So, after living here for two years L.A. is finally starting to grow on me. I don’t love it. I’ve just started to like it in the last few weeks, but that’s a nice change considering the fact that I was actually starting to hate it. It had actually gotten to the point where I looked at living here as a temporary situation and that when I could afford to I would move to San Francisco and commute by plane when I had a movie to shoot. As cities go I immediately liked San Francisco. It’s got a cosmopolitan feel to it and there are lots of charming and beautiful sites to see. It also has a great mass transit system and it’s a compact city (47 square miles according to Wikipedia) so it doesn’t take much time to get across it. Los Angeles is the exact opposite.
It does have some lovely spots though, it’s just so vast (498.3 square miles) that you have to venture farther to find them. Santa Monica and Venice are great because they’re on the water and they’re mellow and quirky neighborhoods. The Hollywood Hills are really something to see, a clash of natural and man-made beauty and somehow, even when the architecture is garish or poorly realized you still get your money’s worth so to speak. I also like Laurel Canyon, Toluca Lake and Beverly Glen since that’s where the film people hang out and those districts are always buzzing with the energy of creativity.
One day when I was at the Beverly Glen Starbucks Britney Spears stopped in to get coffee. The paparazzi must have been tailing her because they mobbed her and just kept taking her picture. I never actually saw her, nor did I really have a desire to. When you work in the industry and live here you just become blase about seeing celebrities. After all, Christopher Walken puts his pants on one leg at a time too – except when he puts them on to make gold records. I actually felt kind of bad for Britney Spears. People get jealous, cynical and sometimes downright bitter about celebrities but I doubt you’d enjoy it very much if you were stalked by photographers and hounded when all you were trying to do was get a cup of coffee. They were literally hanging onto the doors of her convertible while she was trying to park and snapping photos and trying to get her to give them a sound byte. Oh well, that’s the nature of this beast I suppose and the fact remains that the moment the paparazzi aren’t harassing her, that silence that will be so blissful to her will also signal the end of her career.
Watching the swarm of paparazzi descend on a pop star reminded me that I live in a strange town. But at least it’s a town I can like.
