In 1975, I moved to California for one year, to finish art school. I haven’t left yet. As a producer, I’ve found the state to be a rich source of documentary subject matter.
First, there are the earthquakes. I did a short feature for children, who think that our frequent tremors are lots of fun. Fortunately, in recent years we’ve been spared catastrophic events.
NPR asked me to do a stereotypical vignette about a new product: A Free State of California Passport: probably the fluffiest piece I’ve ever done.
Then there was the California company that was seeking a way to make pasta—a fast food—even faster.
You can’t live here without doing a story about wine tasting. This was a competition between the Americans and the Brits.
The most fun California topic I discovered was Boontling, a lingo developed in a rural part of the state not long after the Gold Rush era. It was still alive, but fading, in the late 1980s. Here’s a short version of the program.
I also did a half-hour documentary about it for NPR Journal.