Hollywood!
Roll camera, and...action! And...
tiguh_tiguh and I didn’t actually go back to the Con on Sunday. Instead we went to the San Diego Zoo and then picked up a rental car to drive up to Los Angeles. We hit the returning weekenders traffic and verily did it suck.
We stayed with a childhood friend of mine, Michael Fisk, who is now vice president of Sony Pictures Studios’ Digital Marketing division, and his partner Jimmy Banks, an interior designer. Would you believe we didn’t take a single picture of them? We are terrible guests. Here is the lovely little bungalow they had in their backyard, converted from a garage:
Michael and Jimmy gave us a map of L.A. and circled a bunch of places to visit, including various museums, Venice Beach, Griffith Park, etc. But we wound up totally ignoring that in favor of touring movie studios.
On Monday, we slept in and then drove to Hollywood to do the typical tourist thing. There was a premiere scheduled at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre for Rush Hour 3, which we didn’t hang around to see. We did look around the attached mall at Hollywood and Highland, which shows no shame at all in identifying itself as a modern Babylon:
We got the obligatory shots of the Hollywood sign, and visited the very cheesy wax museum, which mostly sucked, with very few exceptions.
We walked east on Hollywood Blvd., taking note of a bunch of stars on the Walk of Fame, and ended up at the Pantages Theatre, where Renee bought tickets for Wicked. Four times in three other major cities was obviously not enough. On the way back I bought screenplays for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tuesday we went to Legoland! I have always wanted to go, but I think I almost waited too long. It is definitely aimed at younger kids-on some rides they won’t even let two adults ride together! But the best part was definitely the miniature versions of famous landmarks.
The problem with Legoland was that it was closer to San Diego than Los Angeles, so we pretty much did the full drive south and back north again. Fortunately the traffic wasn’t as bad.
On Wednesday we did the Sony Pictures Studios tour in Culver City (at a nice discount thanks to Michael). We weren’t really allowed to take many pictures on the lot, but we got to hear about a lot of MGM movies filmed here, especially The Wizard of Oz. Indy 4 is on one of the soundstages, but all we saw was the plywood backing of a dome-like structure. The guide claimed that even telling us what was filming there was a crime. Apparently their back lot is pretty much gone. What exteriors they shoot are facades on administrative buildings and offices, which I thought was pretty clever.
After the tour, we drove to Beverly Hills and strolled up and down Rodeo Drive to feel grimy and peasant-like in the presence of abject luxury.
And we saw Wicked that night. Here’s an interior shot of the Pantages Art Deco lobby:
Thursday was our massive Day O’ Tours. We began at 8:30 with Warner Brothers in Burbank, where we saw more boxlike soundstages where wonderful stuff had been filmed. I believe Indy 4 had one of those soundstages too. We saw the fully dressed exterior of the hospital in ER, where the El tracks are only about 100 feet long. Here is the tower where they keep the Animaniacs hostage:
We then walked literally across the street to the NBC Studios, which was a pretty lame tour. They love Jay Leno, and tiguh_tiguh and I do not. They also love Days of Our Lives, which apparently no one on the tour cared for. Leno’s set was pretty cool, and we got to hear the performer for Friday’s show rehearse. Unless I am already thinking ahead to Paramount, they also had reconstructed the Central Perk set from Friends:
But by far the best tour we did was Paramount Studios, back in actual Hollywood. The guide talked a bit much (obviously an actor-wannabe) but knew his stuff, and we actually got to walk into a hot set for Nip/Tuck, another set for Everybody Hates Chris, and Entertainment Tonight. Not only that, but we went into the control room and had a chat with the show’s director as they were finishing up a taping and editing session:
We also saw the same New York backlot façade that every studio seems to have, but this time we got to walk in one of the buildings and see the entirely finished back side. I thought that was pretty cool. Of all the studios, Paramount best matched the look and feel of the studio in The Movies (that video game where you run a studio and can make movies).
On our last day we went to Universal Studios, the theme park.
Of course we rode the “Studio Tour” ride, which after the other tours was downright laughable, although we did drive past one of Peter Jackson’s bigatures for King Kong, and a model of the ape himself:
Only moments later, the older cheesier animatronic King Kong shook our trolley inside a destroyed city set building. We did get to see the Mule prop from Serenity:
And some of the other attractions were fun. Terminator 2-3D was cool, except we didn’t get the shaking seats, so that was lame. The first time we tried to get into Back to the Future, we got right up to the front of the line when it shut down for some reason. It was pretty fun when we went back, though. The Mummy’s Revenge was spooky and fun. It was mostly in the dark, moving forward, backward, and sideways. And the Jurassic Park water ride was pretty sweet.
We stayed for dinner at Bubba Gump on the Universal City Walk:
And then went home to pack for a %$#@ early flight the next morning. And as I bent over to pack, my back went out and I got a bonus trip to the hospital to find out that fortunately I have really good health care. I am sitting here more or less comfortably thanks to Messrs. Vicodin and Cyclobenzaprine. That wasn’t how I wanted to end our trip, but I guess I won’t forget it!
tiguh_tiguh and I didn’t actually go back to the Con on Sunday. Instead we went to the San Diego Zoo and then picked up a rental car to drive up to Los Angeles. We hit the returning weekenders traffic and verily did it suck.
