The Scripps Voice

By Tori Mirsadjadi ’12
Editor-in-Chief

Ashok Amritraj, CEO and Chairman of Hyde Park Entertainment and Hyde Park International, spoke at Vita Nova Hall on April 19 as part of an event sponsored by Intercollegiate Media Studies and Scripps Career Planning and Resources. The event was free and open to all 5C students, faculty and staff.

Intercollegiate Media Studies (IMS) at the Claremont Colleges is an interdisciplinary program that investigates social histories, cultural contexts, theoretical approaches and technologies of media forms. The program is oriented toward “independent” narrative forms, documentary, video and digital art and community-based and activist media.

At Tuesday’s event Amritraj showed clips from the films his company has produced, including footage from the not-yet-released “The Double” (featuring Richard Gere, Topher Grace and Martin Sheen). He also discussed how he built a progressive, global independent production company.

“I was not educated in the movie industry,” Armritraj said in a telephone interview before his visit. “I had to learn about it as I went on.” He said that because he came from a different country—India—and was a tennis star with a brother who was also a tennis star, the “family business was tennis” and “it was a real journey” breaking into the business of the movie industry.

Tennis is what brought Amritraj to Los Angeles, when Jerry Buss—who now owns the L.A. Lakers—invited him to play for the Los Angeles tennis team in 1975. Amritraj “took the plunge” into the movie industry by accepting a film role in 1980, but remembers his first five to six years in entertainment as being “very, very tough.” Not only was being an Indian in the United States a struggle in the 1980s, Amritraj said, “Everyone wanted to play tennis with me. Nobody wanted to make a movie.”

When Amritraj played tennis in the 1970s, playing in major tennis tournaments, such as Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, the hotel he stayed at in London overlooked Hyde Park. Amritraj said he had had his “nicest days” there, and the allusion to the park in his company’s name “brings back nice memories.” He sees his perspective as a tennis star as contributing to his business success, in spite of tennis being “such an individual sport,” because it has helped his ability to focus. He said that tennis, like business, requires skills of hard work, discipline, focus and passion. “My office,” said Amritraj, “is where the creative and business meet.”

Amritraj founded the Hyde Park Entertainment Group in 1999. As an independent studio, Amritraj said, Hyde Park Entertainment can “operate like a mini studio” and is, as opposed to Hollywood studios’ “unweildly, long-term process, more efficient.” The company’s international sales arm, Hyde Park International, has represented films such as “Machete,” “Blue Valentine,” “My Idiot Brother” and “Peep World.” Films produced by Hyde Park include “Bringing Down the House,” “Premonition,” “Moonlight Mile,” “Traitor,” “Shopgirl” and “Walking Tall.”

Amritraj’s appearance on Scripps campus was advertised through the IMS website, and provided background on the CEO’s initial forays into the media sphere, including the fact that Hyde Park Entertainment Group partnered with Imagenation Abu Dhabi in November 2000 “on a $250 million financing deal to develop, produce and distribute up to 20 feature films over seven years—with additional financing for the production of cross-cultural films.” This partnership was extended in 2009 to include Singapore’s Media Development Authority in the funding of several films a year, with an estimated production value of “75 million USD over the next five years.”

“Our industry,” said Amritraj, “is one that’s not for the weak of heart. Discipline and perseverance can overcome everything. It’s less about talent and more about passion.”

By Leah Hochberg ‘14
Guest Writer

On March 10, students flocked to the Mabel Shaw Bridges Music Auditorium at Pomona College to hear Bill Gates speak. The talk was open to 5C students as well as to the  greater Claremont community.

Gates, the founder and former CEO of Microsoft, was brought to the Claremont Colleges by the combined efforts of the Harvey Mudd College Annenberg Speakers Series and the Pomona College Distinguished Speakers Series.

The session began with a conversation between Gates and Harvey Mudd’s president, Dr. Maria Klawe. This conversation was followed by a question and answer session.

Gates and Klawe discussed myriad issues in the introductory conversation. Topics covered included vaccines, United States healthcare and HIV/AIDS. But Gates spent the majority of the conversation focusing on the topic of philanthropy.

Gates and his wife co-founded the eponymous Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation’s efforts are directed at decreasing poverty worldwide. In his talk, Gates emphasized the importance of helping the poorest people in the world.

Said Gates, “The best thing we can do for the poor is to make them not poor anymore.”

In answering questions about his personal philanthropic efforts, Gates discussed his commitment to the Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge is a pact for billionaires to leave their wealth to charitable causes. Gates has promised to give away more than half of his net worth to charity.

Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, have worked alongside Warren Buffett to convince 60 billionaires in the United States to join the Giving Pledge. Some, like Buffett, will give away up to 99 percent of their wealth at their times of death.

Focusing on vaccines and education, Gates encouraged his audience to start and continue philanthropic work throughout the world. When asked why foreign philanthropic efforts were important, Gates said that it was a simple matter of our belonging to a single human race.

In addition to addressing national and international philanthropy, Gates talked about topical issues.

Gates spoke, according to attendee Jordan Stein (CMC ‘14), “elegantly and relevantly on world issues of today.”

By Eliza Silverman ’14
Copy Editor

On Nov. 18, eight women came to Scripps campus to speak in Balch Hall for an hour—eight women who had served a combined 239 years in prison. Students from Professor Sue Castagnetto’s Feminist Ethics class invited these women, all recently released from California state prisons and living communally in a halfway house called Crossroads, to discuss their experiences and comment on the injustices they had faced and continue to face within the criminal justice system. The monologues heard that night were incredibly moving—nothing could have prepared me for the moment of one woman explaining that, “this coming Christmas will be the first Christmas I will not be beaten by my father or my husband for opening a gift—for being beaten because I was not good enough.”

These eight women—introduced as Mary Ann, Ivy, Linda Lee, Margaret, Sharelle, Margo, Frankie and Gloria—exemplified strength beyond measure. Confined to a small cell for an average of 30 years and subject to much verbal and physical abuse, each and every one of them fought hard to derive meaning in their every day interactions with others and with themselves. The women described, in sometimes chilling detail, particular experiences and memories from their times in incarceration. One woman petitioned for parole in front of a board 15 times before parole was granted to her. One woman painted a verbal picture of the horrific and highly dangerous makeshift abortion she had witnessed. Many described mistreatment from guards, the almost-unfathomably low pay for what jobs within the prison they were able to secure, and the sadness resulting from the deaths or releases of friends. Each woman maintained that within the system, good relationships with inmates and staff are of paramount importance.

All eight women are currently residents of Crossroads, a house that assists women recently released in prison by fostering a positive transition period to the outside community, which is often a daunting process. “[Being in prison] will always be a part of me,” said one woman. Several of the women have vowed to take action against the injustices within the incarceration system, such as the inefficiency of the parole system, now that they are released. Another woman described, with bittersweet humor, her incompetence with modern technology, especially cell phones. At the end of the hour, the audience was noticeably saddened by the stories shared, and yet the collective joy emanated from the former prisoners was infectious and inspiring.

“During the course of only one hour, it was incredible to witness how far these women have come,” said attendant Molly Fassler (’14). I agree—and reflect that it was the most valuable hour of my year thus far in Claremont.