Day 3 - Mar 24, 2005 Last updated: 4/10/05 8:00pm PT
Our day began with a tour of the Paramount Studio lot. Our tour guide wasn’t very good. Not only did she mumble quietly, she’d only been in LA for about 9 months, and we didn’t get the impression she knew too much about what was going on at Paramount.
Here’s a large backdrop painted like the sky in front of large “tank” (blue near bottom of the picture, in front of the cars). They currently are parking cars in the tank, but they fill it with water to shoot water scenes. They repaint the background for different types of sky needed for the scene.
The fake buildings were cool to see. It’s around here that we may or may not have seen Jeremy Piven. I saw someone on the back of a golf cart speeding past that sure looked like him, but it was hard to tell.
Here’s Denise sitting on the park bench used in the movie Forrest Gump. Then I sat next to her and held the camera out to take a picture of the both of us. I pushed the camera button, yet still managed to close my eyes at the wrong time.
We got a free souvenir from Paramount. It’s a film canister used in the filming of the movie Jarhead, staring Jamie Foxx.
After lunch at the Farmer’s market (Pike Place Market in Seattle is better), we went to the La Brea tar pits. It is a pond of water. I was expecting thick tar oozing and trapping birds. Turns out all the tar had been removed a long time ago. There is still natural gas bubbling up, so every once in a while you see a bunch of bubbles on the surface. It smelled like tar though.
The Hollywood Entertainment Museum in Hollywood was probably better than the Paramount tour. It has a bunch of stuff on display, but you really need to take the guided tour (included in the price of admission). On the tour you get to see the TV sets from Star Trek, Cheers, and the X-Files. I was a pretty big fan of Cheers, so it was fun to sit on Norm’s stool. In Boston, we saw the “outside” of Cheers, now we’ve seen the “inside”.
We walked Hollywood Blvd and saw the “stars” on the sidewalk. Anybody can get a star, all you have to do is pay for it; seriously. At Mann’s Chinese Theater, we looked at the footprints in the cement. There are some psychos walking around here, dressed up as movie characters, that will let you take their picture with your children, for a tip! I wouldn’t want these people anywhere near any children.
We went to Beverly Hills for dinner (Frida’s Mexican – shrimp al ajillo – yummy). Before dinner we walked Rodeo Drive. Lots of fancy shops. The thing we noticed most, was how clean the outside of the stores looked, even the awnings. We were speculating about whether they killed all of the birds or just cleaned the awnings alot. We saw no birds.