Telling LA Premieres Tuesday, December 5th at 10 p.m. on KCET
and
Tuesday, December 12th at 8 p.m. on LinkTV
By: Judy Shields
Los Angeles, California (The Hollywood Times) 12/05/2017 “The only way to know Los Angeles is to know it’s stories. You can’t really know its story until you look into the eyes of the people who have lived them and have them tell them to you. This is what Telling LA is about.” Dudley Saunders, producer and host of KCET’s Telling LA, told The Hollywood Times.
“The city is full of stories, 16 million stories. Everybody out there has a story. This city is far more fascinating than we realize. Even most of us that think it is fascinating, we have no idea until we start hearing those stories together.”
“I hope the city of Los Angeles will get behind this and support it so we can take it on. There are so many stories that need to be told. This is an opportunity for these stories to be told.”
“If we can do a lot of Telling LA, I think it will change how people feel about the city. I can tell you there was one person in the audience for when we taped the pilot and she told me after the show that she was preparing to move out of Los Angeles, and having heard the stories, she decided to stay.”
The Hollywood Times: What made you chose LA, say over Chicago or any other big city?
Dudley: “I was curious about it and Los Angeles is one of the big music city and it is a city of dreams and worth trying out.”
“I didn’t expect to stay very long, it kind of surprised me. It is still a city of opportunities that I feel a lot of cities are. There are still nooks and crannies in Los Angeles that make it possible and it just worked for me.”
THT: Did you have any fond memories from your drive from New York to Los Angeles?
Dudley: “You find yourself taking highway 66, Route 66 and that feeling when you finally hit the ocean and you really crossed the country. It is one of America’s romantic journey and as it happened, there was kind of, a pot of emotional gold at the end of the rainbow.”
THT: What did you do with the car your Grandmother gave you?
Dudley: “Well eventually one morning I came out of the house and found that it had been smashed into overnight. I’m afraid it was totaled without me in it. I had to move on from one story to the next.”
What would you like to share with our readers about the show?
Dudley: “”I hope the city of Los Angeles will get behind this and support it so we can take it on. There are so many stories that need to be told. This is an opportunity for these stories to be told.”
“The only way to know Los Angeles is to know it’s stories. You can’t really know its story until you look into the eyes of the people who lived them and have them tell them to you.”
“This is what Telling LA is about. We are going to find out what Los Angeles really is by hearing the stories of diverse Angelenos all speaking on the same theme, seeing what we have in common, what sets us apart. The only way to find out what an Angeleno is, is to hear their stories. This is the place where Angelenos can tell their own stories to each other and that is the most important thing.”
The pilot show has four different storytellers that tell us, in their own words, about how they came to live in Los Angeles. All four stories will make you love the city of LA even more.
The first storyteller is Anotonio Sacre. His story will make you believe in your dreams and that they can come true. Why it was great to move from Chicago, to New York and finally to Los Angeles.
The second storyteller, Maire, will make you laugh and wonder why someone would leave to follow their heart across the world to Los Angeles.
The third storyteller, Trini, will make you cry and some of you will share her story as well.
The fourth storyteller, Barbara, will touch your heart and you will grow to love the words “I Love You.”
Dudley said that they are delivering Angelenos to one another and that is how you really bring a city together. Fundamentally that is what Telling LA is all about.
It is going to be available on Broadcast television and online at kcet.org, Telling LA and premiering nationally on LinkTV one week later on December 12th.
It will be available for streaming on YouTube, Roku and Apple TV.
Dudley said that they are trying to get people to engage with it. They want us to go online and tell them how we arrived in Los Angeles. They have a discussion question on kcet.org/decision to share your story with them. They call them arrival stories, which are currently on the web.
Dudley made a great point, “when you hear someone tell their story to you, you immediately start thinking about your own story, like when did that happen, what did I do in that situation. When you are sitting around with people, you start to share your stories, so part of what we are doing here is to start a conversation with these stories.”
“We are going to find out what Los Angeles really is by hearing the stories of diverse Angelenos all speaking on the same theme, seeing what we have in common, what sets us apart. The only way to find out what an Angeleno is, is to hear their stories.”
Tuesday – Dec. 5th at 10:00 PM PT – KCET-HD
Wednesday – Dec. 6th at 9:00 PM PT – KCETLINK
Saturday – Dec. 9th at 4:00 PM PT – KCETLINK
Sunday – Dec. 10th at 5:00 PM PT – KCET-HD
“Telling L.A.” explores the art of storytelling, and celebrates the diversity and commonality of the human experience. Utilizing Los Angeles as the theme for their narrative, four unique viewpoints showcase a great range of human experience utilizing storytelling to bridge the social, geographic and economic borders that separate Angelenos from their city. Over the past 15 years, live storytelling has grown into a national phenomenon creating an unexpected, intimate, and often enlightening experience into the lives of others. “Telling L.A.” is dedicated to preserving the complex and multi-faceted city that attracts the best storytellers in the world.
About KCETLink Media Group
KCETLink Media Group is a national independent, nonprofit, digital and broadcast network that provides high-quality, culturally diverse programming designed to engage the public in innovative, entertaining and transformative ways. With a commitment to independent perspectives, smart global entertainment, local communities, and opportunities for engagement and social action, KCETLink depicts people and the world through a lenses unavailable elsewhere in U.S. media. A viewer-supported 501(c)(3) organization, KCETLink content is disturbed nationally via satellite on Link TV DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410 and on KCET in Southern and Central California via broadcast and cable, as well as through various digital delivery systems.
For additional information about KCET and Link TV Productions, web-exclusive content, programming schedules and community events, please visit kcet.org or linktv.org. Select programming from KCET and Link TV is also available for streaming on Hulu, Apple TV, and Roku platforms.
