Paradise Regained, the Hollywood Edition
by James Roland
A really cute Asian girl took a photo of me. Normally I would take this as flattery and strut around until I bumped into something, but seeing as she was a tourist on the Universal Studios tram tour I took it with a grain of rice and went back to work . . . which happened to be a new Lexus commercial that was filming on the Universal back lot (hence the tourists).
It was surreal to be working at Universal for the first time, running around with my walkie-talkie and acting important while loads of tanned folks in khaki shorts and sandals took pictures of me.
Just a few years prior I was one of those people.
And I thought about what it felt like when I first came to California, to take those stupid tours and chide myself when, despite my best efforts, I got excited to know that Back to the Future was filmed RIGHT OVER THERE!
With the one exception of the time I got to film at night in Griffith park on the same trail that Spielberg filmed the alien landing scenes from E.T., I have never felt that giddy about Hollywood again.
On the last night of the Lexus commercial, once we were locked and loaded in for a long night of single takes, a few of us guys snuck off through the trees to tour the back lot for ourselves.
We swung past Amity Island where Bruce the shark was pulled out of the water for the night, menacing foam rubber attached to a rusty metal rig.
We climbed the hill and sweet-talked the guards from Desperate Housewives to let us pass, making our way in the dark until we found the set for How the Grinch Stole Christmas glimmering white and blue in the dim light.
We swung around back, and there was the Bates Motel, complete with a cardboard Norman Bates peering from the window and an old, white Cadillac parked out front with a body in the trunk. We tried the doors but they were all locked, so we moved on around the corner and on the hill, back lit by the moon and framed by spindly trees, was the old Bates house.
And something happened.
Four twenty-something burnt-out film industry guys charged up the steps and began to take ridiculous pictures on the Bates porch. Shining our flashlights suspiciously, throwing ourselves into various death positions on the porch, trying to out-do each other in grossness and complexity, we warned each other for laughing too loud and attracting imaginary guards.
After climbing through the broken homes and plane fuselage from the War of the Worlds set, we snuck back down to the Bates Motel where two of the guys wanted to snap more photos with Norman. Myself and one other guy quietly slipped around the back where we found an open door, and rushed inside to find a maze of heavy black fabric. We pushed our way through and almost ran into a bloody torso that was hanging from the ceiling in thick chains. Not wanting to question why the Universal Studios staff might want to hang graphic horror where no tourists will even see it, we made our way to the window where our two companions were just walking by on the porch. We threw ourselves against the glass with all the menace and gusto of a Jr. High prank and fell back, hugging our ribs and wheezing laughter when our friends jumped off the porch with perfect 50s horror expressions on their faces.
We left and crossed the road where I spotted a cement path leading up a steep hill between trees. We ran for it and used our momentum to crest the rise, and found ourselves looking over the entire back lot. We stood on the edge of a giant pool, the one used for the ocean scenes in Jaws and The Truman Show. All of the lights and old sets stretched around us; in the distance we heard a concert playing near the enormous Universal parking structure. The music was blurry and undefined by the time it reached our ears, but it played like our soundtrack as we surveyed the land before us.
And in that hour, we felt like we were twelve years old in a run-down movie theater, cradling a bucket of popcorn on our laps as the credits rolled.
It was where the movies of our childhood had been made, the movies that drew all four of us from around the country to a thin and desolate desert. And it was ours, in the night, with no studio or producer or guard to take it away.
