 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture. I am this program's co-host, DeSoto Brown from Bishop Museum Archives in Honolulu. And joining us from Germany is our program's actual host, Martin Despang. And Martin, are you there? Are you on the screen? Yeah, there he is. Hi. Hi. I'm here. Hello, DeSoto. Hi, everyone. And we are going to be talking today about Magnum PI. Is that not correct? Yeah. All right. Well, what's in the background? Let's have some nice Feierabend, which means it's a German word for have a nice evening to party, actually. That's what Germans do every evening with beer and all the goodies, right? Oh, right. And many Germans, like Americans, watch TV. So let's watch some nice crime scene in the evening here. Okay. So let's get to the first slide here, please. So I did my research at my son's place. This is the Lenny Stark Studios here. And we were doing what we promised to do research because as we pointed out in the show that you are honoring on your shirt today, DeSoto, the original Wi-Fi, I basically acquired the whole DVD set from the end. We were going through them, including at the bottom right, Kurt Sandburne, our activist journalist's favorite one, which, as he says, shows the quintessence of mid-century modern Honolulu, including one of favorite buildings here, which we did a show about at the bottom right, the Alamoana building with still the sun retractable louvers on. But then we were zapping through on the way to watch it. We were zapping through TV and we caught what you see at the very top. And then there is a launched Magnum PI. So that brings back memories for us old fogies DeSoto, right? Yes, it does. And let's go to the next slide and you tell us why. Well, here's Tom Selleck and he was the star of Magnum PI and he made a huge impression in the 1980s. He's a very iconic looking man, partly because of his mustache. Let's agree to that. Before he was on Magnum, Tom Selleck was a model and he was doing some other acting. And here are two ads that he did print ads for cigarettes, which interestingly enough, he doesn't smoke. And the bad on the left is for obviously the United States. And then there's the ad on the right for the same brand of cigarettes, but in German, in Germany, where it has a different name. So this is pre-Magnum Tom Selleck. But he still has a very recognizable look. Does he not? Yes, he does. He does. And you told me yesterday we were a dry running here that he also was on Playboy magazine. That's right. Very masculine appearance and that's right. Being attractive for both men and women for that reason. If we go to the next slide here, what we're going to talk about today is Magnum. You already said it. And Magnum at the top right, again, we're at the Y5O with my best buddy, Stefan, who also purchased what we see at the very bottom. This is the first season of Magnum, the Asterstaffel, as it says in Germany. And so, again, my generation and you, we grew up on that. We watched that. So this is a deja vu. And there are other relationships because, interestingly enough, I found out that what I was watching as a kid was censored. And that's sort of funny, right? You wouldn't think, you know, when Germany, when you guys trusted us again, you know, we would self-censor and you would censor us. But what they did is that they cut out what, you know, Magnum at large parts was built on is dealing and healing the Vietnam history. And they thought this would be too much for the German TV audience. So they cut this out and only recently, when they were featuring them on other TV channels, they were going back and synchronizing the whole thing. And Vietnam gets us to a tropical David Rockwood at the top left, whose favorite research place, his other paradise, is Vietnam, and particularly the Nang. And when you watch the Magnum, the original ones, you see them wearing caps with the Nang saying this is where, you know, they scripted to having been stationed. And in the, because this is a show of architecture after all, there is a Saigon bar in the Robin Masters mansion, which is the main building where they reside, which we will get to later. So let's move to the next page here. And you tell us a little bit about, because I see a person is familiar to me at the top right. And so you tell us what this is all about. Well, part of the Magnum mystique and charisma was not only his mustache, but he also wore a series of Aloha shirts. And his Aloha shirts not only placed him as being in Hawaii, but they really identified him as this particular star of this show. So a number of the shirts that he wore were very popular sales for sales during that time period while Magnum was on. And in the top right corner, you see this youthful young man with glasses on and a beard. And long hair, he in fact has a kind of a mullet hairstyle. Well, that's me dressed in a similar kind of shirt to what Magnum was wearing in the 1980s. So there's Thomas Magnum in the 1980s and there's DeSoto Brown in the 1980s, both wearing the same kind of shirts. That's right. But since we like to talk about not just surface, but substance, I think it's important to talk about the character that he was portraying. Yes. And since you wear your Y5O shirt, if we compare him to McGarrett, the main character, the detective in Y5O. And that was purely late 60s and 70s. And these were the upcoming, the heydays, the boom days of America, shooting people to the moon, refrigerators, microwave. We can do it. Everyone looked up to America. And that somehow got a crack in the early 80s. And that's pretty much through the 80s. And we're going to get to that later. And