Thursday, March 1, 2007

Welcome to Hollywood, What's Your Dream?

Hollywood is a district of Los Angeles that comprises roughly everything south of Mullholland, Laurel Canyon, Cahuenga and Barham, east of Beverly Hills and WeHo (West Hollywood to you non-Angelenos), north of Melrose, and west of the 5 freeway (or Franklin Ave., depending on who you ask).

And it's a piece of crap.

Nobody here wants to live in Hollywood. The execs live in Burbank, the directors live in the Palisades, the stars live in Malibu, the crew lives in the Valley, the well-paid crew lives on the Westside, or Los Feliz, or even Redondo; anywhere but Hollywood. Hollywood is where the struggling actors live, the failing screenwriters, the naive hopefuls who want to be right in the seedy center of the action. But honestly? There's not all that much action.

There are a few studios still in Hollywood: Paramount is still camped out at its border on Melrose, and Sunset-Gower is an institution of Sunset Boulevard. But for the most part? Movies shoot in Burbank, or Culver City, or sometimes Beverly Hills, but not in Hollywood.

Hollywood is for the fake Marilyn Monroes, who go out every afternoon to stand over fake grates on the Walk of Fame and wink at tourists. Hollywood is for the coked out clubbers, driving buzzed down Highland Ave. to the 101 at 4AM. But mostly? Hollywood is for the tourists. They drive down Sunset Blvd. at night when you can't see the trash on the sidewalks and marvel at the neon lights. They pass the Dome, Chateau Marmont, and the Rock and Roll Hyatt and they take pictures which they later label "Us in Hollywood," not realizing that they passed Hollywood proper back at the Seven Veils Strip Club.

Why am I telling you all this? Because for a shining symbol of the new American dream, Hollywood is really just the dirty center of a dirty city, sucking in the smog overhead and coughing it back out onto the street in the form of people who have been battered down by the dreams passing it and out of it every day. Once a year, they roll out the red carpet for Hollywood at the Kodak theatre, but the gold stansions still block its denizens out, importing instead ethereal figures from New Zealand, South Africa, London, and Malibu.

Everyone in America feels like they're on the outside looking in, and the in they think they're looking at is Hollywood, the glorious Hollywood of the bright sign on the hill - but that sign isn't even in Hollywood. The citizens are still on the outside looking frantically around for that Hollywood, but it's just a mirage coming off of the asphalt of the street that makes the sign look like a sign from heaven. It's just concrete.

The sign itself is now guarded by motion detectors, as a result of both a rash of vandalism (many of them due to Danny Finegood, an art student whom people referred to as "a makeover artist), and suicide attempts. The first of these was in 1932 - a struggling actress named Peg Entwistle dove off the "H," dying on impact. Heretofore, the sign stood for the dreams of thousands of hopefuls - it gave the illusion of shining, bright white opportunity. Peg's suicide established it as the symbol of the Hollywood paradox of failed dreams, and it has remained so to this day, inspiring a rash of copycat attempts until the stricter security measures were implemented. People are still trying to hang themselves from the Hollywood sign, but this time metaphorically, and much slower.

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