From a strange perch, I have seen Hollywood Boulevard, and it is coming back.
Well, at least it looks that way from the rarified air of The Highlands, the up-above-the-rabble rooftop nightclub at the Hollywood and Highlands complex. I went to a cast-and-crew screening at the Chinese last night for Shark Tale (even if someone close to me hadn't worked on it, I'd still give it a thumbs-up).
As we sipped drinks and snacked on artful canapes there beneath the white reproduction Babylonian-elephant columns lifted from DW Griffith's Intolerance, I had two thoughts :
1) The Hollywood party circuit must be pretty grim.
I've only been to three in my life (counting this one). But really, how many little caesar salads and sesame-mango-topped spring-roll fingers can you eat - and how many times can you walk by the triple-fudge brownie cups and hand-made apple tartlets without diving in - before you a) get sick of it b) gain a zillion pounds or c) lose your mind.
Yet people survive on this stuff week after week, in search of fame, influence and something passing for fun. Entire Hollywood catering companies supported by the need for cunning centerpieces, clever finger food and hippity-hop DJs would just cease to exist without the endless parade of premieres, DVD launch bashes and wrap parties.
And 2) - Would The Highlands be doing any business at all if the party circuit didn't exist? The club is hard to find from the street - you have to park in an underground garage, then thread your way up the rabbit-warren network of hallways and escalators in the not-meeting-expectations theme mall to find it. It doesn't exactly jump to the top of your mental "It" List for Clubs. And I'm pretty sure neither <a href=http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/24/x.music/">X nor The Crystal Method ever played there.
Still, from the uppermost of its two decks, up under the billboard floods, there's a helluva view of Hollywood Boulevard, and if you squint, you can picture the heyday of flashbulb-lit premieres.
All the restored and newly amplified neon glows and blares - Cinegrill, Scientology, El Capitan, the Roosevelt and the El Cap' s hideously garish new diamondvision marquee - and you can't quite make out the drunks mopping the Walk of Fame with each other seven stories below as night crews roll up yet another red carpet to make way for blocked-off traffic.
The hookers half a mile downhill on Santa Monica can't be seen from here, the homeless kids squatting in the abandoned buildings throughout Hollywood can't be heard.
The lights look pretty through the distant heathaze as you sip your mojito.
You could almost believe it's all real. Whatever it is.
Posted by: mack_reed on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 08:40 AM