this is what Magnum is portraying. He isn't anymore that sort of authoritarian guy, right? That as you said, never smiles. He's always grumpy. I mean, my son's got to kick out of that because he looks so pissed all the time. Here, not so much. You see him, you know, Magnum is always smiling, but Magnum is also admitting that he has cracks, you know, because he has traumas from the war, from the Vietnam War. And that's sort of the mission of the series is to deal with that and make that sort of problem, sociotel problem, accessible in an entertaining way, if we can say so, right? Right, exactly. And up until then, yeah, I was just going to say up until then, a lot of times Vietnam veterans were portrayed as very troubled or even criminals. And Magnum is not, he has thoughts about Vietnam, but he's not a criminal and he's not super troubled as many of the previous characters had been. Absolutely, yeah. Let's go to the next page here. So here he is. And, you know, unlike, you know, while, you know, McGarrett is always grumpy, but architecture plays a major role in the original Wi-Fi. Oh, that's what we were talking about in that show in a lot of times. Not so much in Magnum, and no surprise, because the 80s were sort of troubled times. There was unemployment economically struggling. So architecture, I had to, in the late 80s, actually when Magnum was launched in 1980 and December, you know, times weren't quite as funny anymore. And architecture wasn't. I'm kind of talking trauma. I'm kind of traumatized by the peak of postmodernism, which I don't consider the best era in architecture. So there isn't actually much contemporary architecture. Here we have, again, one of our favorite buildings, the Alamona building with the Louvre sill on at that time, because stupid people only took them off a little. Well, pretty soon later in the early 90s, I think they did. So architecture, next picture. Sometimes when opportunities presented, they were, you know, scripting stories around some events that happened anyways as this one. And you were an eyewitness of that one. Where and when was that the Soto? Yes, I was an eyewitness. This is the Kaiser Hospital, which used to be located on Alamona Boulevard near the Iliqai Hotel. It was built in 1958. And then in the 1980s, it got blown up for the construction of the Hawaii Prince Hotel. So yes, I got to watch it from across the street and it got incorporated into a Magnum PI episode. And talking eyewitnesses gets us to the next page here, where at the top, this is my little unconventional way of teaching here. But if you are a Magnum or Tom Selleck maniac, you know, you can go online and find funny blogs. And one is there where it says the 10 things you don't, you might not know about Magnum. And we're going to add to that list with number 11. And what is that about? Well, a lot of people do not know that in the parking lot of the Outrigger Canoe Club, which is what you see in the top picture, and in the bottom picture as well, Tom Selleck was attempting to teach his steps on how to drive. And the steps on accidentally stepped on the gas, drove the Jeep forward, broke through the cables. At the edge of the parking lot floor, and the Jeep plunged some distance, it did not hit the ground, it stopped before it hit the ground. So nobody was injured, but it was a very close call for Tom Selleck as, and had it happened, Magnum would have been gone off the air, probably, without its main star. So it wasn't quite as bad as, I mean, the fall wasn't quite as bad. We pointed out in our last show about the Waikiki Circle Hotel, it's sort of sibling the Marina City in Chicago, which became famous in the talking movies in the Blues Brothers, where the car fells off, because they have the same innovative, but kind of funny guardrail consisting of cables, you know, and usually you do other things, they're more solid. So let's go to the next picture, privately investigating here. This is our tropical tourism expert, Suzanne, doing her research in a post-fossil way on her bicycle, and this is just a few feet down the road on here on the extension of Calla Avenue, and we see something that, you know, is as closely associated with the original Magnum PI as Tom Selleck, and this is Kars, it's a Ferrari 308. And we were wondering, we didn't quite know that they had actually started to reboot the show and do a Magnum PI again, the one that again, they're even translating now, and on April 17th, as we saw at the beginning of the show, also broadcasting in Germany. So here they were filming on the beach, which we witnessed here, as you can see on the top right here. Let's go to the next slide here, next page. I also, because this is my hood, it's in my front yard, there is the annual sunset on the beach, season premiere on Waikiki Beach, on Queens Beach, which is my beach, and I always go, and then here they were showing the first episode ever of the reboot, and of course, I guess, I guess you can say of course, it's not Tom Selleck anymore, it's a gentleman, an actor called Jay Hernandez, who plays Magnum, and in the first series, they heroically trash the Ferrari 308 and replace it with my consultant, Semi taught me it's a 488 Spider. So everything is renewed. And again, we started to look, you know, what a role is architecture playing, and of course, not as predominantly, well, I should say, of course, surprisingly, I want to say, they stay true to the original Magnum, where architecture doesn't play such a predominant role, which makes you wondering, you know, maybe there is architecture, isn't as iconic anymore these days to make it a main actor. And let's