Purple: Well, now that we’ve got the answer to this year’s burning question out of the way (What color was Friends of Film founder Bob Sharka’s blazer on opening night?), it’s a delight to report that even as a scaled-down event, the seventh annual Pacific Palisades Film Festival still attracted some 200 guests to the gala screening and Friends of Film (FOF) benefit on each of its two nights last week. Cozy and intimate, the festival paid fine tribute to actress Frances Fisher on Thursday at the home of Nora and Harvey Lerer on Corona del Mar, from which attendees had an unobstructed ocean view from the Santa Monica Pier to Malibu. Miranda Bailey’s humorous 50-minute documentary ‘Greenlit,’ about a film crew straining to keep an environmentally friendly set, screened. As guests drank tequila sunrises against the Palisades sunset, the cocktail party on the Lerers’ expansive tiki torch-lined pool patio got under way. Fisher, this year’s FOF?Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, greeted fans and friends, including Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren, and ‘Risky Business’ actress Janet Caroll. Fisher told the Palisadian-Post that she was happy to be back in the Huntington Palisades, where she once lived. ‘I miss the neighborhood, the air, the view,’ she said. Pointing up the street, Fisher added, ‘I used to walk my dog in that dog park all the time!’ Warren”whose hits include Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ and Toni Braxton’s ‘Unbreak My Heart”’ has created tunes that have received six Academy Award nominations and seven Grammy Award nominations, including a win for Celine Dion’s hit ‘Because You Loved Me.’ She told the Post, ‘We’ve gotten to be good friends. She’s really cool. A real warm, good person.’ Warren loved Fisher best as Ruth Dewitt Bukater, Kate Winslet’s overbearing mother, in ”Titanic.’ ‘She was a big part of that movie,’ she said. Producer Barbara Ligeti (‘Hugo Pool’) was ’22 when I met Frances at the Actors Studio. I saw this young girl act and I said, ‘I think I’ll become a producer!” Concord recording artist Jimmy Demers spoke highly of Fisher, with whom he traveled to Paris and was one of the few people at Versailles to witness Barbra Streisand receive her Legion of Honors from President Nicolas Sarkozy and the French government. Demers is also a friend of Francesca, Fisher’s 15-year-old daughter with her former paramour Clint Eastwood. Actress Carroll, in town from New York for the memorial service of actress Zelda Rubenstein (‘Poltergeist’), who shared anecdotes from the set of ‘Risky Business,’ Tom Cruise’s 1983 career-launching hit. Wait a minute! What was the mayor pro tem of El Segundo doing there? Had the Post accidentally gotten onto the 405 South and overshot the party? Not exactly. Bill Fisher is Frances’ younger brother and an El Segundo council member. He arrived with his wife, Laurie Fisher, and recalled the peripatetic upbringing he and his sister had experienced, as their father built oil refineries around the world. ‘I was born in France and she was born in England,’ Bill Fisher said. At an early age, he saw the seeds of Frances’ craft. ‘We play acted a lot when we were kids. At 18, she got a job as a secretary at an oil firm, but that didn’t last long,’ as she soon fled the job to pursue acting at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. By her early 20s, she was playing on the ABC soap opera ‘The Edge of Night’ (1976’81). ‘Looking back on it now, 30 years ago, that was amazing!’ Bill Fisher remarked, before talking up the merits of his beloved El Segundo. ‘We’re the most business-friendly community in California! We’ve got the most Fortune 500 companies.’ (Not to mention the Purple Orchid, a tiki bar where Sharka’s blazer would fit right in!) The gregarious Cathy Chazan could not say enough about Fisher. From 1995, when Fisher did the Fox program ‘Strange Luck,’ and through the years in the wake of the mammoth success of 1998’s ‘Titanic’ (which, until James Cameron’s other behemoth,’ 2009’s ‘Avatar,’ was the highest-grossing film of all time), Chazan worked as Fisher’s publicist. ‘It was one of the most exciting times,’ she said, adding that despite Kenneth Turan’s negative review in the Los Angeles Times of the big-budget film, the epic love story went on to gross $1.8 billion worldwide. The afterglow of the film’s release ‘went on for two years,’ she said. ‘Frances and I met people who had seen it 27 times! It touched a chord!’ ‘She is one of the greatest pleasures,’ Chazan continued, ‘as genuine off-camera as on. The whole time I worked with her, she lived in the Palisades. We did many interviews here!’ Apparently going through his Prince phase (in previous years, he wore carnation-pink and powder-blue blazers), Sharka proved a colorful character as the evening’s master of ceremonies, repeating his comic mantra” ‘Are you kiddin’ me?”’in his Boston accent. Reflecting on the previous FOF Lifetime Achievement Award winners”Robert Guillaume, Seymour Cassel and Stacy Keach”Sharka paid special tribute to comic actor Dom DeLuise, who passed away last year. ‘We miss him terribly,’ he said of the late Palisadian. A montage reminded the packed audience at the outdoor screening area of the diversity of Fisher’s work”from one of Henry Jaglom’s earliest efforts, 1983’s ‘Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?,’ to the Christopher Guest comedy ‘Waiting for Guffman’ (1996), her work opposite Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Jamie Foxx in ‘House of Sand and Fog’ (2003) and ‘The Kingdom’ (2007), respectively, as Patty Hearst, Lucille Ball and Audrey Hepburn’s mother in various biographical movies; and in ‘True Crime’ (1999) and the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, ‘Unforgiven (1992), both starring and directed by her ex, Eastwood. Two of Fisher’s acting mentors spoke fondly about the actress, as did Taylor, who attended with her son, horror film director Gabriel Bologna (‘The Black Waters of Echoes Pond’). Taylor spoke of Fisher’s commitment to the Screen Actors Guild, where she’s very involved. ‘She brings to SAG the spontaneity and enthusiasm and power of her acting. I would follow her wherever she goes,’ she said. Then Fisher took the podium to accept her award. ‘I raised my daughter here,’ Fisher said. ‘The Palisades is my hometown.’ As accomplished an actress as she is, Fisher admitted, ‘I feel like I’m still waiting for my big break.’ Following a chorus of ‘We love you, Frances!,’ Sharka jumped in: ‘One more time”Frances Fisher! Are you kiddin’ me?’ Truly a ‘titanic’ evening. Mint green: That was Sharka’s coat color on Saturday, a more intimate affair held at the beautiful Toyopa home of Paul and Irene Gigg, who had met Sharka through a Corpus Christi Church fundraiser. ‘We were about to cancel the festival this year, but we went out to the community and found ourselves some angels,’ Sharka told about 50 attendees before the backyard screening. ‘Don’t be fooled by this house! We’re a struggling nonprofit!’ The evening’s film, the music documentary ‘The Chris Montez Story’ by local filmmakers Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson (last year’s Pali Film Fest opener ‘The Seventh Python’) centered on whatever happened to the young Latino singer/songwriter best-known for the international hit ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Call Me’ (crafted under the aegis of A & M Records’ Herb Alpert, who was inspired by the shuffling jazz of the Ramsey Trio’s ‘The In Crowd’). Kearns got the idea to track down Montez on film after the song popped up on K-Earth while he was driving past Chautauqua and Sunset. Musician Hudson had performed with Montez decades before. Co-producer Joachim Blunck said, ‘There’s a lot happening on the fly. Chris’s life was changing as we were filming it.’ (After a long-dormant career, Montez had begun performing live shows again over the past two years). ‘Chris Montez Story’ was prefaced by Joshua Bell’s ‘A .45 at 50th,’ based on an incident involving a college-age James Cromwell (‘Babe’) in which the actor had let his Manhattan home become the site of a Black Panther meeting while his parents were visiting Europe. The short film”which included Cromwell sharing the anecdote intertwined with a re-enactment starring his son, John Cromwell”put the crowd in a good mood for ‘Chris Montez Story.’ ‘Chris Montez Story,’ which chronicled how its subject went from a teen musician from Hawthorne performing with his buddies (who became the Beach Boys) to touring Europe at age 19 in 1963 with his opening act, a band called The Beatles who, by tour’s end, had exploded in popularity. The film credits Montez for inspiring the Beatles’ collar-less-suit look. Post-screening, Montez, with buddy Sid Jacobs, performed his biggest hits in the Giggs’ living room. ‘I’ve never done a house party before,’ Montez told the Post afterwards. ‘It was kind of cool.’ He added that Kearns and Hudson’s film did him justice. ‘It’s expressing what I’ve been through in life. It has a good message, especially for Latino musicians.’ Jacobs, who soloed on a medley of tunes from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ is a teacher at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. He’s known Montez for 12 years. ‘It’s an engaging documentary,’ he said. ‘What you see in the film is him.’ Returning to Pali Film Fest this year: Chris Lombardi catered, tantalizing guests with cups of couscous and chicken curry, pizza squares, and steak-and-potato skewers with blue cheese sauce; and the ever-affable Whitney Bain proved himself a popular bartender on both evenings. Oh, and next year, Bob”how about canary yellow?

