July 12, 2009 Tastemakers Issue

July 12, 2009

Letter from the Editor

Taste. Is there a more subjective word? Yours is yours alone, as is mine. I respect yours (you like slapstick, I hate it), and you respect mine (you wouldn’t choose Prokofiev, but you respect my love for his music). Simple. And in this time of great spiritual warfare, sometimes it seems like taste in our culture keeps us from despair. Yet the larger question of taste is a more complicated conversation, because in our world, it is both personal and societal. My own taste—classic clothes with a touch of gimmickry and fun versus gimmicky attention-grabbing clothes pretending to be classic—may be overshadowed by this moment’s collective taste for noise versus quiet.

July 12, 2009

Overheard

“Don’t worry—you were only a tertiary character in my dream last night.” —Woman to her date while sharing dessert at Sweet Lady Jane

July 12, 2009

MY LA

No One Is Auto Immune

The good news: The sluggish economy means great deals on new cars. The bad news: The money you save might have to go toward therapy for the identity crisis you develop as you try to decide which car is right for you.

July 12, 2009

BACK / STORY

Where There’s Smoke...

Ed Kolpin was a tough act to follow. He lived to 97, smoked almost every day, once skinny-dipped in the reflecting pool at the Taj Mahal and sipped Cuban rum with Errol Flynn. But for Jeanette Kolpin, his cherubic, mild-mannered daughter-in-law, filling his shoes at the Tinder Box—the smoke shop Ed morphed out of his father’s Santa Monica pharmacy in 1928—since his death in 2007 is about keeping the legacy alive.

July 12, 2009

Turn It Up

TÊTE-à-TÊTE: GREG KURSTIN

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Challenging the lone-draftsman romantic ideal, young architects are increasingly establishing studios on the principle that two T squares are better than one. The partners (photographed at Oscar Niemeyer’s Strick House) founded their firm, Johnston Marklee, in 1998 without a trademark style to sell, and their approach virtually guarantees they will never develop one. That has not precluded them from creating some of the decade’s most exciting L.A. architecture. The firm brings artistic and conceptual gravitas to its work by involving photographers, writers and sculptors in commissions. “We like conflating different points of view,” Johnston says. “You’d think it would diffuse your thinking, but it helps us home in on what a project needs. Besides, it’s fun.”

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

The conceptual explorations of this London-born artist find fertile ground in Los Angeles. Take, for example, Passages, Beshty’s recent installation at LAXART, which required visitors to walk on a tempered mirrored surface laid throughout the gallery. A single step or shift in weight caused the glass to splinter beneath the thin laminate coating. Such intricate shattering reflects the aggressively inquisitive artist’s sensibilities— his work moves in unpredictable directions across many disciplines, including photography, sculpture and writing.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

When traditional media behemoths Fox and NBC—the partners behind Hulu—thought of a Web-based content outlet, they brought in Pittsburgh native Kilar, who’d been instrumental in forming Amazon’s DVD-download business. With technology and storytelling in Kilar’s DNA—his father was an engineer, his mother a columnist—Hulu was a perfect venue. Surprisingly, the aim was not to best YouTube. In crafting Hulu, Kilar leveraged access to a library of premium content with shows like Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, stayed away from user-generated video, offered limited commercials and created a uniquely clean cinematic experience. For Fox and NBC, this was a win-win, and Kilar’s success is measurable: Hulu’s unique users are through the roof, and ad rates for such shows as Arrested Development are higher than when they were on the air. TV Hulu style may or may not turn brains to tapioca—as the ads starring Alec Baldwin, Denis Leary and Seth MacFarlane roguishly imply—but it’s changing how we consume content, and it’s filling network coffers.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

