Star-struck…excessive…smoggy…superficial…There’s a
modicum of truth to each of the adjectives regularly applied to
L.A. But Angelenos — and most objective visitors — dismiss their
prevalence as signs of envy from people who hail from places less
blessed with fun and sun. — Fodor’s 2011
Los Angeles
The opportunity to visit our daughter and attend
WEFTEC, the
largest water conference and exhibition in North America, in Los
Angeles spurred my wife and me to visit this storied city for the
first time. L.A., baby! Here we come.
We came, we saw, we ate well and basked in the fantastic
weather while suffering the traffic and high prices. This latter
problem may have been aggravated by the fact that we were spending
a lot of time — and money — in Beverly Hills and the Westwood
area since my daughter lives and works in the vicinity of UCLA, a
pretty tony part of town. You almost forget that California’s state
government and economy is suffering. But it is a big place. There
are more Californians than there are Canadians.
One morning I called down to the valet service desk to
have my rented Mazda 6 brought around to the front of the hotel. I
saw my nice little car in the driveway, surrounded by Bentleys,
Aston Martins, various high-end German models, and a Ferrari. The
hotel had given me a convention rate, but I was clearly out of my
league. Having forgotten my claim check, I apologized to the valet,
showed him my room key and driver’s license to gain access to my
vehicle without going back upstairs.
“No problem, Mr. Mehan,” said the cheerful attendant. “You
wouldn’t want to steal that car.” Ouch.
California is quite a place, entirely unique in terms of
geography and culture. A friend of my wife from South America, who
lived in Manhattan for many years, recently moved to L.A. When
asked how she liked California, replied, “It is near the United
States.” Many commentators, however, argue that California
prefigures what America is becoming at any given moment in time.
Whether you find that a positive or negative proposition, I tend to
think there is much truth in it.
Pop Culture, for instance, does
permeate life in LaLaLand: a massive economy employing millions
of Southern Californians is built around it.
No trip to Tinsel Town would be complete without a movie
studio tour. We had booked tickets in advance for the Warner Bros.
Studios “VIP Studio
Tour,” to get a sense of L.A.’s premier industry.
This is the quintessential tourist destination and, in truth, it is
not to be missed.
Arriving in “beautiful downtown Burbank,” as Johnny Carson
used to quip, we were struck by the size of the Warner Bros.
corporate complex. This was a visual and useful reminder of the
economic magnitude of the entertainment industry, a thought which,
immediately, brought on a bout of cultural angst: Is it really a
good thing that this town, this industry, these people have such a
huge impact on the cultural and moral consciousness of the nation,
nay, the planet? Get a grip on yourself, man. You’re on
vacation.
Being intermittent, yet dedicated moviegoers, my wife and
I were looking forward to a warm bath in film nostalgia. What we
got was a tightly focused marketing effort promoting Warner Bros.
TV shows produced for CBS, Fox, and the like. The tour guide, a
young fellow who must watch television 24/7, was chock full of
information, anecdotes, gossip, plot lines, recitations of past
episodes and various other trivia relating to numerous prime-time
shows very few of which my wife, daughter, or I had ever heard.
When were we going to see where they shot scenes for
Casablanca or gaze on Clint Eastwood’s Gran
Torino?
Evidently, they shoot one episode of a sit-com in five
days. Most of the cast make something like $300,000 per
episode. Moreover, they work three weeks on, one off. Off the
record, we were informed that that unfortunate man (my term, not
the tour guide’s), Charlie
Sheen, made millions for one show of Two and a
Half Men.
Also, re-runs of Friends, worldwide, bring in a
billion dollars a year. Those protesters occupying Wall Street
should Occupy Hollywood next time.
We saw the sound stages for The Mentalist and a
replica set for Friends. We also learned about optical
illusions to create a sense of perspective on the small
sets.
The studio does understand marketing. We just watched our
first episode of The Mentalist, a gruesome, compelling
crime show with an edgy character, Patrick Jane, played by the
Aussie actor Simon Baker. He appears to emulate the great
Jeremy
Brett who immortalized Sherlock Holmes in that
masterful, over-the-top role for PBS. Both characters are nuts —
but in a good way.
