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The group “Saving the Lives of Our Own” has released an Open Letter to Jeffrey Katzenberg in answer to two full-page advertisements by the Motion Picture & Television Fund in a print trade publication last week. Katzenberg is the Chair of the “MPTF Foundation Committee,” and a member of both the Fund Board of Trustees and the MPTF Corp Board of Directors. Saving the Lives of Our Own is a grass-roots coalition of thousands of Entertainment Industry workers and community members whose mission is to keep the MPTF long-term care facility open, to stop the evictions of its elderly residents, and to ensure that the MPTF promise of “Taking Care of Our Own” remains unbroken – now and for future generations:
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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We received a holiday letter requesting a year-end donation from MPTF yesterday. It wasn’t a straightforward professional request. It was a thinly disguised PR piece that included the line “Isn’t it great to know that when you support MPTF, they’ll be here for your colleagues, your loved ones, and even you, if you need help someday?
Been there, done that. We supported MPTF for years and years and it’s not there for our loved one when we need it. It’s not there for our colleagues. It’s not there for us.
We returned the form today stating no donations from this household until you re-open and support the nursing home. Ditto.
MPTF is hurting and needs to make cuts to survive. To just say cuts can’t be made and not offer ways to fund the long term care facilities shows you live in a dream world. Just wait if the money situation gets even worse…
The MPTF is NOT hurting and does NOT need to make cuts to survive.
The MPTF chose to close the Hospital and Nursing Home so that it could pursue expansion plans in other areas that the MPTF feels would be more profitable.
It is the responsibility of the Board to make certain the original mission of the MPTF is upheld before the Fund ventures into other areas.
In one of the family meetings I attended in the Saban Center, David Tillman discussed the possibility of opening food service (like a sandwich shop and a juice bar he said) after the closure was completed. He told this to families of LTC residents who were going to be evicted. He actually though this would sound like a good alternative use of the MPTF funds to us.
Just like his comments that no amount of money would stop the closure it is clear he is out of touch with how to manage the MPTF organization.
Tillman did it early then. He opened the Outtakes Cafe in the Katzenberg pavilion while the nursing home and hospital are open. Now he and Ellis will no longer run the risk of having to look at sickness on campus since they don’t have to eat in the Heartbeat Cafe in the hospital buildng. Instead they can sit and admire the wellness around them. After all, the falls and health failures are whisked off campus almost daily from the sounds of sirens. Out of sight, out of mind. Gaze down at the healthy and wealthy. Isn’t life grand?
If the Foundation was dissolved and no donations are being accepted, what happened to the money that was “raised” at Katzenberg’s 2008 and 2009 glitzy MPTF Fund-raisers?!
Charitable institutions make a commitment to the people and the community they serve. It is the responsibility of the Board to make sure the commitment is fulfilled even at the expense of some temporary financial challenge.
Why is the law – and the lawyers – acting like Ostriches on this? There certainly seems to be enough evidence to warrant a thorough investigation…
Jeffrey is closing the Home while raising money for Obama to apply this same sad standard to the entire country…I’m just saying it seems to be quacking like a duck.
Bingo.
Jeffrey also led MPTF to join “Divided We Fail” to bring attention to health care and long-term financial security.
“The entertainment industry’s leadership felt that we could make a major contribution to Divided We Fail,” said MPTF Foundation Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. “Hollywood can call attention to these problems and help galvanize the public into taking action, which is a key first step in solving them.”
MPTF was well compensated for its participation in “Divided We Fail.” Check out the others involved with AARP, Business Roundtable, SEIU, and NFIB’s project.
I’m just agreeing it seems to be quacking like a duck.
It’s the ongoing national health care debate fireworks on an intimate scale here. Where are the ethics, morality, and personal responsibility?
Jeffrey alters the legacy of the Home while acting as chief SoCal fundraiser for a national administration that is pushing its health care reform agenda.
Politics and Hollywood make powerful, scandalous bedfellows. Whether or not industry members support the current version of healthcare reform, few support the actions of the MPTF.
All eyes on Katzenberg.
Hopefully, DH will reprint this article from the MPTF “Saving the Lives of Our Own”… It deserves to be read by everyone in the entertainment business!
What Country Is This?
by Dean Butler
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.
What’s wrong with this picture?
The social workers disregarded my concerns, insisting that I was a potential security risk to the residents. They wrote down my name and the name of my mother-in-law. Then a security supervisor, a gentlemen who clearly likes to project his command authority, put his shoulders back and sucked in his stomach while telling me with considerable pleasure that I could not rejoin my tour group and that I could only be on campus if I was in the presence of my relative.
Then I smiled. “Are you guys making up new rules on the fly now?” I have been moving freely around the campus for over three years with no restrictions. I have enjoyed the picture-lined halls alone, strolled the gardens on my own, and more recently toured the pristine and largely unused Saban Center. I had walked everywhere. There had never been any questions of “where’s your relative?” in all that time.
Clearly this was a punitive response to my camera and my unwillingness to submit to a search of my computer bag.
The Motion Picture Home is becoming a health-care lockdown rather than a safe and welcoming haven for retired industry workers and their families. I chose to visit my mother-in-law rather than being forced off campus.
As I stepped through the sliding glass doors I heard the security supervisor bark at one of his guards, “Stick with him”. Are they kidding? Was this MPTF Five-0? I was waiting for “book’em, Darren,” referring to my MPTF security tail, Darren Chavez. I’ve dealt with Darren before. He’s a polite guy who is just doing what he’s told to do. Darren’s security supervisor, on the other hand, seems to be a man who enjoys confrontation.