We go back a long way: to 1982, when Conan was invited on a Boston television show to defrock me and my Official Preppy Handbook as the arbiter of prepdom. He was funny and sharp as editor in chief of The Harvard Lampoon, but I had the better complexion, and it was just a local show. In 1987, I was cohosting a pilot for ABC called Goodnight America, and he and his best friend, Greg Daniels, were my writers. How confident and free these boys were, both joke writers earning a living in L.A., while other Lampoon alumni were pursuing high-paying corporate jobs. Then I read that the unknown Saturday Night Live and Simpsons writer with the strange name had been anointed by Lorne Michaels as the newest late-night star, and I have to say, I was shocked. Conan? That Conan? How did he slide to the front of the queue? I watched him intently (and with a bit of jealousy) at the beginning of his run, and though he was awkward, he was awkward in front of millions of viewers. He didn’t de-Conan-ify himself—he laid it on. Eventually, it worked.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

The last time a restaurant and chef got the kind of buzz Andrés is getting for the Bazaar was when Wolfgang Puck opened Spago on Sunset, and people were eating duck pizza in droves. Times—and palates—may have become more sophisticated, but a culinary star of Andrés’ wattage still draws a lot of attention.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Think of McFetridge as a goodwill ambassador for skate culture. From Champion Graphics, his Atwater Village–based studio, the CalArts grad applies the aesthetics of his demimonde to feature films, home decor, even billboards for hegemonic soft drinks. Most remarkable about his style, which favors softly contoured animalistic characters and line-drawn, Sgt. Pepper’s– reminiscent figures, is how well suited it is to clients of every ilk. Champion does the “Live Simply” T-shirt series for Patagonia, a project that might have spiraled into “Life Is Good” pabulum if not for McFetridge’s minimal, winking illustrations. This followed a limited run of lunch boxes for skate-fashion arbiter Stussy, which were immediately snatched up and hawked on eBay.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

She once bristled when anyone put down Los Angeles—but not anymore. “Now,” says fashion designer Rodriguez, “I think it’s better if people don’t get that L.A.’s a truly modern and diverse city. It’s our secret.” Of course, she isn’t exactly helping to keep our cultural profile hush-hush. Her eponymous line has been a favorite of New York fashion editors since 2006, when the “Criss Cross” cocktail dress debuted and quickly became a must-have for Hollywood’s young and restless. Since then, the co-owner of bicoastal vintage mecca Resurrection has been designing collections that often toast a deliciously misspent youth.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

The founding of Commune—the West Hollywood–based design firm that, in five short years, has become one of the hottest names in the field, with a portfolio that includes residential interiors, shops, a restaurant, a hotel and sundry “branding” strategies—could make a good setup for a movie. Four friends (two New Yorkers, two Angelenos), all with quirky and seemingly incongruent tastes, get to brainstorming and, before you can say, “Hey! My dad’s got a barn,” a studio is born. And the Andy Hardy reference makes some sense. Commune principals Pamela Shamshiri and her brother, Ramin, worked in production design for films and commercials; principals Roman Alonso and Steven Johanknecht met at Barneys in Manhattan, where they handled, respectively, public relations and store display. More important, there is surprise and drama in Commune’s work. Describing one project, Johanknecht calls it “theatrical, surreal, humorous and collected,” but he could be talking about the firm’s otherwise unclassifiable designs. In one house, they mixed an assortment of mounted deer heads and antlers with sleek modernist furniture. They placed mannequins in a giant gilded birdcage in a Juicy Couture shop. They gave the rooms at the new Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs a hippie-campground vibe, with low beds, flowing canvas curtains and free-edge wooden furniture.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

From his offices in Silver Lake, Maltzan has developed one of the most innovative and respected architectural practices in the nation—an achievement that has led to his being named a finalist for the 2009 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. His talents can be seen in projects large—the Pirelli RE offices in Milan and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena—and small. He designed the temporary Queens home for New York’s Museum of Modern Art, renovated the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer and built homes for artists Lari Pittman and Roy Dowell and art collectors Michael Ovitz and Alan Hergott and Curt Shepard. “Architecture,” he says, “is at its best when confronting questions about our culture.”

