Hollywood and Highland is a shopping complex in Los Angeles that not only has the home of the Oscars – the Kodak Theatre – but a maze of so many stores, shops and places to eat (that don’t quite satisfy your hunger) that few people living in the city frequent it if it can at all be avoided.  It’s not that it’s particularly bad but it’s overdone, confusing, doesn’t have anything really necessary that you can’t get somewhere else and is a chore to navigate through and park.

I was there to see a matinee of the new Robert Redford film, “The Conspirator,” because I assigned my writing students to see the film, and didn’t get a chance to go to it this weekend, and consistently chastise my students when they complain about getting off their —-s and going out to movie theatres.  (And, being a period drama, it wasn’t playing anywhere else.  On that score, we’re lucky to even see it at a movie theatre and not straight to video).

Hollywood and Highland is still home to the revamped Mann’s (formerly Grauman’s) Chinese Theatre, part of a landmark that wasn’t at all confusing because it’s best known for housing the footprints and signatures of our most famous movie stars in dried cement.  Those cement blocks still exist, but in front of a façade adjacent to Hollywood and Highland.  The theatres themselves are three floors up (or more, who can count with so many subterranean and upstairs levels) from the main level inside the complex.  They still have the Chinese logo (hopefully that Chinese writing is not yet deemed offensive, but merely still borderline) but that’s about all of the vintage locale that remains.

As a visitor to L.A. in the seventies, and a transplanted Angelino since the eighties, Grauman’s (as we used to call it, the Chinese theatre) was one of my favorite places.  I mean, who didn’t want to dream of being a movie star (which you could do by literally standing in their footsteps) or feel a connection to the larger than life men and women immortalized in cement?  Even if you didn’t care, who doesn’t remember Lucy trying to steal John Wayne’s footprints and then getting her foot caught in a bucket of quick drying cement, only to then have to drag a new block of wet cement to the Duke’s dressing room and try to get him to unknowingly sign it.  Oh, you don’t remember that?  Well, trust me, it was funny.  And memorable…

(Watch entire episode here)

As for the movie theatres, in the eighties I can remember going first to an advertised sneak preview of “Ghost” at the Chinese and crying despite myself when Demi and Patrick connect again through Whoopi.  I can also recall seeing a screening of a god awful film called “Whispers in the Dark” where Alan Alda is (spoiler alert) exposed at the end as a homicidal killer chasing after someone with a knife on the beach.  Such is the life of movie theatres and I certainly don’t blame the quality of films on the proprietors of any particular movie palace.

What is upsetting is everything else about Theatre #1 at the Chinese these days.    The fact that through half the movie you could hear a blaring soundtrack of something else coming through the walls of the mall or another one the five other theatres in the now sixplex (the manager couldn’t quite determine which).  The fact that with dozens of places to buy refreshments nearby one is almost frisked at the door and told you can’t bring in food or drink from any other locales in the mall or even from home (I did get around this by pouring my hot tea I bought 100 feet away (I have a cold) into an empty cup I got from the concession stand but that’s me and I don’t recommend illegalities).  Add to all this, the fact that there wasn’t one movie in the coming attraction trailers anyone in our audience seemed excited about.  And the fact that the movie we saw wasn’t exciting at all and came from an indisputably talented director and film icon (Robert Redford) and a cast of terrific actors trying a little too hard to make each moment work. And the film had so many lighting tricks that one can’t help but be reminded every two minutes that this is a PERIOD film and that it is meant to be ARTISTIC.  And finally, the fact that there were, oh, about 8 people at the theatres.

My afternoon at the movies and at Hollywood and Highland made me consider just how complicated we try to make everything these days and how unnecessary or at least cumbersome and tedious it all is.  Do we really need endless levels of stores selling nothing of necessity in the center of Hollywood, New York or fill in the downtown center of your city.  (Do not tell me this is capitalism or I will surface through your computer and shoot you). Can’t a movie tell an uncomplicated story in a simple way and still resonate with a contemporary audience?  Or do we need endless bells and whistles?  Can’t a huge underground parking lot be fully open during the day and not littered with endless yellow cones providing you with even more endless arrows that detour you into oblivion?  Yes, I’m a somewhat smart guy but it still took me about 10-15 minutes to figure my way out of there.

