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The Real Hollywood?
My client Francie writes about how the recession has affected the
below-the-line (crew) people working in the entertainment industry. I
read part of it on my radio show a few weeks ago. It's a poignant
story of what working people are giving up. Not the Hollywood you see
on the main stream media. Nor the Hollywood liberals that right
wingers assail. No, mostly hardworking union people and the non-union
people that service the productions from the seamstresses to the
caterers to the assistants. If you get to visit a set you see
carpenters hauling lumber and electricians working on lights. You see
the Teamsters driving the crew back to base camp where they get their
daily lunch and costumers bringing in the actors' shirts that they
ironed the night before.
This Is Hollywood?
Francie has a word of warning filled with sadness at the end. Manicures, gym memberships, trips home to visit Grandma are gone.
This Is Hollywood?
On our narrow street of once-modestly-priced, 1950s cottage homes, there are 23 kids, 16 of them between the ages of 5 and 9. After-school wars are waged in the street on tiny little bikes filled with light-saber-wielding, Nerf-gun-toting speed demons. In the setting sunlight, mothers in their 30s and 40s, home from work, stand guard on the corner, drinking coffee and sometimes $4 wine from Trader Joe's, yelling "Car!" when an unwary commuter approaches. Where I grew up, the moms watched from the front stoops and wine was reserved for the racier sacraments, but otherwise it's a lifestyle familiar to our mothers--albeit a little nicer around the edges.
Most passersby will only see the idyllic scene that is our street. They won't hear that the conversations, more and more, are about how we'll make next month's mortgage payments and, if we can't, whether we could afford to rent somewhere in the neighborhood so the kids could keep going to their good public school.
Gone are the days of planning vacations, plotting tiny additions to our tiny homes, weighing whether tumbled marble in the shower really does raise resale values.I've been amused, but more often angry when I hear conservatives rail about "Hollywood" and it's terrible values. Most of Hollywood are like the people that live on Francie's block with it's little cottages and modest expectations. The people here work 14 hour days when they get a job on a movie or TV series. The main stream corporate press fills the airwaves with Lindsay Lohans and Britney Spears, but not the Francies. So conservatives get it wrong. It's not really Hollywood they should rail against; it's Madison Avenue. The media moguls who control the vast empires which include their smaller movie making industries also do there best to control our minds with advertising. It's all about selling us stuff for them. And most of these moguls are not liberals.
Francie has a word of warning filled with sadness at the end. Manicures, gym memberships, trips home to visit Grandma are gone.
Francie is right. If the middle class goes, will democracy survive? The elites of Wall Street and Washington still seem increasingly out of touch with what is going on on Santa Lucia Drive. But maybe it's also time for Hollywood to get back to portraying the Santa Lucia life rather than the life on "Wisteria Lane" or the sordid goings on of "Dirty Sexy Money." Maybe it's time to bring back "The Honeymooners" who lived in a fifth floor walk up or The Bunkers who lived in Queens. Maybe it's time to portray the lives of non- white suburbanites. There have been stunning exceptions to this like HBO's "The Wire", but there's a whole lot more reality out there that needs attention. Bring back the bus drivers, New York City sewer workers, and junk yard dealers.Such losses, many of them, are petty things. But we recognize them for what they are: canaries in our coal mine. As Santa Lucia goes, so goes the country. In the gathering twilight, we, the downwardly mobile, nurse our cheap wine, watch our precious children, set our shoulders and pray that the things we do hold dear are not leaving us for a lifetime.
It might be a good time for realism to return. We can no longer afford to live vicariously through glamorous suburbanites or the filthy rich who stank up Wall Street. And we can't live vicariously through a glamorous couple in the White House either. That is just as self delusional as following the lives of Britney, Rwanna, and Paris. It's just as silly as watching week after week of "American Idol" and other get rich or famous quick schemes and thinking fairy tales can come true and can happen to you. As the middle class slips into the lower class, it realizes that it should never have abandoned the "we are all in this together" idea. It should have looked out for the brothers and sisters in poverty by raising them up with a living wage and good health care for everybody. But it too was fooled by the flim flam artists. Well now it looks like we are all in the same damn dinghy looking for a paddle as the AIG/Goldman Sachs yacht roars by us.
I guess it's....sigh....time to grow up. And get real loud.
