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Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has died. The celebrated documentarian started making documentaries that captured the weirdness and wonder of everyday life in the mid 1960s and did not stop untilFilmmaker Frederick Wiseman has died.
The celebrated documentarian started making documentaries that captured the weirdness and wonder of everyday life in the mid 1960s and did not stop until"I usually know nothing about the subject before I start," he said at the black-tie ceremony."And I know there are those that feel I know nothing about it when it's finished!" Wiseman was extremely prolific. He made roughly 50 documentaries, many of which chronicled the inner workings of institutions as diverse as the Idaho state legislature "He has a way of finding in reality some of the most surreal, absurd moments that I've ever seen anywhere," Morris said."And it seems like the entire scene is populated by women except for the janitor standing by the exit door, looking nervously on with his hands folded over his crotch," Morris said."To me, this is really almost as good as it gets." Morris added Wiseman was a mentor to him and a close friend. After Morris lost both his father and brother to heart disease, and was worried about his own fate, the filmmaker said Wiseman organized medical help for him."I can even credit Fred with saving my life," Morris said. Frederick Wiseman was born in Boston in 1930. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and living in Paris during the 1950s, he taught law at Boston University.It was taking his students on field trips to Bridgewater State Hospital, a Massachusetts prison facility for the criminally insane, that compelled the then law professor to direct his first, and most famous, filmAfter its seemingly benign opening, the movie captures the appalling conditions under which the inmates are kept, with unblinking scenes of bullying, force feeding, strip searches and squalor.was so shocking, the state of Massachusetts managed to get it banned from public screenings for more than two decades. "In order for anyone to see that film, for years you had to sign a declaration saying that you were a professional in one of the following fields, like criminology, law or film studies," said film scholar Barry Keith Grant, author of"It gave him a lot of notoriety and it helped establish his career," Grant said. Over the years, Wiseman became known for his meticulous, hands-on process. He directed, produced and edited his movies. In a"I was there for three months, every day for twelve weeks, probably twelve, fourteen hours a day," Wiseman said of the shoot, adding he amassed 170 hours of footage."So the ratio between film shot and film used is about 60 to one." Wiseman's films were also known for their prodigious length, running for as long as six hours."I don't tailor the length to meet any commercial needs," Wiseman said."I assume if people are interested, they'll watch it, whether it's 75 minutes or three hours."Following reports of local police assisting federal immigration agents with raids and detentions of citizen observers across Southern California, state lawmakers have introduced a bill seeking to outlaw such collaboration.State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez announced Monday that she has introduced SB 1105, dubbed the Protect California Rights Act. The bill would ban local law enforcement from helping federal agents with operations based on racial profiling, efforts to stop First Amendment speech or actions involving unauthorized military weapons.At a news conference, Pérez said: “Californians deserve to feel safe. They deserve to trust that the officers sworn to protect them will not be used to intimidate them. And they deserve a state government that stands firmly on the side of civil rights and constitutional protections.”The bill is co-sponsored by ACLU California Action. Executive Director David Trujillo said if the bill passes, Californians who’ve been subject to illegal activity by local law enforcement could take their case to court. “The courts will be able to then step in and order local law enforcement to comply with our laws here in California,” Trujillo said.The news conference featured speakers who have been detained by local police in incidents related to federal immigration actions. Jose Madera, director of the Pasadena Community Job Center, said he was arrested last month by Pasadena police while tracking the movements of an alleged ICE agent. “The perception of the community,” Madera said, “is that local police were protecting ICE agents and not protecting us, the residents, legal observers.”A series of severe weather advisories ranging from extreme marine conditions to severe thunderstorms and the possibility of hail and weather spouts have peppered Southern California on Monday.The wet start to the week is expected to continue, with concerns high about possible mudslides and debris flows in areas hard hit by recent fires.A series of severe weather advisories — ranging from extreme marine conditions to severe thunderstorms and the possibility of hail and water spouts — have peppered Southern California on Monday. The wet start to the week is expected to continue, with concerns about possible mudslides and debris flows in areas hard hit by recent fires. