Month: March 2017

NORMAN LEAR

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Writer and producer Norman Lear has been called a one-man Golden Age of Television, responsible for such hit ’70s shows as All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons and Good Times. Tackling such tough subjects as racial bigotry, homophobia and abortion, Lear and his colleagues enlarged the world of TV’s sitcoms and drew huge audiences. He had three of the top four shows on the air during one season, five of the top nine on another.

Now 94, Lear is still developing new television shows and still dedicated to the social activism that has long accompanied his television work. He launched People for the American Way to challenge the mixing of religion and politics and the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center to analyze the impact of entertainment on news and culture. A World War II veteran who flew 52 missions, he later purchased a July 4, 1776, copy of the Declaration of Independence for $8.1 million, then sent it across America with historical exhibits and voting information.

BARBARA ISENBERG: When your World War II tour of duty ended in 1945, did you have a career plan?

NORMAN LEAR: As a kid of the Depression, with parents who were out to lunch, I needed a role model, and that was my Uncle Jack, who used to flip me a quarter. I wanted to be an uncle who could flip a quarter. He was a press agent, and I’m not sure I knew what a press agent was, but I wanted to be him. When I was overseas, I wrote a one-pager announcing my release from the Air Force and how brilliant I would be as a press agent, and I sent it to Uncle Jack. He sent it out, and I got a job in New York writing amusing things about stars and Broadway shows for newspaper columnists.

BI: How did you make the leap from press agent to comedy writer?

NL: I moved to California, which is where I met Ed Simmons, who wanted to be a comedy writer, and that turned my attention to comedy writing. One night, our wives were at the movies, and we wrote a parody of The Sheik of Araby. There were a lot of nightclubs around, and we sold it for $40 to the first club we went to. That was what I made in a week trying to be a press agent and selling door to door. We wrote a piece for Danny Thomas that he did at Ciro’s nightclub, and a major agent in the audience called us. Soon we were writing for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and we did TV specials for people like Jack Benny and Danny Kaye.

BI: Did you ever think you’d write for television?

NL: No. There was no television when I was thinking about making a living. My mother heard me singing in the shower and thought maybe I could be a cantor, but I was never asked by my parents what I wanted to be.

BI: What were some of the shows on TV when you started out?

NL: There were The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flying Nun, Petticoat Junction and Father Knows Best. The biggest problems an American family faced in those shows were the boss is coming to dinner and the roast is ruined or mother dented the car and how will the kids help her keep the news from daddy.

BI: How did All in the Family come about? You and your producing partner, Bud Yorkin, were working mostly on movies by that time.

NL: Bud was making a Pink Panther film in England, saw the U.K. television series Till Death Us Do Part, about a bigoted father and his liberal son, and told me about it. I was getting divorced, I was in great difficulty financially and in live television you owned nothing. I knew I had to do something that had reruns, and I was thinking about that when Bud mentioned Till Death Us Do Part. Within two weeks, I had written 82 pages of notes for a show that became All in the Family.

BI: You borrowed a bit from your own family experiences when you were writing All in the Family, didn’t you?

NL: Well, my dad did have a floor model Atwater Kent radio, and he controlled the radio dial from a red leather chair next to it much like Archie would control the TV dial later. He used to call me “the laziest white kid he knew.” And when I screamed at him that he was putting down a race of people just to call his son lazy, he would yell back, “That’s not what I’m doing, and you’re also the dumbest white kid.” He would also tell my mom to stifle herself, just like Archie told Edith.

BI: When the first episode ran in January 1971, CBS started the show with a disclaimer and hired extra switchboard people to deal with viewer responses.

NL: There was no subject we did that was not an everyday event in our family or our extended family or in the house up the street. But people would say to me, “If you have a message, pal, there’s Western Union. You have no right to use television.” I used to say, “That’s not what we’re doing. We’re trying to bring an audience to its knees with laughter.”

BI: Are you saying that shows like All in the Family and Maude, with their story lines about racism, attempted rape and other rarely discussed topics, weren’t written to inform and persuade?

NL: It was years later when I began to accept that there was a message. I’m a grown man with strong feelings, and of course it’s reflected in my work. But there were messages on TV before, too. Their message was that there were no economic issues, no moral questions, no problems. That is also a message.

BI: How do you see America today?

NL: I see America the way Dwight Eisenhower warned us it could be in his farewell address, talking about the possibility of a military-industrial complex taking us over. I feel that is exactly what is choking us right now, delivering the fruits of everybody’s labor to the 1 percent. So many people in our country felt hopeless to such a degree that they would throw their weight behind a Donald Trump.

