Los Angeles, 10 Years Later
A travelogue through time and space
I first travelled to Los Angeles with my wife nearly a decade ago. I was 33 and we had only been married a little over a year. My beard was much darker and looked a lot fuller. I was teaching a class or two in video editing and/or production at an advertising school in Atlanta while also working part-time in the multimedia department of Zoo Atlanta. We were scraping by to make ends meet but were no less happy for it.
Neither of us had been to LA and so we were experiencing it together for the first time, fresh-faced and at the precipice of the rest of our lives together. We were still in a phase where we wanted to move to every city we visited, and so of course that planning started shortly after we left, though we haven’t yet made it back together even for a visit (don’t cry for us, we travel a lot - there are just too many other amazing places to see).
Nine years later and we’re at a much different, more established and secure place. We are parents of two, each of us with long-term full-time jobs. A lot of life gets lived in a decade that includes two Trump presidencies, a worldwide pandemic, the beginning of parenthood, sickness, the loss of loved ones; it’s no longer two babies that stare back at us from our photos but two very grown (though still cute) adults.
Back then we were both still finding ourselves. It’s a continuous process. The biggest part of finding myself was meeting and marrying Tiffany. That was already done by my last time out west. Another major part was finding a place where I belonged professionally, which I felt I finally accomplished once I started teaching full time. It’s as a full-time teacher that I was able to go back this past week and experience the city not only through the eyes of a man ten years older and wiser but also through the eyes of 12 film students, many of whom were seeing it all for the first time. Going back with a more seasoned perspective, and from a position of authority, was somewhat of a change but also a deeply rewarding experience. For them, a whole new life was suddenly open and available to them in a very real and applicable way. For me, a place that once felt like escape now simply felt like a place for rejuvenation or additional opportunity.
Ten years feels like both forever and the blink of an eye. There’s something about taking in sights that you haven’t seen in a decade that marks the passage of time more starkly than the gradual passing of years through the course of day-to-day life.
Then and Now
The first photo I took in LA on my first trip was of Tiff, no surprise.
My first this time is a visual metaphor for how lost I am in a city not my own without her. I was also informed by my students that this angle (as well as the 1-second pause I take any time I start a video of myself) is a mark of my old age.
In 2016 I went to a midnight screening of Reservoir Dogs at the Tarantino-owned New Beverly Cinema. Tiff had tapped out after an ill-planned hike followed by a wine tasting left us dehydrated and exhausted. This time I got to see The Philadelphia Story on 35mm. It was not only my first time, but we got to take two carloads of film students to see it. To hear them rave about it on the way home - how funny it was, how effectively simple the camerawork and blocking was, how in love they now were with Katharine Hepburn and/or Jimmy Stewart1, will remain one of the great experiences and memories of my life.
When Tiff and I visited the Dolby Theatre, home of the Oscars, the most recent Best Picture winner was Spotlight. This time I got there a week after Anora’s victory and it was already mounted on the colonnade.
And while the last time I went all I saw of Peter Lorre was this random mural, this time I got to see his final resting place.
Repeat Stars
The following are stars on the Walk of Fame that I took excited and impulsive photos of BOTH times, the second often not remembering whether I had done so the first or not.
Orson Welles
Martin Scorsese
Kevin Costner (for my mom)
Godzilla
Odds and Ends
I realized when I placed my hand in the imprint of Paul Newman’s at the Chinese Theatre that they were an exact match. This means that I am officially just as handsome as he was - sorry, I don’t make the rules.
During a visit to the WGA library, we noticed that they had a Billy Wilder’s collection of his own scripts. I asked for Ace in the Hole and Sunset Boulevard. Upon requesting the latter, the librarian winced slightly and asked me to be very careful with it because it was in delicate condition and had been appraised at roughly $30,000.
On one of our final nights our host organization, Cinematography for Actors, threw a mixing event for us at their headquarters, an honest-to-god party in the Hollywood Hills right under Griffith Observatory. The kind of thing you read about or see in movies - standing on the deck overlooking the city (even though it was freezing cold), neighbors wandering in just because they see something going on.
And our very last dinner in town was a moment of luminous confluence - two of the best and funniest people I’ve ever known, having recently moved to the city, were able to attend; I reconnected with a filmmaker and artist who I had lost contact with; I finally met in person the guy I’ve been cowriting a textbook with for the better part of a year; and two of our oldest and dearest friends just happened to have arrived in town for a trip that day and were able to join us. It was the kind of night that makes one feel so very fortunate, so very covered and fulfilled.
I’m not immune, even at my most jaded, to the pull of things like this - I told Tiff at one point that I was starting to feel the itch to move out there again while we were there, especially the more I reconnected with friends newly relocated, and with transplants recent and seasoned alike who made it seem much more reasonable than the cautionary tales you often hear. Today she was looking at jobs out there. Just to see, you know?
Who knows what the future holds. Isn’t that the point of having one?
-cs
Who is the hottest man alive in this movie, my god in heaven.