It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a dark figure in a feathered cape falling fifty stories.
This ain't Marvel, girl. Or D.C. - whatever. It's not 9-1-1 or Code Black or anything from the neverending list of procedurals that squint incessantly in green light.
It's Hollywood and it's a she-mergency. She's no longer a golden house of gods but a patient on a gurney. Wheeling her way to an operating theater. Preparing for triple bypass.
Analog. Digital. VR?
Who even is she? After shedding a thousand skins, messes of silver halide and cassette tapes crumple at her feet. Homegirl's shed so many skins, in fact, we're no longer sure who's beneath. A crisis not only of midlife but identity. All grownup with nowhere to go. No longer a silent girl accompanied by orchestras, or a box-office smasher with talkies. No more rabbit ears in the room or dishes on the roof. Her soul is on the run. And her body - in Hollywood Forever.
"Los Angeles is becoming a production graveyard," Winston Cho writes for the Hollywood Reporter, as "the numbers of movie and TV shoots approach historic lows." Increased rent at soundstages, constrictive permitting and location fees, and terms and wages from renegotiated union contracts have transformed a trickle of migrating production to a mass exodus from California. "L.A.'s share of the film and TV economy is shrinking. Its grip is quickly loosening." Since COVID, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and a narrowly avoided IATSE strike earlier this year, "Hollywood has been holding its breath for a comeback. What started as an expectation that it will rally has become muted hope that things could get better."
The result? People are leaving. Or staying and losing money. Noam Scheiber of The New York Times describes the circumstances as "impossible for young people to enter," and "a squeeze" for established Hollywood producers - whose six-figure incomes have dwindled to $60,000 a year.
Now you may be thinking - good - that no one needs that kind of money. But anyone in production knows - it's blood money. The least you can do - to offset the grueling hours, insane commutes, and sacrifice of mental sanity - is bolster healthy wages and provide for your family. Not to mention that slumming it in L.A. these days requires a six-figure salary. It's one of the most expensive cities in the world. Another reason she's leaving. That glamorous friend of ours. To cheaper pastures in Canada and Mexico. Places like Australia and the U.K., uncomplicated with price tags and complaints of people unsure of their place in her future.
Common rhetoric in industry circles (if you've re-mustered the gravitas to participate in them) is no longer "Whatcha workin' on?" but "Are you working?!?" - sometimes replied to with a string of sideways laughing emojis that scream "Girl, are you cereal?"
"I'm putting down roots in Portland."
"I bought a mansion in Michigan."
"I'm becoming a sommelier."
Real happenings of former coworkers, hip to the trend. But when artistry is all you've ever cared for, and you've sold your soul to one specific kind of it for twenty years, where else can you really go? Hollywood is, after all, a state of mind.
And so I pretend she's alive. That she can hike up her skirt on the sidewalk and showcase a slender leg to lure them back in. That she can Dumbledore her way back in this bitch and pull strings from the other side.
Or maybe she's the customer, smacking gum in a convertible, waiting for us to make it right. To evolve with her in the everchanging landscape of entertainment. To create a safe haven for hoes.
Help us Governor Newsom. With your tax breaks and incentives. You're our only hope.
-Frederic Redfern
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