Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/501792
44 CINEMONTAGE / SPRING 2015 44 CINEMONTAGE / SPRING 2015 UNION SERVICE CALLS Later, while working at CFI, he was surprised to be tapped as shop steward for Local 789, replacing the former one, who became Assistant Business Agent. A few years later, that agent decided to retire. "I was wondering who the new person would be, and was asking around, when someone told me to ask the Assistant Business Agent, so I did," Aredas remembers. "And he said, 'Well, I was thinking it should be you,' to which I said, 'Oh, not me,' but he reiterated, 'Yes you.'" Aredas pauses and visibly reflects; his focus returns to the telling: "I guess sometimes people see things in us that we don't — which is better than the other way around, when we think we have something we don't." It could be that the agent had taken note when Aredas had encouraged a janitor — whom he thought had promise — to go to school and learn something more skilled "or at least the machine trade." Aredas backed up his talk by attending classes with the janitor, eventually earning his own Machinist Associate's degree — and obviously the respect of others. On his view of service, Aredas credits his parents and his teachers. He was raised not far from Los Angeles City Hall, in what is now known as Historic Filipinotown. His father had emigrated from the Philippines; his mother from Portugal. "I don't know how they got together, but they were good parents," he says. School was important to them, and Aredas credits that education with much of his progress later in life: "My parents were encouraging. And the teachers were great. They all taught us that education was a gift — literally it was free — and we should build on it, make something of it." But he also mentions the profound effect of living through the Watts riots and wondering how he might make a difference in such a society. Rather than move out, he was moved. "I asked myself long and hard what I could do to make a difference, and it was difficult to come up with answers," he reveals. One day, as a parent with a full-time job and studying for that degree in the evening, Aredas was talking in a group of students, when one — a young black man — excused himself from the group. Aredas watched him cross the street to aid a blind white woman. "I suddenly realized that actions are always what matters. I decided right then to start looking for the opportunities everywhere. That guy really showed me something — how to act like a caring human being." Aredas' position as Assistant Business Agent of IATSE Local 695 gave him a strong background in organizations and organizing, as well as a unique perspective on the changes technology was making to the industry. Among his assignments was inspecting the many small operations that were starting to offer services. "I remember getting this address out in the valley, and going to a home where a woman opened the door. I said, 'I understand your husband is going to do such and such a service here,' asking as much as stating. And she said, 'Yes, let me show you,' and took me out to the garage where there was this one tape machine. I really didn't see how they were going to Joe Aredas, left, and colleague Jim Osburn (in cap) on a picket line at director Blake Edwards' home in Malibu during the making of That's Life in 1986. George Hutchison, left, Paul Law, Joe Aredas and, seated, Michel Papadaki at CFI in 1997.