On April 27 I had an unusual experience while quietly shooting a tour of the Motion Picture Home with members of our “Saving the Lives” group and two guests, including actor Elliott Gould.
After shooting Mr. Gould walking through the halls and greeting smiling residents who were delighted to see him on campus, two MPTF security guards stopped us as we walked through the cottages on our way to the Saban Center. The guards told me they knew I had been shooting on campus and insisted that I would have to put my camera back in my car immediately.
I told them I wouldn’t shoot any more. That wasn’t good enough. The camera had to go back in my car.
I’ve been capturing documentary footage for more than a decade in all kinds of environments. There were only two places where my shooting had been controlled or restricted -- the border of North Korea and in Vietnam. What country are we living in?
Amazingly the Motion Picture Home joins the company of two infamous Communist countries in its efforts to control the flow of information within its boundaries. This should be a cause of great concern for all of us. The long-term care and hospital unit closures will directly affect hundreds of people today and many thousands in the years ahead.
If the MPTF is so confident and so certain about its chosen course, why would it be so concerned about groups like ours trying to offer alternative points of view? Why does management refuse interviews with working press? Why have they hired a crisis-management public-relations firm?
All is not well within the plush offices of MPTF management.
After I put my camera safely in the car, I grabbed my computer bag and started to re-enter the hospital in order to find the group and rejoin the tour. The guard who had followed me to my car stopped me and demanded to search my computer bag, presumably to check for small cameras or other information gathering technology.
I am a very law-abiding person. I support civil authority. I give regularly to police auxiliary groups. I had nothing to hide in my bag, but I told the guard that a search of my bag wasn’t going to happen under any circumstances.
Two female social workers approached me at that point with emotionally detached smiles on their faces. They knew where I was. They told me that camera restrictions were for the safety and security of residents. I told them, with no smile on my face, that I was also interested in the safety and security of the residents as well.
The difference is that I, like many others, want long-term care residents to stay in their on-campus homes while the MPTF wants them all to go away with as little objection or review as possible. Residents had no problem with the camera capturing Elliott Gould’s warm-hearted visit. MPTF social workers were clearly troubled by their happy faces.
