, Scott, it's a documentary. Something will happen. And
(31:31):
you know it did happen because we lost two of the.
Speaker 6 (31:35):
Main characters that are in the film.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Two of them died in car accidents within nine months
of the reunion, blowing the surprise.
Speaker 6 (31:46):
But yeah, you were saying, did anything happen?
Speaker 7 (31:49):
Yeah, we lost two people and that I cared about
very deeply, and we dedicated the film to them.
Speaker 8 (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
One of those individuals, and according to the notes that
you displayed towards the end of the film, was looking
at at a second home or something up in northern
California and was driving after that and lost his life.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
He was he was driving to the birthday, the third
birthday of his grandson, and he you know, and always
with his kids, we don't turn on the car until
everyone has on their seatbelt. And what's crazy is he
was throwing from the car. We think perhaps he was
reaching for a cell phone or something, because you know,
(32:31):
he hit a tree and he was declared brain dead,
and the whole family converge the next day and they
pulled the plug to let him go. And that was
pretty damn shocking because in the movie he's the great storyteller,
and this happened.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
It was it was really it shattered me.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
You're a Hollywood guy, you are a storyteller. Just out
our audience what we know as some of your work.
Speaker 7 (33:02):
Well, we have in October the centennial of Johnny Carson's birth,
and I am the lucky guy who is able to
finally convince the Carson estate to let me make a
documentary film about the probably for a while the most
famous man in America, the King of Late Night, Johnny Carson.
(33:25):
That became the highest rated documentary in the history of
American Masters on PBS, and I attributed to Johnny Carson
because he had a nightly audience of seventeen million. I
also did a documentary won an Emmy for Judy Garland
Now you can't go wrong with Wizard of Oz and
Dorothy and her amazing life.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
And then I made a documentary.
Speaker 7 (33:48):
About Betty Davis, who will also lived for dramatic life
and was a phenomenal actor.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
American Experience American Masters on PBS. Those are the best.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
Yes they are.
Speaker 7 (34:01):
I got to do the producer Samuel Goldwe those real
name which Pool Gelbfish, and he came from Poland.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
In fact, all the major Stutino heads, Louis B. May or,
Samuel Goldwin.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
They all lived within a fifty mile radius in Poland,
and they all happened to come to America to pursue
their dreams. But they all went to a movie theater
and said, there's something to this. So all the movie
mobules came from Poland and invented the American movie industry.
And they were Jewish, and they projected in America that
(34:34):
was all about white cricket fences and beautiful people from
the Midwest. Now that's the miracle of Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I know a lot of people would be excited to
see the Johnny Carson documentary. Hey, put Burbank on the map.
I'm talking to you from Burbank right now, right across
from where he would broadcast. It's all very exciting. Judy Garland,
you know the Samuel Mayer. That's easy. What do you think,
especially here in southern California, will draw folks to see
fortunate sons?
Speaker 6 (35:03):
Oh?
Speaker 8 (35:03):
What will draw them is universal issues like mortality and
watching men being vulnerable with one another and opening up
watching through the film we've watched.
Speaker 6 (35:18):
I watched the audience at the premiere, not the screen.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
And everybody was riven because they're hearing people tell the
most intimate things about themselves to each other and to me.
Speaker 6 (35:31):
And when somebody is being.
Speaker 7 (35:33):
Honest about their life, it's riveting and it's just engaging
and you want to.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
Know, oh, what's going to happen next to that person.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Peter Jones is the Emmy Award winning filmmaker who has
just put out Fortunate Sons, an intimate, unguarded portrait about love, loss, redemption,
and the lasting bonds between the men of LA's Harvard
School for Boys class of seventy four. We now know
it Harvard Westlake. Peter, congratulations on this beautiful film. I'll
look forward to watching it again on the premiere. Thanks
(36:07):
for spending some time with me and KFI.
Speaker 6 (36:09):
Thank you, Michael.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
That's it for this edition of Michael Monks Reports. We'll
be back next week for another look at the week
in news, and you can find me all week long
bringing you those headlines right here on KFI. Revisionist History
with Malcolm Gladwell is next. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend
and thanks for keeping it right here on KFI AM
six forty
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