Studio Lots

I was on the Paramount lot when the LA riots began. My husband told me on the phone, "Get home as fast as you can. Crazy shit going on." We hid out for Tuesday, Wed, Thurs watching it on TV and then strolling to the window now and then to see downtown's palm trees smoldering. People were looting to get Pampers ...

I spent lots of time wandering the lots -- Sony, Culver, Fox (running Motor between the two of them and stopping off at Versailles for killer Cuban Garlic Chicken ... mmmmm) and then up to the valley hauling my ass at hellish speeds running the gutter lane of La Brea over the hill to Universal, Warner Bros., Disney, with those funky 7 dwarves pillars, rather macabre and sinister on the Exec Building, hot hot afternoons, near the cemetary ... was that Forest Lawn next to NBC in Burbank? I'd kill time between meetings there. Death and Disney, always a good combo to remind you to HAVE FUN NOW! Those priceless original cells on the walls in the Disney Animators Building. Beautiful. The big wooden shutters to keep the building cool and the sun out.

And Paramount, at lunch I was a table away from Sharon Stone, very fun, but not what I was there for. I was pitching some deal to someone and focused on hunting them down, hot afternoons wandering the lot loving the older buildings named after old directors, being stood up often as not. Didn't he say Lubitsch? Lots of plump old guys in insanely expensive casual clothes riding bicycles, as if they were the small town afternoon paperboy on a summer's day, pretending not to be millionaire producers with 3 ex-wives.