Strike, day 81
Despite the cold and rain, we had a sizable turnout at the Van Ness gate this morning, with four newcomers joining the stalwart crew. The Seattle folks brought coffee (purchased locally; they didn’t bring it with them), while feature scribes Amy and Liz enthusiastically pitched the plotline of Miracle Mile, an LA disaster movie they claim seriously smokes Volcano.
To me, it’s the lack of an urban core which seriously weakens LA’s viability for disaster movies. What is a giant monster supposed to attack? The Hollywood sign? A landmark made of white-painted wood isn’t particularly smash-worthy. If recollection serves, The Day After Tomorrow took it out with twisters, but that was hardly a key plot point.
No, the Cloverfield equivalent of LA would find the monster smashing the Santa Monica Pier, then walking 20 minutes to take out the Getty Center, and subsequently getting lost in the Valley while trying to find the Griffith Park observatory. Our most iconic feature is our vast freeway system, which doesn’t lend itself to cinematic destruction.
What LA needs is an ostentatious, provocative and destroyable landmark. Yes, it would be catnip for terrorists. But think of the movies.
Back at Paramount, we had more traffic than we’d seen in weeks, with many cars and trucks backed up. Completely not our doing — it was the security gate checking IDs. After the 10th truck with barking dogs in back, we started to realize that something other than Star Trek must be shooting on the lot. A friendly teamster gave us the answer: Hotel for Dogs.
Thursday is our Friday, so no picketing until Monday. Over the weekend, I’ll update with any special information.
Articles
January 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Do you think that the Grammys will still air? Have a good weekend!
January 24th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Lol, that was hilarious! And so are your Angry Cadillac Woman anecdotes! You should completely write more comedy, you’re really good at it. I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was laughing hard through the whole movie.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Of course, there already was a “Miracle Mile.” Damn fine film. And particularly apropos to “Cloverfield.”
January 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
You’re right about the Cloverfield monster becoming bored with L.A. He’d probably think to himself, “I’ve emerged, caused an incredible amount of fear, crushed an army vehicle or two, but now what do I do?”
January 24th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Ummm, the Hollywood sign?
January 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
A likely possibility and I hadn’t thought about that. What would he do after taking away the famous sign? Terrify more people with his enormous size?
January 24th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
He´d probably take out his Macbook, order a grande Caramel Macchiato and check his mails in what´s left of the nearest Starbucks.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
i’ve always wondered what Spider-Man would do in Los Angeles… not a whole lot to swing from.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
“Our most iconic feature is our vast freeway system, which doesn’t lend itself to cinematic destruction…” Say what? A giant colossus rampaging through downtown, tossing cars off freeways, leaving nothing but chaos in its wake… how cool is that! Next stop – the Mann’s Chinese Theater. Imagine the premiere…
January 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Man, My favorite part in The Day After Tomorrow (I know, I actually have a favorite part) was when the researcher father (Dennis Quaid?) drags his friend into the Wendy’s to survive the cold. All I wanted, which would have put the movie into the stratosphere of awesome, was for him to turn to his friend and say “Now that’s what I call a frosty.” Seriously.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
haha I really liked this entry.
The worst any disaster film could do to L.A. is what the South Park movie already did–kill the Baldwins and the Arquettes.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Or how about the rampaging colossus takes a destructive stroll down ventura… stomping on the building complex at 15503.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Hotel For Dogs….
NICE. lol
Hope you all have better weather on Monday.
Thanks for diggin’ in & keeping on.
Cheers John
ps: even the AMPTP building has no architectural interest for a Godzilla… L.A. needs some large scale buildings aside from the (older) First Interstate Bank (blown up in Armageddon).
