History of Hollywood

Originally known as Prospect Boulevard (1887-1910), it changed upon Los Angele's annexation of the street: Hollywood Boulevard. In 1911, on the corner of Sunset and Gower, the Nestor Company opened the first studio in Hollywood, starting a trend in the industry:friendly weather allowed year-round filming, an environmental attribute not experienced in the upstate New York town of Ithaca, a previous hub of the silent film industry. The formerly agricultural land south of the boulevard was divided into housing for studio workers. During the 1920's and 30's hotels, restaurants, banks, and movie theatres were erected. The street became the new Broadway of Los Angeles with the construction of the Egyptian Theatre and the Gauman's Chinese Theatre. The intersections of Hollywood Boulevard at Vine, Cahuenga, and Highland were the first areas to be densely commercialized, eventually stretching farther to replace the remaining homes on the street. The Beaux-Art Architecture of the buldings and more formal styles fit in with an air of modernity and class, while other Spanish Colonial Revival architecture reflected the glamorization and extravagance of the era.

The iconic Walk of Stars began in 1958, first star was placed in 1960 to commemorate the artists of the entertainment industry. Before and during the implementation of the Walk of Fame, the real stars had been leaving to reside in places like Beverly Hills. The studios migrated to Sunset, leaving run-down tourist attractions amidst seedy shops. Although the glamour had moved to Beverly Hills, tourists still flocked to the center of Hollywood, thanks to the glamorized images of the street constructed in the 20's and 30's.

A symbol of the changing facade of Hollywood Boulevard, the Egyptian Theatre was built in 1922--the first movie palace to be constructed on the Boulevard. The
Egyptian was designed in faux-Egyptian architecture, with huge colonnades
framing the screen. The final movie premier to be shown was Barbara
Streisand's "Funny Girl" in 1968. The Egyptian closed officially after the
1992 earthquake in a state of disrepair, becoming a squat. With the new
"rebirth" of the Boulevard, however, the Egyptian opened once again in 1998,
fully restored, a symbol of the street's revival. It now houses the American
Cinematheque. Other rebirth efforts include:

-Disney's restoration of the El Capitan theatre, turning it into the most
profitable theatre in the country. A Disney store opened right next to it.

-The restoration of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

-$10 million restoration of the Pantages Theatre in anticipation for a
premier of Disney's Lion King musical (2000)

-The Hollywood Entertainment Museum

-The CIM group (owners of retail stores in Old Pasadena and The Promenade)
has invested $100 million, buying parcels of land and opening The Knitting
Factory, a music venue. CIM plans to open more attractions on the street.

-The remaining "problem" of tacky souvenir and sex shops is expected to soon work
itself out as the rebirth attracts more commercial investors, who will buy
them up and move them out. Score one for massive corporate interests!

The Boulevard has never been a real creative center for the entertainment industry. Most studios in Hollywood were found on Sunset Boulevard, even at the height of the 20's and 30's. Rather, the street functions historically as a showcase of the act of watching: tourists line the streets, continually adding to the mythology around buildings constructed for the distribution of entertainment, watching the palaces of watching.

Try a virtual tour of the Boulevard!

http://www.historicla.com/hollywood/map.html

Lyrics to Public Enemy's Hollywood intervention: Burn Hollywood Burn

CHUCK D:

Burn Hollywood burn I smell a riot
Goin' on first they're guilty now they're gone
Yeah I'll check out a movie
But it'll take a Black one to move me
Get me the hell away from this TV
All this news and views are beneath me
Cause all I hear about is shots ringin' out
So I rather kick some slang out
All right fellas let's go hand out
Hollywood or would they not
Make us all look bad like I know they had
But some things I'll never forget yeah
So step and fetch this shit
For all the years we looked like clowns
The joke is over smell the smoke from all around
Burn Hollywood burn

> ICE CUBE:
>
> Ice Cube is down with the PE
> Now every single bitch wanna see me
> Big Daddy is smooth word to muther
> Let's check out a flick that exploits the color
> Roamin' thru Hollywood late at night
> Red and blue lights what a common sight
> Pulled to the curb gettin' played like a sucker
> Don't fight the power ... the mother fucker
>
> BIG DADDY KANE:
>
> As I walk the streets of Hollywood Boulevard
> Thinin' how hard it was to those that starred
> In the movies portrayin' the roles
> Of butlers and maids slaves and hoes
> Many intelligent Black men seemed to look uncivilized
> When on the screen
> Like a guess I figure you to play some jigaboo
> On the plantation, what else can a nigger do
> And Black women in this profession
> As for playin' a lawyer, out of the question
> For what they play Aunt Jemima is the perfect term
> Even if now she got a perm
> So let's make our own movies like Spike Lee
> Cause the roles being offered don't strike me
> There's nothing that the Black man could use to earn
> Burn Hollywood burn

