Culver City and Sony Studios.
Day 2
Started the day with breakfast on Santa Monica Blvd. Breakfast Quesadilla. Huge. Stay off the food porn. It was a good job it was huge though as it kept me going from morning until 9pm. This wasn't the plan, just the way it worked out.
From there we headed off to Culver City. Or The City of Culver City to give it it's full and slightly awkward title.
I needed to get some money out and found my card denied. This is always fun when you're in a foreign land. Phoned my bank back home and explained to the very nice lady with the headset on that when I told them before I was heading to foreign shores I meant it, and would they kindly take the block off my account.
Unbeknownst to me, my phone people had had the same lack of faith in my ability to make it out of the country and hadn't put the international roaming tariff that I'd asked for on my account, so that wiped out all the credit I had on there.
When I get home and can be bothered I am so switching banks and phone companies. Probably.
Anyway, got the cash, did some grocery shopping and had a wander around Culver.
Culver has a lot of little things tucked away around corners, like this dancing lion
And this Art Deco style theatre
Culver was for a long time, one of the main areas for studio lots in the early days of cinema. The most significant of these lots is the one that became the colossal 400+ acre MGM lot. Much of the land was sold off, particularly during the 80s and now only 44 acres remains. MGM moved off the lot in the 70s and eventually Columbia moved in. Columbia are now, of course, a division of Sony Entertainment, so despite it's heritage, it is now known as The Sony Pictures Studios.
Rumour has it that bar a few stumbling blocks, MGM want to come back in a partnership with Sony.
I suspect that one of these stumbling blocks might be the name.
It's the only studio tour I've done, so I've got nothing by way of comparison to give you, but it seemed like a good one.
The Irving Thalberg Building, often used as schools, diners and courthouses. Also houses a large number of Oscars.
The entry to the lot.
New York. Or at least a street that doubled as NY in a lot of Seinfeld exteriors.
Our guide very much gave the impression that the tour commentary was off the cuff. He was willing to take interruptions and questions and a few times deviated from the regular route to show us extra stuff (or at least that's what he told us – it could well have been that the tour script reads “Normally we'd not take a group in here, but I'm going to bend the rules as there's no-one around.”)
One of those deviations was a real highlight for me – I'm a bit of a movie geek and the behind-the-scenes stuff is as interesting to me, if not more so, than the end result. So getting into a working Foley studio was pretty incredible. Well, it was just a room with a whole load of junk in it and a big pile of Gritty Kitty Litter in the middle, but to me it was special.
From there we went on to what was the biggest highlight, and it was a huge empty room. Makes no sense, I know, but between October 1938 and February 1939 this huge empty room was Munchkinland and other realms of The Land of Oz. The 2nd biggest sound stage in the world (biggest is at Pinewood, fact fans), where most of The Wizard of Oz was filmed. Lot of other stuff too, but that's the one that counts. In case you'd not guessed, as far as I'm concerned it's one of the greatest films ever.
So I stood on the trapdoor that Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch Of The West disappeared through as she left Munchkinland in a flash and a ball of smoke (setting fire to her face as she went – true story) and I also stood at where the tour guide told us The Yellow Brick Road started.
Stood.
Not skipped.
There are limits.
Beyond that, Angels & Demons was filming and walking past Tom Hanks' trailer we heard him laugh. I have to say I wasn't bowled over by this because a) it was just a man laughing while he had a minute to himself during the working day and b) it was Angels & Demons. The one Dan Brown book I have read. It made me feel dirty, but that's a different story.
After the tour ended was when the real adventure began. And by adventure I mean me walking a really long way, and taking ages to get home.
Time check – left Sony studios at about 4pm.
The journey began with a trip into Culver itself. Kind of place where Starbucks has to maintain original architectural features to appease the natives. My plan was to find somewhere to eat that had wifi and plan my route home from there. It was a great plan, but for the spanner thrown in the works by the bus and metro website.
It doesn't work. Or at least it didn't. Not that day. Asked me endlessly where I wanted to go, and kept telling me that there were several options I might have meant and could I pick a specific one from the list.
Forced to rely on pre-internet technologies I went out onto the streets to try and find a bus stop with a list of destinations on it. A timetable, if you will. Of course there are no buses from Culver to Hollywood, that would be too simple. On the way in, we'd come through Beverly Hills and Century City. I knew this was not the most direct route, but it was the only route I knew. And the number 3 bus went to Century. So that was my plan – get to Century and hope there was a bus that went east from there.
Step 1 – find a 3 bus stop. They're pretty well spaced apart.
Step 2 – wait or a 3 bus. They take their time – about 1 an hour. And if you get bored and wander up the street away then one goes by while you're between stops, that's pretty annoying.
Step 3 – Finally get on the bus and have a looping conversation with the Tommy Chong stand in about how the number 1 might have been better but I didn't know that at the time.
By the time I got to Century the sun was setting. It's 4 miles. Had I known (and known the direction) I could have walked in less time.
Or perhaps I would have called my sister to either get her to come pick me up, or give me directions or something. But of course I had no credit on my phone.
I would have happily got in a cab, but they don't seem to have those in Culver.
Once I got to Century I found a really helpful bus driver who not only told me what buses I needed after his but was also really chatty. He did smack his lips just a bit to much after each mouthful of coffee, but overall that didn't detract from his advice.
Finally arrived at Hollywood, and due to... Well, this one was pure and simple my incompetence; I got off at the wrong stop and so presented myself with the opportunity to walk all the way along Hollywood Blvd, admiring the commemorative stars along the way. It would seem that the qualification of being a “star” is pretty basic.
Running the gamut of drunks, crazies, crackheads and ticket touts (Hollywood is so colourful after dark) I got to where I needed to be.
And my sister, bless her, could tell by the look in my eye that what I really needed was a gin, a curry and a place to sit down.