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Frankfurt is proof that the sensibilities and skills that make for a great jewelry designer and those that make for a wonderful hostess share more common ground than you might think: Both involve an engagement with the outside world, an exquisite personal touch and a heartfelt execution appropriate not just in tumul­tuous times but in all times. Frankfurt finds inspiration for her jewelry everywhere, from forms found in nature to the impact of other cultures. Her pieces are highly personal and intended as a talisman for each wearer. The people who frequent her Venice boutique, LFrank, “are looking for significance and quality— not for something trendy or mass produced.” When she opens her home to friends and family, Frankfurt assembles each occasion from scratch, getting inspiration for the menu and decorations from whatever is seasonally available—then mixes unexpected ingredients and flora to fulfill her vision. There is a certain dignity, grace and generosity of spirit in Frankfurt’s philosophy. She demonstrates that adornment and socializing are hardly superficial when they enrich everyday existence.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Robinson didn’t dream of stardom as a teen—she was too busy rocking the hottest Hollywood clubs with her spellbinding dance moves. And pursuing her passion turned out to be a good move: Directors and artists in the dance world quickly discovered her talent, and Robinson went on to choreograph for the likes of Michael Jackson, the Black Eyed Peas, Gap, the Oscars and Dreamgirls. Success is nice, to be sure, but for Robinson, the real thrill is staying in touch with vibrant young dancers. One of the places they flock to is her aptly named dance studio, Foresight—“because it’s always looking ahead,” she says. Robinson throws dance parties for kids age 16 to 18 who come from “the hood and Hollywood, rich and poor.” There is “no drama at the door”—everyone is welcome, money doesn’t matter and creativity is king.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Moses has always known our city has a heart and soul. As Los Angeles nightlife impresario, he has transformed the historic downtown district into a vital community, sparing us from the touristy filigree that had plagued the city with its slew of velvet ropes, celebutantes and self-conscious clichés.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Uribe has been addressing issues of identity since he was child. “My father’s friends would call me ‘pocho’ [a derisive term for an assimilated Mexican immigrant] because I wore Dickies and Dodger caps and used a hybrid of Spanish and English that I picked up in the streets of East L.A.” It wasn’t until he turned 33, listening to the radio show Pocho Hour of Power with Lalo Alcaraz, that he came to a realization: “I should be proud of my new culture, as it was a result of my ancestors migrating to the U.S. to improve their lives.”

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

In the hands of the right designer, costumes can illuminate onscreen characters with jarring and immediate elegance. Phillips, the Oscar-nominated costume designer for Walk the Line, who’s also behind the looks for 3:10 to Yuma and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, is renowned for creating images that endure in one’s memory—often longer than the tautest lines of a great screenplay.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Urban gentrification—New York’s SoHo is the classic example—tends to follow a pattern: Artists in search of cheap space move into a moribund area, galleries and cognoscenti follow, and soon a once dilapidated district has wide-ranging cachet. This, in a way, was Philbin’s formula when she took over as director of UCLA’s Hammer Museum a decade ago and turned oil baron Armand Hammer’s cold and roundly despised vanity project into the hippest and most dynamic cultural institution in town. “We defined our primary audience as artists,” she says. “If you can capture their attention, everyone else comes along.”

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Korek is the great matchmaker of the art world. Having worked in the prints and drawings department at LACMA, she found herself disillusioned by the lack of collaboration within the museum system. So she left that world behind and founded ForYourArt, where she became a “metacurator,” a link between artists and a larger audience. Among its many projects, FYA produces a quarterly pocket-size map, akin to the Zagat Guide for culture vultures, with openings, contributors’ picks and artist interviews. Recently, FYA created summer issues for New York and Chicago and plans to expand to Miami this fall.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Artistic and general director of the Long Beach Opera since the 2003-04 season, Mitisek wants nothing less than to change the sensibility audiences bring to seeing opera. Attending a performance doesn’t mean sitting in plush seats and watching centuries-old compositions played as they have been for generations. “When you go see a film, you want to see something new, not something that was made 30 years ago,” he says. “So, why should you always want to see the same opera?” He staged Orpheus & Euridice, a newly commissioned work by Ricky Ian Gordon, at a pool that represented the River Styx and The Diary of Anne Frank in the Sinai Temple underground parking garage. Mitisek, who trained in Austria, eventually left his homeland to take his vision of alternative opera to the New World. Austria’s loss was Long Beach’s gain.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