go to the next page, because in tribute to your shirt today, they also had the Hawaii 5.0 newest episode of that season here, and we were happy and almost thought, maybe someone is actually listening to us, because here they were playing that episode in the Kahala Hilton, which is a killingsworth building, and one of the most innovative buildings we have, and we did a show about, but also one of the most threatened, because the lease is running out, Kamehameha schools, it might be torn down soon. So hopefully this helps to keep sort of the Dokomomo-wise public awareness for that building. Next slide, please. And again, this is another iconic piece of architecture that I had the privilege to live in, Waikiki Grand. We did a show about in tropical tourism experts. Suzanne is looking over the guard rail to see what's going on, and they're filming down there. They have a set, and they have the TC van there. So it's very apparent now, and every day is live, and you grew up with that, this sort of both with Hawaii 5.0, and then Magnum, to constantly see roads being blocked and sets being set up, right? Yes, absolutely. So next page. So what is that? Going back to architecture and the new one, we were surprised about that in one of the previous shows, right? Yeah, and this is... We had a little discussion about this, because this is supposed to be the house where the new Thomas Magnum lives. And when you first showed me that, I said, wait a minute, that's not a real house, that's effects, that's special effects. And you can see in the photograph on the bottom at Kualoa Ranch, that's the real setting, but the entire house is actually fake, and it's just created for the TV series, and you'll never see it in real life, because it doesn't exist. So that makes you wonder, isn't there any good contemporary piece of architecture that you could use as an actor, as an architectural actor? And next slide here, we want to see how that was way back. And this is where they basically staged the old Magnum PI house, or we should say the Robin Masters house, because it's actually, it wasn't his house, he was living on this property, and was working or allowed to stay, we should say, because that's interesting. Again, he was really portraying the zeitgeist of the times where many people were struggling, because of post trauma, stress disorder, and or economical reasons, and the series was honest about it, and not sort of trying to create a fake picture that was just about fun and crime, and these things. It was really sort of a criticism, or at least a reflection of contemporary society, and what was going on there. So this is in Waimanalo, and again, my friend Stefan and his wife, Kirsten, when they visited, they had the little airplane charter crews, and the pilot, and basically host and guide, was pointing out, as a tourist attraction looked down there, this is where Magnum lived. So there were some interesting news recently, next slide, about what happened, but again, let's go back to architecture. We did a show here, which we quote here, Presidential Paradissel Presidents, where we're going through the presidents and their architectural relationships in where they lived, and while the 80s were the turning point from, I say, innovative to reactionary, Carter passing on on to Ronald Reagan, while his politics was truly reactionary, with all respect, actually his architectural style was not, because he was living in a rather modern ranch house, which was also then used to brand the consumption of energy, and not the conservation, which we are mainly worried about today. And so that is sort of interesting, but next slide, the actual house they used for the original Magnum was, they choose, I guess, intentionally not a contemporary house, but this one, and tell us a little bit when that was built. This house was built about, either 1928 or about 1930, and it was a private home, obviously a very sumptuous and elegant private home, very costly private home, in what was then a very rural area. It continued to be owned by a descendant of the people who built it during this time period, and she allowed not only 5-0 to film there, but Magnum to film there, in order to earn money to keep the house going and to keep maintenance going of the house. And she told me that herself back in the 1990s, so I knew that was why she was doing it. And we characterized it as so probably a meta to reinstall that style, or I just came back from my oldest son, Joey, and his entry for narrow shaved eyes business on Malta, so that reminds me a little bit of that sort of climate zone and cultural concept. So this is sort of an imported style, yet it looks pretty well. It's got lanais and all the goodies that we need to have our preferred easy breezy lifestyle. Let's go to the next page, because then something sort of, well, first of all, here is the interior of the house, and it speaks for itself. It's the 80s, you know, it's sort of this sort of cheesy, beigey, leather, you know, cushion all pretty plushy, and probably not again, what America wants to be remembered for for its best, right? This was sort of a down time, one can say, and when he wasn't wearing, you know, lower shirts, he was wearing the typical sort of baggy clothes, you know, funny times, but again, it's all relative, and there's probably some retro about that, and every style and every time comes back, but the 80s interior and, you know, actually clothing, not so much for some obvious reasons. Now just give it time and we'll come back. The architecture, postmodernism isn't, well, hopefully with architecture, it's not the case, because I don't want to