WHY IS IT SO COMPLICATED?

Mind you, we’re not talking Mideast politics.  Or the economy.  Or the multi-layered machinations and brain cells that are needed to understand either or both.  We’re just talking about going to a movie and some hot tea.  Greater minds are writing about our two (or is it now three?) wars and our financial system.  I’m a teacher and a screenwriter so I can only speak with authority on getting about town to see a film, and yes, I know how bitter and shallow that sounds (especially since I live in Los Angeles).

Of course, we all know it’s not just movies or the mall. Can you call a company and get a real person, or the person you want to talk to, on the phone without playing a tag team relay race?  Lately I’ve even been detecting a slight annoyance when you call someone on the phone during a business day.  Wouldn’t an email or a text suffice?  Why be so intrusive, I hear them thinking.

Call me Methuselah (the world’s oldest man) but I sometimes like to make direct contact in a simple, straightforward way.  I like my gadgets and the ease of the computer but I also want to feel like I’m driving occasionally.  Not driven to distraction by too many neon lights on my screen or in the mall stores I have no desire to patronize.   Now I really may sound old, which, perhaps (perhaps?) I am, but with age comes wisdom so hear me out.

My dear friend Neil (who is a very talented and famous production designer) and I see it as the plain white shirt argument.  You go out somewhere and someone compliments you not on the shirt, pants, jacket or dress (the latter if you’re female or transgender or transsexual) you’re wearing . Instead, they crave the classic white shirt (or fill in the blank of another classic item) that you bought 10 years ago and now is no longer available – anywhere.   Because, well, they don’t make them anymore.

But can’t I have something plain?

A: No.

Can’t I have something without the color stitching?

A: Uh, uh.

The collar is so big, it looks funny.

A: It’s standard.

Why is this collar so small?

A: Tailoring.

Do I have to have pleats in the back?

A: Yes, it’s special.

The shirt seems awfully long.

A: Oversize.  One size fits all.  Alteration.

The cuffs have all this stuff on it.

A: Logo.

No this.

A: Embroidery signature.

But I can’t I just have a plain white shirt.

A:  Well, sure.  But – we don’t carry them.  Sorry.

Can you recommend any place that does?

Blank stare.  Blank stare.  Silence.  And —

Scene.

When one watches images from Japan it’s hard not to think one is watching a scene from a cheesy, bad or even good television movie or film.  For me, it’s “The China Syndrome” and “Silkwood” and the sounds of the “mehhhhhhh, mehhhhhhhhh, mehhhhhhh,” of the nuclear reactor alarms.  For my parents, it’s probably “On The Beach,” where to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda,” the last people on earth succumb to the fatal nuclear holocaust in Australia.

For younger people, I’m not sure.  My students generally tend to want to lose themselves in films like “The Dark Knight,” or “There Will Be Blood” where there are themes and sometimes clear lines of good and evil.  Or indulge in the post-modern irony presented in  “Community.” “Archer,” and “South Park.” And who could blame them given the events of the last 15 years and the fact that few of them will likely make more money than the Kardashian girls or Paris Hilton in their lifetimes.

Whatever poison (a really bad term for this, I know) one picks to quell fears or at least preoccupy oneself to the point of social inadequacy, it’s usually about movies, television, music, theatre, books or photography.  It doesn’t matter whether you buy it, download it illegally (it can’t possibly be illegal when almost everyone under 22 that I know does it, can it?) –- art (a pretentious term, I still know, but indulge me) has a key place in world culture.  It helps us cope.  It dulls the pain.  It makes us laugh.  It even gives us something to make fun of so we don’t feel bad about ourselves, our work or our lives.  Occasionally, very occasionally, it can also inspire us or give us reason to hope – that our life will be okay if someone else got through this.  Or hope for our careers because we know that we absolutely, positively and without a doubt can write, film, act etc, better than the no talent morons responsible for that piece of crap we’ve just seen. (Don’t underestimate the latter as a motivating factor.  It’s actually caused me to produce some of my best work).

