The Motion Picture & Television Fund acknowledged today that it had done a poor job of explaining the reasons why it is closing the long-term care facility and hospital at its Woodland Hills retirement home, but insisted it had no choice in a difficult economic climate.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Dreamworks Animation chief who chairs the MPTF Foundation board, said of the organization’s public communications over the past three weeks: “We give ourselves a failing grade. This has not been communicated well.”
Update:
Several hours after the audio conference, about 50 family members and union activists held a candle-light vigil outside the MPTF’s front gate urging the board to reverse its decision and keep the long-term care facility and hospital open.
“This is not a done deal,” Hans Johnson, an organizer with the Service Employees International Union told the crowd. “When we show up, when we let our lights shine, we can reverse what they say is an irreversible decision.” (At left, Hans Johnson. Photos by Andrew Gumbel.)
Relatives of the residents facing eviction have retained the fearsome Los Angeles litigation firm Girardi & Keese, which has previously won settlements from Merck over problems with its best-selling anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, and was also instrumental in the suit against Pacific Gas & Electric depicted in the film Erin Brockovich.
Protesters reported that a rumor went round the MPTF campus last weekend that Brockovich herself was about to show up. Security guards closed all but one gate and brandished 8 x 10 photographs of the legal activist so they could prevent her from gaining access to the threatened home. She never showed.
Speakers at the vigil expressed anger, not relief, at the explanations MPTF officials gave at the audio conference. “They’re just trying to confuse you,” retirement home worker and activist Myra Torres said in an impassioned speech. She said the executives were treating their charges like pets more than humans. “Why did they continue to accept residents if they knew the closures were coming?” she asked. “These are people who sold their homes, or who spent their lives paying contributions, so they could live here.” (At left Paul Kissner.)
Earlier:
The MPTF assembled a group of industry heavy-hitters including Katzenberg, MPTF chief executive David Tillman and MPTF corporate board chairman Frank Mancuso, for an audio news conference.
The news conference came a day after TheWrap ran a two-part investigative series on the closures, and apparent inconsistencies between the Fund’s public statements and its official financial documents.
Katzenberg said the home faced a “triple storm”: a decline in Medi-Cal payments triggered by California’s budget crisis, a decline in the Fund’s investment portfolio in the wake of the collapse on Wall Street and an anticipated drop-off in charitable giving to the home.
But the MPTF officials gave only superficial answers when asked why they had announced the closures without warning.
They did not explain why a document prepared by the Camden Group analyzing the MPTF’s financial situation and laying out the case for closure had been kept confidential, and why they had not even waited to see if the Hollywood community could raise funds to make up an anticipated multi-million dollar shortfall for 2008 and 2009.
