The first 10 minutes of the hour-long documentary, which premieres Friday, focuses on beach ownership issues in Malibu. Critics say the documentary is one-sided.
By Susan Reines/Special to The Malibu Times
A documentary premiering Friday spotlights struggles between beach property owners and beachgoers, exploring everything from seawalls to land trusts along California’s coast and focuses about 10 minutes on beach access in Malibu. While the producers of the documentary say they gave equal time on camera to those on both sides of the issue of beach access, local residents and city leaders say the filmmakers did not do enough to contact more people in Malibu.
The film, which co-producer Elizabeth Pepin calls an objective study of coastal issues, begins in Malibu, as the voice-over says, “The problem is how to get access to the beach in communities that are fenced and gated to keep the public out, like Malibu.”
The first person interviewed in the documentary is Steve Hoye, a local activist who heads Access for All, a group he says is committed to giving the public access to the beach they own, generally everything below the wet sand.
The camera follows Hoye for about three minutes, describing what the voice-over calls his “classic David and Goliath” conflict with Malibu billionaire David Geffen over beach access.
Hoye is also one of the last people to speak in the film, which received funding from environmentalists like Melvin and Joan Lane, and Paul and Nell Newman, and environmental nonprofits such as the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
The camera pans past Malibu homes and Hoye says, “These houses shouldn’t be here. But since they are, we’re going to have to learn to live with them. And they’re going to have to learn to live with us.”
Sara Wan, a Malibu resident and Coastal Commissioner known for supporting public beach access, speaks nine different times in the documentary.
In the documentary, Wan criticizes some of the measures Malibuites take to keep their property private, but in an interview last week, she said the conflicts in Malibu struggles are not atypical.
“Because there are so many high profile people, there’s a tendency to single Malibu out as somehow more problematic, or the most problematic area in the state,” she said. “And I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a tension that exists on this area in many areas of the state. So I do think that it gets blown out of proportion.”
Pepin, who lives in Northern California but has family in Southern California, said comments from two city officials and a private property supporter balance Hoye and Wan’s perspectives, something that some locals claim is not so.
“KQED doesn’t make documentaries that have any kind of opinion,” she said. “Our goal is to try and give voice to different perspectives. In the case of Malibu, we tried to find people who were able to give the different viewpoints that in doing research and in doing interviews kept coming up. So we have a homeowner, we have a city official, and we have someone who wants to open up access. Of course, it’s an hour-long documentary, and you can’t interview every person in Malibu.”
Pepin pointed to an interview with homeowner John Heidt, who says opening access onto unregulated beaches forces property owners to act as lifeguards.
“John has legitimate concerns and we let him list them,” Pepin said. “Then Steve Hoye says, well, his privilege is not legitimate.”
City Attorney Christi Hogin and City Council Member Jeff Jennings speak for a combined 34 seconds, talking about legal issues and the city’s commitment to opening access.
The voice-over describes the officials as touchy.
Asked why city officials do not get as much airtime as Wan and Hoye, Pepin said she had trouble getting interviews when she was filming two years ago.
“I think I called almost everybody on the city of Malibu Web site, and nobody was calling me back,” she said.
Mayor Pro Tem Andy Stern said he never received a call, and he said the documentary’s statement that “city officials have to tiptoe around residents who say their biggest concern is privacy”-which Pepin said was a general impression the producers got from interviews- was silly.
“Malibu is a town with under 13,000 population,” Stern said. “We’re host to 14 million to 15 million beach visitors per year. There is no other city in the entire country that has those kinds of numbers. To say that we have to tiptoe around property rights is ludicrous.”
While Pepin says she had trouble finding interviewees in Malibu, resident Wade Major says he tried to contact the documentary team to give another homeowner’s perspective but received no reply.
“I was unsuccessful with even getting a response,” Major said. “It was like they were going to seek out the people that they were going to seek out.”
The film is not the first to explore beach access in Malibu. Former Planning Commissioner Ted Vaill walked the length of Malibu’s coastline with a camera in 2002 to show that a member of the public could walk the entire 27 miles.
“I don’t think there’s a problem with lateral access,” Vaill said in an interview last week. “If you look for them, there are a lot of accessways already in place.”
There are 15 vertical public beach accessways in Malibu, about 11 are usually maintained by the county and four by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.