RIP

Some very sad news from the ranks of LA’s international entertainment journalist community. Per a report in Screen International, Swiss-born journalist Claudia Laffranchi was found dead in her LA apartment Tuesday by a friend. She was just 49.

Laffranchi was intricately involved with several film festivals, including a brand new one in Cancun that she attended in March. Like many LA-based foreign showbiz journalists, she contributed to a variety of outlets including the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Swiss magazine Il Caffe, Swiss Italian TV and Radio RSI. From her website bio:

For Swiss television, Laffranchi produced a series of profiles of descendants of Swiss-Italian immigrants who moved to California at the beginning of the 20th century. She also produced and directed, together with Alberto Engeli, two 26-minute documentaries: Los Angeles, Switzerland, about young Swiss artists living in LA; and Hollywood, CH, a profile of three very successful personalities of Swiss heritage (businessman Fred Hayman, actor Vincent Perez and production designer Eugenio Zanetti).

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

USC grad Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon) continues to spread the word about the phenomenal instructional DVD he put together a few years ago about his late teacher Nina Foch. As well he should.

Underwritten by George Lucas, the DVD was culled from around 100 hours of footage shot by Kleiser during Foch’s USC course about acting and filmmaking. Following a recent speech at Athens’ Michael Cacoyannis Foundation that focused heavily on the DVD, Kleiser talked to greekreporter.com about the Oscar nominee for Executive Suite and Emmy nominee for Lou Grant:

“Nina Foch was the best teacher I ever had and I knew her teachings had to be recorded for future generations. Even as she continued acting in film and television, her passion for teaching lasted for over forty years.”

“Her course was immensely popular because she developed her own unique style drawing from her experiences studying with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Uta Hagen, as well as, the directors, Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Kubrick, Cecil B. DeMille and Otto Preminger. She taught a generation of filmmakers including John McTiernan, Amy Heckerling, Ed Zwick, Ron Underwood and many others. Nina went from being my teacher, to my mentor, to my good friend.”

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Interesting tidbit from TheWrap film writer Brent Lang.

Lowell Bergman, a producer with 60 Minutes from 1983 through 1997, told Lang that prior to the making of Michael Mann‘s 1999 drama The Insider, he arranged for Wallace to meet with the director at the Beverly Regent Wilshire hotel. Why? Because Mann at the time hoped to convince Wallace to play himself in the film (the correspondent was, of course, famously channeled in the end by Christopher Plummer). From Lang’s piece:

The movie depicted Wallace caving to CBS’ corporate leadership after the network refused to air the Jeffrey Wigand interview over concerns about a potential lawsuit from tobacco company Brown & Williamson. Wallace claimed that he never agreed that the story should be killed.

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There have been several memorable remembrances of journalist and biographer Charles Higham, who passed away in LA late last month at the age 80. Most notably, locally, was Joel Bellman’s guest post on LA Observed about the time he interviewed Higham for an Orson Welles radio documentary.

Another worthy piece comes from the country where the British-born Higham began his transcontinental journalism career, Australia, in the form of a Sydney Morning Herald obit written by Philippe Mora, a French-Australian writer-director who occasionally contributes to the paper. There is much about Higham’s most famous work, the 1980 Errol Flynn biography The Untold Story, as well as this funny anecdote:

Higham had a delight in the macabre and the absurd, exemplified by his invitation to the English widow of Hermann Erben for dinner in Los Angeles with a Flynn double, Chuck Pilleau. Higham coaxed from her a bizarre revelation: SS agent Erben was circumcised.

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Despite the fact that Steve Bannon, a filmmaker and executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network, has appealed to website WorldNetDaily to stop pursuing Andrew Breitbart death conspiracy theories, contributor Jerome R. Corsi goes down that road again. Bear in mind that the title of Corsi’s latest book is Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?

Along with what Corsi deems death by “suspicious causes” of a 61-year-old photographic technician at the LA Coroner’s office the day the preliminary Breitbart autopsy report was released, there is also the matter of 26-year-old Christopher Lasseter. The site thinks it’s strange that the only witness to Breitbart’s sidewalk collapse has seemingly gone into hiding:

At the request of WND, Ohio-based private investigator Susan Daniels recruited a California-based private investigator to find Lasseter. The local investigator tried without success to find a cell phone or landline phone number for Lasseter.

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Yauch, also known as MCA, died today, May 4, after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 47.

Yauch is best known as a founding member of the trailblazing rap trio the Beastie Boys.

The news was announced on Global Grind, a web site run by music mogul Russell Simmons. It was Simmons’ Def Jam Records that in 1986 released the Beastie Boys’ legendary first album, “Licensed to Ill.”

In 2009, Yauch was diagnosed with a a cancerous tumor in his salivary gland. Soon after his diagnosis, he released a video announcing the news to his fans.

Yauch was a filmmaker as well as a musician, Under the pseudonym “Nathanial Hörnblowér”, Yauch directed many of the Beastie Boys’ music videos. In 2002, he founded the film production company Oscilloscope Laboratories.

Short and sweet, the University of Southern California released a touching tribute video for former linebacker Junior Seau, who was found dead Wednesday from a self-inflicted gunshot.

The 43-year-old sang “Wonderful Tonight” at USC’s Spring Game last month.

Suicide is a brutal act for close friends and family to comprehend, especially when the person choosing to end their life does not leave behind any explanation. According to early reports, that is apparently the case with former USC great, San Diego Charger and perennial NFL Pro Bowler Junior Seau, found today by police at his home in Oceanside.

For 710 ESPN radio host Marcellus Wiley, a 2001-02 Chargers teammate of Seau’s, it has been an especially devastating piece of news. He last saw Seau in November, and during this very emotional appearance on Sports Center, Wiley explained that at first he couldn’t quite believe the news, scanning the Internet for a retraction and even texting Seau directly:

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The L.A. riots began 20 years ago today, a five day period of fires, looting, and destruction. More than 60 people lost their lives in that chaos, victims were as young as 15 and as old as 87, mostly blacks and latinos. Some were participating in the riots, but many were simply innocent bystanders. The Los Angeles Times has created a chart of the dead on their website with a searchable map and database. It’s a haunting reminder of just how much this city lost during those heartbreaking five days.

A few of the casualties:

Juana Espinosa, a 65-year-old Latina, was shot and killed Saturday, May 2, 1992, in the 7600 block of South Compton Avenue in Willowbrook. Espinosa was shot in the stomach by a 15-year-old boy who authorities say was aiming for two other youths.

Betty Jackson, a 56-year-old black woman, died Friday, May 1, 1992, in South Park while rushing to deliver some barbecued chicken to a friend before the citywide evening curfew began.
The small car that Jackson and her sister were in was struck by a van at Main and 51st streets. Traffic lights were out throughout the area.
“Betty was very generous,” said Ingrid Chamberlin, a relative. “Betty was like the one person you would want to win the lottery. If she’s rich, everybody’s rich. That’s the kind of person she is.”

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The very active expatriate journalism community in Glendale is mourning the loss this week of Armen Dilanyan, who died unexpectedly on Tuesday at age 56.

Before coming to the U.S. in 2006 and establishing a daily political talk show on SoCal’s Horizon Armenian Television, Dilanyan built up a solid reputation working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Per an obituary on azatutyun.am, he was one of the first correspondents for the service in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan and helped launch a local bureau after the territory gained independence in 1992:

Armen Koloyan, a longtime member of RFE/RL’s Prague team, had worked with Dilanyan since the early 1990s. “We colleagues called Armen Dilanyan ‘Dilo’ because there were several Armens in our office and we had to tell them apart,” he said.

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