Fuck the Sherman Oaks Galleria!

Fuck the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Every time I go there I say it's the last time I'll ever do so, because I have such a shitty experience. I need to stick to my guns, but it does have the closest movie theater to my house.

Back in the 80s, the Galleria was the mall de rigueur. It was so de rigueur that every 80s teen film was shot there (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl, etc.). Hell, even a couple Arnold Schwarzenegger films were too (Commando and T2).

But something happened. Business went bad, so the mall shut down.

One Third Street Promenade and one Grove later, the Sherman Oaks Galleria reopened with a major facelift. It became an outdoor mall, sans Main Street U.S.A. choo-choo train. No department stores and why should they? The sort-of-recent Sherman Oaks Fashion Square had all that. What the Fashion Square lacked was a multiplex, Tower Records, and Cheesecake Factory.

I guess I should get to the point of my thesis: Fuck the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

Here's why.

Parking.

Parking blows at the Galleria. It's not for the dearth of spaces. There are plenty to go around. What pisses me off is that every space is designed for a compact car, yet every vehicle in there takes two spaces, since they are all mega-SUVs who don’t even attempt to park in between the lines.

The Movie Theater.

Yeah, the Pacific Cinemas 16 has nice screens, great sound, first run movies, and all that jazz. It also ties for worst customer service at the mall (more on that later). I have now resorted to using the automated Kiosks to purchase tickets, since the punks at the ticket window do not know how to greet people.

I do not know if there has been any research done into the matter, but the audiences at this theater are the worst in America. I cannot tell you how many times my movie-going experience has been tainted by assholes at this theater. Actually, I can -- every time.

Whether it was the family bringing their three children under 5 to the last thirty minutes of Domino, or the Harry Knowles wanna-be on his PDA device during Hostel, nary have I had a pleasant movie-going experience at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

Then there's Tower Records.

When I was 16, I used to love driving to my local Tower Records in Northridge. This was before iPods mind you. This was also the days of the CD longbox. Remember those? The CD case came in a long rectangular cardboard box, which was very ecologically uncool. I think R.E.M.'s bitching and moaning helped spell the demise of this phenomenon.

Tower Records was also the spot, cause you could buy concert tickets there. There was no ticketmaster.com. If you wanted to see Lollapalooza, you had to wake up early on a Saturday, wait in line, and pray for a good wristband.

And the people that worked there were cool. They were post-New Wave and pre-hipster. And they usually asked how you were doing when you went up to the register.

Not so at Tower Records at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

I went in there this weekend to buy CDs for a friend’s birthday. When I first got in there the line was obscenely long, but after I selected his CDs there was no line. Excellent.
I walked to a couple feet in front of the counter, where I saw two employees working. They weren’t exactly busy, nor were they exactly attentive to the fact that I was standing in line. One would ask the other one questions (possibly work-related), but I could not fathom that neither one of them asked if they could help me. So I said, "Fuck this" and put the CDs back and huffed off.

What the fuck happened to customer service? I realize most of their customers are too busy with their Blackberries, Sidekicks, and iPods to pay them much attention, so they figure why bother? Now I know why Tower Records has had so much financial trouble recently, and I now vow to do all my music shopping online or at Amoeba.

Don’t even get me started on the people at Starbucks. Yes, I go to Starbucks, cause there’s no other fucking place to go in the valley!

Customer service, not so bad. Customers, atrocious. I had my iPod on at a comfortable listening level, yet I could hear the entire conversation of this guy and his tranny-looking girlfriend (or was it his mother?) next to me. She was apparently in bad financial states, while he rambled on about his watery bowel movements. I could hear this, even with my Guns N Roses playing on my iPod! They were so loud and obnoxious that I relocated to one of the outdoor tables, even though it was 90-something degrees.

It's malls like this that make me miss San Francisco.

Fast Times at the Skirball Center

This past Thursday I went to another rad Cinema's Legacy at the Skirball screening in which a filmmaker screens and discusses a film that has inspired them. It's every film geek's wet dream. Especially this one:

Judd Apatow and Amy Heckerling in discussion before a screening of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

How could this not be the coolest night ever?

I ended up walking right behind Amy Heckerling down the walkway to the entrance of the Skirball. She is fine! Serious. She has to be in her early 50s by now, and she looks great. What makes her even more attractive is her take-no-shit, sassy attitude which was in full display during the talk with Apatow.

