This week I've seen more of camera lenses than I have for years, particularly if you exclude the sort that inhabit mobile phones. In fact, they didn't feature at all.
On Tuesday I appeared in the pilot for a new community TV show, Altadena Tonight! It couldn't have been more informal. The studio was the back room of Altadena's Coffee Gallery, which has long been a great local meeting place. The back room is used regularly for concerts and shows. It holds about 50 people plus a small stage, big enough for a band - plays would be a bit limited unless they were conversation pieces. You'd have to use your imagination to enjoy a version of Star Wars there, or even Henry V.
This time there was more lighting than usual, and three fixed cameras were discreetly installed right, left and centre, together with a mobile camera. The show wasn't structured for broadcast, instead the raw material was recorded for editing later. It consisted of a series of songs by Ian Whitcomb and the Bungalow Boys, Will Ryan and others, interspersed with Ian interviewing people such as the manager of the Gallery.
That was where Lynne and me came in. Ian, a long-time expatriate himself, asked us about why we emigrated to US, and why Pasadena and so on. We talked about my Sunday Times column and what I thought of the LA Times (I was as polite as I could be, blaming its troubles on the internet and Sam Zell).
It added up to a very pleasant evening. There were no calls for silence and the breaks every hour or so were an opportunity for the audience to load up on a free buffet outside - we had already eaten at Chandra Thai with our friends, Pat and Elaine.
It looks a very promising magazine show, very localised but very professionally produced. Whether it generates enough of an audience, or even gets aired on a channel anyone can get hold of, are open questions but I felt it deserved to succeed. I think they'll play around with it until it does.
Although I didn't think they'd come together in quite the way they did, for about a month the Sunday Times has been talking about new byline photos for all columnists as part of a massive colour-driven redesign which began with the July 6 issue. However the picture desk has been trying to save money by using old shots of me - hard to see how that would work, because the new design demands a new format for byline pics, three-quarter length, outlined and so on. But they persisted and the editor duly complained about the pic of me that appeared last Sunday, so the new shots had to be taken in a rush this week.
They used an agency in New York to find a photographer near me, and the girl probably thought that West Hollywood was pretty near Pasadena - it's a 40 to 60 minute drive, depending on the traffic.
It was fixed for Thursday afternoon, but as my car was out of action the photographer, Danny Rothenberg, kindly agreed to have me picked up and returned home. The shoot was great fun, in his patio, with lighting equipment and reflectors, and we got on well, with me going through several changes of clothing, pink and white collared shirts, a navy blue t-shirt, velvet jacket. Danny plays an unpublished John Lennon CD in the background. After an hour he decided he had enough and I was taken home by his assistant Emily's boyfriend, Sam, an engaging companion for two longish journeys.
At 6 the next morning an email and text message arrive from Danny. The Sunday Times aren't happy. They wanted the pics shot in a studio, against a white background, with 3/4 length as well as portrait.
In a flurry of phone calls I persuade Kathryn Cooper on the Money desk to let me put the cost of a return taxi fare on expenses, anything up to $200. And we do the whole thing all over again, although this time I only have the pink shirt and blue velvet jacket, with a tie as variation. We still make it fun, but the atmosphere is noticeably more subdued. I hang on until we get word from London that the Sunday Times are happy: I did not relish a third journey to West Hollywood.
I enjoy being photographed. I wasn't at all aware of the camera in the Coffee Gallery show, more concerned about the mike I had to hold. But for stills the big preoccupation is to inject life into the shots by moving around, twisting your body, looking in odd directions, closing your eyes to rest them, changing expression. It's fun, satisfying but quite exhausting - for those on both sides of the lens.
An interesting week, but I wouldn't want to do it for a living!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Downtown LA's Mohican haircut by Bill Kay
Downtown Los Angeles is a graveyard at weekends - with one exception. While office blocks slumber and the cafes and newsstands that serve their worker ants are shuttered, one street bustles with the roaring engines of buses and trucks, and the steady chatter of eager, alert shoppers.
LA's Broadway is a provincial shadow of its progenitor in New York. But, ever since the rich folk abandoned Bunker Hill for Beverly Hills more than 50 years ago it has been reclaimed by the Mexican-Americans who founded and named the city. They keep it busy on a Saturday when, apart from the wonderful public library and a few Starbucks, the rest of downtown is dead. It is as if the district has had a Mohican haircut, with a bushy middle and bald sides.
And among the rows of shops selling souvenirs, clothes, electronics, large-screen televisions and DVDs, a dozen faded, once-grand buildings stand proud, like so many dowager duchesses at a fiesta. They are one of the saddest sights in America: Broadway LA's theatres.
Today I joined the LA Conservancy weekly tour of the theatres. As it is booked solid two months ahead, there is plenty of interest in what has happened to these architectural relics and why.
The tour begins promisingly enough at the Million Dollar Theatre on the corner of 3rd Street, now given over largely to Latin singing stars but still preserved in a condition that would be recognised by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and the many film giants who attended its premieres.
From there, however, the tour sinks into a depressing succession of theatres darkened or converted irrevocably to one form of retail or another. The best-preserved we saw, the State on the corner of 7th Street, is now leased by a Portugese religious group. Some, such as the Orpheum, burst into life occasionally for a one-off show and they are all available for conferences, movie shoots, weddings or whatever legitimate purpose can justify the hire fee.