If HBO was in a lull after the end of pop-culture phenomenons Sex and the City and The Sopranos, it’s now back on top, drawing in 3.7 million viewers for the sophomore-season debut of Alan Ball’s vampire drama, True Blood. “I woke up this morning and felt like nothing could go wrong today,” says Naegle, who before becoming president of HBO Entertainment a year ago repped Ball as head of the literary division at UTA and packaged his hit series Six Feet Under. But she isn’t stopping with vampires. Next up are a Martin Scorsese–directed drama, Boardwalk Empire, chronicling Atlantic City’s casinos; and the fantasy Game of Thrones. And then there’s Hung, about a father who becomes a prostitute to support his kid. “What’s so great about Hung is, at first, it seems really provocative, but the issues are universal. That’s the beauty of the network—everything is thought out.”

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

When Siegel was a med student, he was actively discouraged from finding out what patients were thinking. Now in his current practice as a clinical psychiatrist, executive director of Mindsight and codirector of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, it’s the mind he is most interested in—specifically how it can be channeled to help the whole body. One of the core practices of “mindsight” is concentrating on the breath. “Mindsight can increase one’s ability to perceive the world,” he says. Siegel created practical applications from his research: He has lectured to school superintendents, and educators confirm mindsight’s effectiveness as a foundation for social and emotional intelligence. Even the world’s spiritual leaders are interested—he met with Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama. And what of Freud? Siegel thinks he would approve—heartily.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

He is young (30), smart (Crossroads and Yale) and married to actress Jessica Alba. Along with his best friend and business partner, NBA star Baron Davis, Warren started Verso Entertainment, which includes ibeatyou.com, one part social networking, one part online competition, where friends can challenge friends to anything from pet tricks to karaoke. Modest as he is in person, Warren has grand aspirations: nothing short of redefining Los Angeles culture and creating new entertainment for progressive twenty and thirtysomethings. “The next cultural explosion will be fueled by homegrown talent,” he maintains. That means, essentially, that the time has come for Warren and his peers—who grew up here and remain connected through networks that cross school, cultural and geographical lines—to join up and partake of one another’s endeavors.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

It’s all about Shanks—and that’s a good thing if you like some of television’s most promising but short-lived series. Because as DirecTV’s executive vice president of entertainment goes, so go the satellite giant’s more than 18 million subscribers. His aim is simple: Keep quality content alive. He has rescued canceled shows with loyal fan bases—Showtime’s Sleeper Cell and ABC’s Wonderland—and given them another window. With NBC’s football drama Friday Night Lights, DirecTV even shared costs for new episodes—a warm-up for the original programming said to be coming down the pike. Shanks developed his catholic tastes in TV through a peripatetic career that began with the Winter Olympics in Norway. “Right now, I’m starting from scratch with The Wire,” he says. “Maybe that’s one show I’ll be trying to get next.” Stay tuned.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

By the time the X Games were created in 1995, pro skateboarders Steve Berra and Eric Koston felt their beloved boarding had become more about merchandising and corporations than camaraderie and spontaneity. To help bring the sport back to its roots, in 2007 they founded the Berrics (a combination of “Berra” and “Eric”), a private skate park at a downtown L.A. warehouse, to give pro skaters a place to practice and film videos without the interruption of police. They also added a suite of edit bays and a crew of filmmakers who worked around the clock to generate exclusive content and give fans online access at theberrics.com to the most exclusive skate park in the city. At events like the semiannual Battle of the Berrics, the freewheeling spirit of the early ’90s is clearly alive and well.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Leave it to a rock guitarist to see a chance to riff. If his dad hadn’t talked him out of a recording contract when he was 17, Kavanaugh might not have launched Relativity Media, the company that has financed or produced and distributed more than 100 films—and racked up more than $7.4 billion. When he bought the horror-genre Rogue Pictures, the idea was to make movies, not launch a lifestyle brand. “We started to hear: ‘We love Rogue T-shirts, shoes, videogames.’ Well, these didn’t exist,” says Kavanaugh. “Say it takes $30 million to promote a movie...Why can’t I take that same dollar and also be promoting a brand?” Developing your own brand based on what the audience wants and placing the products in the film is the logical step beyond placement of other brands. It’s taking Marshall McLuhan one step further: The medium is the message—and both are making money.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