see postmodernism again, but that's my personal trauma again. Let's go to the next page, because something surprisingly happened here, talking news, and what was that, because there were these articles here in the newspapers all over the place. Well, the house was sold, the house was put on the market, the house was sold, and it was bought by, or the property was purchased by a, not by Barack Obama, but by a friend of Barack Obama, so there continue to be rumors that the friend actually purchased it for him. The original house has now been demolished, and so some kind of new home is going to be built, perhaps for Barack and Michelle Obama, but that's not confirmed, and you've actually talked to some people with some inside information, correct? Yeah, and, you know, you're also being closely related to, you know, our, you know, historic Hawaii and our tropical tutor, Bill Chapman, as well, you've got to wonder, tearing down something from the 30s, but, you know, maybe it wasn't that significant, or whatever it was, but also it was a tourist attraction, and that got eliminated, so you've got to want it better replaced by something better, as we always say, and there's some hope, which you're referring to next page here, because within the architectural community, there are some leaks here, and so here, this is supposedly the architects who are going to design something for the former president, and they are rather innovative, and, you know, the architectural, you know, language is rather modern, and hopefully also the house is going to be as modest in size, and not a McMansion, and that was what we would expect from Obama as innovative as he has been, in contrast to the current president, and his property in Florida, the other tropics, which is the opposite, so let's go to the next page here, because we want to sort of sooner or later pretty much phase out and sort of conclude. Here we see, again, we see acknowledged that Magnum is sort of an icon, is a cultural icon. He got inducted into the Smithsonian Institute, well actually his shirt here, which is which he's dedicating to that, and he's also next page apparent, you know, in pretty much pop culture, next slide please, through the shirts are still there or here again, and kids can play with the original Magnum, with his Ferrari and TC's bus, and the helicopter, TC's helicopter, and the helicopter gets us to a different spin of the story here, our private-investigated story, next slide please, because this here is where our investigative vehicle, literally and figuratively, is my old Mercedes here, which pretty much this model here, they discontinued around the time when Magnum was discontinued in the late 80s, in 1988, actually. So this is kindly staying here out at Barbara's Point with another J.J. Mormon and Brad Segikawa at the bottom, who ran a little historic military vehicle museum out there at Barbara's Point. And so next slide, because Brad is the longest standing and still semi-active, if you ask him kindly, model maker on the island here, architectural model maker. And so he told us that the hangar next door, which we see here, which I was overly excited to be an Albert Kahn building. Albert Kahn is a very famous industrial architect from back in the days, which you see at the top left. He did some buildings, especially the one the third to the left here in that area, which is very iconic building, very Bauhausian, but the hangar unlike the ones that you see at the top right, which are on the island of Midway, which are by Kahn, ours isn't by Kahn, but the Magnum PI Studios are in there. And next page, Brad has to go over there in his capacity of model making because Higgins, who is the Robin Masters, basically a person who's running the land there, isn't that grumpy, older British guy anymore, but a very attractive young woman here. And she scripted to in her free time, making little ship models. And so Brad is helping out, and this is why he has an inner scoop that really figure would be speaking of the hangar. And he tells us that just behind that blue door is actually where they built the interior of the new Magnum PI that from the outside, as you analyze is fictional, but on the inside is real, at least as a set. And in a previous show, we kind of tried to characterize and we call it sort of coral kitsch. You know, it is easy breezy. It is open, but again, it sort of looks like the sort of the ordinary, average, more upscale house. That's what people would do in Hawaii, sort of they can stick, you know, surface veneer and things like that. Anyways, let's go to the next slide here, which is pretty much, this is a shot from the, not that long ago, like in the beginning of our century here. And it's interesting because Magnum didn't even leave and live in that big house, but he lived in what they call a guest house. It was a little shack or a little cabana. And next slide on the inside, it looked like this. And it's probably a good, it's scripted in a way that it's a representation of, again, Magnum being not the ideal. He's a different hero. He's a true hero, we say, right? And his place looks pretty unorganized and trashy and all over the place, as he was, and it looks cheap. And that's what, you know, he represents the sort of the more lower part of Americans at that time that struggle and try to make a living, right? Next page here. And I found this artist here, artist series, who make little frames of floor plans and they made one of this guest house here. And with that, maybe, you know, Magnum was a trendsetter for something that's very prevalent now and very zeitgeist-y, which is struggling for