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass issued an evacuation warning for the Palisades, Sunset and Hurst burn scar areas ahead of the rain Monday. That warning went into effect at 9 p.m. on Sunday and will be in place until 9 a.m. on Tuesday. Most of L.A. County is under a flood watch as a powerful rainstorm hits the region, that's in effect until midnight Monday. Areas that include much of Central and Southern L.A. County are additionally under a flash flood warning until 2 p.m. Monday. That's due to an observed rainfall rate that's between 0.5 to 0.75 inches in 15 minutes. Some mountain communities are also under a winter storm warning through Thursday where up to a foot or two of snow is possible for elevations above 6,000 feet. Forecasters are also warning that it's going to be windy along mountain passes where gusts could reach up to 70 mph Monday afternoon.Widespread rain began to fall on Southern California overnight, as of 11 a.m. Monday here are preliminary rainfall totals over the last 24 hours, reported by the National Weather Service:According to the National Weather Service, locations that will experience flash flooding include Monday afternoon: Long Beach, West Covina, Glendora, San Dimas, Pomona, Whittier, La Verne, Covina, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Monrovia, Claremont, Santa Fe Springs, Norwalk, Cerritos, Artesia, Bellflower and Walnut.As of Monday afternoon: Rancho Palos Verdes Drive South is closed in both directions from Wayfarers Chapel to Peppertree Drive due to flooding. Please use an alternate route if you must drive at this time. It is unknown when the road will reopen.As of Monday afternoon: The 5 Freeway north is closed in Sun Valley from Tuxford Street and Lankershim Boulevard because of flooding.As of Monday afternoon: All lanes Northbound and Southbound at PCH from Seapoint Street to Warner Avenue are closed until further notice. Meteorologists for the National Weather Service have warned that a powerful storm system will move through the region Monday"bringing the potential for severe thunderstorms, burn-scar debris flows, flash flooding with rock and mud slides, damaging winds, heavy mountain snow, and high surf with coastal flooding." They say Southern Californians should expect"cold and blustery conditions with periodic rain" through"at least the middle of the week." The expected rainfall is significant enough that they're warning people near vulnerable areas, which include recent burn scars from last January's fires and other recent fires, to take precautions immediately and be ready to leave if evacuation orders are issued. are how the NWS begins to raise the alarm. The goal is to give people enough time to take action. is issued when a hazardous weather event is imminent or already happening. When one is issued for your area, you need to get to higher ground immediately.is issued when a flash flood is coming or in progress. Flash floods are sudden and violent floods that can start within minutes.Don't drive through standing water — as little as 12 inches of rushing water can carry away most cars, and two feet can carry away SUVs and trucks.Dial 911 in an emergency. However, if you need to report a flooded road or a downed tree, you can call the following non-emergency numbers:Watch for traffic signals that may be out. Approach those intersections as four-way stops. Make sure you have a battery-operated radio and flashlights. Check the batteries to make sure they are fresh. Use flashlights for lighting during a power outage; do not use candles because they may pose a fire hazard. If you’re in a vehicle with a fallen power line on it, stay in the vehicle and remain calm until help arrives. It is OK to use your cellphone to call 911. If you must leave the vehicle, exit away from downed power lines and jump from the vehicle, landing with both feet together. You must not touch the vehicle and the ground at the same time. Then proceed away from the vehicle by shuffling and not picking up your feet until you are several yards away. Water and electricity don’t mix. Water is an excellent conductor of electricity. Do not step in or enter any water that a downed power line may be touching. Do not use any equipment indoors that is designed for outdoor heating or cooking. Such equipment can emit carbon monoxide and other toxic gases. If you use a generator, place it outdoors and plug individual appliances directly into it, using a heavy-duty extension cord. Connecting generators directly to household circuits creates “backfeed,” which is dangerous to repair crews. Leave the doors of your refrigerator and freezer closed to keep food as fresh as possible. Place blocks of ice inside to help keep food cold. Check food carefully for signs of spoilage. that can keep indoor temperatures at a minimum of 70 degrees. That means every dwelling unit and guest room offered for rent or lease should offer heating equipment.Cranking heaters can be expensive. If money is tight, be judicious about how and when you use your utilities. For example, only use heaters at night or only set the thermostat to around 70 degrees.If you have central A/C, look at where the vents are around your home. Are any open in places where you don’t stay long? Practice opening and closing those so warm air only goes where you need it . Humidifiers can also help you warm things up — and it’s useful to add moisture into our dry air.If you have a wall heater, you can change the output by adjusting the knob . Since wall heaters can only warm the areas where they’re placed, it’s essential to close doors to rooms you won’t be in so hot air doesn’t get wasted.If you have a ceiling fan, try turning it on. This sounds counterintuitive, but there’s science behind it. Since hot air floats up, your fan can help move it around. For warming, your fan should This is a developing story. We fact check everything and rely only on information from credible sources . Sometimes, however, we make mistakes or initial reports turn out to be wrong. In all cases, we strive to bring you the most accurate information in real time and will update this story as new information becomes available.