I'm a huge fan of Apatow's. I think 40 Year Old Virgin is one of the best films of last year. I get a little tired hearing about how tragic it was that Freak and Geeks and Undeclared were so short-lived. I loved both shows, but a lot of shows get cancelled before their due time. Apatow has been writing professionally since his early 20s. I envy the guy!

Their conversation was very animated and hysterical. Apatow's a huge fan of Fast Times. You could tell he was excited to be up there asking Heckerling about the making of the film. They both shared horror stories about how Universal did not trust them with their respective films and sent "spies" over to make sure they were not fucking up too badly. For Heckerling, they sent John Landis (who will soon be at the Skirball introducing Wizard of Oz). I forgot who they sent to monitor Apatow.

Heckerling admitted that the Universal brass wanted more football scenes, so producer Art Linson went in and shot some footage.

She was totally non-pretentious and salty. I could've watched them both talk all night, but there was a movie to watch -- though not before a little Q & A.

I was the first person they called on. I asked about her involvement with the short-lived Fast Times TV series. I realize I should've asked if John Travolta and Kirstie Alley pulled any wacky Scientology shit on the Look Who's Talking set. Maybe next time.

Every film/tv screening Q & A must have the requisite geek asking a stupid question that makes the entire audience and panelists cringe...

Some dork in the front row with the novelization of Clueless in hand said something along the lines of:

"Ms. Heckerling, next year is the 25th anniversary of this fine film, and the 15th anniversary of Clueless is coming up in a couple years. I wanted to know if you ever went to a school like Cher Horovitz (the protagonist of Clueless), because I know I'd like to have a friend like that when I went to high school... someone who could give me good advice..."

I looked around the audience. Everyone buried their heads in their hands, looked at their movie-watching partners, and generally looked all around uncomfortable. I saw that Apatow and Heckerling both kept their cool. Apatow probably gets his share of geeks at these things, so this was probably no big deal.

I forgot how Heckerling responded. I think something about how Cher was based on Jane Austen's Emma, blah blah blah...

For the rest of the evening I saw this groupie dig into his nose with a handkerchief. I wonder if he got a nose bleed from all that probing.

I debated whether or not stay for the screening. I've seen Fast Times a million times, but never on the big screen.

I decided to stay, and I'm glad.

The movie holds up great. True, the Rat and Damone's reconcillation at the end seems a little unnatural, but it's an extremely well-made film. Seeing it projected made me notice things I never have after seeing it for so many years on video and DVD. Namely Sean Penn's eyes were bloodshot and watery in every single scene.

All in all a great night. Bravo AFI!

What the fuck happened to Boardner's?

Not that I went there all the time, but Boardner's was always a dependable Hollywood bar -- not too divey, not too trendy, and more importantly not too pricey. Well, the gentrification of Hollywood has hit this haunt hard, and I am never going back!

I went last Monday with my former roommate from San Francisco, who was in town for one of her rare L.A. visits, and our mutual friend. I suggested Boardner's since she's a big hot dog fan and wanted to try Skooby's, which I had recommended to her and is very close by. After a few trips around the block, I got rock star parking and met them at Skooby's. I sampled some of her cheese fries, chatted for a bit, then we were off to get some drinks.

It wasn't too crowded, so we got into Boardner's with no problem. The decor seemed different. More chi-chi, or as my friend Jeff says, it is Roosevelt-ed (as in Amande Scheer-Demme's former stomping grounds). Really nice booths, no more of that cracked red vinyl crap -- which I actually liked. We managed to snag such a booth, I took my friends' orders, then walked up to the bar.

The bar wasn't crowded. I saw one of the waitresses tell the bartender that she needed a couple glasses of wine. No problem. She had paying customers waiting. I'd be next.

After she poured the wine, some faux-hipster comes strolling up to the bar with an empty Heineken and she proceeds to ask what he needed. I couldn't fucking believe it. It's not like we're at some trendy Sunset Strip bar, where the guy was blingy with some fake-boobed bombshell at his arm. He looked straight outta Hot Topics.

I don't know if the bartender sensed my anger, but as she was pouring fuck-head's drinks she asked for my order.