That’s why I’m completely puzzled by the idea that what is most necessary is weaning ourselves off of oil in favor of nuclear power and tightening our economic belts by cutting most of the arts programs in schools across the country.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather pay at least $8 a gallon for gas if I was 100% guaranteed I wouldn’t be told by the government to duct tape myself into my house because it was probably the best way to avoid all of the radiation leakage in the atmosphere.  It’s not as if I can afford to or want to pay that much, but life is about choices.  When my aunt used to babysit for me on Sunday nights she insisted on watching “Bonanza’ and, bored to death,  I chose to go into the living room and turn on “The Judy Garland Show.”  This taught me early on that every problem had a solution and that solution often involved a singer.  And that one person’s great art (“Bonanza) is another person’s (young boy/Judy fan’s) torture.

(Note:  Those under 40 can substitute “CSI” for “Bonanza” or any episode of “VHI’s Divas Live”for Judy).

You might not be a Christopher Nolan fan but aside from Steven Spielberg and James Cameron he’s probably the most commercially successful filmmaker now working.  So it might interest you to know he used his advertising copywriter Dad’s super 8 camera to make his first movie and went to University College in London as an American Literature major and made his first film short among the school’s film society.  That short, “Doodlebug,” might give you an indication of what was to come.

Not everyone has a father with a movie camera (my Dad had a great facility for sports trivia and not singing divas, though I did find his and my mother’s “Judy Live At Carnegie Hall” album one long, dark night, but that’s another story) or a college film society.  In fact, many don’t.  I meet them every semester teaching film and TV writing at a private college that is expensive but also offers a lot of scholarship money.  The fact that I, myself can teach here, is because I first got my B.A. from a city college in New York where my tuition each semester was – wait for it — $69.25.  Yes, really.  It was called “free” tuition and it educated lots of lots and lots of talented people in the arts that are responsible for your favorite films and tv programs.  I’m not name dropping when I tell you one of the people in my class was Jerry Seinfeld and my friend Deb directed him in a production of “One Flew Over the Cuckcoo’s Nest” at Queens College.  The reason I’m not name-dropping is because we didn’t know each other in college and even when I went to a rehearsal for the play and was told he was funny and performing in comedy clubs I chose to instead go home and listen to show tunes.  Though I did get the chance through a college professor to get tickets to the original production of “A Chorus Line.” So it’s not entirely regrettable.

I’m not saying “Seinfeld” wouldn’t have happened without tuition-free Queens College but as we learned in “Back to the Future” films you never know what can happen when you take away opportunities and rearrange the events of history.  I’m not saying that any of my scholarship students are going to be the next Chrstopher Nolan but I do know you can’t prove that one of them won’t be – or be even better.  And who wants to take the chance of losing that?  What is known is that there are at least four full or partial nuclear meltdowns going on in Japan; our economy still teeters on the brink of its own disaster ; and enough natural and unnatural meltdowns of all kinds have occurred in the last few decades to last us the next few centuries.  And that the arts have an all-important place in the world to help us get through it.  Not high art or low ART,  but art.  That’s sitcoms, porn,  and Michael Bay movies.  (That’s mean, I know, but sometimes you do just have to go there to make a point).

What will get you through and what happens when it’s not there,20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now and you’re old and scared that the world will revolt because there’s nothing to assuage their frustration?  One shudders to think

Here’s what’s helping my friend Tom Diggs, writer and producer of the upcoming web series called “The Perks of Writing A Musical.”  Watching the horror unfold in Japan he remembered that the first year he lived there, in 1985, he had read Basho’s ‘Narrow Road to the Deep North” and decided to travel the path this great poet traveled and wrote about with such marvel.  He writes it was up around Sendai and in that all too familiar coast are the beautiful islands of Matsushima.  Basho’s simple words upon seeing that untouched majesty of the coastline: “Matsushima ah!, A-ah, Matsushima, ah!, Matsushima, ah!”

Of course, that coast is now earthquake and tsunami ravaged and in peril of being radiated away from all eternity.

That brings to mind for me the end of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,”and what is said by young Emily, when she is allowed to go back and observe the people in her town one last day after she has died.  “They don’t understand, do they?”

Watching a scene from “Transformers 2”or 3, or 7 (god forbid) to get away from it all is equally valid.  What’s important is that we continue to have a choice.