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What do you think would be good ideas for TV series or movies at this time? I have to admit I look forward to "Big Love" each week. Boy was that Mormon women's ceremony weird. All that white gauze. I don't watch much, but after a day of work on blogging about flim flams like AIG, something to just watch and not interact with does feel kinda good.
Gosh I'm all mixed up. I've loved movies since I was a kid. I'm proud when my industry produces "Milk" and "WALL-E". I'm embarassed when it creates reality junk. But I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. One man's junk, they say....
So off to the bar and tip a glass to the folks on Santa Lucia drive.
All I can do right now is visit with friends.
March 17, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is just delightful. I think it is because it has nothing to do with the other blogs this week.
It is fun to hear the on the street Hollywood kind of thing.
A center of propaganda filled with real people.
Very good.
March 17, 2009 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
This reminds me of living in Las Vegas. I met many tourist who didn't realize there was a "real" city pass the bright lights of the Strip. People doing ordinary things just like any other city in the U.S.
The only thing I would add, Hollywood entertainers are real people too. They simply live better than many of us. Well some of them because even entertainers can struggle.
There is an interesting and sometimes blurry line between fantasy and reality in the entertainment world. Thanks for the reminder, DKC/Feral Cat.
March 18, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
That is a good point M. Vegas is just like that. I used to go there twice a year. Try to sneak in some business and pleasure in four days or so.
Thousands upon thousands of people, washing sheets, vacuuming floors, preparing the mirage in the midst of the desert.
March 18, 2009 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it odd that the one thing the rest of the world really digs about us, our popular and classical arts, is what the right wing hates?
March 18, 2009 12:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
True dat...
March 18, 2009 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
No disrespect intended but are you sure you want to imply only people on the left buy records, go to concerts, to the movies,plays, etc.?
March 18, 2009 1:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you're talking to me, I don't mean that, I mean that the right rails about movies and music's moral failings, while the whole world buys the product.
Put another way, we aren't making any enemies with our movies and music.
March 18, 2009 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry Tom Wright I meant to reply under your name.
I've never been right wing but I rant about tv all the time (and movies with big snakes) and I'm not conservative or right wing, maybe a nut but that's another story. I get your point though. Thanks for the explanation.
March 18, 2009 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Feral Cat: A TV series? Something smart and quirky -- definitely quirky -- that makes us laugh. Another "Northern Exposure" or Six Feet Under" or.....?
Thank you for this tribute to the other Hollywood.
You are describing my friend, H, a Dutch/Indonesian woman with the most refined, sophisticated sense of color in the universe. She should be doing sets for Woody Allen or Nancy Meyers; instead, the set design work she got was for a series of iconic horror movies in which her palette was restricted to dried blood red/brown, morgue green and horrible fluorescent light. H is cheerful about this, laughing when she says that all she has to do is the opposite of anything that makes her feel good. (Once, she took me to the prop houses and showed me the (13) bathtubs that document successive stages of gore....)
So H exorcises the gloom of her work by producing amazing layered abstract paintings between projects -- one of which I have -- all perfect chartreuse, curry, gray/green, barn red, azure blue, real butter pale yellow and a suggestion of black, all in just the right amount and place.
Like H, her husband V has slogged for years in sound effects and sound editing; their close friend,B, is a Skycam operator.
There is no glamour in this picture. These are hardworking people, dedicated to doing their best on whatever project they have, happy to have work when they have it, content to live modestly and an oasis of art and music and love to their family and friends when they are not.
March 18, 2009 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can see Belle, I was touched by this also.
But you do a finer of job of describing why I really liked this post. And add so much to the post.
March 18, 2009 8:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a famous actor once said to me when I questioned my decision to become an agent, "It's not what you do, it's how you do it." There are great car salesmen and nasty cancer researchers. There are good bankers out there, but the predators got most of the glory over the last 28 years.
We must drag these jokers off their pedestals. We must not admire the Rubins, Paulsons, Thains, Welchs, and the other Barbarians at the Gate.
All most of us can do on a daily basis is do our work and treat our fellows with compassion.
I'm praying that a leader emerges and jumps on to all this passion and anger swirling around the bailouts of the banksters and we get a whole new labor and people's party. It's happening all over Latin America. Maybe there is hope for us too. But it can easily go the other way and we get even more law and order fascism than we have now. Reminding ourselves that we are all in this together might keep us from going to the dark side.