S o how’s this for a cheap shot? Just as Ellie Kanner-Zuckerman’s latest film, 2009’s ‘Wake,’ was released on DVD last month, the last video store in her home’town”a Blockbuster on Monument near Sunset”closes its doors. Just another obstacle for this tenacious independent filmmaker to overcome. Third time might be the charm for Kanner-Zuckerman, whose ‘Wake,’ starring Bijou Phillips, Ian Somerhalder and Jane Seymour, boasts an eclectic cast. ‘It’s a dark comedy or a comedic thriller,’ Kanner-Zuckerman says. ‘It’s got a lot of different genres.’ Here’s the synopsis: When things get tough for the offbeat Carys Reitman, she does what any alienated modern girl would do: she attends strangers’ funerals, where at one of them she meets Tyler, a man mourning his fianc’e. Despite the warnings of her best friend Shane and her roommate Lila, she finds herself connecting with Tyler. Searching for answers, Carys confronts her estranged mother regarding her past. And as she tries to open herself up to the risks of love with Tyler, she realizes she may have more to fear than just a broken heart. This is the third film Kanner-Zuckerman has put together independently. Her directorial debut in 2001, ‘Italian Ties,’ starring Scott Baio and the singer Meatloaf, was a film, in her words, about ‘three brothers who want to know their father better. So they kidnap him!’ The film made the film festival rounds, garnering awards, as did 2006’s ‘Crazy Love,’ produced by Hal Schwartz and by ‘Wake’ screenwriter Lennox Wiseley. The latter, a dramedy, featuring Reiko Ellsworth of ’24’ (and the return of Meatloaf!) centered on Ellsworth as a paranoid schizophrenic upon her release from an institution. ‘We ended up selling it to Lifetime,’ Kanner-Zuckerman says. ‘Her films are all quite different,’ says her husband, David Zuckerman, ‘although she seems drawn to stories about women who are transformed by unusual relationships. She finds ways to relate to the characters in her movies, and she’s very passionate about her work, but I’m not sure she’s found a project that is deeply personal to her. She’s still discovering the depths of her own creative voice.   Page one of the script that is Kanner-Zuckerman’s life begins on the East Coast. The filmmaker grew up Ellie Kanner in Bloomfield, Connecticut, but ‘when I was 10 years old,’ she says, ‘I knew that when I grew up, I’d be in the entertainment industry and move to L.A.’ She attended Southern Connecticut State University before transferring to Pasadena City College. But she detoured from school to Irvin Arthur Associates, a talent agency representing celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Marsha Warfield, Shelly Berman and Dick Shawn.   The experience left her dissatisfied. ‘I realized I didn’t want to be an agent. And I fell into casting. I was a casting director for 15 years,’ Kanner-Zuckerman says of her former career, now akin to a distant dream. ‘I cast the pilot of ‘Friends,’ ‘Sex and the City,’ and ‘The Drew Carey Show.” Among the features she cast: Noah Baumbach’s ‘Kicking and Screaming’ with Parker Posey, ‘Quiet Days in Hollywood’ starring Hilary Swank and Chad Lowe, and ‘Playing Mona Lisa’ with Harvey Fierstein. ‘Naturally, anything I direct now, I’m directly involved in the casting aspect,’ she says. Kanner married Zuckerman, a former producer on several long-running prime-time animated series, including ‘King of the Hill,’ the first two seasons of ‘Family Guy,’ and ‘Family Guy’ creator Seth MacFarland’s follow-up, ‘American Dad.’ He is currently writing a live-action series, ‘Wilfred,’ which he’s developing for FX.   The Zuckermans lived in Sherman Oaks until 2004. They now live in Sunset Mesa, where they have two sons, Zachary, 7, and Adam, 5, who attend local schools. ‘It’s sort of this hidden area that’s just beautiful,’ Ellie says of Pacific Palisades. ‘Thank God not a lot of people know about it.’ The entertainment-industry couple totally complement each other. ‘Ellie has always been incredibly supportive of my career, which has included quite a few stretches of long days, late nights and working weekends,’ says her husband. ‘I’m happy to do the same for her. That said, the first question I ask her is, ‘Is it shooting in L.A.?’ ‘Ellie is the first person to read my drafts. She gives me a director’s perspective on production issues, pacing, clarity and actor-related issues. When I read her projects, we talk about storytelling, theme and structure.’It’s nice to have a spouse working in the same business. We can cheer each other on through the good times and talk each other off the ledge in bad times. It’s a pretty sweet deal!’ Kanner-Zuckerman already has her eye on her next film: written by hubby. ‘It’s a dark comedy about a woman who’s had a series of bad relationships titled ‘Bitter: A Love Story,” she says. ‘Hal Schwartz and I and Lennox will produce again.’ With studios shuttering their independent film distribution arms in favor of gambling on big 3-D blockbusters, with viewing choices becoming more fractured between cable and the Internet, and today’s technology facilitating movie piracy, 2010 is not exactly an indie-friendly epoch. ‘I don’t do those big studio films,’ Kanner-Zuckerman says. ‘So it’s so much more difficult than back in 2000, even. When ‘Italian Ties’ came together, one guy financed it, everyone was on board, and it came together in two months. ‘When we shot ‘Wake,’ it was in the middle of the [2007-08 WGA] writers’ strike and the recession. We were lucky to get any kind of an advance.’ The final budget, she adds, was under $1 million. ‘Some days I feel like I’m in the business, some days I don’t,’ Kanner-Zuckerman continues, half-joking and half-sighing. Surely the 2000s do offer some benefits? ‘Thank God for Netflix, that’s all I have to say!’ she says, laughing. ‘Wake’ can be found via Video on Demand, iTunes and Amazon. For more information, visit WakeMovie.com.

By design, the documentary ‘Dirt! The Movie,’ a 2009 Sundance Film Festival entry, was broadcast on the PBS series ‘Independent Lens’ on Earth Day, April 20. As it turns out, ‘Dirt!’ is a Pacific Palisades family affair. Bill Benenson, who co-directed with Santa Monica Canyon resident Gene Rosow, is a Palisadian, as is the film’s executive producer: his wife, Laurie Benenson. Even the narrator, Jamie Lee Curtis, lives here.   ’Besides being a neighbor, Jamie is a friend and a dedicated environmentalist,’ Bill Benenson tells the Palisadian-Post. ‘And she is particularly interested in the history and consequences of the American Dust Bowl. When Laurie told Jamie about our project, she volunteered to narrate it for us. Of course, we accepted her offer with jubilant enthusiasm. Her spirit and voice help animate our film.’   Available on DVD, ‘Dirt!’ combines science and humor as it digs into the history and current state of the living organic matter, explaining how four billion years of evolution have created the resource that recycles our water and provides food, shelter and medicinal properties.   However, mankind has endangered the planet with destructive agricultural, mining and urban-development practices that are yielding catastrophic results: mass starvation, drought, floods and global warming.   ’Our film was one of 900 documentaries submitted to Sundance for 2009,’ Benenson says. And it was at Park City, Utah, back in January, where ‘Independent Lens’ started negotiating with the Benensons to acquire ‘Dirt!’ Benenson believes that it could even become the program’s sole submission for Best News Documentary come Emmy season. In a long career that has seen Benenson executive-produce such theatrical films as ‘Mr. Johnson’ with Pierce Brosnan, ‘The Lightship’ starring Robert Duvall, and ‘A Walk on the Moon,’ about the Peace Corps (not the 1999 movie starring Diane Lane), ‘Dirt!’ represents his return to the documentary format. His first two, ‘Diamond Rivers’ and ‘The Marginal Way,’ were created for WNET in the late 1970s in New York City, where the Columbia University graduate grew up. (Post-college, Benenson went to Brazil for a couple of years, where he served with the Peace Corps.)   ’The documentary world has changed radically since I left it,’ Benenson admits. ‘Thanks to the Internet, we’re having screenings in England right now without having anything to do with it. We’ve been invited to film festivals in Korea and Taiwan.’   Unlike this year’s documentary category Oscar-winner ‘The Cove’ and nominee ‘Food, Inc.,’ ‘Dirt!’ does not end on a bleak note, despite its inherent gloom-and-doom caveats.   Benenson says, ‘It’s divided into three parts. Dirt is alive, the damage to earth, and how to remediate and regenerate life through composting. So it’s much more optimistic. If you treat dirt properly, you can grow your way out of a lot of problems.’ Laurie Halpern Benenson moved with her family from Brooklyn to Phoenix when she was 7 because her father had asthma.   ”Pack up your asthma’ was Arizona’s slogan,’ Laurie remembers with a chuckle. She attended Reed College in Oregon before transferring to Arizona State, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature.   After traveling the world and toiling at odd jobs, Laurie settled at the Arizona Republic copy desk for three years.   ’I really wanted to write, so they let me do book reviews,’ Laurie says. ‘I started to establish myself at the Arizona Republic and I met my first husband. He was going to get his doctorate in business so we moved to Los Angeles in 1976. We split up, and I worked at Architectural Digest [as a caption writer], the late Herald-Examiner [copy editor and feature writer], and New West magazine [copy editor].’   Four years later, in 1985, she and her ex-husband, Boris Krutchensky, launched Movieline magazine.   ’I was the editor-in-chief until it got bought out [in 1991],’ Laurie recalls.   In 1988, Laurie met Bill Benenson, as she recalls, ‘through my very dear friend Susan at New West. She had known Billy when they were growing up in New York. She had run into him again and he mentioned that he and his wife had split up.’   Laurie agreed to a blind date. The night before, she went to a screening of ‘Bull Durham’ and knew that Bill was planning on seeing ‘Wings of Desire’ at the same theater.   ’Somewhere in this crowd is the guy I have a date with tomorrow night,’ she said to herself on her way out of the movie. ‘I saw a guy, and even though I had never seen a picture of him, I [had a hunch it was him].’   It was. The next night, the couple hit it off at the now-defunct Louie XIV, a trendy La Brea Avenue restaurant.   ’We talked all night,’ Laurie recalls. ‘He called me the next morning at 7 a.m. with this great promotional idea for Movieline. He suggested putting a poster in every issue. We did it and it worked.’ In 1990, the couple married. They lived in Santa Monica while Laurie was pregnant, then moved to the Palisades a year later. ‘We both had a thing for Rustic Canyon,’ she says. A sycamore tree and a small stream sold them on their first home. After nine years, they relocated to their current home in the canyon.   The ‘Dirt!’ road began in earnest with the filmmaker’s late mother. ‘My mother, who just died last year, told me 10 years ago that she had seen an exhibit at the Rose Center of the Universe at the New York Planetarium, which posited the idea that everything on this planet comes from outside of our solar system,’ Bill Benenson says. ‘We only get hydrogen and helium from our sun; there’s nothing on this planet that is physical that doesn’t come from a supernova explosion. Essentially, we’re all made from stardust. My mother asked if it would make an interesting film and I said, ‘I’m not an astrophysicist.” However, the 1995 book ‘Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth’ by Bill Logan, deepened his interest. In 2002, Benenson optioned Logan’s book, but acknowledges, ‘It was a hard topic to make presentable to a lay audience.’ ‘I wrote narration for the movie,’ Laurie says of her role on the film. ‘Billy and I discussed the footage every night.’ The production took its small crew to India, Brazil, France, Kenya, Haiti and all over the United States, and Benenson had trouble nailing down some key on-screen interviews, including Dr. Vanana Shiva in India, mushroom expert Paul Stamatz, and Sebastian Sagato, a renowned social photographer who has planted a million trees on his farm in Brazil.   ’A very important person is in Los Angeles and he’s Andy Lipkis of TreePeople,’ Bill says. ‘He’s someone we return to over and over in the film.’   Far from the jungles of Kenya and the rainforests of Brazil, Pacific Palisades offers respite for our world-weary documentarians, yet they still can’t escape from their documentary’s subject.   ’Dirt is not so far away,’ Bill says. ‘We filmed one sequence [of ‘Dirt!’] in our backyard, ‘Part of the sustenance for me has been the Santa Monica Mountains; being able to hike there has been my solace.’   The Benensons’ 18-year-old daughter, Amanda, is a senior at New Roads and works at Village Books on Swarthmore. Bill has a son, Stephen (a chef living in Portland, Maine) from his previous marriage. The Benensons hope people viewing their documentary will grasp its subtext. ‘Dirt is critical to our continued survival on the planet,’ Laurie says. ‘The thing that always struck me about dirt, even the word ‘dirt’ has negative connotations. What we’ve characterized as having little value turns out to be the most valuable substance we have.’ Visit dirtthemovie.org or pbs.org/dirt.

