Jere-Rigged

The Big Valley

This is the third chapter of the California Trip:

On Friday, I had my first experience with public transit here in L.A. In order to make a lunch date in Studio City (in “the Valley” as people say here), I had to figure out how to get there and back again on my own. I was expecting this to be arduous and time-consuming, but, with some assistance from Mike and David Ehrenstein, I discovered a bus that I could get at Santa Monica and Crescent Heights Boulevards that would take me up and over the mountain and into the Valley, depositing me only a block or so away from where I needed to go. How lovely! How convenient! How inexpensive! (It was $1.25 each way, by the way). And how speedy!

Now, I’ve been told that no one in L.A. takes buses except for the Mexican immigrants who must move around the area to act as servants for the rich folks who populate the town. Shades of Metropolis, I must say. Luckily, there seem to be rich folks (and bus lines) everywhere. Buses are, of course, not as convenient and far more confusing than trains, but one can’t have everything.

I got to Studio City in excellent time and even had time to walk a bit around the neighbourhood before heading to my first appointment: lunch with a reader named Allen with whom I correspond now and then. There was a Samuel French bookstore right on the corner and I spent some time looking over scripts and books on how to make it in the business. There were several that I’d buy if I had the money, but perhaps one day that will happen.

The sidewalks of Studio City carry plaques that seem to commemorate various movies that I’m guessing were shot there. It’s difficult to tell, really, since I saw no explanation and the plaques themselves weren’t as self-explanatory as, say, the stars on Hollywood Boulevard.

Then came time for me to go meet Allen at his office. I was pretty excited because his office was located within the CBS-Radford Studio facility where, as I discovered, many television series are shots. In addition to being a successful playwright (one of his works has been enormously popular and played all over the country, except possibly in New York; I saw a production in Memphis several years ago), Allen works at Mozark Productions for writer/producers Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason, who created, among other things, the long-running series Designing Women and Evening Shade. Exciting, right? Who doesn’t love Designing Women? And, coincidentally, I’d just seen Delta Burke on Broadway in Steel Magnolias!

After getting a bit turned around on the lot, I found Allen’s office and discovered him to be as delightful and friendly in person as he is via email. He showed me around the office and introduced me to his beautiful co-worker “Belle,” at first the only other person in the office that day. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason has an office that’s comfy and inviting with just a hint of Southern formality and that was, in a word, perfect. I’m thinking that she must be sort of like the Julia Sugarbaker character in Designing Women; it was just that sort of place.

Allen then showed me over to the studio commissary, which is probably just like the cafeteria in your office building. We ordered sandwiches and went to the dining area, as I surreptitiously scanned the room for faces I might recognize. No such luck. Allen and I talked and laughed all through lunch and I walked with him back to his office. He told me I should take some time to walk around the lot and just check it out and I was happy to be able to do so. I know I’m supposed to be a jaded New Yorker and all that, but it’s SO exciting to be on the lot of a television or movie studio. I was just saying goodbye to Allen and “Belle,” when someone else entered the office and I was introduced to Mr. Harry Thomason himself. Mr. Thomason sat down for a few moments and talked, which surprised the hell out of me considering that he must be an incredibly busy man. He really seems like a great guy and I almost forgot that I was standing talking with, not only an important television executive, but also the A-#1 Friend of Bill (as in Clinton, for those of you with short memories). The Clinton administration seems like so long ago now…remember those quaint years when we were all so concerned about whether or not the President lied about his sex life, rather than about a war, the economy, or terrorist attacks.

I wonder if the Thomasons are as close to our Senator Clinton as they are to her husband? If so, I hope that they throw their support behind the Senator, should she choose to run for President in 2008.

After finally leaving Allen to get back to work, I did wander about the lot some and saw the outside of studios housing Will & Grace, the current Big Brother compound, Passions, and some shows with which I was unfamiliar, Half and Half and Rodney. I also saw production offices for Malcolm in the Middle and CSI: NY. It was cool!

The studio is bisected by what the locals out here seem to call (with a straight face, I might add) the Los Angeles River, a foot-wide creek held in place by two large cement banks. I felt so sorry for the poor thing, wending its way to God-knows-where and having to do so through solid concrete. It was sort of the equivalent of what might run in the gutter during a particularly hard rain storm.

