Harvey Guillén on Saving His House from L.A. Wildfires
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00:00I feel like, you know, I'm from Altadena in my house, in my neighborhood, and what's happened has been really tragic.
00:05And a couple days ago, we got a chance to go back into that area, and there was this mural on the side of this historic building.
00:13The building was burned down, but this side of the wall was all brick, and the mural was there, and it just said,
00:18Altadena, and it's a beautiful mural, and it's just so poetic, because it's just what the city is.
00:23It's, you know, yes, it's had a hard time, but it's still standing, it's in the rebuild.
00:29Yes, I'm helping rebuild in any way I can. I can't live in my space, obviously, in the near future,
00:35but I have hope. I hope Altadena is such a beautiful place.
00:40I caught on fire, but fortunately enough, I was spared, and there's damage to my house,
00:48but nothing in comparison to my neighbors, and that's why I've been trying to help in any way I can.
00:52We started fund-raising, and we were able to fund it for our neighbors, and these people lost everything.
00:56Everything. So I had this guilt for, you know, a couple of weeks that I literally had gone and asked...
01:02It's like Survivor's Village.
01:03Yeah, Survivor's Village. I had this guilt of, you know, I went to my backyard and I asked ancestors that night,
01:08when it was windy, I was like, please protect my house, please protect my house.
01:11And wouldn't you know it, every corner of my house, the trees, the fence, everything, my neighbor's house,
01:15everything caught on fire, but before I left, my neighbor gave me some really good advice.
01:20He's 80, and he did not fight for it, and he decided to stay, and he just hosed down his house,
01:25and he was like, Harvey, if I was you, before you leave, you hose down your house, and I said, you're right,
01:29and I put, like, I hosed down the house, I put sprinklers on the top of the roof,
01:33I turned the sprinklers around the front and the back, and let them on.
01:36Just let them all on, and my ring light kind of came on at 4 in the morning, and it was raining fire.
01:42All the palm trees that caught on fire, they were falling down from the sky with just balls of fire.
01:46My ring light caught it all, and I was like, oh my God, and then just balls of fire falling down to my grass,
01:51and it would dissolve automatically, because there was puddles of water everywhere.
01:54So I just, I don't know why, but that was the way the universe worked, and it saved my house, it saved it in that way.
01:59And the 80-year-old neighbor's house is safe?
02:01It's safe, yeah.
02:03It might be a UFO.
02:04Is it hard for you to be doing this?
02:06It's a little hard because of, you know, I put off work for the last month, I stopped production,
02:12I was supposed to do other events and recordings and everything, and I went into a really kind of depressed,
02:18dark place because, you know, I've never been in this place.
02:21I've never been in a situation where my community is mourning, and I don't know what to do, I feel helpless.
02:26My house is, you know, it's still standing, but it's damaged, and I can't go live there, and it's toxic,
02:32and it's like lead paint and all these things, so it was hurtful.
02:35It was hurtful, and I had people reach out.
02:37I sent out a friend, Kathy Griffin, and reached out and said, come stay with me, what do you need?
02:42And it really warmed my heart, just because it's like the community did reach out, as you know,
02:46we're part of this group chat.
02:48People really reached out to us and said, how are you doing, how are you doing?
02:52Yeah, yeah.
02:54Living life, life is life.
02:56I don't know why I'm going to say this.
02:58Let's just move in.
02:59Yeah, let's just move in.
03:02You know what we do in times of chaos and mourning and darkness?
03:06We need to do this, we need to create entertainment, because we need to escape.
03:09So I'm really excited to promote this movie.
03:11It's such a fun movie, it's a thriller.
03:13The less you know about it, the better.
03:15Because I didn't know.
03:16Yes.
03:17That was on my honorable mentions.
03:18I know.
03:19Yeah, exactly.
03:20The less you know about it, a very bright and brilliant and wise person who recently just told me by the name of Allah,
03:26the less you know about it, the better.
03:28And I think they're absolutely right.
03:30How much fun was it having Lucas as your boyfriend?
03:32Oh, my God.
03:33We had to do the kissing scene so many times.
03:35I'm in therapy for it.
03:37It's just, he's such a charmer, such a lovely guy.
03:40You know, it's funny, we were both in a relationship at the time when we were filming this,
03:43and we were so madly in love, we brought that love into these characters,
03:45and now they live forever on screen, and now we're both single.
03:48I was going to say, now you're going to tell me that you're in love.
03:51Well, we are in love.
03:52We kind of said, look, it worked out for the best, and we've been holding each other,
03:57we've been holding space for each other.
03:59Yeah.
04:05You look great.
04:06I'll see you again.