Compass American Guides Hollywood and the Best of Los Angeles - Couverture souple

Reavill, Gill

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1878867717 ISBN 13 : 9781878867711

Editeur : Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.,U.S., 1994

Synopsis

This edition is a renamed version of "Compass Guide to Los Angeles" (1992). It reflects the changed focus of the guide, namely, Hollywood and the film industry's effect on Los Angeles. It features essays and literary excerpts, colour photographs and historical images.

A propos du livre

Extrait

INTRODUCTION
L.A. Through the Movies

When I first moved to L.A., I was told the Hollywood bungalow I stayed in was once the home of Simone Simon, the tempestuous French star of Cat People and The Devil and Daniel Webster. She was whispered to have been the illegitimate child of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, educated in France and brought to America only after she reached her independence.  It was also rumored that Simone has a smoldering Gallic sexuality, and that she gave golden keys to all her lovers -- keys to the very house in which I was then living.  I was especially captivated by this part of the tale, enough so that I found myself poking around the garden of the place, hoping to turn up one of Simone's gold keys.

I never found one, and I later found out that the story, like a lot of Hollywood rumors, had about as much truth to it as a truly dry martini has vermouth.  But that's just how Hollywood is.  Made out of rumors, as if you'd take away the stone and adobe and lumber and plaster-and-lathe with which the town is built and all you'd have left would be swirling, echoing, extremely talkative ghosts.  Rumors are the fund on which myth draws, and you would expect a town that's rich in one to be rich in another.

The difficulty about a guide to Los Angeles, and  Hollywood, is that "Hollywood" suffers from a split personality.  I'll let Robert Redford explain: Hollywood is two things.  It's a state of mind, and it's a particular location in Los Angeles.  Hollywood as a location is pretty grim.  I mean, there is really nothing there.  And it's certainly nothing to write home about.  Probably hasn't been since the early twenties.  But as a state of mind, it certainly does exist, even more strongly than an actual location.  It's the movie business, but the movie business is everywhere you go.  If you're in New York making Mean Streets, that's where it is.  It's definitely a state of mind.  As far as being decadent -- there is a Babylon quality about it, but that's what it's supposed to be.  It's the end of the rainbow, the melting pot, the edge of the continent.
Now Bob, ensconced up in Utah, has a vested interest in saying, "Hollywood is where you want it to be."  The thing to remember is this dual nature of Hollywood, the hybrid beast that is part flesh, part smoke.  And don't go mistaking one Hollywood for another.

This book, like almost all books about Hollywood and the movies, is a sorting out of rumor and myth, fact and fallacy.  Some writers come down more on the side of the P.R. agent than the research librarian -- I've tried not to be one of those.  But I hold in reverence the deeper truth embedded in the rumor, the shred of basic human reality encapsulated by the lie.  The word "myth", as Joseph Campbell points out, can mean "lie" as well as "all-encompassing truth."

Besides, it is a Sisyphean labor, in this crucible of illusion called Hollywood, to really nail down who did what to whom and where they did it.  In their introduction to Naked Hollywood, journalist Mel Harris and the immortal voyeur-photographer Wegee stated the quandary as well: "The word corroborated by the picture must impart to the book that rare quality of presenting facts as they are -- simply, honestly, and objectively.  We regret that it has failed."

"Facts as they are" -- not a bullish commodity in the land of the press agent.  It's almost as if Hollywood, the dream factory, is a little afraid of waking truth.  When a 1991 BBC documentary, also called Naked Hollywood, gave a warts-and-all portrait of several of the industry's most powerful men, at least two of them -- Top Gun team Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer -- managed to have a segment suppressed.

But a certain chariness with the truth is a characteristic I guess Hollywood shares with many other parts of the world.  But people in other parts of the world don't make their living dressing up the truth, burnishing it, gilding it, and making it sing.  Movies are, after all, based on illusion in a strictly physical sense, since it is a trick of the eye (technically called "persistence of vision") that makes still images snapping past us at 24-frames-per-second seem to move and take on life.  Does all the Hollywood froufrou obscure reality or, through the supremely human endeavor of storytelling, furnish us with a higher one?

A lot is riding on the answer.  California has almost two-thirds of the film starts in the nation, with the industry employing over 60,000 people in greater Los Angeles.  Filmmaking generates over $4 billion annually for the area economy, money which is recycled and regenerated until it at least partially powers the great economic dynamo of Southern California.  In the world marketplace, America may be perceived as fading as a manufacturing giant, but it remains unchallenged in the field of dreams: 55 percent of total global movie revenues, 55 percent of total video and an astounding 75 percent of total global television revenues are generated by the Los Angeles-based American entertainment industry.

So the gold keys are more often than not truly golden, and they've been proliferating around Hollywood since 1913, when Cecil B. DeMille shot The Squaw Man in an old barn at Selma and Vine.  Selma and Vine is the site of a bank and (inevitably) a parking lot now, but DeMille's barn itself has had a peripatetic history.  It was moved to the Paramount lot on Melrose in 1927, used as a library, gym, and Bonanza set, then trucked to a lot across the street from the Hollywood Bowl in 1979, for its transformation into a movie museum.  Hollywood is a moveable feast.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Created by local writers and photographers, Compass American Guides are the ultimate insider's guides, providing in-depth coverage of the history, culture, and character of America's most spectacular destinations. Covering everything there is to see and do as well as choice lodging and dining, these gorgeous full-color guides are perfect for new and longtime residents as well as
vacationers who want a deep understanding of the region they're visiting.
Outstanding color photography, plus a wealth of archival images
Topical essays and literary extracts
Detailed color maps
Great ideas for things to see and do
Capsule reviews of hotels and restaurants

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.,U.S.
• Date d'édition: 1994
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1878867717
• ISBN 13: 9781878867711
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 324
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible