Entertainment
Compton business owners say they lost thousands of dollars when Kendrick Lamar shot the 'Not Like Us' video in his hometown
Saturdays are usually busy days for Alma’s Place, a soul food restaurant in Compton across from the city’s courthouse.
But roughly an hour into opening on June 22, Corina Pleasant, who runs the business with her mother Alma, noticed no customers were filing in. Their parking lot, which is shared with other small businesses in a strip mall, was overrun by cars and chaos as hundreds of people poured to the courthouse to catch a glimpse of rap star Kendrick Lamar, who was there to film the music video for “Not Like Us.”
Alma’s Place and other nearby businesses say they lost thousands of dollars that day. The business owners blame city officials for not providing any notice about the video shoot, which ultimately forced them to shut down operations. Now they’re asking Lamar, production company pgLang or the city to compensate them for their losses.
Daryl Hurlic places a morning order at Alma’s Place on July 11 in Compton.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
“It was really disheartening to have the electricity on and gas,” Pleasant said. “I’m just running everything and making no money. I literally was there for nothing, because the little money that I did make, I had to pay my staff with that.”
If she had been informed ahead of time, Pleasant said she could have preemptively closed for the day or set up a pop-up tent with a special menu.
She estimates she lost between $1,800 to $2,200 that day. Other business owners in the area told similar stories in testimony to the City Council and interviews with The Times.
A spokesperson for the City of Compton said in a statement that the city would identify “opportunities for more efficient film permit communication to our community” in the future.
“Businesses in Compton, especially small businesses, are the backbone of our city,” the statement said. “We want to continue to keep an open line of communication and do everything we can to support economic growth.”
Representatives for Lamar and pgLang did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Rumors of Lamar’s video shoot had been circulating online since at least June 17, building up anticipation for the rapper’s appearance in his hometown following his highly publicized feud with Drake.
Compton officials issued a film permit certificate June 21 for several locations in the center of the city: the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at the courthouse, Compton Courtyard and parking structure, Tam’s Burgers on Rosecrans Avenue, Compton College, Central Avenue, Willowbrook Avenue and Compton Boulevard.
The next day, more than 700 people arrived at the courthouse to be featured in the video. Nearby parking lots were packed to the brim, with some people even parking their vehicles on grass.
Lamar began filming at Tam’s Burgers and other areas earlier in the afternoon before heading over to the courthouse around 3 p.m., where the large crowd was waiting for him.
Pleasant closed her restaurant hours earlier. Spectators had overflowed the shopping center’s parking lot, turning into a one-way street, obstructing access to fire lanes and Dumpsters and trapping vehicles that were already parked, she said. Customers, many of whom often drive from Riverside and Orange County to dine at Alma’s Place on weekends, turned around and left.
“One day does matter,” Pleasant said. “It does matter when you’re there, and you’re wasting your time. It does matter when your Edison bill is $1,000. It does matter when two weeks’ payroll for three people is nearly $3,000. It does matter when gas is $800. You’re there, all these things are running, and you have nothing to show for it.”
Adelfo Antonio Garcia, a co-owner of Sunny Express Gourmet Fast Food, said he lost about $2,000 that day as well. And customers still believe he’s closed on Saturdays.
Garcia called the situation frustrating because his restaurant was already struggling to get by. The city’s lack of communication was unacceptable, he said.
“The people who suffer are the small businesses,” he said in Spanish.
Alma Pleasant attended a City Council meeting the following Tuesday to share her disappointment with city officials, who she said needed to “get it together.”
“I’m here because three things affected me on Saturday,” she said during public comment. “And when those three things affect me, I’m coming in full force. One, my kids. Two, my money. Three, my food.”
It is not mandatory for production companies to pay impacted businesses, according to Kathryn Arnold, a producer and entertainment consultant unaffiliated with Lamar. However, filmmakers do sometimes compensate businesses as a sign of good will.
“Everybody does better when there’s clear communication,” Arnold said. “Nobody likes to be blindsided by something like this.”
Movie Reviews
Movie Review – SHAKA: A STORY OF ALOHA
Entertainment
Tommy Lee Jones’ daughter reportedly found dead at San Francisco hotel on New Year’s Day
Victoria Jones, the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones, was reportedly found dead at a hotel in San Francisco on New Year’s Day. She was 34.
According to TMZ, the San Francisco Fire Department responded to a medical emergency call at the Fairmont San Francisco early Thursday morning. The paramedics pronounced Victoria dead at the scene before turning it over to the San Francisco Police Department for further investigation, the outlet said.
An SFPD representative confirmed to The Times that officers responded to a call at approximately 3:14 a.m. Thursday regarding a report of a deceased person at the hotel and that they met with medics at the scene who declared an unnamed adult female dead.
Citing law enforcement sources, NBC Bay Area also reported that the deceased woman found in a hallway of the hotel was believed to be Jones and that police did not suspect foul play.
“We are deeply saddened by an incident that occurred at the hotel on January 1, 2026,” the Fairmont told NBC Bay Area in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences are with the family and loved ones during this very difficult time. The hotel team is actively cooperating and supporting police authorities within the framework of the ongoing investigation.”
The medical examiner conducted an investigation at the scene, but Jones’ cause of death remains undetermined. Dispatch audio obtained by TMZ and People indicated that the 911 emergency call was for a suspected drug overdose.
