L.A. is a great big freeway...
So many books, movies, television shows and songs have commented on Los Angeles that it's a pretty daunting task to find something new to discuss. It's the entertainment capital of the world, yes, and it's home to gobs of celebs, true, but the myth of Los Angeles is not the daily life of Los Angeles. (Unless you're George Clooney. If you're George Clooney then the daily life of Los Angeles isn't real at all. The myth is real. Which I suppose would make the myth the daily life which would make it real...so if you're George Clooney disregard anything I've said about myth vs. daily life)
Let's get the big one out of the way. Hollywood. Hollywood sucks. I'm talking about the city of Hollywood now. It's filthy. It's overflowing with homeless people. The only stores anyone goes into sell cheap-ass movie paraphernalia like Charlie Chaplin mugs where the mustache appears or disappears depending on the heat of the beverage.* Want to go to a great restaurant? Go someplace else. Great theater? Uh uh. Sight seeing? Pretty much everywhere but Hollywood. So much of what L.A. has to offer isn't in Hollywood that it's no wonder the only people you'll see on the streets - besides the flowing homeless - are tourists.
Second: Stop referring to L.A. as "the city of broken dreams" or "a wasteland of failed hopes" or "a densely packed woodland of gnomes and imps who just need to find the key to the magical castle to free them from the curse of the necromancer" or any other such tired analogy. It's hacky and it's old. We don't have any more crack whores than a Mexican border town, and just as many failed actors (minus the bumble bee outfits).
For the most part, people in L.A. are doing just as good or as bad as the rest of country. We have jobs and homes and families and 2.5 dogs. We go to work in our Toyota Corollas and talk about whatever the hell everyone else in the country talks about. Yes, there are people who are aspiring actors or screenwriters or directors, but we ignore them just like everyone else in the film industry does. By the way, I'll let you in on a little known secret outside of L.A. If one of your L.A. friends tells you they work in movies and they're a "Production Assistant", that is an industry title given to the lowest ranking person on the set. For example, in the Beethoven movies, it was a Production Assistant who cleaned up Beethoven's shit. These friends of yours are no more in show business than a failed American Idol contestant.**
Everyone out here says they live in L.A. but chances are excellent that if you're reading this online you don't have any friends who live in the actual city of Los Angeles which is a shithole second only to Hollywood in terms of the homeless. The city of Los Angeles is really small and has only about 11 tall buildings (not too many in L.A. - earthquakes, y'know?). Los Angeles county on the other hand is colossal and has all kinds of cities in it like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, your precious Hollywood, etc. most of which can be really great places to live.
The long and short of it is that while it may sound like I'm cynical about Los Angeles (the County), I'm really not. I love it here and everyone else I meet loves it too. The reason our real estate prices are so high is because so many, many people want to live here and so few want to leave. I am, however, cynical about the myths of L.A. It's really no different from any other city in the world. It's got good parts and bad.
Statistically speaking if you are interested in the film/television business you're better off living and working here, just like if you're interested in winning the lottery you are statistically better off in buying a ticket (though the odds remain eerily unchanged). But L.A. isn't some golden land of entertainment possibilities with it's people suckling at the teat of opportunity any more than it's a junkyard of chewed up souls and spent heroin needles. It's somewhere in between. Kind of like how Branson, MO is somewhere between Vegas and Atlantic City.
(By the way, the weather out here kicks ASS and is every bit as awesome as everyone says it is. But stay out, cuz we can't afford higher real estate prices.)
*Patent Pending
**I'd like to fuck Paula Abdul
-=-Jack-=-
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