It’s been an amazing two weeks.
On Christmas Eve, Cristo and I flew to Los Angeles. It was a little more fun than our last trip because, while there was no celebrity-studded Kodak Theatre wedding this time, it was much less scheduled; our only responsibility was occasional childcare, and his nieces are so fantastic that that was a pleasure. We had access to his sister’s car, and I passed the Clueless LA freeway driving test with ease. It almost made me miss having a car.
We stayed with his sister, her husband, and their two amazing daughters, who are four and eight. Everyone got comfy holiday pajamas on Christmas eve, and Christmas morning was amazing coffee and Barbie!Barbie!Barbie! Our gift to our Hollywood hosts was a generous gift card to a national movie theater chain, signed “the babysitters,” and they got us a generous gift card to a sushi place in downtown Hollywood called Geisha House.
We spent Christmas afternoon looking after the girls while they went out to the movies. Cristo’s stepbrother P. and his fiancee came over for Christmas dinner, and we got the proposal story: in Las Vegas, on her birthday, at the finish line of a marathon she ran. Cristo’s mom and P.’s dad have been together for close to thirty years; the two boys are only a few months apart in age and were best friends growing up. P.’s fiancee is qualified for the Boston Marathon in April, and we’re super-excited seeing them again then.
The day after Christmas, Cristo and I took off in the early afternoon to Santa Monica, where we wandered the Venice boardwalk, took in the palm trees and ocean, found a dive bar, walked out to the end of the pier, then had buffalo burgers–buffalo meat, not sauce–with fresh avocado at a little place called the Firehouse. Then we were lured by window displays into this amazing antique store called Urban Country, full of carnival props and signage; I really wanted some of the industrial baby-doll molds. They were creepy and gorgeous. The owner invited us to visit the gallery upstairs, where we ooooohed over, among other things, an early 20th-century steel-framed Southern prison cot that had been reimagined as a glass-topped coffeetable. Dessert was oysters and martinis a few blocks away as the sun set. It was just a gorgeous day; the weather was amazing, but everyone was wearing puffy down jackets, insulated mittens, and complaining bitterly about the cold.
The next day, Saturday, we met up with P., who’d offered us a tour of his “office”–the Paramount Pictures studio backlot. He basically has the coolest job ever; he works in the interactive media division on digital rights management. So it’s everything from trying to evict cybersquatters to producing mockumentaries and parody videos (including one of the DVD extras on Tropic Thunder; apparently it costs over $5,000 in prosthetics to make Tom Cruise ugly). In the parking lot, an enormous scrim several stories high was painted to look like the sky; P. explained that the recessed portion of the lot in front of it could be flooded with water, and that a sailing scene from Benjamin Button had been filmed there. Every building is dual-use; the lobby of his office building often stands in for apartment building or hospital lobbies.
We wandered deserted city streets where every storefront was vacant and every doorway led to bare beams jammed with enormous lights and other stored equipment. He showed us down a very familiar back alleyway where hundreds of fight scenes from Buffy had been filmed; he’d taken photos of his fiancee in faux-kung fu poses in there (I knew I adored her for more reasons than her sweetheart disposition and enormous novel collection, anchored by Tom Robbins and Margaret Atwood). Unfortunately, there was too much construction equipment in the alley for me to get a similar photo (although I was wearing a brightly printed and totally Buffy Summers-esque trenchcoat!). He also pointed out an uncannily eerie steel-and-glass replica of Boston’s South Station T station, which had been labeled as Downtown Crossing.
P. showed us The Robert Evans Door, and I confessed to never having seen The Kid Stays in the Picture. So the boys decided that P. would loan us his copy to take back to Boston with us. On the way to visit his office, we ran into one of his co-workers, and decided to pop into a showing of Benjamin Button in the studio’s screening room.
The best part of the movie was watching it in the same theatre where Spielberg and Katzenberg preview films they’re still working on. The seats were enormous and cushy armchairs; huge screen, huge sound, incredible room. We’d also reserved tickets for a late-night showing of The Spirit at the Arclight for that evening, so we’d be watching movies in P.’s two favorite Los Angeles movie theatres in the same day: very likely the two best movie theatres in the world. I love that you can select your seats at Arclight in advance online, so we picked great ones, high and center. Some shows there are 21+, so you can order a drink at the bar in the lobby and bring it in with you. We picked the stylized superhero flick because both Cristo and I wanted to see a big huge action movie on a big huge screen. Frank Miller was part of it as well, of course; we didn’t need it to be a good movie, just pretty.
After we left the studio, we went back to P.’s place, where we met up with his fiancee for dinner. A short walk later, we were at a restaurant called El Cholo; we make it a habit to eat both Mexican and sushi every time we’re on the west coast, and we knew we’d be eating at Geisha House the next night. It was delicious. Cristo had crabmeat enchiladas, and I went for the Plato de Carnitas.
We all hung out back at P.’s apartment in Santa Monica until it was time to drive to downtown Hollywood to see our movie. The theatre is on Sunset Boulevard; it’s amazing how many streets in Los Angeles have worked themselves into common knowledge: Hollywood, Vine, Fairfax; Ventura and Pico and Wilshire Boulevards; Mulholland Drive. I know they’re just roads but their names, and also palm trees, haven’t yet failed to delight me. We had about an hour to kill before our showtime, so went next door to Amoeba Records to spend some giftcards we’d gotten for Christmas. The crime of an amazing place like that, where hours could be lost rummaging through bins of vinyl and compact disks, is that any music you could possibly want can be found online. My plan was to buy a tote bag or t-shirt with the famous record store logo on it, but my boy had the great idea to look at DVDs. And we miraculously found both seasons of Twin Peaks, together priced at the exact amount we had to spend.
The theatre was indeed gorgeous. In the lobby, flanking the gift shop, were displays of actual costumes from Revolutionary Road and The Spirit. We each had a glass of wine at the lobby bar. It was so lovely not having to worry about rushing to get good seats, because ours were guaranteed. The seats were really wide and well-cushioned; they had the snuggle-enabling armrests I like, and miles upon miles of legroom: I eat my knees on airplanes, and my legs are as long as guys’ who are 6’5″, but even sitting forward at the very front edge of the theatre seat there were a good 8 inches between my knees and the back of the seat in front of me. The movie was super-pretty; I love that bleak and hyperdrive aesthetic, Samuel L. was a force of nature, and Scarlett Johanssen—who I always almost want to hate—was absolutely fantastic. She just might be slithering up into my Favorite Jews list, but my boyfriend, John Stewart, and Rahm Emanuel are always safe in the top three. The costumes, every last stitch and sequin, were to swoon for.
So ends week one of perfection, because this is reeaaaaally getting long. Read about the rest of my holidays and travels here.
P.S. This is what “For Your Consideration” Oscar screener DVDs look like. The producers ever so casually suggest to Academy members which awards they think they deserve; click on any picture below for a larger, more legible, peek.
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