She doesn’t like to drop names—McQuillan prefers to let her résumé do the talking. But ask any number of decorating heavyweights, and they’ll tell you the fiercely inventive fabric designer, known for setting trends in color and pattern, is a home-furnishings sensation. Who knew that the 12-year old who used to ruin her mother’s irons crafting batik would become spooled into the industry while studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago? It was there that she developed a taste for repeat patterns that later evolved into block printing and silkscreening. Soon, she was creating prototypes for skate and surf companies Quiksilver, Billabong and Nike. Now operating out of her own factory in Santa Barbara and her Pacific Design Center showroom, McQuillan plans to expand into wallpaper and weaving—inspired as always by passions rather than trends.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

For much of Los Angeles’ early history, resource allocation meant bringing water to its citizens through remarkably ingenious means (We’ll divert a lake!) but little foresight (We’ll suck it dry in a decade!). Contemporary L.A. does better in regulating its profligate thirst, but as Krug sees it, there are new frontiers of water conservation that beg to be explored.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Personally, Leiweke likes to keep a low profile. Professionally, he’s all about the big splash. Chances are if you’ve gone downtown over the past decade to attend a sporting event or a show, you’ve already been part of his master plan.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

In 1993, young Nadler spent all of his bar mitzvah money on a Macintosh computer and started surfing the newfangled World Wide Web. Turns out it was a savvy investment. Today, as head of UTA Online, Nadler is getting paid for doing the same thing—and getting other people paid, too. He and the other three agents in his division log “a lot” of hours scouring the Web for the homegrown talent who make YouTube hits—like the directors of “Obama Girl” and Lucas Cruikshank, aka Fred (beloved by several million teenage fans of his YouTube series)—then tracking the auteurs for potential commercial deals.

July 12, 2009

Tastemakers

Inc. magazine’s 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year is not a publicity stuntman in the mold of Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson. Rather, Musk is an implacable tinkerer. He burrows deep into lithium-ion-battery development for his electric car brand, Tesla Motors, and pores over sketches from the company’s advanced-design studios in Hawthorne. When Musk is satisfied that his terrestrial tech is well in hand, he designs rockets and cargo capsules for his El Segundo–based low-cost space-transport endeavor, SpaceX.

July 12, 2009

WEB ONLY

Tastemakers: Power & Grace

J.J. Abrams

July 12, 2009

FEATURE STORY

Grand Tour

One of the clichés of writing about houses and decor is a discussion of “the mix.” At the home of Richard Shapiro, the story is not so much about the mix as it is about an individual connoisseurial vision that ennobles objects and artworks of widely ranging period, pedigree and provenance. A zealous collector all his life, Shapiro owns one of the finest antiques shops in Los Angeles. His treasure-laden house in Holmby Hills reflects the arc of his shifting passions and tastes over the past quarter century.

July 12, 2009

GOOD SPORT

(Don’t) Show Him the Money

Fastball, changeup or curve? Inside or outside, high or low? Slide step or full leg kick? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of variables a pitcher considers over the course of a nine-inning game. Decisions, decisions.

July 12, 2009

MY BEST STORY

Idle Motivation

I’m at Radio City Music Hall for the 2005 Tony Awards, billed as Broadway’s biggest night, though I always thought that was Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. I have never even seen a Tony show before. When God was doling out showbiz DNA, I must have missed out on that particular gay gene. But I do love musical theater, having grown up in a world of Gilbert and Sullivan before switching to a mature respect for Frank Loesser, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter and Lerner & Loewe.