The Fire Behind ‘Heat Wave’

What was amazing to Michael Lazarou is that the Watts “insurrection” 25 years ago didn’t happen long before. He said the rage had long been in place.

Lazarou, the 29-year-old screenwriter of “Heat Wave,” premiering Monday at 5 p.m. on TNT cable, has had a passionate amateur’s fascination with history--but especially the flaming anarchy that engulfed South-Central Los Angeles in 1965. He has been obsessed with it since he was 4 and living barely two miles from the riots.

To research the movie, Lazarou talked with people who were in the riot areas--rioters, bystanders, police officers, members of the National Guard. Lazarou recalled an interview with an officer and a rioter “sitting side by side, reminiscing on how it changed their lives.”

He was driven to keep his script within the tightest confines of truth. His interest in dramatizing the story was sparked when he learned about the existence of the young classified ad messenger, Robert Richardson (played in the movie by “L.A. Law’s” Blair Underwood); it was through Richardson’s experience that the story of Watts could be constructed.

The story around Richardson was mostly invented--although the characters and their lives were based on real people, events and emotions (some names have been changed because the people couldn’t be located and clearance obtained). But Lazarou said he was obliged to get a true reenactment of the riot itself.

He tried to put it into perspective:

“After World War II, L.A. was painted as the new paradise,” Lazarou said. “It was the boom town. Newspapers from here to Birmingham (Ala.) were filled with (Los Angeles) job ads. This and the fact that L.A. was viewed as a color-blind dream--the most racially progressive city in America--brought African-Americans here by the hundreds of thousands.”

But the promise was hollow.

Lazarou said what evolved was a prison without walls: Public buses didn’t run through Watts. There were few jobs available in the community and jobs outside were hard to get to. People with skills who were eminently employable were shunned from the work force, he said.

One scene in the script suggests the dreadful isolation: Richardson and his friend happen across Alameda Street into Lynwood, acclaimed as an All-American city in 1961, and they’re chased by white toughs called the Spook Hunters, which was a real gang.

“If you crossed Alameda, if you were caught in Lynwood and were black, you literally took your life in your hands,” Lazarou said. “We’re talking about de facto segregation--even more cruel than that they left behind.”

Lynwood--then referred to as “Lily White Lynwood”--was nearly all-white and proclaimed by the Chamber of Commerce as “The Best Place to Live Best.” Today it’s about 20% white.

To Lazarou, these root-cause realities help explain the ferocity of the mobs when they finally unloaded.

“Finally, on the night of Aug. 11, whatever patience there was left, ran out,” Lazarou said.

“There were a number of circumstances at play that led to so many people being at Avalon and 116th Street. It was uncharacteristically muggy and hot. Everybody was outside on their stoops.”

The rioting itself seems to be meticulously re-created in the script, especially the confrontation at that intersection between a young black driver and a Highway Patrol motorcycle officer who stopped him for a sobriety test. Lazarou recounted it, based on his interviews:

“Marquette Frye was with his stepbrother Ronald and was pulled over. He was on parole and riding a lucky streak. Things were going well; his life was turning around.

“He was bound and determined to talk his way out of this jam and he was downright ebullient, friendly, cooperative. The patrolman responded in kind. He was very, very, very cooperative. The rapport couldn’t have been better. Frye, a little bit drunk, was putting on a show and the crowd, continuing to grow, was eating it up.

“Even Officer (Lee) Minikis commented to him, ‘You’re quite a comedian.’

“They were hitting it off. Of course, the Highway Patrol in those days didn’t have the rep for brutality that the LAPD and the county sheriffs had.

“Then Frye’s mother showed up and was absolutely furious at her son for driving while drinking and proceeded to yell at him. The crowd by this time had grown to several hundred and Frye started to get upset, realizing that he might be going to jail. He was fighting back tears, then lost his temper and pushed his mother out of the way, pointed to the officer and said, ‘I’m not going anywhere with that white --------------!’

“And just like that, the mood of this crowd went from jovial to very tense and very chaotic. He was subdued by force and his mother and stepbrother came to his aid--and they too were arrested.

“The crowd started getting nasty and the partner of the officer called an 1199, which is CHP car code for ‘officer needs help!’ Then came Code 3, the sirens.

“They were soon joined by LAPD--a convoy practically--all coming from the north while CHP and sheriffs were coming from the south, while the sirens in turn were attracting more people like a magnet. The more police, the more hostile the crowd.

“A young lady barber, Joyce Ann Gaines, was pulled from the crowd and arrested. Her smock gave her the appearance of being pregnant--which she wasn’t. Someone screamed, ‘Those whitey cops are beating on a pregnant woman!’

“That’s what really sent the crowd ultimately into abject rage.

“That was the spark. Within 36 hours the riots encompassed 54 square miles of L.A.”

The official toll was 35 killed, with 1,200 reported injuries and 4,000 people arrested and 600 buildings burned and looted in six days of rioting.

Said Lazarou, “It’s so important that the viewer understands the context, understands why it happened.

“It’s important to point out that this (the Frye-Gaines arrest) was just the spark, nothing more. I mean it could have been anything. What was amazing is that it happened then and not much earlier.”

It was not a happy story then, and Lazarou said that it’s not a happy story in South-Central Los Angeles now: “There, when the smoke cleared, little was ever done to improve the situation. Recommendations for improved education, housing, jobs, fell by the wayside. Let’s face it, you can’t look at what’s going on down there and put a happy face on it.”