Jones was the daughter of Tommy Lee and ex-wife Kimberlea Cloughley. Her brief acting career included roles on films such as “Men in Black II” (2002), which starred her father, and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), which was directed by her father. She also appeared in a 2005 episode of “One Tree Hill.”
Page Six reported that Jones had been arrested at least twice in 2025 in Napa County, including an arrest on suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance and drug possession.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me
Just when you think that you’ve seen and heard all sides of the human migration debate, and long after you fear that the cruel, the ignorant and the scapegoaters have won that shouting match, a film comes along and defies ignorance and prejudice by both embracing and upending the conventional “immigrant” narrative.
“I Was a Strranger” is the first great film of 2026. It’s cleverly written, carefully crafted and beautifully-acted with characters who humanize many facets of the “migration” and “illegal immigration” debate. The debut feature of writer-director Brandt Andersen, “Stranger” is emotional and logical, blunt and heroic. It challenges viewers to rethink their preconceptions and prejudices and the very definition of “heroic.”
The fact that this film — which takes its title from the Book of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 35 — is from the same faith-based film distributor that made millions by feeding the discredited human trafficking wish fulfillment fantasy “Sound of Freedom” to an eager conservative Christian audience makes this film something of a minor miracle in its own right.
But as Angel Studios has also urged churchgoers not just to animated Nativity stories (“The King of Kings”) and “David” musicals, but Christian resistence to fascism (“Truth & Treason” and “Bonheoffer”) , their atonement is almost complete.
Andersen deftly weaves five compact but saga-sized stories about immigrants escaping from civil-war-torn Syria into a sort of interwoven, overlapping “Babel” or “Crash” about migration.
“The Doctor” is about a Chicago hospital employee (Yasmine Al Massri of “Palestine 36” and TV’s “Quantico”) whose flashback takes us to the hospital in Aleppo, Syria, bombed and terrorized by the Assad regime’s forces, and what she and her tween daughter (Massa Daoud) went through to escape — from literally crawling out of a bombed building to dodging death at the border to the harrowing small boat voyage from Turkey to Greece.
“The Soldier” follows loyal Assad trooper Mustafa (Yahya Mahayni was John the Baptist in Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints”) through his murderous work in Aleppo, and the crisis of conscience that finally hits him as he sees the cruel and repressive regime he works for at its most desperate.
“The Smuggler” is Marwan, a refugee-camp savvy African — played by the terrific French actor Omar Sy of “The Intouchables” and “The Book of Clarence” — who cynically makes his money buying disposable inflatable boats, disposable outboards and not-enough-life-jackets in Turkey to smuggle refugees to Greece.
“The Poet” (Ziad Bakri of “Screwdriver”) just wants to get his Syrian family of five out of Turkey and into Europe on Marwan’s boat.
And “The Captain” (Constantine Markoulakis of “The Telemachy”) commands a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel, a man haunted by the harrowing rescues he must carry out daily and visions of the bodies of those he doesn’t.
Andersen, a Tampa native who made his mark producing Tom Cruise spectacles (“American Made”), Mel Gibson B-movies (“Panama”) and the occasional “Everest” blockbuster, expands his short film “Refugee” to feature length for “I Was a Stranger.” He doesn’t so much alter the formula or reinvent this genre of film as find points of view that we seldom see that force us to reconsider what we believe through their eyes.
Sy’s Smuggler has a sickly little boy that he longs to take to Chicago. He runs his ill-gotten-gains operation, profiting off human misery, to realize that dream. We see glimpses of what might be compassion, but also bullying “customers” and his new North African assistant (Ayman Samman). Keeping up the hard front he shows one and all, we see him callously buy life jackets in the bazaar — never enough for every customer to have one in any given voyage.
The Captain sits for dinner with family and friends and has to listen to Greek prejudices and complaints about this human life and human rights crisis, which is how the worlds sees Greece reacting to this “invasion.” But as he and his first mate recount lives saved and the horrors of lives lost, that quibbling is silenced.
Here and there we see and hear (in Arabic and Greek with subtitles, and English) little moments of “rising above” human pettiness and cruelty and the simple blessings of kindness.
“I Was a Stranger” was finished in 2024 and arrives in cinemas at one of the bleakest moments in recent history. Cruelty is running amok, unchecked and unpunished. Countries are being destabilized, with the fans of alleged “strong man” rule cheering it on.
Andersen carefully avoids politics — Middle Eastern, Israeli, European and American — save for the opening scene’s zoom in on that Chicago hospital, passing a gaudily named “Trump” hotel in the process, and a general condemnation of Syria’s Assad mob family regime.
But Andersen’s bold movie, with its message so against the grain of current events, compromised media coverage and the mostly conservative audience that has become this film distributor’s base, plays like a wet slap back to reality.
And as any revival preacher will tell you, putting a positive message out there in front of millions is the only way to convert hundreds among the millions who have lost their way.

Rating: PG-13, violence, smoking, racial slurs
Cast: Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Ziad Bakri, Omar Sy, Ayman Samman, Massa Daoud, Jason Beghe and Constantine Markoulakis
Credits: Scripted and directed by Brandt Andersen. An Angel Studios release.
Running time: 1:43
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