Okay, I calmed down. Gave her the order.

She poured the drinks.

Three drinks.

Twenty-six fucking dollars!

That's almost 9 dollars a drink!

I guess those renovations must've set the place back a few grand.

I brought the drinks back to my friends and didn't make mention of the price. That's bad decorum and I know better.

When it was time, my visiting friend took care of the next round. She returned to the table, shocked at how much it cost.

I tried to assure her that the place used to be cool and cheap, but now all of Hollywood is getting gentrified, so all the drinks prices are going up. It's no wonder she loves living in San Francisco (and why I sometimes wish I never left). When I went to visit last time we went to a great beer bar Toronado, which puts Father's Office to shame. Up there you can find pints of Stella for three dollars, Jacks and Coke for four. I could write essays on the bars of San Francisco, broken down by neighborhood, jukebox selection, and genre.

We still had a good time catching up, but fuck Boardner's! Fuck them hard!

I came back home still bitter enough to post a nasty Citysearch review.

I almost wrote a remake of The Hills Have Eyes

(Well not quite, but read on...)

Several years ago, a couple friends and I got fed up after reading about the latest remake of a 70s horror film. Were there really no original ideas left in Hollywood? Was nothing sacred? And more importantly, why the hell shouldn't we try and make some money by reworking a 70s horror film? I think that was the keyword -- reworking. The producers of whatever remake was just announced claimed that theirs was not a remake, but a reworking of the original.

We racked our brains. What cult classic could we rework? One of them suggested Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (which, surprise, is now being remade) or Race With the Devil. I said no to the latter, because a friend of mine had recently tried to get his own remake of that off the ground, but nothing ever happened with it. The former was too obscure. After a bowl or two we decided on Wes Craven's classic The Hills Have Eyes.

One of my writing partners had worked in various construction jobs and figured it might be interesting to set the picture at a construction site of a gated community of McMansions. We all agreed this was a good idea and would legitimately make ours a reworking and not just a remake.

The title of the final product was The Hills Still Have Eyes. We figured it was a nice homage to the original. The script itself was no reinvention of the genre, but it was a fun ride, with some cool kills and snappy dialogue. Of course I'm one of the writers so I'm kind of biased.

We finished the script in 1999.

We wrote another script after that, this one not a remake.

In 2002 I found myself working at a major international distribution company, which meant one thing...

AFM.

Crazy hours cooped up in a room at the Loews Hotel. Sure, I got free room service and a slight bonus from my boss for my efforts, but it was a hellish week.

My then boss was and still is a huge figure in the global marketplace of film. That being said, many producers and distributors would pop their heads in unannounced just to say hello.

One such producer was Peter Locke.

Peter Locke produced The Hills Have Eyes.

When he introduced himself I probably committed a faux pas by telling him what a huge fan I was of the movie.

My next faux pas came after he chatted briefly with my boss and I told him that some friends and I wrote a remake, I mean a reworking, of Hills. He mentioned that he and Wes Craven were planning on doing an update.

What a coincidence.

I forgot how we left things, since it has been a few years now and I've been trying to erase that week from my memory.

A few months later I moved to San Francisco. I was fed up with the industry and thought a change of scenery would do me good. I would have more time to write and I would no longer be working in a non-stressful environment. Both plans were proven wrong soon after my move.

A few months into my San Francisco experience I received an e-mail from a former co-worker telling me that Peter Locke had called the office looking for me in regards to my script for The Hills Have Eyes.

I couldn't fucking believe it!

I immediately got in touch with Locke. I told him I was now living in San Francisco and that I would love for him to read the script. He asked me to send him a copy, then reminisced about his own college days in San Francisco back in the late 60s.

It all seemed too good to be true

It was.

He passed the script along to Wes!

Wes (or his people) passed.

Alas, The Hills Still Have Eyes will not be the #1 movie at the box office this weekend. (Though judging from the sparsely attended matinee today at the Mann's Chinese, The Hills Have Eyes probably will not be either.)

Even if Hills doesn't do too well, that won't stop Hollywood from continuing to rape and pillage through the 70s horror classics.

I know that New Line is planning a remake of Last House on the Left. God knows how they're going to do that.

Maybe I should start on a remake of the underappreciated The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (complete with German Shepherd flashbacks)