As founder of Over the Top Productions, an event planning firm, Luann Laval Williams knows how to throw a really big party. On Thursday, May 20, Heal the Bay will throw her a party when they honor the longtime Pacific Palisades resident for her invaluable assistance and expertise in mounting large-scale events for the nonprofit. This year’s ‘Bring Back the Beach,’ its 25th anniversary fundraiser, will also honor actor Nicolas Cage (‘Kick-Ass’), businessman Jack Baylis, and The Walt Disney Company. It wasn’t long ago that Williams helped mount Heal the Bay’s 20th anniversary fundraising gala. ‘Development is where I’ve focused at Heal the Bay,’ says Williams. The 2005 event was the tipping point. ‘Every year, the dinner got bigger and better. With the 20th, [Heal the Bay became] competitive in that world of fundraising.’ In 2003, Williams started Over the Top Productions, which plans parties for private individuals and nonprofits in Pacific Palisades and beyond. She has coordinated festivities on a ranch in Paso Robles, and at the Ojai Valley Inn. Here in the Palisades, she once staged a dinner party for 20 inside a barn. ‘It’s pretty much word of mouth,’ says the party coordinator, who does not even have a Web site to publicize her business. Williams has had her share of moments gone awry on the job. But it comes with the territory. ‘We did a party at the Bel-Air Bay Club,’ she recalls. ‘We had thought they were providing individual cakes that were supposed to come out with the waiters. At the beginning of the event they asked, ‘When will you be bringing in your cakes?’ I said, ‘You’re kidding!’ Their people and our people ran all over town looking for small cakes. It was a nightmare, but it turned out fine. But there’s always something.’ Her first event was at the Bay Club: a surprise party for pop singer Richard Marx, thrown by his wife, on the occasion of his 40th birthday. This happening, Williams says, put Over the Top on the map. ‘We had fireworks,’ she recalls. ‘It set the bar [for Over the Top’s productions].’ At Marx’s party, Williams coordinated a band to perform. Of course, Marx and other high-profile musicians in attendance leapt on stage to join in. Over the Top brings out her creativity. For a luau-themed party (also at the Bay Club), ‘I sent a pineapple as an invitation. I like to find an element that’s different.’ Business, she says, has slowed since 2009, due to the economy. ‘Even if they can afford it, they’re not [throwing parties like they used to],’ Williams says. ‘We’re on the rise now, but certainly people have been more hesitant and conservative.’ Williams saw the need to expand the fundraiser’s scope and scale when she coordinated the 20th fundraiser at Casa del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica. ‘We had two large tents in the parking area, one for the guests, one for the stage,’ Williams says. ‘Hootie and the Blowfish performed. More than 1,100 guests came. It raised more funds because certainly we had more people attending and more media attention. [Celebrities and board members such as] Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Amy Smart have brought a lot of attention. ‘I have enthusiasm for Heal the Bay and it has never waned,’ she says. ‘My good friend [actress] Julia Louis-Dreyfus brought me to an event. I joined the board in 1998. ‘I didn’t want to sit on a board and be just a name only. I wanted to be on a board where I could get my hands dirty. All of the people on that board do the same thing. They welcomed me with open arms.’ It’s easy to see why Williams is involved with Heal. ‘I love the ocean,’ she says. ‘I see it every time I drive down Chautauqua. When I realized that the ocean is so beautiful on the outside and not on the inside, I wasn’t thrilled by that. The ocean, in fact, is what brought Williams and her husband, Bob Williams, from Berkeley, where Bob finished law school, to Pacific Palisades as residents. Bob, owner of Conversive Software, a customer-service software company, no longer practices law. ‘He’s in lawyer recovery,’ his wife jokes. ‘We wanted to be near the ocean and as remote as an L.A.-based family can be, so we found the Palisades to have the charm we couldn’t find anywhere else,’ says Williams. Williams grew up in Fresno, where her mother was a high school teacher and her father founded Claude Laval Corporation, a water filtration company. Married for 22 years, Luann and her husband have lived in the Huntington for 20 years. They have two teenage boys attending Windward School: Nick, 18, and Chase, 15. ‘Heal the Bay started out in the back room at Dorothy Green’s home,’ Williams says, ‘and every cent of every dollar earned goes to what they do. That’s why development was such an issue with me. We really needed to get [their message out].’ Ticket information: healthebay.org/events/bbb/2010/about.asp