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.Robert Duvall, who brought a wide range of characters to life, from tough Marines to wistful, tender-hearted cowboys over a long career, has died at 95.Duvall appeared in over 90 films over the course of his career, imbuing stock Hollywood types — cowboys, cops, soldiers — with a nuanced sense of vulnerability.on Monday,"Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort."Over his long career, Robert Duvall brought a wide range of characters to life, from tough Marines to wistful, tender-hearted cowboys.on Monday,"Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort."In his first major movie role, in 1962, Robert Duvall appeared in only a handful of scenes. He didn't have a single word of dialogue. Yet the actor managed to make an indelible, star-making impression. The film wasBoo is the small town's recluse; he spends the movie as little more than a mysterious shape, cloaked in shadows. But in the film's final moments, he steps out nervously, into the light. Duvall's features soften, he smiles slightly — and the menacing presence of Boo Radley transforms before our eyes into a figure radiating kindness and concern. The pure, elegantly nuanced physicality of that moment launched his career."I was at a small college in the Midwest," he said."It was the end of the Korean war. I did go in the army eventually but to get through college, to find something that would give me a sense of worth, where I got my first 'A'. It was my parents I had to thank for that." As a young actor, he ended up in New York City, where he palled around with Gene Hackman, James Caan and his roommate Dustin Hoffman. It was over many coffees and conversations with them at Cromwell's Drug Store on 50th and 6th Avenue that he struck upon his personal philosophy of acting. His approach was direct and unpretentious, as he explained to the TV seriesThe Godfather , as Tom Hagen, the Corleone family lawyer, that changed everything. Amid the film's operatic swirl of emotion, Tom Hagen was an island of calmness and restraint, so it might seem odd that Duvall often said it was one of his favorite roles of his career. But his strength as an actor was always how unforced he seemed, how true. Others around him emoted, showily and outwardly — he always directed his energy inward, to find a character's heart. This was true even when he played roles with a harder edge., he was a bluff, belligerent Marine who bullied his sensitive son in an attempt to harden him into a man., Duvall was all charismatic swagger as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, who calls down an airstrike and delivers one of the most quotable lines in film history:"I love the smell of napalm in the morning. ... It smells like ... victory.""Yeah, that was a wonderful line," he said."People come up to me and quote it to me like it's this in thing between me and them. Like they're the only ones who ever thought of it, but it happens with everyone in the same way.". He played a recovering alcoholic country singer trying to start his life over. Duvall did his own singing in that film., which he also wrote, produced and starred in, as an evangelical preacher on the outs with God. It earned him his fifth Oscar nomination for acting. Over the course of an acting career that spanned decades, Duvall appeared in over 90 films. He took traditional, old Hollywood archetypes of masculinity — soldiers, cops and cowboys — and imbued them with notes of melancholy, a vulnerability that made them come alive onscreen.Kaiser Permanente pharmacy and laboratory workers go on strike in front of the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center last week.Thousands of Kaiser health care workers, including 22,000 nurses in Southern California, are on strike to demand better pay and staffing. The walk out has resulted in canceled or delayed appointments and surgeries, patients say.This is the latest of a number of major strikes to have roiled Kaiser in recent years, including a 10-week strike by mental health workers in 2022 and a 2023 dispute mediated by the then-U.S. Secretary of Labor.More than 31,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers remained on strike Monday as the open-ended walkout entered its fourth week, disrupting patient appointments, surgeries and treatments across California and Hawaii. Bargaining teams for Kaiser and workers resumed negotiations after weeks of stalemate, but no agreement appears imminent. This is the latest of a number of major strikes to have roiled Kaiser in recent years, including a The strike, which started Jan. 26, is an effort by one of the organization’s largest unions to improve wages and staffing conditions. Members of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals have never before walked off the job. The union, which is an umbrella organization for multiple local chapters, represents nurses, physical therapists, midwives and other health professionals.Workers accuse Kaiser of violating staffing agreements and worsening patient care — both of which the health care giant denies. They are demanding a 25% raise over four years, arguing the wage increase is needed to retain and recruit employees and account for the steep inflationary pressures of the past few years. Kaiser contends its employees are on average the highest paid among other health care organizations. It has proposed a 21.5% increase