Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 4/28/09 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: Photo Courtesy of François Duhamel Robert Downey, Jr. speaks with Steve Lopez (right) on the set of The Soloist.

Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, was walking around downtown L.A., looking for a story to meet his deadline. Four years ago, he heard classical music played on the street that would begin a lasting friendship, a series of columns that captured a city and, now, a major motion picture starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jaime Foxx.

The man he met that day was Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a former musical prodigy whose battle with paranoid schizophrenia left him homeless. Nathaniel, once a promising student at Juliard, was living on the streets of L.A.'s notorious Skid Row, but his soul was able to escape in the music, which gave him temporary relief from illness. He would go so far to play in the tunnels of Los Angeles because he found the spaces to be orchestral.

In a conference with college journalists, Steve Lopez discusses his relationship with Nathaniel, the new film and social justice.

Student: What's it like to see a big part of your life being put into a motion picture with different people playing people you know?
Steve Lopez: It's pretty surreal, except that this process has been going on for a few years now, so I have kinda gotten past that. It is a little strange. I have seen the movie a few times and to see Robert Downey calling himself Steve Lopez is a little bit strange. But I am flattered by the portrayal and very gratified by what they did with this movie. I mean, there was a lot of different ways to make this movie, and I must say that from the beginning I had some concerns about whether the issues might be simplified, or the story might be changed so much that it would be unrecognizable to me.
But the producers I met with on day one, Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff, shared with me what their vision of this movie was, and I gotta tell you that they made the movie they said they were going to make. And I am very gratified in part because I have become very passionate about all of the themes here, friendship and the redemptive power of music and just the simple power of human connections. The way two people could come upon each other from two different walks of life entirely and have an impact on each other and a lasting change that results from it. The movie gets that and it's a great movie and I am really pleased.

Continued...

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