STAY AND PLAY IN LA
by Carolyn Kohler
Who would have thought that Arnold Schwarzenegger has “smallish” feet? So does Meryl Streep for that matter. We are at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, and along with dozens of other visitors, we are searching for the imprints of our favorite stars, carefully recorded in cement throughout the theater’s frontcourt.
People all around us chuckle with pleasure when they discover a favorite name, as if connecting with a long-lost friend. They stoop down to compare their own hand and footprints with those of the actors. Jack Nicholson, Judy Garland, Robin Williams – they are all here.
Later we stroll over to the Kodak Theater, home of the Academy Awards. We walk up the sweeping red-carpet stairway that leads to the theater’s entrance. Closed! The next Academy Awards Ceremony is only a few days away, and the theater is off-limits to visitors. We settle for reading the glass plaque for every Best Picture Oscar award ever presented and watch our fellow visitors pose to have their photographs taken on the grand stairway.
Blame it on LA’s filmmaking roots or its year-round mild climate, but the city seems to be one giant sound stage, and we revel in being its audience.
Photo shoots take place just about everywhere. One morning, we stumbled upon a magazine ad underway for outdoors gear, starring two seven-year-olds jumping from a rock. Later, we watched a female model walk along the surf and, to our amazement, change her clothes every few minutes by ducking under a voluminous tent dress.
Our favorite photo shoot, though, was an enlightening lesson in the repetitive nature of video making. As we walked along a Malibu beach one afternoon, we noticed a crowd ahead. Cameras, lights, people milling about – we decided to perch on some nearby rocks to observe what unfolded...
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