over four years. In a statement, a Kaiser spokesperson said negotiations are happening while health care costs rise and millions of Americans are at risk of losing insurance. “This underscores our responsibility to deliver fair, competitive pay for employees while protecting access and affordability for our members. We’re doing both,” the unsigned statement says. According to the statement, Kaiser leadership believes it can afford the 21.5% wage increase without increasing member premiums, but it cannot make the same guarantee under the union’s proposal.The company argues that it intends its reserves for long-term commitments and emergencies. In a statement the company said using reserves for payroll would be “financially irresponsible.” Kaiser’s wage proposal would cost about $2 billion, and the union’s would cost an additional $1 billion, according to the statement.. At the same time, some of the organization’s local units declined to bargain during the COVID-19 pandemic, believing it would be too disruptive, and refrained from seeking additional raises. The group’s latest contract expired in September last year. Other major unions at Kaiser that signed contracts after 2022 received inflation-adjusted wage increases. “What we’re asking for is the same deal. Everybody else got to deal with inflation,” Guzynski said. “It’s really about restoring fairness.” The union is also speaking up for three groups of Northern California employees who recently formed unions and are bargaining for their first contracts: certified nurse midwives, certified registered nurse anesthetists and physician assistants. Kaiser has proposed cutting retirement and medical benefits for these groups, freezing wages for current employees and cutting wages for new hires, said Brian Mason, lead negotiator for the nurse midwives. There are 157 nurse midwives in Northern California. “The reality is we’re a few hundreds of thousands of dollars apart and that’s like being $10 apart for the common person,” Mason said of the nurse midwife contract. “It’s not a lot but they’re acting like we’re asking for billions and billions of dollars.” Nurse midwives deliver 80% of vaginal births across Kaiser’s Northern California hospitals, said Emily Hardy, a certified nurse midwife at the Redwood City Medical Center. Their work results in fewer cesarean sections and maternal complications and improved patient satisfaction, she added. It’s also cheaper to use nurse midwives for low-risk births than it is to pay for doctors, who focus on complications and high-risk mothers. Hardy, who has been a nurse for 15 years, said she has never gone on strike before and neither have many of her colleagues. Walking off the job was a “last resort” after two years of negotiations for the nurse midwives. “It has felt very painful because you operated for so long under the assumption that your employer really valued your services and cared about the impacts you made for members,” Hardy said. “To hear ‘we want to lower retirement and keep wages stagnant’ does not tell me that you value .”reports have described cancelled chemotherapy treatments, surgeries and other procedures. They’ve also posted images of pharmacy and laboratory lines snaking down hallways and out the door. Unionized nurses on strike, too, have reported getting recruitment texts from contractors seeking to backfill the staff positions. Kaiser is the largest health provider in California, serving more than 9 million patients. It is also the largest private employer in the state. In aCecilia Ochoa, 50, was unable to get a prescription filled at the Downey Medical Center last week. Ochoa, who had been recently hospitalized, said she was at home when she started to feel nauseous and weak several days ago. She went to the emergency room and received medication for nausea. Later, her lab results came back positive for a urinary tract infection. Ochoa said she was vomiting and shaking when she tried to get antibiotics at the 24-hour pharmacy in Downey. The line was nearly 100 people long, she said, and almost reached the street. Ochoa tried another Kaiser pharmacy around the corner and waited an hour before a staff member came outside to tell everyone that the pharmacy would not fill any more prescriptions for the day. One man complained that he had been waiting in line for three hours just to check in. “It was bad. It was so bad they were handing out snacks, water. People were there for so long,” Ochoa said. She was born at Kaiser and has been a member her whole life, Ochoa said. Over the years it has gotten harder to see specialists and wait times for appointments are so long she has to schedule them months in advance. She’s supportive of the nurses and other workers striking, some of whom she has known for decades. “I think somewhere they lost the whole thing. It’s not about the patient, it’s about the money,” Ochoa said. “I hope all of this ends as soon as possible for everybody.” Supported by the California Health Care Foundation , which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
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Frederick Wiseman, who captured the weirdness and wonder of everyday life, dies at 96The prolific, pioneering filmmaker made dozens of documentaries and chronicled the inner workings of institutions. His 1967 film, Titicut Follies, revealed appalling conditions at a prison facility.
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Oscar-winning filmmaker Frederick Wiseman dies, leaving legacy of American institutionsOscar-winning documentary maker Frederick Wiseman is dead at age 96.
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