LA LA Land
Where dreams are made … maybe
Tangerine smog. That’s what I remember about landing in LA. I was a kid. Twenty-two maybe. I’d a met a rock girl with tattoos in the Swiss Alps. She had green eyes, dark hair and a go-to-hell attitude. I followed her to San Francisco. Because that’s what you do when you’re young. You follow your heart. We flew to LA on a whim one day. I had a window seat. I looked across an urban sprawl that glowed. The late sun lit up a bank of smog and the world was bigger, brighter, more alive.
Twenty years later and not much has changed. It’s the light. It grabs you. The colours are richer, more saturated. Edges defined. It feels like you’re looking at the world through a coloured lens. It makes the ordinary feel extraordinary. The tepid becomes tumultuous. The prosaic, profound. No small wonder the film industry landed here.
I came on a whim again. This time to see an old friend, but also to meet up with Dave Andron and David Thwaites, the Screenwriter and Executive Producer attached to the Stone Rider film project. That’s a thing to say – the Stone Rider film project – let that get boring. I hired a compact car at LAX – the hell was I thinking? I should have doled out loot for a Mustang dammit – and speared along the superhighways, periodically tapping the GPS to make sure it didn’t die on me and leave me stranded in South Central politely asking a gangster for directions to Hollywood.
Beverly Hills. Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Strip. Melrose Place. The Hollywood Hills. Laurel Canyon. Santa Monica Boulevard. Chateau Marmont. Mulholland Drive. We know the names. They’re in us. We’ve seen the TV shows, the films. It’s like coming home to a place you lived when you were a kid, but when you get there you don’t recognise anyone. It’s the same street name. The same house. But no one you know lives there. LA feels like that. It feels like you should know it, but you don’t. I’m a transient. A traveller. A passer-through. It’s a busy city. It’s a lonely city too.
Look up as you drive and you see a cerulean blue sky and those skyduster palms swaying in the breeze. It’s a film set. It isn’t real. Sex, glamour, celebrity. I’m ready LA. Bring it on! I’m a rock star, I tell myself … as my compact, fuel-efficient, Japanese-made car bumps economically along the highway.
I booked a room at the Roosevelt hotel. Top floor. Apparently the first Academy Awards were held here or something. Old Hollywood glamour. Marilyn lived here. All back in the day. It gives on to Hollywood Boulevard. Across the road is the TCL Chinese Theatre. Crowds pound the pavement, snapping selfies on the star walk.
At night it’s afire with popping lights and lasers … and screams. They scream names here. OWEN! JOSH! JOAQUIIIIN! That’s pronounced WAY KEEEEEEN by the way. I wandered down to the main road. It was the premier of Inherent Vice. Owen Wilson, Josh Brolin, Joaquin Phoenix were doing their thing with the camera crews and mooching over to an excited rabble thrusting for their autographs. I see a guy with a list of names. He looks at the list and shouts out the names. Just calls them out. Top of his lungs. He doesn’t bother looking up. Another guy comes charging. He elbows me in the gut and surges forward, booting a nine-year-old girl out the way in his nutjob eagerness to push his pen into Owen, or Josh, or Way Keen’s hand.
I meet Dave and Dave the next day. And normalcy returns. These guys are professionals. They know what they’re talking about. Smooth and funny and charming and in love with what they do. Not jaded. Optimistic. We talk about Stone Rider and the writer’s journey. We talk about the sequel. We talk about what it’s like to adapt a novel for film which Dave Andron does a great job explaining in this interview with Final Draft: http://www.finaldraft.com/discover/articles/screenplay-teleplay-stage-play-whats-the-difference/what-would-elmore-do
They are both eloquent and intelligent. Laid back. I like them immediately. They speak honestly. LA seems real to me suddenly. Then lunch is over. And it’s back on the street. My friend calls me. Asks me to join him. Where are you? I ask. Buying a Lamborgini, he answers. Just down the road. And the palms begin to sway again. And the smog rolls in and the colour of the smog is tangerine.