BI: Any thoughts about how America came up with two such polarizing presidential candidates in 2016?

NL: It was the American people’s way of saying: “This is the kind of leadership you give us? Take this.” And when I say that, I’m not just thinking of politics. I’m thinking of Wells Fargo, the pharmaceutical company Mylan’s EpiPen price increases, the airbags from the Takata Corporation—I’m thinking of leadership across the board.

BI: You recently were an executive producer on the Epix TV series America Divided and investigated housing inequality. What surprised you most about what you found out?

NL: What surprised me is that I could learn what I learned and still sleep well after learning it. I don’t know how to explain caring as much as I think I care and doing as much as I think I do and realizing now and again how little it is. Then again, every little bit matters.

BI: Your popular 1975 show, One Day at a Time, reimagined with a Cuban-American family, is set to air early next year on Netflix. What is the status of your proposed TV show, Guess Who Died, set in a retirement community?

NL: We’ve had more interest lately, and my guess is that it will happen. The fact is that older people are the fastest-growing demographic with the most expendable income. And we watch a lot of television.

BI: It’s your demographic, of course. Do you feel 94 years old?

NL: I am the peer of whoever I’m talking to. If I am talking to a 15-year-old, that’s who I am. If I’m talking to a 50-year-old, that’s who I am. I see too many 75-year-olds who seem much older than I feel. I’m aware I’m an older person, and I wish my back didn’t hurt and my legs didn’t weigh 1,000 pounds. But I go to bed at night and can’t wait for the first taste of coffee in the morning.

BI: What do you think accounts for you not feeling your age?

NL: I think it’s living in the moment and being aware that whatever I’m doing, I’ve spent all my  life getting there to do it. Like this interview. It is an indisputable fact that this interview took me 94 years, some weeks and some days to get to. And for you and everyone who reads it, it took every split second of your lives. So is the moment important or not?  How can anyone deny the importance of any moment that took all of your life to get to?

 

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CAROLINE DIANI

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Caroline Diani recently came across a photograph of herself as a 7-year-old school girl. She was at home in Northumbria, England, where she grew up. “I had a rabbit at that time and I had a dog,” she says. “I also had a hamster.” In the photo, she poses with all three. The hamster belonged to her class at school, and it was her weekend to care for it. “I wore a bow tie to celebrate the occasion. I wore the bow tie all weekend,” she remembers. “I loved creating occasions to celebrate, even if they seemed insignificant to a lot of people.”

Diani has been trying to capture that childhood passion for the off-the-cuff occasion in the midst of running her 14-year-old DIANI Boutique. She’s been losing herself in curiosities; she recently returned to painting, an art form she’d pursued in school, and started living part-time in upstate New York, where the historicity and weather contrast her beach-town base of Santa Barbara. “I’m trying to go back to the things that made me feel alive when I didn’t have as much pressure,” she muses.

A circuitous path brought her to Santa Barbara and to her boutique, which carries Chloe, Isabel Marant and other curated brands and has gradually expanded to include a thriving online business and home line, DIANI Living. Born in Kenya and raised in Northumbria, Diani had her first taste of coastal California in 1995, when she spent a summer in Ventura, interning at Patagonia. She returned to London, graduated with a fashion design degree and worked first in freelance design, then fashion PR. When her father became ill and she needed more flexibility in her schedule, circumstances conspired dramatically in her favor. “My boyfriend at the time had been buying me scratch cards,” she recalls, “and I never ever scratched them off, and then, this one time, I did.” She won 25,000 pounds, a sizable sum at the time. After splitting it with her then-boyfriend, she bought a small flat, fixed it up and resold it. For the next few years that became her vocation: meeting with contractors, renovating houses, then re-selling them.

She thought she would continue in the same vein in 1999, when she moved to Santa Barbara. But here, there weren’t as many fixer-uppers—she still lives in the mountain home she bought then—and she longed to put down roots. She couldn’t imagine making the long commute to work in L.A. fashion. Then she fell “madly in love,” her words, with a quaint storefront on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara.

“It had beams, and so much character,” she says. She had no business plan. “The landlord just took a chance.” Years later, the space, with its attractive wooden door and tastefully minimal aesthetic, remains her headquarters, though it’s often when she leaves that she finds inspiration.

“I have a freedom when I’m traveling that I crave,” she says. On buying trips to New York, the East Coast or to Southern antique shows, she has no set schedule. “I’m walking around, meeting with people. If I have an hour to spare and I’m next to an art gallery, I’ll walk around it. I’ll go see theater at night.” People-watching, too, has become a stimulating hobby. In low-key Santa Barbara, women often come into the shop in sweats, after yoga or before picking kids up from school. She rarely sees them in the clothes they buy from her. On the streets in London, New York or Paris, women dress to be seen.

“I just will catch a glimpse of somebody and it will free up my imagination,” she says. She’ll think, “Who is that person; why are they dressed that way; where are they going?”

She finds this more interesting than looking at clothing on runways or showrooms. What people wear, and do, in their daily lives is more interesting than staged events—better still to hear their stories. She married three years ago, to actor and photographer Jeffrey Doornbos, and their choice to buy a 400-year-old home in upstate New York has brought different narratives into her life. People share anecdotes on the train; the man she hired to repair the chimney offered up his knowledge of historic masonry. “Growing up in England, I took for granted that you were surrounded by history,” she says. “Even going into a pub, you’d sit down next to an old man and he would tell you his life story.” She has also started dreaming of having animals again; perhaps a farm life could somehow be incorporated into DIANI Living. Diani observes that most of the creatives she admires —like the innovative florist Saipua, who grows her own flowers and raises sheep—approach their work holistically.

“I’m not really interested in fashion, purely,” she says. “I find distasteful the throw-away nature of it. I don’t like the idea of the next greatest thing or being on trend all the time. It’s exhausting to me. But I love the idea of creating something that has meaning and is authentic.”

 

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SWIZZ BEATZ

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

If you’ve turned on the radio in the last two decades, you’ve heard the work of Kasseem Dean, aka Swizz Beatz. Since breaking onto the music scene at age 20 with DMX’s “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” in 1998, the now 38-year-old überproducer has cemented his place in music history, racking up accolades for his work with everyone from Whitney Houston and Gwen Stefani to Jay-Z, Drake and his own wife, Alicia Keys. Not bad for a kid from the South Bronx.

But Swizz’s talents transcend the hip-hop landscape, and to define him by his musical accomplishments is to merely scratch the surface of this modern-day Renaissance man. Never one to rest on his creative laurels, this devoted father of five is just as likely to be found laying down tracks with Kendrick Lamar as dreaming up a collaboration with a major fashion brand or scoping out emerging artists for an art show.

Chalk it all up to his natural instincts as a producer. “Everything I do is putting people together,” says Swizz. “That’s where I have the most fun.” That also applies to his latest endeavor, No Commission—a platform designed to promote fine artists and help them sell their work without any middlemen or fees, allowing them to take home 100 percent of the proceeds from their sales. “It’s like, what if I can create an art fair that’s 100 percent for the artists, because at all these fairs, the galleries win, the collectors win, the fair wins and the artist has got to kind of find their way home,” says Swizz, who conceived of the project not only as a way to empower artists but also to connect them with their buyers.

“If you ask the average millennial of the ways to get into art, they all have different answers. And none of those answers would have been heard of five years ago—maybe even two years ago,” says Swizz, noting the similarities to the music industry. “When I started music, you didn’t have the access of iPhones and all the different ways you can reach your fans now, and all these cool apps and social media platforms,” he says. Case in point: his 16-year-old son, Prince, who turns to music-streaming service SoundCloud to find new artists. “I was like, so you don’t go on iTunes? He’s like, ‘No, that’s too commercial.’ ” The rules had changed.

 

Swizz-Beatz-1
Meanwhile, Swizz was already starting to witness firsthand the power of social media through his own Instagram, where he would regularly promote up-and-coming artists to his 1.5 million followers. “They would write me back and say, ‘Man, thank you. I just sold out my show and I’ve got galleries fighting over me,’ ” recalls Swizz. “I thought, OK, cool. I have some power here that I can free some artists with.”

Swizz launched the No Commission Art Fair in 2015 during Miami’s Art Basel, where 35 participating artists sold more than $1 million in artworks. That success story was repeated in the fall of 2016 with the inaugural No Commission Art Performs, a free four-day celebration packed with musical performances, art showcases and installations, held in his native South Bronx. Featured artists ranged from established talent such as Kehinde Wiley to up-and-comers like So Youn Lee and Delphine Diallo. “Merging music with art and culture and fashion and all those things just created an energy where people were like, ‘I’m going to buy a piece,’ ” he says. Ninety-eight percent of the artists sold works, and 70 percent of the purchasers were first-time art buyers.

“I’m a Virgo—we want to please everybody,” says Swizz. “We want to do a lot of cool things for people, so I am happy when other people are happy, too,” he says, citing the success of the No Commission artists as an example. But happiness for him also means spending time with his wife and children, which he prioritizes above all else. “I think the balance to making everything work is just making everything work. You know, you can come up with a thousand excuses. Everybody’s busy. It’s like, ‘No, this is what I’m doing and that’s that.’ Something has to take a loss. It should be your family as little as possible,” says Swizz, who has two children, Egypt Daoud and Genesis Ali, with Keys. “We have rules where we can’t go two weeks without seeing each other. You can be wherever, if it’s two weeks I’ve either got to come to you or you come to me because you have to maintain some type of balance, because we both live busy lives. We both have big missions to fulfill.”

The greatest lesson of marriage and fatherhood, he says, is one word: communication. “We never raise our voice in eight years at each other. Not one argument, not one fight. Why? Because the communication is, ‘Let’s have dinner tonight and go over a couple things,’ rather than not communicating and building up 15 things to talk about.”

As a convert to Islam, religion is a guiding principle for Swizz, who is constantly learning life lessons from the people around him. That could mean a stranger with whom he had a random, two-hour conversation (“Some of those people I never saw again in my life, but those lessons that they told me and explained to me stuck with me a lot”) or his artistic heroes, whom he describes as “all of the people that had a dream and believed in it and didn’t give up because of what other people said.” Ultimately, he says, it’s all about taking a stand: “If we don’t fight for something we’re going to have nothing. How are we going to make change that you want and how are you going to be responsible for the change that you want?”

For Swizz, that doesn’t mean just blazing trails in music and art. What’s most important, he says, is finding ways to positively impact the lives of others.

“Forget a Grammy. That’s something that you could leave on the table. That doesn’t continue doing anything. It’s a statue of a moment, but if you can create something that keeps on giving, then that’s the truest blessing.”

 

 

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JULIAN SCHNABEL

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

It was 1995, and we were having one of those awkward folded-linen-napkin lunches in the middle of a Volvo commercial shoot. Our host was on the phone, and there was so much gossip going on around the table that no one seemed to notice, until he handed Herb the phone and there ensued that somewhat graceless pregnant silence while everyone tries to conceal their curiosity, but you could feel the questioning glances. Here we were, a family more comfortable on the beach, pushing the boundaries of appropriate behavior in the very conservative world of surfing, surrounded by commercial-industry professionals. Who in the hell would want to talk to Herb?

On the other end of the line: Julian Schnabel, who was regaling Herb with stories of their first meeting at a surf contest in Brownsville, Texas, in 1967, where a 16-year-old Julian lived with his family. There was laughter and true joy as they reminisced; theirs is one of those rare friendships that seem to pick up as though they had just spoken yesterday. Time was short—Julian was in production on Basquiat and the cameras were ready to resume shooting on the commercial we were working on. They exchanged numbers and as soon as our business commitments were complete, Herb got in the studio to send Julian the big-wave surf footage he had requested for his film.

 

 

Julian has a true passion for the art of surfing; ours is a bit more jaded being in the business, but the romance of the early years and the characters who make up the sport’s history have proved a great bond around which to build our mutual friendship. Julian’s generosity of spirit and encyclopedic knowledge of art, movies and literature was completely intoxicating to me. On one of our trips to his home in Mexico, Herb laid Julian’s carefully chosen nautical charts down on the yard’s raked gravel, with weather-polished rocks anchoring the corners and containers of mixed oil paint placed within easy access of Julian’s brushes, which were attached to long sticks so he could stand erect and achieve what he felt was the proper perspective. Dressed in a sarong, sleeveless plaid shirt and yellow-tinted horn-rimmed glasses, he painted his Navigation Drawings with a muscular abandon that was utterly amazing. The wind started to gust and blew sand into some of the paint, but Julian was undaunted as he made his marks on one chart after the other, sometimes circling back to add on or moving forward by skipping one or two. It was a creative dance choreographed by a master, and with the final stroke I knew I had been a witness to magic.

 

 

In the evenings under the thatched roof they would relive every wave ridden during the day, as surfers tend to do, and discuss how their performance could be made better with a little tweaking in board design. Julian created a logo for the boards that Herb shaped, which they would exclusively ride. Although technically long boards, these are not “logs,” which the length typically refers to; these are high-performance, down-rail, ultra-responsive, lightweight flying machines, for going fast and hanging high in the wave before sideslipping down the face. They were completely black, with a round logo laminated on the deck 24 inches from the nose—a painting from Julian’s Big Girl series along with the words “Blind Girl Surf Club” written in bold white lettering along the stringer on the bottom of the board. Each a custom-made work of art for peak surfing experience. It wasn’t long before a few other good friends were included in the clique, which had the feeling of a surf team from back when Herb first started competing in the mid ’60s. Their motto was adapted from an old Groucho Marx quote—“I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member”—and with the likes of Christian and Nathan Fletcher, Vito Schnabel, Nathan Webster, Bruce and Andy Irons, Dustin Barca, Danny Fuller and John John Florence, the boards and coach jackets with the same logo are starting to be seen, recognized and coveted.