Presentation Material

Hi Everyone, I was trying to upload a sound clip that I want to share in class today, but I will just bring the cd to class because I can't figure out how to do it. Since I am on I should say a few words. I am interested in doing some kind of performance-based text/ sound piece and have been recently introduced and excited about the work of artist Janet Cariff who does walking tours through public spaces. I will maybe share something of hers in class today. Most of my data collection was a la flanuer style, and I am thinking about how to make this way of taking in information about a location accessible or valuable for passers-by. Also, I think Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" is a good text on this notion of public/private (we had a visiting scholar cite this work last semester in regards to the "Authentic Tourist"), and I got a lot out of Natalie's post of Acconci's public/private terms. See you all in a few hours with more. Danielle

Hollywood(s): Powers of Simulation

For the last seventy-five years there has been an uneasy fit between movie-made HOLLYWOOD glamour and the dowdy Hollywood district. Movie stars, of course, have never lived in the tenement flatlands, and most of the big studios moved long ago to the suburbs. The actual Hollywood of the 1930s was best described by Nathanial West: home of the "flea people" -- -the extras, laborers, grips and failed starlets.

The HOLLYWOOD in the imagination of the world's movie public, therefore, was kept tenuously anchored to its namesake location by regular rituals (premieres, the Academy Awards, etc.) and the magical investment of a dozen or so places (the Bowl, Graumann's, etc.) as tourist shrines. But over the last generation, as the real Hollywood has become a hyper-violent slum, the rituals have ceased and the magic has waned. As the linkages between historic signifier and its signified decayed, the opportunity arose to resurrect HOLLYWOOD in a safer neighborhood. Thus in Orlando, Disney created a stunning Art Deco mirage of MGM's golden age, while arch-competitor MCA countered with its own idealized versions of Hollywood Boulevard and Rodeo Drive at Universal Studios Florida.

Meanwhile, the elopement of Disney and HOLLYWOOD to Florida further depressed real-estate back in real-time Hollywood. After bitter battles with local homeowners, the major landowners were able to win city authorization for a $1 billion facelift of Hollywood Boulevard. In their scheme, the Boulevard would be transformed into a gated, linear theme park, anchored by mega-entertainment complexes at each end. But while the redevelopers were still negotiating with potential investors, MCA pulled the rug out from under Hollywood Redux with the announcement that its nearby tax-dodge enclave, Universal City, would construct a parallel urban reality called "CityWalk."

Designed by master illusionist Jon Jerde, CityWalk is an "idealized reality," the best features of Olvera Street, Hollywood and the West Side synthesized in "easy, bite-sized pieces" for consumption by tourists and residents who "don't need the excitement of dodging bullets ... in the Third World country" that Los Angeles has become. CityWalk incorporates examples of Mission Revival, Deco, streamlined Moderne, and "L.A. Vernacular" (the Brown Derby), as well as 3-D billboards, "a huge blue King Kong hanging from a 70-foot neon totem pole," and a sheriff's substation for security. To alleviate the sense of artificiality in this melange, a "patina of age" and a "dash of grit" have been added:
Using decorative sleight of hand, the designers plan to wrap the brand new street in a cloak of instant history -- on opening day, some buildings will be painted to suggest that they have been occupied before. Candy wrappers will be embedded in the terrazzo flooring, as if discarded by previous visitors. Hollywood redevelopers immediately responded to construction of CityWalk with a $4.3 million beautification plan that includes paving Hollywood Blvd. with "glitz" made from recycled glass. But even spruced up and glitzified there is almost no way that the old Boulevard can compete with the hyper-real perfection on Universal's hill. As its MCA proprietors have taken pains to emphasize, CityWalk is "not a mall" but a "revolution in urban design ... a new kind of neighborhood." -- an urban simulator. Indeed, some critics wonder if it isn't the moral equivalent of the neutron bomb: the city emptied of all lived human experience. With its fake fossil candy wrappers and other deceits, CityWalk sneeringly mocks us as it erases any trace of our real joy, pain or labor.

http://www.huzzam.com/etext/davmurbancont/Hollywoods.html

Hollywood Mythology: Bling Edition!