January 24th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
LA is not a city, it’s a federation of affiliated suburbs. I think this leads Angelinos to forget there is a downtown, replete with skyscrapers to knock over for an enterprising young monster. Sure, even Angelinos don’t know what most of them are (the most recognizable tall building being the Capitol Records building, which obviously isn’t in that downtown cluster), and that’s the problem — recognition. Why would a monster want to knock over a bunch of obscure buildings when New York has so many exciting, high profile buildings to knock over. It’s not that LA isn’t a delicious snack, it’s just that today’s monster has a reputation to build. Simply having a Myspace page isn’t enough. Every monster has one of those now. No, in today’s saturated media climate, if you can’t knock down the Empire State Building, or the Chrysler Building, or even the measly Flatiron Building, nobody’s going to pay attention. “Monster knocks over generic skyscraper” just isn’t a catchy headline.
The sprawl would probably require a fast moving monster to wreak havoc at enough recognizable landmarks that anyone would want to film his or her exploits, but even a sufficiently speedy monster would think twice before chowing down on LA — the cost/benefit ratio just isn’t good enough. Even San Francisco has more recognizable landmarks per square mile. What Angelinos need to do in order to attract monsters, frankly, is remember the names of some of the buildings and talk them up. “Oh, the Fnord Building is so — glassy. It’s the glassiest building on the whole west coast.”
After all, it works both ways. In today’s media saturated climate, if a city wants to be eaten by monsters then the residents need to show some civic pride. Don’t just complain about it, stir up some viral marketing for even the most obscure of landmarks (coating them with meat and/or trapping a monster’s offspring inside of one helps, too). What monster wants to go down in history as having destroyed “some building” in LA?
Hopefully this advice will help all Angelinos in their efforts to have their city eaten. Best of luck!
January 24th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
The Bonaventure Hotel is a recognizable downtown building in LA, mirrored and multi-cylindrical. Or how about Disney Hall?
January 24th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Yeah, I too want to see Disneyland get razed by giant talons… Or Six Flags!! OR Universal… how dope would it be to see the rampaging colossus ravage the Jurassic Park ride!! ROOOAAAR!!
January 24th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
As a follow-up to my advice above (accidentally posted anon), I wanted to add that another thing LA really needs is bridges. LA has many waterways to cross, and some islands that building a bridge to would require a very impressive bridge. Yet, LA has no impressive bridges. Face it, monsters like bridges.
As for Kaz’s mention of the Disney Hall, that is the one real monster magnet in LA besides the Capitol building. It’s like a puzzle: “Do I eat it, or try to put it back together? Maybe it means something? Maybe I can ride my monster skateboard on it?”
Disneyworld is also good, but it’s pretty flat. Monsters don’t like being taller than the buildings they eat — it’s just a fact of monster life. It makes them feel less impressive. You need to make the monster want to eat your city.
But, still… Bonaventure Hotel? Disney Concert Hall? LA’s buildings also need better names. Empire State Building, The Dakota, Waldorf Astoria, Flatiron Building, The Guggenheim — these are buildings that sound like they want to be eaten, people. The Bonaventure Hotel sounds like — well, a hotel. Come on LA, you can do better.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I would have thought that San Francisco would be a better location for a disaster movie but maybe it’s just me.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
And all this time I thought the Hollywood was metal.
Maybe Godzilla could terrorize the Santa Monica pier and the ferris wheel.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Hey John
Working over in China – and wanted to let you know that the Nines has hit the shelf here – as well as most academy screeners. While it does advertise all the extras – it alas is a naked disc – with just the movie.
Cinefiles over here are getting their fix though… all criterion releases are here – as is everything else. The populations appetite for movies is pretty insatiable.
But at about 1.25 a disk… who can blame them?
keep up the good fight…
jiko
January 24th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
It’s funny that you mention Miracle Mile, because the plot is very very similar to that of Cloverfield. Not many people know about Miracle Mile. It’s one of those great movies of the 80s that somehow got swept under the rug over time, and no one remembers it. The soundtrack, acting, and story were all fantastic. SPOILERS kinda… Cloverfield and Miracle Mile end almost the exact same way, too. I was actually going to write an IMDb post about the very strong similarities between the plots, but I realized immediately that it would get buried quickly in the threads because either a) no one has really seen the movie and b) no one cares to really have intelligent discussions on IMDb boards.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:02 am
Day 81…somehow I picture you with a very, very long beard by now.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Wouldn’t the monster take its cue from the people accumulating at the Paramount gate and just smash that and the lot behind it?