March 18, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
AMEN!
I was thinking about your question concerning shows I would like to see. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the play, "A Day of Absence." The original production was a satire on stereotypical myths and what could happen if all the Blacks disappeared for a day. I'd like to take that concept one step further, a role reversal sort of thing. I believe that seeing life through a differnt lens other than our own could go a long way towards understanding. A silly and naive dream I guess, but one can dream.
March 18, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Except for the obligatory swipes at "conservatives" hating Hollywood, I agree one hundred percent. It is long past time we got MBAs out of the business of The Business.
They are horrible at deciding what makes for good film and television. The only reason they sometimes make ends meet is by releasing a couple films a year on 7,500 screens fueled by a slick ad campaign for crap that rarely live up to the hype. It is the entertainment equivalent of Wall Street and just as damaging, if in more subtle ways.
This is the money quote:
I have been telling anyone who will listen that we have lost something very fundamental in this country over the last twenty years or so. It was gradual at first, as if America was on life-support, but now the devolution is so blatant that we can hardly miss the stench of our rotting societal corpse.This really isn't a conservative or liberal issue as much as it is an American one. I think we are all in the process of rediscovering just how much we have lost, both culturally and politically.
March 18, 2009 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yep.
March 18, 2009 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Except for the swipe at my obligatory swipe at conservatives, I like your post. I specifically came up against the Republicans in the state legislature here when we lobbied to pass film incentives to bring film production into the state. We had not had a major motion picture since 1997's "The Horse Whisperer" shot in my county.
The arguments against the bill in the committees ranged from "we don't want our children turned into homosexuals" to "why should I care about putting Hollywood people to work." It passed but with such weak incentives that we still aren't able to attract any movies. "The Horse Whisperer" generated a great deal of income for Ullman's Lumber and "The Grand" restaurant had its best year.
So a lot of misconceptions are kept going both by the far right and the tabloid media.
March 18, 2009 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
No argument. Far right ideologues have had far too much influence on our common narrative. I look forward to the day that we truly do see all that connects us across the "center" as it shifts back toward the left where humanity naturally belongs.
March 18, 2009 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the posts. The old Hollywood system with contract players did exploit people, but the moguls lived and worked in Hollywood. Now the studios are just part of somebody's world media empire. Aircraft makers like Boeing used to be run by engineers.
The rise of the CEO with a nominal tie to the company is at the heart of James Galbraith's "The Predator State" and at the heart of our troubles. We need to ratchet all of this down.
March 18, 2009 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
As usual, excellent diary, Feral Cat.
This is so true:
Now, we all arre in it together.
March 18, 2009 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Tom. Always good to see you. There is a difference between the "above-the-line" people i.e. director, producers, stars and the below-the-line people i.e. the crew. (Note: the designers, writers, and director of photography are also above the line). The below the line people can't show up late or behave badly. That would break their contracts. Above the line people....well....
We should not have a two tiered system. We should all be on-the-line.
Gee two tiered system aka feudalism aka Two Americas... where have I heard that before?
March 18, 2009 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well... I assume her reference to "Santa Lucia" is the neighborhood in Newport Coast down near Santa Ana - and it's a blue-collar, Beaver Cleaver neighborhood in the same way Versailles is a shanty. But other than that, there are real people, not making millions in overpaid salaries negotiated by overpaid agents, who are suffering in Hollywood's labor-unfriendly "New Format". The entertainment industry, in a company town like this, emphasizes the "industry" part of the equation; it's a do-or-die business like any other. And it's an industry just as susceptible to financial tribulation as any other. That old saw that Depression audiences went hungry to spend their last dimes on movie tickets is a steaming pile of bull cooked up by press agents. Would you? In truth, Hollywood instituted double- and triple-bill showings to attract audiences with two or three movies for the price of one. Does that sound like bounteous generosity - or desperation?
March 18, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
She lives on a street in Los Angeles called Santa Lucia Drive. I've been there. The houses are quite small and close together. Cottage size or Levittown size only cuter. Nowhere near Newport Beach.
March 19, 2009 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hollywood makes movies that make money. That means they make mostly junk these days. Thank the stars (not the actors but the those in the heavens) for films from the other side of the pond.
March 18, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing amount of junk all around. We only see the really good stuff from abroad. Ever watch German TV? Youza!
March 19, 2009 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink