AFI fest

The last two weekends in LA were full of highlights! On Saturday we volunteered for the AFI (American Film Institute) Fest. This film festival is a young one, it has the common competitions of feature, documentary and short, but it also hosts some glamourous red carpet premieres. One of them, the "centerpiece", was the 4 hour movie CHE (2 parts à 2 hours) with Benicio del Toro playing Ernesto Guevara. It took place in the legendary 'Graumann's Chinese Theater', the central building on Hollywood Blvd. Lena and I had to usher people to their seats inside the theater. It was exciting because the cast and crew of the movie was there, of course. We did not follow the speach by Steven Soderbergh, the director, because we were too busy working. It became very difficult to fill the last spots here and there in the dark correctly when people kept arriving and the movie had started. It was all in Spanish with English subtitles. But I had seen that the documentary about Gogol Bordello (the band I'd seen at the Detour festival) screened in another theater and that Elijah Wood might be there! So Lena convinced me that this was the chance and we arrived there just in time. The film had just started, we could use our ticket vouchers we had from volunteering and - Elijah Wood sat right on the first seat when I entered the small cinema. I realized that his girlfriend sat next to him and that she was actually in the BAND (!), a dancer and kind of go-go-girl, but very witty (she was interviewed in the documentary) and beautiful. After the screening she answered questions from the crowd and when she and Elijah stood in front of the theater for a long time, chatting with friends, I just talked to him again and asked him if he remembered me from the shooting in Prague. He did, after a while. People don't understand why I am so crazy about that small guy. But I was happy and that was it.

The next weekend I volunteered for AFI once more, this time at the premiere of "Last Chance Harvey", a Hollywood comedy with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. This time it was much more relaxed work and I got to see the whole movie. Dustin Hoffman clowned about instead of giving a speech before the screening... :-) Maybe he's sick of those things.

But before that a lot of things happened... see next post!

There's still much to tell. Yesterday I was at the Walt Disney Hall. It has a breathtaking architecture, that alone is worth a visit. Leonora and I saw a very very American program, performed by the LA Philharmonics under a young conductor: Appalachian Spring by Copland followed by Britten's Violin concert starring Midori and rounded off by La noche de los Mayas by Revueltas (you don't ususally hear that in German concert halls). Short and pleasant for lovers of picturesque music.

The other night we saw a musical - for me, it's a must whenever I stay in big cities. In this case an indie rock musical called "Spring Awakening", based on Wedekinds novel "Fruehlingserwachen". I liked the music at once, it was quite progressive and young but that was fitting the topic of troubled adolescence. The singers were very young and all the more it was amazing that they gave such a dynamically differentiated performance. I still have one song stuck in my head. They displayed the sexual things rather openly, with "first time sex" halfnaked on stage and masturbation and everything. I thought that was not necessary and very unamerican, but alright.

Alien film

So that was the Hollywood Halloween!

What a Halloween Weekend! It's spinning faster and faster around me, I am meeting more and more people. I have a feeling that will go on until it apruptly comes to an end on November 13th when I have to leave this beautiful country.
We started Halloween on the 30th with a very rare event: the long promised visit to the spooky Villa in the Hollywood Hills, that was built by Charlie Chaplin and inhabited by the Rolling Stones and Marylin Manson thereafter. Patrick, the German AFI directing student - who lives an extremely bohemian life complete with a lot of women, drugs and odds like writing his screenplays in a strip club every night - threw a gigantic party around the pool and in the house. There was a band playing and the craziest costumes around. We arrived late because we had seen the screening of "Malibu Song" (directed by two very nice people that we met at the tea invitation at the Schoenbergs') at the Goethe Institut. It was a fantastic and witty documentary about the last Hippie Colony in Malibu/Topanga Canyon that has been destroyed by the State Park. The paradox was that they forced them to move and pulled down their houses in order to "make the nature available for everybody" by restoring that State Park to "its original state". This film is just so important! The people in the film were all there to do Q & A afterwards and they had sooo much to tell. A lot of artists' roots lay in that little spot of the world. Anyway, so we forced ourselves into the costumes while in the parked car and headed to that Villa where we also met our friend Timo. Much fun! But only until about 2 when the cops arrived and ended the party by sending everybody home.

The Halloween parade on Santa Monica Blvd. on the 31st was a crazy experience as well. Just beautiful to walk and watch people's creativity. The costumes ranged from Christmas tree and carrot over to giant penis and furry monster. Extremely popular where film figures like Charlie Chaplin, Queen Elizabeth, Joker in Batman, Teletubbies and other odd things. A lot of pirates, cowgirls and -boys, Playboy bunnies and many many drag queens were seen. some people didn't have a costume and used their working clothes (uaaa..), so a lot of hospital staff, soldiers and sportsmen around. The current issues in politics where also picked up, so one saw driver's licenses, Sarah Palens and McCains. I used my Burning man grape costume again, I was too lazy to make more costumes. Lena sported a fantastic self-made crow/witch costume with wings from some art project that somebody left in the office. We both wore violet and black, so it matched perfectly and every now and then we got asked to be in pictures with people, just like many of the very cool costumed people.
After the parade we were to meet a friend at a private Halloween party in Hollywood that kinda turned public because it was in a garden right next to a liquor store. It was a comedian's party, so there where a lot of funny people. We didn't meet that firend but made new friends, a Tarzan and a playing card from Alice in Wonderland. We hung out a little at the playing card's place and then tried to go to this other party but it was over by the time we got there - which was about 5.

100 F today - how crazy is this

I HAD to tell you this immediately: 37 Grad Celsius!! That is 99 F!! it is ubelievable. you walk outside and get thrown right back, you hit a wall of heat. And it is 10 am at the end of October. These Santa Anas, I hope they won't get us into trouble, causing more fires. I sit here sweating in my tank top while you at home are probably quite cold.

cultural input

I finally even learnt to say "Hi, how are you!" without the slightest interruption, that makes me be not always the one who has to greet the opposite with "Thank you, fine, and you?" because usually the other person doesn't respond to that 2nd phrase then and you feel kind of stupid afterwards.
I want to read so many more world literature books, this huge library here in the Villa (20.000 books) motivates me. But when? The weeks are to be counted and there are still sooo many things on my list to do and see. I am very glad I will get to be here on Halloween and also for the presidential elections. My god, they are only talking about that in the media. It is gonna be exciting. As for Halloween, it's one of the biggest events of the American year. What the Christmas light strings are in December (blinking, colorful, glowing, planted all over the place in every front yard), are the artificial cobwebs for October. Three weeks before the 31st people start to decorate their gardens with white thread stuff, horror masks, witch statues and the essential pumpkins, the pumpkin patches open (little fairs lines with pumpkin mazes) and the shops sport all the huge candy bags for trick-or-treat, orange colored paper decoration and cards. I have been in America once for Halloween, which was fun. I dressed up as... a pumpkin! oh my. This year I am going to be grapes. That's for sure. Actually, hey guys, I am not kidding. Picture will be posted after the 31st.

Recently at the Getty Villa (a museum for antique art, some rich dude bought all the stuff from Europe), an African-American museum guard saw the Obama badge on my bag and asked "Is that Obama? That is so sweet. Thank you!" But he didn't know I was not American... The Getty Villa by the way seems awkward because everything looks new and too neat, no charme to that place at all. But then a bunch of porno pictures. Yes, it's funny how the Americans don't care - as long as it's antique art. All these amphores with Dionysos having a hard-on... INteresting.

And the Feuchtwanger Memorial library is equally interesting when it comes to that. There are some original sketches of Heinrich Mann, very obscene, but very. We could actually flick through his very sketchbook. And we could touch and look at Brechts "Kriegstagebuch", the original photographic one. And there are also books from the middle ages that Feuchtwanger collected. I found all those funny misspellings in the titles of the pages. The book is such an early work, that it is not even fully "printed", it is a so-called Incunabel from before 1500.

The bouncer

Ok here comes the cultural explorer: As easygoing as everything seems here in America and open and "not a problem" - some things drive me up the wall. Once more I experienced the discriminating processes that go on in front of clubs... We started the evening around 7 at the Roosevelt hotel. On the rooftop with pool there was the opening reception of the Media Festival "Hollywould" going on. We somehow managed not to pay the $25 and still drank wine and ate for free. (The valet parking was already $12.) We looked at the projections that appeared on the surface of the pool and on the baloons that swam in there and met a couple of interesting and hollywoodesc characters. Fotographers, filmmakers and a real estate woman called Suzanna who was like straight out of "American Beauty". We got a hint to go to the "Kress" instead of the Knitting factory. There would be a CD release party going on with some celebrities. In the Knitting factory there was indeed not so much going on, which was sad because Christine, a former Villa fellow, was DJing. So we went to the Kress and the usual thing started at the door. Lot's of very important looking guys in black suits with headsets and walky-talkies hanging around the fenced entrance area, enjoying their power, very self-conscious. You stand there in line, not really knowing what you are waiting for because inside the club is empty. Lot's of dudes waiting to get in and from time to time some people arriving and just let in past the socalled "bouncers" (Türsteher). There is no rule, it's totally arbitrary who they let past. You either have to know one of them, or you have to be on the guest list (means you know one of the person's who throw that night's party inside) or you pretend to be on the guest list or you are just young and good-looking, preferably a girl. The bouncer chooses who he likes and "gets them in". They make a big deal of it. Anyway, we stood there for a second time and finally two guys said they knew a friend of the bouncer. But they needed us to get in because they won't let a group of only guys in. With Lena walking ahead very self-assured and smiling at the big doormen, we did not have too much of a problem to even get hold of the sought-after wrist-band that entitled us to step into the VIP area three floors up. What an intimidating experience. We did not so much like the crowd up there - probably some B class prominent people, TV show stars, band members and the like, from their looks, but.. pew.. we danced 3-4 songs in the basement club (black, R&B, HipHop), with all the chicks around in dresses that hardly covered their boobs and their bums and a large African-American crowd. Well, why not try this for a night.