According to David Thompson, author of “America in the Dark: Hollywood and the Gift of Unreality”, Hollywood is largely responsible for the pandemic of materialism – our short chain to outer presentation and need for status symbols - in the U.S. The key in spreading this materialism is the mythology that the material object can substitute for or capture ontological value. This idea is nothing new, but I think Thompson’s address of how this mythology developed, and the thin line between industrious creativity and materialism, is intriguing. Here is a sample:

“…the factory is a deadly place in our culture, where people get a living in return for boredom, alienation, and withered self-respect. No one seems to have been bored by the Hollywood factory. Sensation was the product, melodrama its instrument, and excitement the mood in which people worked. Outsiders detected that extra zest and took it as one more proof – along with extravagance, mediocrities made wealthy, and indulged self dramatazation – that Hollywood people were crazy. But as Hollywood shrunk, these ways of life spread in California. …I may wonder how far expenditure as a form of identity, the gap between merit and awards, and the unrestrained outpouring of inner life are now modes in Califormia. That golden state is often attacked for crass materialism. But the facile turning dreams into possessed things shows allegiance to the imagination.”
(Thompson, 43-44)

In terms of Hollywood Blvd, the streets are literally lined with this mythology in the walk of stars. The setup is simple: name of a person in gold, indication of their field in a gold plaque, all encompassed within a star shape (gold) and lined up uniformly with other stars on the sidewalk for people to see. These objects are a perfect illustration of “expediture as a form of identity, the gap between merit and awards, and indulged self-dramatization” that Thompson mentions. They reduce the human identity to a dramatic material symbol (the star – singular, bright and shining against the abysmal night of community), and award people with little reference to their merit or substance. I wonder how much of this mythology, which equates being with having can be applied to our own intervention art - or any other discourse that deals with material objects and thier meanings, and its fascinating for me to consider that I am lumped into the very thing I am intervening on.

I would like to point out and apologize for my apparent need to end each and every one of my blog titles with an exclamation point. But I am easily excited and a word like bling demands more than a simple period, dammit.

Here are some other resources that deal in the realm of Hollywood materialism:

On Crass Materialism or Industrious Creativity?
"Sullivan's Travels" Director: Preston Sturges
"For Your Consideration" Director: Christopher Guest

LACE: A Brief History

LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) was founded in 1978 by LA based artists Richard Hyland, Ismael Cazarez, Guillermo Martinez, Marilyn Kemppainen, Joe Janusz, David Scharf, Alexandra Sauer, Ron Reeder, Barry Scharf, And Bill Fisher (see image). The group consisted mainly of recent Otis Graduates and artists from the East LA chicano community. The gallery's first location was at 240 S. Broadway, a 8,000 ft space above a downtown bridal shop ("lace" also references the material used in stitching bridal gowns). LACE was funded, in part, by the LA County Comprehensive Employment Training Act (initially, the group taught classes on mural painting), the LA City Council, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In the early 1970s, the Pasadena Art Museum was closed and converted into the Norton Simon Museum, much to the dismay of local contemporary artists. MOCA would not open their doors until 1986. Nancy Drew writes, "LACMA was frequently being charged with neglect for its tentative commitment to contemporary art. Alternatives were therefore born out of LA's frustrated underground" (see Ruscha's LACMA Burning). When LACMA stated that they would not exhibit work by contemporary Chicano artists because they did not collect "folk art," LACE artist Harry Gamboa responded by signing his name with spray paint on the building's facade (see image).

LACE openned during a kind of NEA reinassance--in the same half decade, the Kitchen openned in NY, NAME in Chicago, and Beyond Baroque in Venice. Not-for-profit venues gave artists the ability to perform, make video, and create other forms of art that could not be purchased, or easily absorbed into the market.

Some noteable LACE exhibitions: Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler (By Products), 7.11.80, Paul McCarthy (Monkey Man), 5.19.80, Allan Kaprow (Exercise and Team), 5.25.80, Chris Burden (Solaris), 10.23.80, Nancy Buchanan (If I Could Only Tell You How Much I Love You), 1.25.07, Lari Pittman (Sunday Painting), 5.9.82, Elanor Antin (Recollections of My Life With Diaghilev), 10.30.82...

Well, you get the idea. I will also bring several LACE catalogues to class tomorrow--Dave.

On a related note...

I found this, it's a pretty big step up as far as interactivity of projection goes. There's a sensor that tracks the special green laser, which then is interpreted by the computer and projected (with a high powered lens) on the building. Seeems like a pretty advanced (and expensive) thing, just thought it was interesting.

Projectertising!

This ad campaign has taken projecting moving images in the public space a step further - moving while projecting moving images in the public space. God bless capitalism.