dwelling space. And we made a show with Rich Richardson up there who's a tiny house pioneer on the island. So that might be an issue and obviously is as we point out in many shows and in this one here as well. So the next page shows us a... And, you know, we found, this is funny. Why is this funny, Disoto? Well, this is funny because as you pointed out, both Hawaii 5.0 and Magnum PEI rely on the concept that Honolulu and Oahu and Hawaii are very crime-ridden and all these guys have to solve all these crimes. And in fact, this guide or this chart shows that the 10 safest metropolitan cities in 2018 in the United States includes Honolulu as one of the safest ones. So in fact, we're not crime-ridden despite what these TV shows portray. Yeah, but nevertheless, we have some very sort of explosive potential and that gets us to the next slide. And you gave me this article. So please, what is that about? Well, we also did a... We did a show about the Makaha Valley Inn and the golf course there and what has happened in the course of the development and then the loss of much of that what had been built in Makaha. But just recently it was announced that Tiger Woods is going to be designing a new golf course there as they start to try to get this whole resort area going again which we were talking about. Can there be accommodations for people to be given homes there who currently are homeless, particularly in the Waianae area? And what we see here is no, we're going to be going back to a high-end resort instead of housing people like that, most likely. Exactly. And that gets us back to Waimanalo next page where we have similar issues right? I mean, this is... The military is there but also there's housing intense along Kamehameha Highway and this is where the homeless go because they have no other place too. So next page we're sort of polemically proposing suggestions that gets us back to Barbara's point on Jay and Brad's property here and talking movies. They're currently shooting another movie which is called Godzilla versus Kong and Pasha containers have donated these containers and they basically painted them in this combat green to shoot that. And we were exactly a year ago almost with a studio that was looking to make the most space with the least means and we're looking once again into cargo containers as a large module building material and the spacing of these containers here was exactly what we were imagining which gets us to the next page. And this is the review of the project that you unfortunately weren't able to be there but most everyone else is there that we know from previous shows or from collegial shows is Howard Wigg here called Green Showmaster and we want to extend special greetings and wishes for recovery to Richard Low who's in the middle who was one of our favorite guests from the past and will be in June. He had a little accident and is currently recovering from that so all the best to you Richard. We see Brad here again in his capacity of a model maker showing the emerging generation how about architectural and also landscape models and the next page to next page is going to show the project and I'll let you explain it because you're as much of an expert in it as I as we are so what is that? Well what we're looking at is the potential reuse of shipping containers and this is an area that's being explored a great deal now and by stacking or arranging the containers equal distance apart you allow an empty space a negative space between each one of the containers giving people who live in them a little empty open space for outdoor living here in the Hawaiian Islands which is what we certainly should be doing and I think we can go to the next picture and there is the way it could be worked out and as you pointed out heavily vegetated so that in these empty spaces you can put a lot of vegetation into create shade create coolness keep moisture etc so the reuse of containers is something that really can be looked into particularly for low-income housing and that's a direction that we probably should be going Yeah and obviously we're at the end of the show we're encouraging the movie industry to go back to its roots and innovate its tradition of addressing socio-tell opportunities as in case of the original the Y5O booming and good architecture being an actor or Magnum PI addressing issues and problems and probably solving them so both things together please move the industry to help us out to portray a real picture of our islands which might not always be as pretty as people think but it's honest and it helps to keep the island alive and as we you did many presentations about the evolution of tradition on the islands right so this seems exciting so stay with that and maybe get us back in front of the camera on air next week with the show comparing my plays currently here because that's an opportunity while me being here to do this sort of intercultural correspondence obviously so let's compare Munich and Hanunulu once again in the same context and I think we have a great working title what was that yes it is it is going to be primetime crime shows and so we're going to be comparing Magnum PI and one of the crime shows is shot in Germany exactly and the main actors the detective team will be bandit Kanistakon and Janice Lee and your work is to reach out to them and get together with them this week so we're going to report about that next week that I'm very much looking forward to okay we're at the end of the show all right so thank you all for being here everybody see you again next time on human human human human architecture on ThinkTech Hawaii thank you Aloha