The saddest was undoubtedly the original Pantages at 534 Broadway. The Pantages name lives on in a highly successful Hollywood theatre that has hosted the Oscar ceremonies and, currently, the hit show Wicked. The Latino manager of the TV store politely showed us through to his store room, which was the auditorium of this 1910 building. A walkway has been built between the tiered rows where seats used to be. The walkway leads up on to the stage, which still has the remnants of lighting and curtains. The proscenium arch and balcony are intact. It is possible to picture the old vaudeville singers, dancers and comedians doing their turns in front of an audience which could not have numbered more than 1,000. In its later years it fell foul of 24-hour film shows, when hobos would pay the nickel entry fee just for somewhere cheap to sleep at night. Next to the Pantages, later renamed the Arcade, is the former Clune's, which became the Cameo and is in a similar state.
The contrast with New York is stark. There, the theatre district has 39 active auditoria. LAs has 17, none operating full-time. Another 14 have been demolished.
The virtual collapse of Broadway LA as an entertainment centre is normally blamed on Sid Grauman, who opened the Million Dollar but a few years later whipped the rug from under Broadway by opening the Egyptian and the Chinese theatres in Hollywood, backed by film premieres that had tremendous headline-grabbing razzmatazz. But Broadway's is also closely linked to downtown's transformation from a wealthy residential area to one that is almost entirely commercial, bar some lofts and apartments. Less publicised but just as tragic has been the closure on the street of a string of huge department stores, now totally overtaken by the modern shopping malls.
A succession of plans have been advanced for the revival of downtown and in particular Broadway, but it is hard to see a future for the theatres unless thousands more people move into the area to live. That will require a transformation that would take a minimum of ten years and cost billions of dollars, quite apart from raising the political snakepit of having to drive out the Mexican-American retailers and their customers. It is, I fear, a lost cause.
The former League of American Theatres and Producers is now known as simply the Broadway League - and that does not embrace LA's Broadway. Life has moved on.
LA's Broadway is a provincial shadow of its progenitor in New York. But, ever since the rich folk abandoned Bunker Hill for Beverly Hills more than 50 years ago it has been reclaimed by the Mexican-Americans who founded and named the city. They keep it busy on a Saturday when, apart from the wonderful public library and a few Starbucks, the rest of downtown is dead. It is as if the district has had a Mohican haircut, with a bushy middle and bald sides.
And among the rows of shops selling souvenirs, clothes, electronics, large-screen televisions and DVDs, a dozen faded, once-grand buildings stand proud, like so many dowager duchesses at a fiesta. They are one of the saddest sights in America: Broadway LA's theatres.
Today I joined the LA Conservancy weekly tour of the theatres. As it is booked solid two months ahead, there is plenty of interest in what has happened to these architectural relics and why.
The tour begins promisingly enough at the Million Dollar Theatre on the corner of 3rd Street, now given over largely to Latin singing stars but still preserved in a condition that would be recognised by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and the many film giants who attended its premieres.
From there, however, the tour sinks into a depressing succession of theatres darkened or converted irrevocably to one form of retail or another. The best-preserved we saw, the State on the corner of 7th Street, is now leased by a Portugese religious group. Some, such as the Orpheum, burst into life occasionally for a one-off show and they are all available for conferences, movie shoots, weddings or whatever legitimate purpose can justify the hire fee.
The saddest was undoubtedly the original Pantages at 534 Broadway. The Pantages name lives on in a highly successful Hollywood theatre that has hosted the Oscar ceremonies and, currently, the hit show Wicked. The Latino manager of the TV store politely showed us through to his store room, which was the auditorium of this 1910 building. A walkway has been built between the tiered rows where seats used to be. The walkway leads up on to the stage, which still has the remnants of lighting and curtains. The proscenium arch and balcony are intact. It is possible to picture the old vaudeville singers, dancers and comedians doing their turns in front of an audience which could not have numbered more than 1,000. In its later years it fell foul of 24-hour film shows, when hobos would pay the nickel entry fee just for somewhere cheap to sleep at night. Next to the Pantages, later renamed the Arcade, is the former Clune's, which became the Cameo and is in a similar state.
The contrast with New York is stark. There, the theatre district has 39 active auditoria. LAs has 17, none operating full-time. Another 14 have been demolished.
The virtual collapse of Broadway LA as an entertainment centre is normally blamed on Sid Grauman, who opened the Million Dollar but a few years later whipped the rug from under Broadway by opening the Egyptian and the Chinese theatres in Hollywood, backed by film premieres that had tremendous headline-grabbing razzmatazz. But Broadway's is also closely linked to downtown's transformation from a wealthy residential area to one that is almost entirely commercial, bar some lofts and apartments. Less publicised but just as tragic has been the closure on the street of a string of huge department stores, now totally overtaken by the modern shopping malls.
A succession of plans have been advanced for the revival of downtown and in particular Broadway, but it is hard to see a future for the theatres unless thousands more people move into the area to live. That will require a transformation that would take a minimum of ten years and cost billions of dollars, quite apart from raising the political snakepit of having to drive out the Mexican-American retailers and their customers. It is, I fear, a lost cause.
The former League of American Theatres and Producers is now known as simply the Broadway League - and that does not embrace LA's Broadway. Life has moved on.
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