In Search of a City’s Soul

What do the zookeeper at the Playboy Mansion, the announcer on “The Price Is Right,” a street entertainer who juggles chainsaws on the Venice boardwalk, and a mechanical bull operator have in common? They are all “Souls of LA.”

Created by Brent Sterling Nemetz, “Souls of LA” showcases unusual jobs in Los Angeles. Five installments have been completed, each featuring seven or eight such colorful characters. The series began in December, with the fourth and fifth episodes to run tonight and next Mondayon KCET. Additional half-hours are being shot.

“Souls” expands upon an idea that Nemetz initiated after graduating from New York University film school.

“Having just graduated from school, most people are not banging down your door,” he said. “So I decided to take my future into my own hands and look in my own backyard for everyday people who have interesting stories.”

The first person he interviewed in New York was a horse and carriage driver in Central Park. “He had some wonderful anecdotes about the city, and that’s where I got the title for the series,” Nemetz recalled. “He described Central Park as the ‘soul’ of New York because it is the embodiment of all the people who make New York what it is. I thought it was such a beautiful title.”

Nemetz sent WNET, the PBS station in New York, his first installment of “Souls of New York” in hopes the station would acquire it. The audience response to the first episode was so strong that WNET quickly asked for more. “I am working on my 30th half-hour program in New York alone,” he said.

With “Souls of New York” launched, Nemetz decided to try his luck in Los Angeles last year. “I had been to L.A. many times and had come across several people who I found to be appropriate for the show,” he said.

Over the last year, Nemetz profiled everyone from a mixologist at the Tiki-Ti Cocktail Lounge on Sunset Boulevard to a young man who poses in a tank at the Standard Hotel on the Sunset Strip. Nemetz said his natural curiosity, as well as suggestions from viewers, leads him to his subjects. “When I have a show air, I receive tremendous positive response from viewers, not only by e-mail but by telephone,” he said. “They say my neighbor is a ‘Soul’; my father is a ‘Soul.’”

Rod Roddy, the announcer on “The Price Is Right,” is probably the most famous “Soul” he has profiled in Los Angeles. Because the majority of the people Nemetz profiles have never been on television before, he often has to convince them to participate.

“I have been very persistent,” he said. “There are very, very few people I ultimately don’t get in the end. Sometimes it takes as long or two or three years to get a segment.”

The New York version of the series is now in the archives of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. “I think the museum appreciates the fact that many of these people who I capture won’t be around forever, and many of these jobs are dying off as we enter a new modern age,” Nemetz said. “A lot of these people are not the type of people who would be filmed and captured. We generally live in such a celebrity-oriented world and [the celebrities] receive such overexposure. I think that one of things people love about the show is that they can relate to many of these people.”

Besides taking on New York and L.A., Nemetz has recently completed several episodes of “Souls of Miami.” He is also exploring taking the concept to San Francisco, San Diego and a number of other cities. “We’ll see how far it goes,” he said.

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“Souls of LA” can be seen tonight and Feb. 18 at 10:30 p.m. on KCET.