January 25th, 2008 at 7:37 am
And that’s why you have films like the original Gone in Sixty Seconds. Destroying the highway system as much as possible is as good as you can get for causing panic in LA.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:11 am
I looked up Hotel for Dogs thinking I would find some silly stupid movie like Air Bud, but it’s actually based on a Lois Duncan novel.
The logline:
Two kids secretly take in nine stray dogs at a vacant house.
Don Cheadle’s in it. Interesting
January 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Perhaps they should change it to “Magnificent Mile” and base it in Chicago since Chicago is much more of a traditional urban city than L.A. And Chicago has a lot of bridges to destroy as well as skyscrapers. Of course, no American city is as much fun for monsters or natural disaster to destroy as New York.
If the monster’s going to destroy Disney Concert Hall, perhaps it should just go to Spain and destroy the Guggenheim Bilbao. I say that as a fan of Gehry’s work; it’d be fun to see his buildings featured in a disaster flick.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
There really is nothing out West here spectacular enough to destroy, except maybe personal careers. A nice touch would be to have the monster accidently step into the La Brea Tar Pits and say, “Oh, shit…”, then sink to it’s doom.
Otherwise, I’d say San Francisco as well (that oasis of culture in the California desert) but even it isn’t large enough to stomp around in for very long, though it does have some tasty bridges. Tokyo and New York have us beat as monster bait. Even Paris wouldn’t work (the French would never accept it anyway) but London has had a few reptilian beasts up and down its streets in the past.
Nope. We just have to live monster-free here. Our most dangerous threat is a normal rainy season.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Miracle Mile? Probably one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I have a hard time thinking of a film I hated more (although I bet there are some that aren’t coming to mind). The setup of the movie is actually a really good idea and really intriguing, but they chose the worst possible ending, one that makes all the most interesting stuff earlier on completely irrelevant.
I hope Cloverfield isn’t too much like MM, I was actually looking forward to seeing Cloverfield until hearing this comparison.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Then I’d say stay away from Cloverfield, Mike. SPOILER……. They end the almost exact same way.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Many people had a negative reaction to Miracle Mile, after it had spent a couple years as one of the most highly-regarded screenplays in town. I loved the screenplay but it ended up being made for too little money and it doesn’t quite come off – but I still like the movie. You just have to grit your teeth over some of the bumps. And I’d be surprised if the makers of Cloverfield never saw it – it’s the first film I referenced after watching Cloverfield with my stepson. The final sequence is nearly identical, but there are no Tar Pits in Central Park.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Down here in Melbourne (Australia), a few of my friends and I were talking disaster movies (Cloverfield, Independence Day, etc) and about landmarks for destruction. In any disaster film, if we cut to Australia to see what’s being threatened there, nine times out of ten it will be the Sydney Opera House.
For once, a group of Melbournians have decided that Sydney can keep its landmarks. As long as Melbourne has no world-definable tourist attraction, we are safe from the monsters and disasters. We all breathed a sigh of relief, and maybe the Angelinos can too.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:11 am
“Our most iconic feature is our vast freeway system, which doesn’t lend itself to cinematic destruction…�
I suppose you’ve forgotten “Attack Of The 50-Foot Woman.” (Not the movie, mind you — the poster.)
January 28th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
(miracle mile spoiler)
Even if the endings are similar, my complaint with Miracle Mile is that the ending took an interesting premise and made it irrelevant. I actually liked the beginning of MM, what I liked best about it was not that it was a thriller about a nuclear attack, but that it was about the mayhem that came about from rumors of a nuclear attack. I think the movie would have been infinitely more interesting if it had turned out that the people were taking desperate measures and in the end it turned out to be a rumor that wasn’t true.
In the case of cloverfield, it seems like there isn’t much doubt that there actually is a monster destroying the city…so all the reasons I hated MM wouldn’t apply.