We stayed with a childhood friend of mine, Michael Fisk, who is now vice president of Sony Pictures Studios’ Digital Marketing division, and his partner Jimmy Banks, an interior designer. Would you believe we didn’t take a single picture of them? We are terrible guests. Here is the lovely little bungalow they had in their backyard, converted from a garage:
Michael and Jimmy gave us a map of L.A. and circled a bunch of places to visit, including various museums, Venice Beach, Griffith Park, etc. But we wound up totally ignoring that in favor of touring movie studios.
On Monday, we slept in and then drove to Hollywood to do the typical tourist thing. There was a premiere scheduled at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre for Rush Hour 3, which we didn’t hang around to see. We did look around the attached mall at Hollywood and Highland, which shows no shame at all in identifying itself as a modern Babylon:
We got the obligatory shots of the Hollywood sign, and visited the very cheesy wax museum, which mostly sucked, with very few exceptions.
We walked east on Hollywood Blvd., taking note of a bunch of stars on the Walk of Fame, and ended up at the Pantages Theatre, where Renee bought tickets for Wicked. Four times in three other major cities was obviously not enough. On the way back I bought screenplays for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tuesday we went to Legoland! I have always wanted to go, but I think I almost waited too long. It is definitely aimed at younger kids-on some rides they won’t even let two adults ride together! But the best part was definitely the miniature versions of famous landmarks.
The problem with Legoland was that it was closer to San Diego than Los Angeles, so we pretty much did the full drive south and back north again. Fortunately the traffic wasn’t as bad.
On Wednesday we did the Sony Pictures Studios tour in Culver City (at a nice discount thanks to Michael). We weren’t really allowed to take many pictures on the lot, but we got to hear about a lot of MGM movies filmed here, especially The Wizard of Oz. Indy 4 is on one of the soundstages, but all we saw was the plywood backing of a dome-like structure. The guide claimed that even telling us what was filming there was a crime. Apparently their back lot is pretty much gone. What exteriors they shoot are facades on administrative buildings and offices, which I thought was pretty clever.
After the tour, we drove to Beverly Hills and strolled up and down Rodeo Drive to feel grimy and peasant-like in the presence of abject luxury.
And we saw Wicked that night. Here’s an interior shot of the Pantages Art Deco lobby:
Thursday was our massive Day O’ Tours. We began at 8:30 with Warner Brothers in Burbank, where we saw more boxlike soundstages where wonderful stuff had been filmed. I believe Indy 4 had one of those soundstages too. We saw the fully dressed exterior of the hospital in ER, where the El tracks are only about 100 feet long. Here is the tower where they keep the Animaniacs hostage:
We then walked literally across the street to the NBC Studios, which was a pretty lame tour. They love Jay Leno, and tiguh_tiguh and I do not. They also love Days of Our Lives, which apparently no one on the tour cared for. Leno’s set was pretty cool, and we got to hear the performer for Friday’s show rehearse. Unless I am already thinking ahead to Paramount, they also had reconstructed the Central Perk set from Friends:
But by far the best tour we did was Paramount Studios, back in actual Hollywood. The guide talked a bit much (obviously an actor-wannabe) but knew his stuff, and we actually got to walk into a hot set for Nip/Tuck, another set for Everybody Hates Chris, and Entertainment Tonight. Not only that, but we went into the control room and had a chat with the show’s director as they were finishing up a taping and editing session:
We also saw the same New York backlot façade that every studio seems to have, but this time we got to walk in one of the buildings and see the entirely finished back side. I thought that was pretty cool. Of all the studios, Paramount best matched the look and feel of the studio in The Movies (that video game where you run a studio and can make movies).
On our last day we went to Universal Studios, the theme park.
Of course we rode the “Studio Tour” ride, which after the other tours was downright laughable, although we did drive past one of Peter Jackson’s bigatures for King Kong, and a model of the ape himself:
Only moments later, the older cheesier animatronic King Kong shook our trolley inside a destroyed city set building. We did get to see the Mule prop from Serenity:
And some of the other attractions were fun. Terminator 2-3D was cool, except we didn’t get the shaking seats, so that was lame. The first time we tried to get into Back to the Future, we got right up to the front of the line when it shut down for some reason. It was pretty fun when we went back, though. The Mummy’s Revenge was spooky and fun. It was mostly in the dark, moving forward, backward, and sideways. And the Jurassic Park water ride was pretty sweet.
We stayed for dinner at Bubba Gump on the Universal City Walk:
And then went home to pack for a %$#@ early flight the next morning. And as I bent over to pack, my back went out and I got a bonus trip to the hospital to find out that fortunately I have really good health care. I am sitting here more or less comfortably thanks to Messrs. Vicodin and Cyclobenzaprine. That wasn’t how I wanted to end our trip, but I guess I won’t forget it!