LUCIDMEDIA

More than a film, The Soloist is a piece of a life.

Written by Catherine Kustanczy Friday, 01 May 2009 12:00

Journalist Steve Lopez is unequivocal in his admiration for friend Nathaniel Ayers.

“He has a passion for something most people in life never find,” says the Los Angeles Times columnist. Lopez, an award-winning journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, Time, and EW, was on the prowl for a story in 2005 when he came across the talented Mr. Ayers in a busy, crowded Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. The experience resulted in a series of columns, a book, a film (released across North America this past Friday) –but more importantly, it resulted in a strong friendship, and a re-assessment of what meaningful work really is.

“(Mr. Ayers) has something that sustains him,” explains Lopez, “something that makes him sane. Music is his life. I so admired it, even envied it.” Lopez had considered leaving journalism, but it was his friend’s passion for his own artform that made him reconsider. “I have a passion too, and I have to stick with this in one form or another. Who knows whether I’ll do it for the LA Times or magazines, or just on the internet. I want to tell stories and that’s one of the gifts I got from him.”

Mr. Ayers is not your average musician. When Lopez met him, he was homeless, struggling with the demons of schizophrenia and trying to survive in the notoriously dangerous Skid Row. “I was not looking for him,” Lopez recalls, “I was looking for a column. You’re always in a panic with a column -you have to keep eyes and ears open, and so I heard this music. It’s a really busy downtown, there’s lots of traffic, pedestrian traffic, people walking to and from work, there are cars, sirens… it is a noisy place, but the music came through, and there was something really distinctive about it.”

Mr. Ayers was playing a broken-down violin that had just two strings. It was a rough interpretation of a classical piece, but Lopez sensed a talent there. It was only later he discovered that Ayers had attended the prestigious Juilliard School For the Arts in New York City. He’d been classmates with acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He could play multiple instruments.  And he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of classical music, as well as a fiery passion for performing it.

As the columns continued, so did the friendship. Readers of Lopez’s columns started sending letters, money, and even gifts –including musical instruments –so moved were they by Ayers’ story. Lopez became well-acquainted with LAMP, a non-profit advocacy group for the homeless based in Los Angeles, and became ever better-versed in his knowledge of local bureaucracy and the politicking that occurs on various government levels, keeping people like Nathaniel Ayers with little hope for proper care and treatment.

The Soloist, Lopez’s book, details his columns on Mr. Ayers, and his immersion into the world of the mental health system and its treatment of the homelessness. He was understandably weary when he was approached to turn his series of columns into a feature film, feeling not enough attention or focus would be placed upon Ayers and the mental illness he and thousands like him live with on a daily basis. 

“I was concerned with what kind of an impact (making a film) on Nathaniel,” he says. “I wanted to protect him.” Lopez hired an agent who weeded through the waterfall of requests that poured in from documentarians, screenwriters, producers, and studios, and eventually forwarded a suitable request. It was important that the film “be sensitive to the issues of concern, and would make a quality movie that would help spread the message of the columns and the book.” What’s the message? “To humanize Nathaniel, and to humanize the thousands like him. To help de-stigmatize people with mental illness.”

The producers of The Soloist met with Lopez and toured Skid Row, and, he says, “had their hearts in the right place.” As promised, the film is really about “a couple of buddies in an evolving situation that impacted both of us –not just me, but what (Ayers) has done for me. This is a man whose career went off a cliff thirty years ago. This is his resurrection, recognizing that promising talent, his moment in the sun.” In the filmed version, Atonement director Joe Wright leads an impressive cast that includes Robert Downey Jr. as the journalist (“What a come down, to go from Ironman to newspaperman,” Lopez wryly notes) and Jamie Foxx puts his own musical talent to good use as Mr. Ayers. The film is a compassionate portrayal of a friendship between two very different, yet remarkably similar men, driven by passion and beset by personal doubt.

Ayers isn’t interested in the movie –his schizophrenia prevents him from watching films or television. “He doesn’t trust two-dimensional images,” Lopez explains, but adds that his friend appreciates what the film, and the book and columns before, have done in raising awareness. As well as getting into Ayers into permanent housing –a Herculean feat in and of itself –Lopez’s other intention was to raise the issue of the relationship between homelessness and mental illness, and to demand better care for those living with the stigmas around them.

“The story by me and by my colleagues, who began focusing on Skid Row, put it back on the map,” he says. “It became a story City Hall could no longer ignore. It became something the LA County Board of supervisors began to talk about. It’s been put back on the map. It’s not as if we don’t know what works. What worked in Nathaniel’s case was to have outreach, an agency that could send people into the streets to establish relationships. These agencies exist but there are far too few for them for the number of people who wander the streets.”

Ayers now lives in permanent supportive housing, but “it took a year to talk him into it.” It’s in the residence that he receives safe shelter, healthcare, and the kind of support only a long-term facility can provide. “It’s expensive to do but cheaper in the long run,” Lopez says. “We don’t have to arrest (the homeless), put them through the courts, or in hospitals, in LA county jails. There are hundreds, if not thousands, with mental illness, who need permanent, supportive housing. (There are) a lot more who’ve found that since Nathaniel’s story but we have a long way to go.”