Eye contact in communication is dicey. A look can be an invitation
or an invasion, a challenge or an appraisal. A lot of appraising
goes on in Los Angeles.
I flew out there recently from Pittsburgh to visit Diana, a producer
friend of mine, whom I hadn’t seen in several years. The
trip was a combination of research for a script I’m rewriting,
meetings with industry people, and catching up on old times. Part
of the research was checking out the Hollywood culture.
One evening, we had dinner at the Palm Restaurant, a rustic, semi-pricey
watering hole billed as a hangout for celebrities. Diana wanted
to check it out as background for the characters in the script.
The research started as soon as we walked to our table.
Every now and then, people tell me I look “distinguished.”
I’m 56 years old, and I choose to believe they mean it and
that the phrase is not code for “getting up there.”
As Diana and I walked to our table, we passed a couple seated
in a booth. The young woman looked at me – this is the best
adverb I can come up with – thoroughly. It could have been
my musky animal magnetism, but more likely she was wondering if
I was anybody.
That feeling suddenly went two-way when we were seated in our
booth. After I had checked out the more or less identifiable caricatures
of movie stars painted on every visible wall, I looked around
at the actual people. I saw a young man sitting in another booth
diagonally from us with another man whose back was to me. The
young man looked familiar: dark hair, movie star looks. I knew
he was somebody. Occasionally I darted glances at him, trying
to remember his name. The interesting thing is that he kept glancing
at me; he was trying to figure out who I was.
The same thing happened the next evening in the restaurant of
the Four Seasons hotel, but with a difference. Diana wanted to
show me the famous hotel, so after a charity screening of A
Place in the Sun at Paramount, we went to the Four Seasons
for dessert and coffee.
This was a completely different venue from The Palm: elegantly
appointed with a lot of glass and dark wood, subtle lighting,
and a nice audio overlay of jazz. As we walked through the bar,
I realized the difference from the Palm.
The previous evening, the appraising looks had been subtle and
sidelong. Here the looks of some of the patrons are silent, but
unmistakably direct, questions: “Who are you and what can
you do for me?” (We saw no celebrities at the Four Seasons,
but the buttermilk chocolate cake was star quality.)
Of course, not everyone in L.A. stares at other people. It depends
on where you are. I had some phone calls to make and writing to
do during the day while Diana was at work at Disney, so I found
a Borders book store in Sherman Oaks, a few miles from my hotel.
While working on my laptop in the café, I noticed there
was no staring or even covert glances by the other customers.
True, many of them were doing LA things: one man read a book on
being a producer, a woman talked on her cell phone about production
values and creative strategies, and a third fellow was riffling
through pages of a script. But no gawking around and no appraising
looks; they were busy. (Apparently, I was the only one who was
gawking.)
The entertainment industry is as competitive as NASCAR, with everyone
racing around, trying to inch ahead of the pack, and with a script
in the back seat. There are places you go in LA to see and be
seen; The Palm Restaurant and the Four Seasons, for instance.
Not Borders.
Back to the Palm Restaurant. I finally figured out who that young
man was when I got a look at his dinner companion. The young man
was John Stamos, and he was having dinner with his Full House
co-star, Bob Saget. (Now you know; I’ll drop a name at the
drop of a hat.)
To show you that I’m not star-struck, I won’t dwell
on the fact that Ray Liotta was on my flight back to Pittsburgh.
And I didn’t stare.
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© 2008
by Jay Speyerer
