Movies On My Mind

On the next day after visiting Hollywood and the Universal Studios I went to Disneyland. Yeah, that’s right, the very first and the most glorious amusement park in Anaheim, Ca., which celebrated 50 years of existence just last year. The number 50 is still very much on display in Disneyland even now. I was very curious to see if there were any changes since I’ve been there the first and only time in 1993.

I started out great, the sky was blue, the sun was bright and I was in a very mellow mood. Finding my way to Anaheim turned out to be easy, but finding the entrance to Disneyland was a bit more difficult – as usual, I’ve taken the wrong exit and ended up somewhere in the backyard of Disneyland first. Thanks to a good Samaritan (actually, a guard at the gates) I got the instructions on how to get to the entrance and naturally, it had to be the next exit! Sometimes I can’t believe myself…
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It is a rather nice comedy, though by no means a masterpiece. Even the credits are promising much, with young Paul Newman and Joan Woodward playing the main characters, Maurice Chevalier playing himself and Frank Sinatra singing a title song.

The movie starts very funny. Paul Newman’s voice is commenting on the opening of the Neumann Marcus’s store on the day of great sale. Scores of women are waiting outside the closed doors of the store waiting for the doors to open in the morning. Finally, the doors open and crowds of women are pouring into the store, the sound of stampede and bull roars on the background. The stage is set for the appearance of Sam, the character played by Joan Woodward, the Mata Hari of the fashion world, a rather masculine young woman in dark glasses sneaking around the windows of famous shops, making clandestine pictures. Between them and her photographic memory there is no problem with stealing designs of the best fashion houses, which is exactly Samantha’s forte in business. Paul Newman’s voice brands her a semi-virgin and indeed it does not seem she has a drop of feminine left in her.
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Quite frankly, Hollywood proper was not high on my priority list of places to see, but as the freeway was going past all the Hollywood exits I’ve decided to drop by and give it a chance. I have to admit, I was quite disappointed with Hollywood when I first came there in 1993. I did not know then that the most well-known places in Hollywood are actually compressed into several hundred meters on

and the rest of Hollywood is very much like the rest of towns in California – mostly 1-2 story buildings of the most ordinary architecture, occasional palm trees – in short, nothing to really incite the imagination. I have went up and down Hollywood Boulevard a couple of times, because I could not find that small strip with the stars and the celebrities feet and hand imprints and after I found it I realized again that it is indeed very short, in just about couple of hundred meters past that spot down on Hollywood Boulevard I could see a sign, which said Little Armenia. My cousin told me that somewhere in Little Armenia they have this legendary bakery shop which makes Russian and Armenian style bread and pastries at any time of day and night. They are always open and you can always find the bread you’ve been looking for waiting for you there, even though the shelves in the store might be empty.
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When the tour has ended I went to explore the lower part of the park. Unfortunately, it was already rather late in the afternoon, so I really did not have enough time to visit all the attractions there, like the studios where they demonstrate the work on the film audio material. I did go for a Jurassic Park ride, though, and have a minted penny with the slogan “I’ve survived the Jurassic Park ride” to show for it! The ride starts rather uneventfully, you get into the boats riding on the rails, and the only thing that really should have clued me in from the start was that the attendant insisted we take off our hats…

I have found the advice quite useful just a bit later, when the speed of the boat was increasingly higher and the wind was whistling in my ears! At the beginning you get to see only peaceful dinosaurs and it’s pretty cool too, but the real fun starts when the ride enters through the gate into the complex where the huge scary Tyrannosauruses Rex roam free and try to get through the ceiling to the rather agitated public in the boat… Br-r-r-r! At the end the boat is going on sort of a roller coaster and I am not too good with this sort of things, so when I’ve looked at my photo taken right at that moment it was scary in itself and I’ve decided not to spend my money on it, let it scare someone else! Unfortunately, I could not make my own photos inside –first, because I was hanging to the bar in the boat for my dear life and secondly, there was really too dark for that anyway. Great memories, though!

That was the end of my visit to Universal Studios. On my way back to L.A. the freeway took me close to

and I could not miss the chance to set my foot on it again, but this will be my next story.

I almost missed the Universal Studios tour, but when I was just about to go on to the lower part of the park I’ve noticed this sign and, of course, ran over to take my place on that train (tram? Bus? Don’t remember what they’ve called it, but it was a nice a smooth ride). Ron Howard introduces the tour on the small LCD screens hanging in the front of each car and off you go to see all these studio sets (the modern ones, like that of the movie “Munich”, mostly from behind, they don’t let you in there). It was cool to see the Bates motel and house from Hitchcock’s Psycho (ve-ery scary movie!), the cardboard figure of Anthony Perkins lurking in the window – nice touch! >

Loved the Mexican set, where they show how rain and flood are made from the sprinklers and the recycled water of the small creek next to the set.
They even show you on the monitors the flood scene from a movie where this set was used.
Next you go to places like streets right out of a Western movie, Little Europe – a general imitation of the old European cities landscape with classical buildings and the fountain, but my favorite one was the latest addition to the tour – a set, where Steven Spielberg was filming the passenger jet crash over a small New Jersey town for the “War of the Worlds” movie. The plane pieces were still in smoke as were the crashed cars around them and you could hear occasional crackling sound and the whole thing looked pretty real on the approach. Only right up close one could see that the grass was a green plastic mat – the only thing that felt fake, the rest of it was still giving me the willies looking at it at arm’s reach as I was to fly out of L.A. back to Philadelphia a few days later…

There were also a couple of places with a bit of action on the way, like the set of King Kong movie, when the train was shaking and there was noise all around and then King Kong’s figure was suddenly appearing around the corner… Another one, which I liked even better was when you are entering what appears to be a set of the subway scene. Everything is quiet and all of the sudden the ground is shaking, the surface above you rips out and a huge truck is hurtling down towards you, stopping almost right in front of your nose – quite a show!