Oh, and I also checked out the lot’s “New York Street,” something that every television and film production facility seems to have. It was a pretty good representation if I didn’t look too hard, which is just the intent. There were storefronts representing many NYC local businesses like Duane Reade, New York Sports Club, and Ray’s Pizza. If you look closer, however, you’ll notice that things are just a touch off and I was reminded of an episode of Alias from the past season in which the Russians had built a complete suburban American town in the wilds of Siberia for the purpose of training spies. It was just wrong in tiny, indescribable ways and would never pass muster if the television cameras weren’t trained on the actors in close-up or a nice two-shot, rather than the scenery.

Still, I suppose using such a set is easier than going to New York and filming on the street for a 20 second clip.

After taking in my fill of the studio lot, I went back out to the real world and got a bus back to West Hollywood, where I met David Ehrenstein on the porch of a café called Basix. We also sat and talked forever about tons of things and he turned out to be a delightful guy who has lots of interesting stories to tell. I wonder if I will have such interesting stories to tell when I reach “a certain age?” I managed to fill in some blanks for him about other NYC bloggers that he reads and we both had a marvelous time sitting on the porch me with my lemonade, and he with his coffee.

After leaving David, I returned home to ready myself to head to the theatre. That’s right; L.A. does have theatre and quite a lot of it from what I gather. The way it was described to me reminded me a lot of theatre in Chicago, where there are a few big time companies and venues, but most of the companies are little storefront places that seat 50 people or so. And there are, apparently, many of these little companies in almost every community. For example, there were two (the Globe Theatre and the Coast Playhouse) literally right around the corner from where I was staying in West Hollywood.

Anyway, Mike and I were headed to the McCadden Place Theatre in Hollywood to see a company called The SpyAnts present their production of The Birds: A Tail of Ornithic Proportions, a comic parody of the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds, written by none other than Chicago’s favorite playwright/composer/drag performer extraordinaire David Cerda. And even better, we were meeting up with Mike and Vicky from Chicago who also happened to be in town at the same time I was. I’d run into Mike on-line before leaving New York and he’s the one who had the idea to go and I’m so pleased that he did. As it turned out, that performance was the opening night and a benefit for GLAAD, a nifty bonus.

It’s always great to see Mike and Vicky and seeing them made me miss the whole Chicago Handbag gang. They were in the midst of their own Southern California odyssey and it was lucky that we were able to find a night that worked for all of us to get together. We had a quick dinner in a delicious Japanese place right on the corner by the theatre and took our seats.

Like most of David’s parodies, I have not seen the original film and I was wondering if I’d get the parody or not. As it turned out, I had no cause for alarm. We walked into the theatre and were immediately greeted by an impressive set, courtesy of Joel Daavid and a lone woman sitting reading a book. She continued to sit there until she decided it was time to start the play, something that she made clear she would be doing at her own convenience.

The woman turned out to be none other than famous lesbian writer and pundit Camille Paglia, played by actress Darcy Halsey, who once, apparently, wrote a latter day feminist interpretation of the film and who would be serving as our guide into the strange world of the play. Vintage Cerda.

As you may not know (I certainly didn’t), The Birds tells the story of what happens when bad girl blonde Melanie (originally played by Tippi Hedren; here by Lori Evans Taylor) meets good boy Mitch and follows him to his seaside hometown. It seems that the birds start behaving ever so oddly and no one seems to know why, although it seems linked somehow to Melanie’s appearance in town.

David Cerda has taken the movie itself and spliced it with, not only Paglia’s take on the plot, but also the behind the scenes story of how it was made, notably Hitchcock’s torment of his star, Hedren. Here Hitchcock, who does not actually appear in the play, seems a casually brutal and heartless Pygmalion to Hedren’s exhausted and confused Galatea.

The production was wonderful and we all had a great time. We agreed that Maria Tomas nearly stole the whole damn show as schoolteacher Annie and her alter ego, the actress Suzanne Pleschette. I also enjoyed the work of the deliciously cute Eric Bunton as Lydia and the previously mentioned Darcy Halsey as Camille Paglia. I was told that leading lady Lori Evans Taylor wasn’t really channeling the film or Hedren so much as doing her own thing, but, I enjoyed what she was doing and thought that she provided a winning center for all the nuttiness.

After the play, Mike and I were mini-celebrities for a few minutes because it had gotten out (courtesy of my big mouth explaining my connection to David Cerda before the show to Mike, my host) that we were friends of the writer and had worked with Handbag. Several of the actors made their way over to speak with us, including Bunton, who, alas, remained at the theatre afterward instead of coming home with me. ;)

What a whirlwind day this was! I’m having such a great time here…this little vacation was exactly what I needed.

Posted by Jere at August 9, 2005 12:50 PM | TrackBack