California Wild Fires

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

August is a hard month for California. The sun sears down on the land that slides out from underneath the mountain ranges towards the sea. Only the water cascading down from the mountains and channeled into the fertile fields below brings relief and wealth, and the sense that all is as it should be. But looking closely, cracks are beginning to emerge. The eruptions of wealth, from early settler gold diggers in the Northern Hills, to the tech innovators in Silicon Valley playing their chips, surge and wane while those other essential and lucrative industries of agriculture and cinematic art are holding on, even as they feel the the claws of federal predators stretch and contract, preparing to strike at this strength and wealth while waiting until other, bigger fish for the moment, are fried.

The plane from London touches down at LA International. Not sure what to expect we are amazed at the ease of facing a camera before the gates are opened into the United States. Collecting our bags, we too are collected by our driver. We are exhausted but Bruno, an Angeleno, born and bred, with his own faded dreams has a lot to tell us and we listen as best we can. Depending on the time of day and day of the week each driver has their preferred route. Today we are driven to Beverly Hills on Sepulveda Avenue. The Avenue is large, even by old Los Angeles standards, dusty, dry and worn, laid down before the freeways had been dug out and around snaking through this city ever hungry for more traffic with seven lanes each way, at times barely able to contain the flow of cars.

Entering The Four Seasons Hotel, the bright lights of the chandeliers beam down on the vast urns of gladioli denying the suffering outside. The following night we leave for the Apple Pan – open from 11 to 11 – on West Pico Boulevard, serving the same menu since 1947. It’s interesting to see Uber drivers from different cities, how they adapt to their city, get a job a gig and somehow make it all work – for a while. For we are all aware, both passengers and drivers how precarious is the American world today. We have paid homage to The Apple Pan since the 1960s, growing older along with Manny on the left wing, and Gordi on the right, of the big horseshoe-shaped counter that surrounds the deep friers and fronts the cavernous kitchen behind. Manny and Gordi began as young counter-boys about the time we first motorcycled into Los Angeles in 1965. They have both retired, but we continue to come, showing our children this tradition whenever we are in Los Angles together. Three kinds of burgers and four sandwiches make up the main menu with a generous helping of french fries. Flipping the menu over to deserts, only the Fresh Apple and Pecan pies are not cream pies – the rest are cholesterol heaven. You want Ice Cream? That will be double Dutch Vanilla.

Entering The Apple Pan is like entering a cave. For awhile, the beat and heat of the outside world is left behind. Even if your truck-driving is more limousine laden than diesel loaded, this is trucker heaven. We come to decompress, to speak and be spoken to kindly, it is almost holy. In years gone by West Pico was bright with shining mall lights, the intersection humming with life but now the outside street is dark and bare. Swaths of real estate have been shuttered, the lights turned off, only the blinking of a few cars and hissing busses pass by. It has taken me two days to find the right word for this Los Angles – it is – desolate. America does not seem so great again.

Julius Tennon, Viola Davis, Walter Murch

The week ahead holds a busy schedule. Along with Viola Davis, Walter received an Honorary Doctorate from the American Film Institute. Each of them, a power-house within their spheres, spoke passionately from within their disciplines and I wonder what the graduates made of them both.

For a morning, because it is a graduation with new beginnings for young artists, there is hope and relief in the air. And laughter as when we stop in at the post-event brunch and the faculty head of editorial asked me,

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

and laughter

“You’re famous in Hollywood. You must have the patience of a saint.”

And there is more laughter.

We connect with the friends that we can. There are friends too sick to visit, there are friends who have put their homes back together after the Palasades fires, and friends who are only just beginning. These are the precious moments.

And then the work. ‘Suddenly Something Clicked’ is clicking along. The buzz around its publication is moving quickly through the Los Angles Post Production community and at the same time ‘Harvesting History’ is having its own quieter moment.

Randal Kleiser and WSM are listening – along with a standing room only audience.

Randal Kleiser led us both through our books at Chevalier’s Book Store in Larchmont before Lawrence Weschler puppeteered Murch at The Hammer Museum and the following night Murch just carried on determined to expose as many minds as possible – in another packed house at the Pasadena College of Art and Design – to his exploration of the Golden Ratio of the human face and its relation to cinema. He’s almost come up with an answer, but an absolute answer that might hold truth in logic would perhaps disperse the magic. And what is the magic of these days for these film makers? Maybe the fact that someone is thinking about and able to articulate what they hardly know goes on in their own minds. “Oh that is what I am doing, that is what is happening.” There is hope and validation and even a good dose of courage to be gained by listening.

We are lacking the stamina that is needed for such a full adventure and were felled with summer colds that descended like thick fog and hovered on the brink of bronchitis. Walter was downed early, checked out and prescribed a broad antibiotic by the brisk 60 year young hotel house doctor. I fall at the end, somehow packing and flying until we reach the safety of our London cottage. I wail that I want Doctor Joe, with his gentle chuckling care and beloved Mo with her Chicken soup.

The saving grace of illness is that it was two nights before we are able to manage the world news, Gazas rubble and carnage taking third billing to the immigration rows and the slow bizarre meeting of The American President with Vladimir Putin in Alaska followed by the European Leaders ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in Washington DC. There is the news, and the the body language, and maybe some fake AI unfurling as this madness of the about turns of this play out in unreal time. Sifting through the lies and the truths, the temptings and concessions, the breath-holding is reminiscent of a mother feeding a toddler with a buzzing airplane spoonful of spinach maybe to be spat out in a rage or grasped and swallowed looking for the prize of peace.

This has been A Letter From A. Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch

As always supported by murchstudio.com

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

Not again. Boris, what were you thinking?! Taking off with new young mother, Carrie Symonds, baby Wilfred, and Dilyn the dog to a remote cottage out in the West Highlands, overlooking the Isle of Skye. You think that a tent in the field next door will be fine for the secret service police but the owner of the field, a farmer, didn’t find the tent – nor the fire the poor chaps must have lit to keep warm – fine. Where are your manners that you didn’t ask for permission to pitch a tent in someone else’s field? The photograph in the Weekend Telegraph paper showed a stone wall between the bleak looking cottage, the field and the sea but no sign of any facilities. A road lies between the cottage and the field. If a car drove down, wanting to have a snap and a chat with the Prime Minister in his wooly hat and PJ’s how long would it have taken for the boys in khaki to; unzip the tent, run the field, hop the wire fence, the stone wall, cross the road and ‘be at your service’? It was a good idea to cut the holiday short and return to the relative safely of London.

Coverage continues on the ongoing protests and retaliations in Belarus. The situation is reaching some kind of a pressure peak as the president, Alexander Lukashenko, wearing the black body-armored uniform of the riot police and holding his assault rifle, is heavily guarded as he inspects the police ranks. Lukashenko looks like an old war general holding onto his last vestiges of power. It is clear that Putin does not, for the moment, want to enter this battle. The protesters remain in strong numbers on the streets. They are attacked, hauled into jail cells, beaten, released and returned to the streets more determined than ever as they get information out to the rest of the world. Will it end like Czechoslovakia? Scenes from ‘The Unbearable Lightless of Being’ play though my mind along with the film’s haunting music. Thinking of the end scenes of ‘Unbearable’ that were shot in the California sunlight of Stinson Beach and Blackberry Farm in Bolinas brings back memories of a happier time. Global distress always, but our corner of the world was a safe sanctuary. Now we watch as the fires sweep through Northern California and pray for you all.

Much of the world looks bleak, with the Coronavirus pandemic being mishandled in the U.S. and other countries. In England, schools are to carefully reopen next week putting children and teachers in jeopardy for the economy.

A large envelope came through the letter box for a survey on the Coronavirus conducted by The Office of National Statistics at Oxford University. The first interview and testing took place in the bathroom and on our doorstep. After forms were signed and the testing completed there was a survey to fill out. Inda sat in her car, I sat on our doorstep. “How many people have you been in physical contact with in the last seven days?” Touching is what she meant and I realized that if we lived alone the answer would be ‘none’.

The quietness of the London Streets is sobering. The parks and canal walks are beautiful but the loss of physical contact is hard. There is a hunger now for human engagement and with that has come a change in attitude.

The Albert pub closed up 3 years ago as the building was bought for renovation. Three flats were built and sold above the pub. Then things stalled. The pub shrank, physically, as the leaded windows dusted over. Even after signs saying, ‘Everything valuable has been removed.’ The door would be broken open just to check. The community petitioned ‘Keep The Albert Open’ but to no avail, and the grumbling rumbled on, ‘There goes another one.’ Earlier this year squatters moved in, furniture was dumped on Princess Street and there were a few days of frantic activity as the squatters made themselves comfortable. But quickly they were moved out and plywood panels went up to cover the old windows. Maybe the squatters were the push that the owners needed for now there are two builders’ vans and a skip in the garden. The front door is open and young men in dust-covered teeshirts and overalls are busily coming in and out. What suddenly is making The Albert a possible proposition is the little garden out back. In these Covid times outdoor seating is at a premium.

“Should be open in September.” Says one of the young builders.

The First beginnings at The Albert Pub Photo by WSM

Sam’s Cafe first opened on the high street of the village. But last year a minor repair turned into a huge building disaster that had Sam shutting up shop – literally – and licking his wounds, brooding on a dream so cruelly crushed. Owning and running a restaurant is not for the faint-hearted. Beloved JC’s L’Absinthe on the corner of Chalcot and Fitzroy was a truly go-to spot for us. But then JC fell in love and married. And he too looked to lighten his load. The doors of L’Absinthe closed and the corner was quiet.

And then during the winter came the rumor that Sam’s Cafe was to take over the old L’Absinthe restaurant. We watched and waited. First up went the brown paper in the windows to keep private whatever activity was going on. Months went by before the doors opened as old equipment went out and new came in. Final touches to Sam’s Cafe’ are done and the doors will open on Thursday.

Now, on this little corner street, all the shops are busy again. There is hope for a future and we are grateful.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad
Written and read for you by Muriel Murch

Muriel Murch

August in LA

Testing Times