 

 

Julian and Herb plan surf trips whenever possible, and whether it’s Montauk, Mexico, Maui or Spain, it doesn’t matter—Julian always has a space to paint, Herb spends his time taking photos, and they surf when the tide is right. When most of the sport’s enthusiasts in the Northern Hemisphere are finalizing plans for their first trip into the frigid white winter land of their favorite ski resort, surfers from the rest of the globe are packing their quivers and starting the annual migration. Destination: the 7.5-mile strip of coral-sand beach on the north-facing side of the small island of Oahu known as the North Shore. From Haleiwa to Velzyland, there isn’t a place on the planet that can boast as many classic surf breaks in such a concentrated area, or as many surfers, photographers, writers, industry honchos, tattoo artists, boogie boarders, groupies, tourists and every manner of hanger-on that comes to experience the Triple Crown event where the WSL Surfer of the Year is crowned.

 

 

With the who’s who of the sport gathered on the beautiful strip of pristine beach, the waves thundering over the shallow coral reefs while the greatest tube riders and aerial masters jockey for position, to the delight of the screaming crowds; it is here, in the heart of hardcore surfing that Herb and Julian meet yearly to enjoy the shared passion for surfing that started on the beach in Texas so long ago. It’s in this environment where Julian paints surfboards for friends, helps Herb with the annual Wave Warriors photo shoot and paddles out for a few waves at Rock Point that he has a chance to enjoy the “surf life” for a couple of weeks. Surrounded by characters who risk their lives riding waves no sane person would paddle into, with some having explosive temperaments that belie their seemingly easygoing demeanor, Julian seems casually at ease while he and Herb enjoy the greatest surf show on Earth.

 

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Posted in Art

Greg Blanc

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Greg Blanc starts his morning ritual with a 35-minute moonlit motorcycle ride between his hilltop home in Malibu and Gjusta in Venice. “It’s the best commute in L.A.,” says Blanc, who would arrive at 3 a.m. to supervise the bake-off when the cult artisanal bakery and deli first opened its doors in 2014. Now with a team of trained bakers in place, Gjusta’s GM and co-head baker pulls up at sunrise, greeted by the aroma of dozens of freshly baked breads wafting from the facility’s nine ovens. By the time Blanc has sampled the first batches, filled the display cases with pastries and prepared foods and stacked the shelves with still-warm loaves of sourdough country, ciabatta, baguette, hemp nori and sprouted rye, the day’s first customers are already beginning to form a line.

 

 

For Blanc, the kitchen is familiar territory. Raised in the French alpine city of Annecy, he was born into a line of bakers, restaurateurs and hoteliers who not only passed down the tradition of bread-making, but more importantly, the knowledge of what defines a good baker: “Caring about what you do, and having the strength to make the best product you can, and being consistent,” says Blanc, who worked his way through prestigious bakeries in France and California before settling down in the Los Angeles area.

But it wasn’t until 2010, when Blanc befriended fellow surfer Travis Lett, the chef and driving force behind beloved Venice restaurants Gjelina and GTA, that he began to revisit his artisanal bread-making roots. “We had too much demand [for bread] at Gjelina for the two small ovens,” says Blanc, who had begun working at GTA after taking a three-year break from the culinary world to work in the apparel industry with his wife. “Gjusta was supposed to be a small bakery.” Blanc was tasked with growing the bread program without sacrificing quality.

 

 

But as Blanc has learned over the years, nothing Lett ever does is small. Fast-forward to present day, when the bakery, deli and cafe is now a neighborhood institution, servicing its own discerning customers as well as those of the Gjelina Group and more than 15 local restaurants. Almost everything is crafted in-house, from the pickled produce and the smoked and cured meats down to the nut milks poured at the coffee bar. The bakery offerings have expanded from three breads to nine, and on any given weekend, Blanc estimates that he and his team bake anywhere from 500 to 800 loaves. “If you have bad bread one day, that customer might not come back. You have to be consistent. And I think that’s why people love us,” he says.

Blanc’s work at Gjusta is more than a job. It’s a lifestyle. “Some people are happy sitting in front of a computer every day, but when you grow up in an industry like this, you need the energy. You live your life differently, and it’s an adjustment for your friends,” he says. “What drives me is the food. Do what makes you happy.”

 

 

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