Fortunately, we did get some exposure to the venerable
film history of Warner Bros. We saw the Paris café where Bogart and
Bergman romanced each other, a bank robbed by Bonnie and Clyde, a
fire escape from Annie and the pond (sometimes a lake,
sometimes an ocean) where the Budweiser frogs were created. Yes, we
did get to see Clint’s Gran Torino, which he still owns but lets
the studio keep for public display in the same building with other
famous vehicles including one from a Batman movie. There is also a
whole floor dedicated to Harry Potter costumes, props, etc. Back
lot, front lot, it is all a theatrical wonderland, truly the Dream
Factory.
However, this city also boasts highbrow appeal, having
amassed an impressive array of world-class museums and arts
venues.
We lunched at the lovely, outrageously expensive Polo
Lounge in the Beverly Hills
Hotel and Bungalows. This
pricey, albeit delightful meal pretty much scratched plans to visit
Spanish TV chef José Andrés’s new
restaurant, the Bazaar
where, according to the Wall Street
Journal, “All meals are made up of tapas, and signature items
include drinks and canapés dipped in vats
of liquid nitrogen…A palm-reader roams the floor, offering
predictions.” Oh well, maybe the next trip.
After feeding the body, it was time to feed the
soul.
Does art follow the money, or does the money follow art?
The latter seems to be the case in Los Angeles where the world’s
richest man (at the time), the late J. Paul Getty, a world-class
collector, endowed and established two of the most spectacular art
institutions to be found anywhere in the world. The National
Gallery in Washington and the Louvre in Paris have more art
masterpieces per square foot, but both the Getty Center in town
and the Getty Villa in Malibu, a short drive through gorgeous Santa
Monica, are unparalleled in terms of their topography, architecture
and presentation of myriad treasures of Western civilization all in
combination.
The Getty Center, which must be reached by tram, is
located on 750 acres in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains
with public and private buildings housing a museum, research and
conservation institutes and the Getty Foundation. The Central
Garden is marvelous as are the structures which constitute an
artistic experience unto themselves. The views here and at the
Villa are magnificent.
The Getty Villa houses over 1,200 works of art from Greek,
Roman and Etruscan antiquity. You do not need a classical education
to appreciate the beauty of the antiquities assembled by Mr. Getty.
Again, as with the Getty Museum, the Villa-the structure itself-is
an object to be contemplated and enjoyed. It is a precise,
archeologically correct, replica of the Villa dei Papiri, a Roman
country house in Herculaneum. That would be the Herculaneum buried
in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The structure also
draws from other Roman homes in Pompeii and Stabiae.
There is an atrium, formal and herb gardens, a floor plan
of alternating triangles of Numidian yellow and africano or dark
gray Lucullan marble, fountains, Corinthian columns and streets
paved with irregular stones.
Moreover, it has burgeoning neighborhoods that bear
little resemblance to those featured in The Hills
or Entourage.
As much fun as was the wretched excess of Beverly Hills
and environs, on Sunday we did manage to make it to the impressive
though hyper-modernist Cathedral of Our Lady of the
Angels in downtown L.A., a structure “with
virtually no right angles.” The architect thought this conveyed a
sense of mystery and other worldliness, I believe.
We were privileged to have the new Archbishop, the Most
Reverend José Gomez, a native of Mexico
and a fine homilist, celebrate Mass and offer his thoughts on
giving unto Caesar the things that are his and to God the things
that are His. It sounded like one of my
book reviews for TAS. Great minds
think alike, right?
Besides being the seat of the Archbishop, the Cathedral is
a vibrant parish, largely Hispanic, blue collar and devout. The
service was in English but there is a Spanish mass at another time
on Sunday. When the lector welcomed first-time visitors to the
Cathedral and asked them to stand, they were almost all Anglo
conventioneers and tourists. We received a hearty round of applause
from our Hispanic co-religionists. The Cathedral, by the way, was
packed.
After mass, we strolled around the plaza outside where
there are several interesting shrines and features
celebrating Our Lady of
Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas.
When in Los Angeles, do as the Angelenos. We left the
Cathedral for a historic Mexican neighborhood, festival and market
area — El Pueblo de Los Angeles — to have lunch at an excellent
Mexican restaurant and down a few margaritas with my wife’s nephew,
an aspiring teacher in town. No question, California Dreamin’ is
hard to deny.
America’s second largest city has more depth than
paparazzi shutters can ever capture. So set aside your preconceived
notions and take a look at L.A. Today.
