hollywood rant #1
Nov. 1st, 2013 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hummingbirdmadgirlusually i am pretty ok with living in hollywood. i miss venice something awful, the weather/smog here actively bothers me, but venice is becoming insanely expensive and we had to move. plus as nice as the westside is, it's nice in a pseudo yuppie-you-never-leave-this-place way, and we tend to want to do things (aside from living) not on the westside...which is really hard to accomplish unless you don't mind spending 1-2 hours in the car...which is still difficult for me to process since 1-2 hours in the car on the east coast usually meant we ended up in another state, not the other side of a single - bloated by urban sprawl - city
it's weird, venice was a combination of ludicrously wealthy people and homeless surfers with an increasingly shrinking middle class thrown in the middle...it was a harsh juxtaposition, though for the most part it seemed like a large percentage of the homeless population chose to live in RV's or on the street as the weather was nice, the had their board, they could recycle cans and were generally left alone by the residents of venice...it was still disgusting to see 15million dollar homes (i think that sort of extravagance is disgusting in general) on streets lined with RVs with more people living in a single RV than in the houses, but it sort of worked and even the homeless didn't seem like they were doing too bad (especially compared to the residents of skid row, which was just so awful i tried to ignore it which made me feel like a total asshole).
hollywood is a whole other story, it feels like the homeless here are different. it seems more like resignation as opposed to acceptance. every night when i take the dog for a walk, pretty much half the doorways on sunset blvd have people sleeping in them...and it's a LOT of kids. kids who probably moved out here hoping to make it in the industry, and didn't, or kids who saw "where they day takes you" and totally romanticized it. they rarely ask me for spare change, though they usually ask to play with the dog, which i'm fine with because it makes him happy, it makes them happy, and it also is sort of acts as a vehicle for making a connection, no matter how brief, since to a degree these kids are invisible when set against the copious amounts of pomp and circumstance that make up hollywood blvd or the sunset strip.
it's funny because venice bothered me for the opulent way in which many people lived, but hollywood bothers me for the opulent way in which the industry (that often allows the people in venice to live so opulently) is run. every other week there's some huge movie premier at grauman's chinese theater where they roll out the red carpet, bring in tons of semi's for the news stations, studios, entertainment channels, and general media, just completely dominate the street with police and private security for a half hour event. all those fancy pictures you see of Brad Pitt or Harrison Ford showing up for their newest movie? a block away there are probably 20 homeless kids in sleeping bags who have been displaced for the evening. these events obviously cost a ton of money but they are nothing more than masturbatory self aggrandizement for an industry that is, in many ways, outdated. these events existed for print and television media to show us how fancy the celebrity experience was, a chance to see celebrities out of character but still living a far posher existence than the rest of us, something we barely had a peek at. but now with social media completely tearing that curtain down either willingly (twitter, fb, instagram) or unwillingly (thedirty, perezhilton, tmz), these events seem more and more pointless. the amount of money essentially wasted just becomes more and more repulsive when you see how harsh the juxtaposition of the fake world they're temporarily creating for their own amusement is compared to the rest of the street, and even moreso when you think about how badly Los Angeles, let alone the entire state of CA is doing financially overall.
i guess it bothers me because realistically you can't begrudge successful people for wanting to live a certain way. yeah it bothers me when a family of 2 has a four thousand square foot gated house because that seems excessive, but at least they're using the house*, but the bullshit that goes on in hollywood is pointless. i don't think premieres are the promotional vehicles that they used to be, and it's just really really sickening to see so much money being wasted. obviously i sincerely doubt that the studios or whoever is paying for these things would suddenly turn around and donate the money they spend on a premiere to say, improving drug dependency or homeless outreach programs in the city, but it would be nice to pretend.
*actually, i have to kind of take that back, a decent number of the huge houses in venice appear to be summer homes.
it's weird, venice was a combination of ludicrously wealthy people and homeless surfers with an increasingly shrinking middle class thrown in the middle...it was a harsh juxtaposition, though for the most part it seemed like a large percentage of the homeless population chose to live in RV's or on the street as the weather was nice, the had their board, they could recycle cans and were generally left alone by the residents of venice...it was still disgusting to see 15million dollar homes (i think that sort of extravagance is disgusting in general) on streets lined with RVs with more people living in a single RV than in the houses, but it sort of worked and even the homeless didn't seem like they were doing too bad (especially compared to the residents of skid row, which was just so awful i tried to ignore it which made me feel like a total asshole).
hollywood is a whole other story, it feels like the homeless here are different. it seems more like resignation as opposed to acceptance. every night when i take the dog for a walk, pretty much half the doorways on sunset blvd have people sleeping in them...and it's a LOT of kids. kids who probably moved out here hoping to make it in the industry, and didn't, or kids who saw "where they day takes you" and totally romanticized it. they rarely ask me for spare change, though they usually ask to play with the dog, which i'm fine with because it makes him happy, it makes them happy, and it also is sort of acts as a vehicle for making a connection, no matter how brief, since to a degree these kids are invisible when set against the copious amounts of pomp and circumstance that make up hollywood blvd or the sunset strip.
it's funny because venice bothered me for the opulent way in which many people lived, but hollywood bothers me for the opulent way in which the industry (that often allows the people in venice to live so opulently) is run. every other week there's some huge movie premier at grauman's chinese theater where they roll out the red carpet, bring in tons of semi's for the news stations, studios, entertainment channels, and general media, just completely dominate the street with police and private security for a half hour event. all those fancy pictures you see of Brad Pitt or Harrison Ford showing up for their newest movie? a block away there are probably 20 homeless kids in sleeping bags who have been displaced for the evening. these events obviously cost a ton of money but they are nothing more than masturbatory self aggrandizement for an industry that is, in many ways, outdated. these events existed for print and television media to show us how fancy the celebrity experience was, a chance to see celebrities out of character but still living a far posher existence than the rest of us, something we barely had a peek at. but now with social media completely tearing that curtain down either willingly (twitter, fb, instagram) or unwillingly (thedirty, perezhilton, tmz), these events seem more and more pointless. the amount of money essentially wasted just becomes more and more repulsive when you see how harsh the juxtaposition of the fake world they're temporarily creating for their own amusement is compared to the rest of the street, and even moreso when you think about how badly Los Angeles, let alone the entire state of CA is doing financially overall.
i guess it bothers me because realistically you can't begrudge successful people for wanting to live a certain way. yeah it bothers me when a family of 2 has a four thousand square foot gated house because that seems excessive, but at least they're using the house*, but the bullshit that goes on in hollywood is pointless. i don't think premieres are the promotional vehicles that they used to be, and it's just really really sickening to see so much money being wasted. obviously i sincerely doubt that the studios or whoever is paying for these things would suddenly turn around and donate the money they spend on a premiere to say, improving drug dependency or homeless outreach programs in the city, but it would be nice to pretend.
*actually, i have to kind of take that back, a decent number of the huge houses in venice appear to be summer homes.