While Darren followed me down the hall to 1 West, he stayed at a discreet distance while I visited quietly with my mother-in-law. In the back of my mind I honestly wondered if security guards were writing down the license number of my car or maybe arranging to slash my tires at some point when I was off the campus. It sounds paranoid, but that’s the atmosphere that’s being created.
At the same time other guards searched out and removed Elliott Gould and the rest of our group as they prepared to enter the Saban Center — presumably because they didn’t have a patient on hand to validate their presence there.
This isn’t an atmosphere we should be experiencing anywhere at the Motion Picture Home. And it’s all because a number of long-term care resident families have chosen not to accept the abandonment of the MPTF’s 88-year old mission to care for the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
Thirty-minutes later, as I walked to the exit, another guard was behind me, apparently to ensure I didn’t pull some secret camera out of my bag. I got the message. They got my name and my mother-in-law’s name. They know where she lives. They know where I live. I won’t take my camera into the long-term care unit again. I don’t want to put my mother-in-law, other residents or their families at risk.
We’ll have to find different ways of getting information out of the home. As you can imagine. my anxiety over MPTF intimidation tactics has risen significantly. MPTF management is sending a message. They are in charge. They are in control. They have eyes everywhere and they are watching all of us. There is no room for disagreement or dissent at the MPTF — it was just like being back in North Korea and Vietnam.
What country are we living in?
Health care lockdown is tightening. Starting tomorrow Gate 1 is locked at 7pm, and every weekend and holiday.
That means you have to use gate 2, drive through the obstacle course, and stop at the new guard shack. Why is MPTF so afraid?
The MPTF has, apparently, opened it’s newest health facility in Glendale.
Is it a clinic, or, is it a health club like the Saban Center?
Obviously, the MPTV has found a way to fund it. So is the MPTV’s focus now, primarily, on WELLNESS and FITNESS?
If so, isn’t that a change of direction away from the original intent and/or the primary purpose and reason for the Motion Picture Home when it was first founded and FUNDED by Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin?
Lest we forget: The MPTF Motto IS NOT: We take only the well and the fit.
The Motto is: “WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN.”
‘We take care of own own’ BUT, ONLY IF THEY REMAIN HEALTHY AND FIT.
AGAIN!!! GET THE BOOKS!!! FOLLOW THE MONEY!!! INVESTIGATE THIS UGLY MESS NOW!!!
Why do you think that hasn’t been done to any extent?
Come on, the place is still open and has renewed its license, hasn’t it?
It’s only open because of the pressure and exposure that is being kept on this outrageous situation. Refer to the original Katzenberg memo and all the weak, simplistic excuses that followed.
Okay, there is certainly no downside to the pressure and exposure. Ms. Finke can take the board to task singlehandedly. Read the transcript from the audio press conference for an exercise in weak excuses. What we’ve been seeing is Big Lie propaganda in action but it hasn’t worked and it won’t work. It would be a mistake, though, to underestimate the lawyers.
Keep the pressure turned up because MPTF is playing sleight of hand, chipping away one resident at a time.
Why are “THE LAWYERS” so silent?!
Contact Jim O’Callahan, Girardi and Keese.
Okay there is no downside to the pressure and exposure. Half the people in my office think this is the reason it hasn’t closed. The other half say don’t underestimate the role of the lawyers. All agree that Big Lie propaganda isn’t working for this scandal.
Speaking of weak excuses, remember that dog-and-pony show of an audio press conference. Ms. Finke can tear those guys and their self-justification apart single-handedly.
Katzenberg still has a way out. Let’s hope he takes it before even more damage is done. Keep the pressure on the situation, and turn it up even higher. There is a clear right and wrong here.
Nikki,
Thank you for keeping the heat on this!
Nikki – yes thank you for keeping the heat on. Despite MPTF’s wars of attrition and exhaustion being waged on the residents and families, this is not going away.
While Nikki keeps the heat on (thank you!), Saving the Lives of Our Own is gathering more signatures. Let’s help them remember the past, and save our possible futures, too.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/keeptheMPTFhomeopen
FYI, someone gave me this “Get the Facts!” flyer the other day from one of the MPTF clinics; following are questions and answers:
“Do you have questions about the MPTF Hospital and Long Term Care closures?
Is the entire ‘Home’ closing? NO!
Can I still get financial assistance? YES!
Will MPTF help me as I age? YES!
Can I still see my health center doctor? YES!
Will the residents who transfer be abandoned? NO!
Have there been any deaths related to strss or transfer? NO!
Get the Facts!
talktous.mptvfund.org
Motion Picture & Television Fund
Taking Care of Our Own”
==================================================================
Although the MPTF Hospital and Long Term Care facility closures have been delayed for one year, nevertheless, unfortunately, this seems like a ‘done deal’. The MPTF’s one year delay of closures may be taking into consideration: the tremendous outrage of opponents to closures, the time that it may take for a lawsuit to get to court and/or Tillman & Katzenberg may be simply hoping to dampen down the resolve of all the patients, patients’ advocates, family members, friends and supporters who oppose the closings.
PLEASE, DO NOT LOSE YOUR RESOLVE!
HOLD THE MPTF’S FEET TO THE FIRE!
Hey there is no resident survey this year asking the usual bland questions about satisfaction. I guess Tillman and others are getting their bonus pay based on other parameters, is that correct Mr. Katzenberg? Bonuses to get the deed done. Disgusting.