Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Tinseltown
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Dear Ben and Brit,
Hope all is well on the home front.
I’m writing from my hotel’s rooftop garden restaurant. I have a clear view of the iconic Hollywood sign, visible from almost all of Los Angeles.
Moviemaking is the marquee industry here, and nothing about it is subtle. From the top of the Capitol Records building a flashing light spells out “Hollywood” 24 hours a day in Morse code.
I took the Paramount Studios factory tour today. Forrest Gump, Titanic, True Grit, Saving Private Ryan, Roman Holiday were filmed at Paramount. For fascinating fun, it’s on par with the General Motors assembly facility in Kansas and the Philip Morris tobacco plant in Virginia. Remember how much you loved those tours?
Do you know why big-name actors are called movie stars? The Paramount logo—a mountain silhouette bounded by 22 stars—signifies the original 22 actors and actresses under contract to the studio in the 1920s. Before long, every major actor was called a movie star. Bore your friends with this, if you like.
The entire industry is built on magic and mystery, artifice and trickery. What we see on screen is a mirage of illusions and lies. Like hiding your dirty laundry under your bed when I ask if you’ve cleaned your rooms.
When the unsuspecting hero is thrown against a brick wall during a back-alley mugging, the bricks are painted foam. The wrenching sound in a barroom fight of a breaking bone is celery stalks snapping.
A boat captain battling the high seas navigates through white caps made by tossing detergent into a backlot swimming pool. To avoid poisoning the cast with carbon monoxide, passing cars on a city street are pushed by hidden stagehands.
In your favorite steamy sex scene, the slurpy kissing sounds are dubbed by stirring mayonnaise. In the signature song and dance number from Singing in the Rain, to make the rain more visible to the camera lens, the studio used watery milk.
In the movie The Godfather, Marlon Brando is reading his lines from a cue card taped to Robert Duval’s chest. The phrase ‘space shuttle’ was coined by Star Trek writers, and later used by NASA. Think about that!
A naked starlet with fake boobs (don’t even think about it, Brittany) swimming in a crystalline pool is captivating, but counterfeit. The camera angle hides her flesh-colored thong.
Whether in Tinseltown movies or touristing elsewhere, I’m never permitted behind the cameras, never allowed to view the world without its makeup. I see only what the world wants me to see.
Stepping into a movie house is like going on a vacation—or maybe it’s the other way around. Movies and travel are entertainments where I pay to be deceived, to be transported to new and different worlds.
Movies and travel show me what others do, how they live, when they laugh and when they cry. I can daydream about living another life, being another person. Whenever that happens, that’s when it hits me that I am so lucky that I get to be your dad.
You are my movie stars.
Love, Clark Gable
