In the October issue of Interview magazine, Joaquin Phoenix made headlines when he told film curator and journalist Elvis Mitchell that the awards season is “total, utter bullsh*t.”

However, that statement was the least interesting part of the interview according to Mitchell.

“There is a pretty lengthy part of the conversation that is about race, which I thought was as worthy if not more so as to what he was saying about awards season,” Mitchell said in the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do series.

“That he walked away from a movie because he wasn’t happy with the way it was being handled, and he thought there was this inertia that plays on this really antiquated attitude towards people of color in the movies. And so far as I can see, almost nobody picked that up. I thought that would have been the thing that had people really jumping.”

Read more in So What Do You Do, Elvis Mitchell, Film Critic and Host of KCRW’s “The Treatment”?

Rock star, punk poet and bestselling author Patti Smith played a private show Wednesday night as part of KCRW’s Berkeley Street Sessions, and FishbowlLA was lucky enough to score an invite. We rocked out with a crowd of approximately 175 public radio supporters including Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Ellen Page, Tim Robbins, Amy Madigan and Jason Bentley‘s mom. We sat next to Bookworm‘s Michael Silverblatt, who was getting his groove on, and watched Ed Harris bark like a dog during Smith’s performance of “Banga.” Magical.

Halfway through the show the music stopped and Smith was joined onstage by KCRW DJ Anne Litt for an interview that touched on a number of topics, including music, motherhood and Smith’s award-winning book, Just Kids. When Litt mentioned how much she’d been enjoying the audiobook version, narrated by Smith, the author revealed that publishers had so disliked her South Jersey accent that they told her to re-record parts of the book speaking “normally.” Thankfully, Smith declined, and her drawl remains on the audio version.

The event was recorded for Morning Becomes Eclectic and will air on November 14. The full recording of the event will become available in the station’s archives that same day.

Photo by Larry Hirshowitz

KCRW paid a visit to L.A. Youth, the local teen newspaper that needs to raise $500,000 by next Monday in order to remain open.

According to Lisa Napoli’s report, the 24-year-old paper has received $13,000 in donations since the news broke.

If L.A. Youth is unable to raise enough money, the nation’s second-largest independent newspaper written by and about teens will close on June 30.

KCRW’s Good Food won for best audio series (long format) at the 34th Annual International Association of Culinary Professional (IACP) awards Monday night in New York City.

Host Evan Kleiman wrote a virtual speech since she wasn’t in attendance on behalf of the show:

I would like to thank the IACP for honoring Good Food. It’s the best 15th anniversary present I can imagine. Thanks to Jennifer Ferro, now General Manager of KCRW for her leap of faith 15 years ago. Thanks to Harriet Ells, executive producer of the show for bringing her serious producer cred to Good Food and for taking us into the world of social media. Thanks to Gillian Ferguson, Supervising Producer for her passion and for crafting such wonderful shows each week. And to Laryl Garcia and Candace Moyer for their careful work as segment producers. And like I say at the end of each show. …and thanks to Ronny Mikkleson (for mixing) and Gary Mecija for the music. Go Team!

Congrats to Kleiman and the rest of the Good Food team.

After 27 years, Evan Kleiman‘s Angeli Caffe closed its doors for good on Jan. 13. LA Weekly columnist and KCRW Good Food regular Jonathan Gold wrote a touching eulogy on Kleiman’s Melrose restaurant:

“The chilly Wednesday evening before Angeli Caffe closed for good, you could grab a bar seat at Pizzeria Mozza without waiting, and there were only two or three dudes in line at Pink’s hot dog stand. If you were ambling down Melrose on your way to a bite or a drink, you could have had your choice of any table at any restaurant on the usually crowded strip.

But Angeli was really crowded, astonishingly crowded, with people there to wish the restaurant well — longtime customers, mostly, some of them with college-age kids who had been going to Angeli since infancy: patting out floury balls of pizza dough as toddlers, graduating to roast chicken as children, perhaps having their first dates there as teens, knowing the mashed-potato croquettes and the gnocchi with brown butter and sage would never let them down.

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Following a surge of customers in the past week, KCRW Good Food host Evan Kleiman has decided to keep Angeli Caffe open until Jan. 13 — five days later than planned.

News broke last week that Kleiman was closing her legendary Melrose Italian restaurant after 27 years.

Margy Rochlin of the LA Weekly reports that Angeli has served roughly 200 dinners a night since the announcement was made regarding the closure.

For more information, check out the Angeli Caffe website.

Evan Kleiman of KCRW’s Good Food has been the owner and chef of Angeli Caffe since 1984. But after 27 years, the Melrose restaurant is closing for good on Jan. 8.

LA Weekly has the email that Kleiman sent out regarding the closure:

Today I am meeting with my staff to let them know that I will be closing Angeli. Sunday, January 8 will be our last day. If you would like to meet as a group to ask me questions I am open to that. If you want to contact me separately that is fine too. This is a decision that I’ve known I had to make for the last couple of years and I can put it off no longer. I had hoped someone would come forward to buy the brand and carry it forward but up to now, that hasn’t happened.

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KCRW news program director Gary Scott is ending his media blog after four years.

The former reporter at the Claremont Courier, Pasadena Star-News and LA Daily Journal started the blog as a way to keep writing. With his current gig at KCRW taking up a majority of his time, Scott is pulling the plug for good:

Years have passed and I have moved into management at a public radio station. I don’t have time to offer the frequency of updates necessary to keep the blog moving.

Instead, I’m going to take what I learned from in the last few years, including from work on this blog, to do my job better. I’ll continue to write here and would appreciate to hear from people who to discuss what comes next. But I won’t be a reliable repository of job cut updates anymore.

Onward.

Veteran KCRW employee Sarah Spitz is retiring at the end of the year after nearly three decades with the public radio station. Spitz first joined KCRW as a pledge drive volunteer, and as she tells FishbowlLA, “I walked through the doors in May 1983 and never left.”

Though her official title has been publicity director since 1988, Spitz has worn a number of hats during her KCRW career. She’s a recognizable voice during pledge drives, and has left her mark on the station’s programming. Spitz founded our beloved “Left, Right & Center” in April of 1996. She recalls:

“It was originally an interview show, in which each of the panelists got to interview a person of their choice once a week from their chosen political perspective (Arianna was on the right back in those days!). But by the time May 1996 rolled around, we had FIVE Wednesdays (the original day for the original format) and we decided to try a roundtable with all panelists — which everyone loved. A new format was born; the show moved to Fridays, where a week in review belongs! LRC is nationally distributed.”

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Music snobs, rejoice!

KCRW released their first music iPad app Wednesday called “Music Mine.”

If you don’t have an iPad, imagine a movable wall of music that features up to 100 artists and full shows from KCRW DJs. Fans of a specific artist can find video, photos and blog posts by using the app’s interactive interface, which was developed by Public Radio Exchange (PRX), and designed in collaboration with Roundarch, using The Echo Nest powerful music intelligence platform.

Simply put, it’s awesome (and free).

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