the warner brothers studio tour, valet celebrity, and what those movie posters mean.
The quote of the day:
Diane: "I need a quote of the day!"
Scott: "I'll try to be more witty."
Running news:
4.7 miles.
Today Scott, Darin, and I went on the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, which Darin and I think is the best of the studio tours that we've been on. It's a tour of the working studio, not Universal's Theme Park tour, and it's better than Paramount's similar studio tour.
Of course, the embarrassing thing is, I was going to pay for the privilege of doing the same exact thing I'd gotten to do for free when I was an intern at Spring Creek.
The tour consists of an introductory movie (which shows many of Warner Brothers' most famous films, from The Jazz Singer to LA Confidential, and very few of their disasters, such as The Postman), followed by a tour via golf cart of the front lot--soundstages, the props and costumes buildings--and the backlot, which has all the exterior sets, such as the Old West or New York street or all of those sets you're so used to seeing in movies and TV shows.
The tour guide explained to us that the buildings and doorways and such are scaled to 7/8ths size, because to make them full-size would simply take up too much room on the lot. This is nonsense. They are 7/8ths scale because movie stars are short. Note what happens when you put a big guy--I'll use Scott as an example--in the doorway of one of these sets:
One of the big features of the tour is, of course, the sets on the backlot used for a little show called ER. They have the emergency doors into the hospital, the little area where ambulances are unloaded, and several Chicago locations, such as an El station. It just so happens to be the same El line that Scott takes to work, which amused us all greatly. So here's Scott, back in Chicago.
The overall "Chicago" set (including this El stop) is very small. If you look closely, you can see that the El tracks are nothing more than the frame; there are no tracks:
The highlight of the tour was when Anthony Edwards came out to say hello. Okay, not really; it's just that everyone comments on Scott's resemblance to Mr. Edwards, down to the lack of hair. Darin, however, continues to look nothing like George Clooney, and I'm not saying whether that's a good thing or not:
Here's one of the sets you've seen a million times: it was used in the Seinfeld finale as the place where Seinfeld et al. laugh at the guy being mugged. It's also used in Hyperion Bay and about 3 million movies that the guide rattled off:
You can't take any pictures on the front lot, which is why only half the tour is recorded here. Sorry.
After the tour we had lunch in Burbank, and then Scott and Darin tried to do a little clothes shopping. I was so excited that Darin was actually going to go clothes shopping, with Mr. Suave himself, but alas: they came up empty-handed. There's nothing but fall/winter clothes in the stores now. Why do California stores have to follow the dictates of New York fashion? We don't need long-sleeved flannel shirts out here--we need short sleeved shirts all the time. Criminy.
I dragged myself along with them. I was really tired, and I couldn't figure out why. When we finally got home, I went to bed, where I didn't fall asleep as much as fall comatose. Usually when I'm that tired I can't sleep because I'm overtired, but I knew that wouldn't be a problem when seconds after getting between the sheets I couldn't feel my legs anymore.
Darin woke me up 90 minutes or two hours later; Mike had come over and was playing (what else?) Starcraft with Darin and Scott. I went upstairs to watch the beginning of Extreme Measures--not very good, although Hugh Grant had a few funny sarcastic quips; the man's a master of the deadpan reaction--until the four of us went out to dinner at Terusushi, where I had one of the greatest valet parking experiences of my life.
(Hey, we all have different scales of fun, okay?)
Everyone piled out of my car, and one valet started to give me a ticket. The other valet ran up and said, "No, no, we know them, it's a new car, right?" I said yes and he said, "We know you. Go ahead."
All through dinner I made jokes about having to go to my insurance company and answer the question, "You gave your car to a complete stranger because he said he knew you and you didn't even get the valet receipt?"
When we came out, the valet immediately ran to my car (which was parked up front, the better to show possible customers what kind of clientele Terusushi has) and pulled it up.
Recognized by a valet. My LA experience is almost complete.
The current ubiquitously advertised movie in LA is Meet Joe Black, the upcoming romantic drama starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins (strangely, that's not why I'm doing this). I'd like to take this opportunity to analyze how movies get marketed.
The logline for the movie is, "Death assumes a human identity on Earth and falls in love."
The poster, in case it's not on every billboard and bus shelter near you, shows a three-quarter head shot of Pitt in a tuxedo, in extremely soft focus. If you look carefully, you can make out that he's embracing someone, but it's not clear who. (One assumes it isn't Anthony Hopkins.)
The picture makes the following things clear: the star is Brad Pitt and the entire thing revolves around him; the soft focus means it's romantic; and the tuxedo tells us it's an upper-class drama, not gritty or filled with poor people. I don't know what you can tell from the fact that you can't make out who it is Pitt is holding, other than the fact that her agent couldn't arrange for her to be in the poster. It certainly doesn't give away the ending.
(Off the top of my head and with no particular knowledge of this movie, I speculate that in the end Hopkins ends up taking over Pitt's job in the Afterworld. How hard can it be to be Death anyhow?)
The tagline on the poster is, "Sooner or later everyone does." Scott points out that whoever came up with this tagline did a good job, because it's only one letter away from "Sooner or later everyone dies."
So I now (through the miracle of "Who I know, not what I know") have Mac OS System 8.5 on my machine. I'm not sure of all the changes as of yet--new systems tend to unfold like flowers over many days, surprising you at every turn--but the most obvious change is the addition of sounds for various activities: changing window size, tossing a file in the Trash, selecting an item in a menu. It's kind of cool, although I foresee homicides in offices where these sounds aren't turned off, because if you're not the one running the machine, the constant stream of beeps and whistles and hoots will probably make your neighbor insane.
Why the Mac rocks, part 453m.: I can still play Mission: Thunderbolt under System 8.5. M:T came out the same year System 7 did...1991. Now, I could be wrong, but...just try that on your PC.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com