Grim reality behind glitzy LA
Los Angeles is putting its best face on – sometimes literally – for the Oscars. But beyond the glitz in the city of angels, the faultlines of American public life run as deep as ever, writes Sarah Blake.
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It’s Oscars weekend and the street outside the famous Dolby Theatre is already closed to cars as an army of black-clad workers builds the red carpet under a giant white awning.
I have loved the Oscars since I was a little girl; the beautiful dresses, the candid moments as celebrities joke on the red carpet, even the long and worthy speeches.
When I covered my first ceremony last year, it was a bucket list moment, up there with the Sydney Olympics and Asian tsunami as incredible stories I will tell my grandchildren about the job I was so lucky to have.
What I might not tell them is how decidedly unglamorous the setting for Academy Awards actually is. Like so much of America, Hollywood is struggling.
Despite the glitz that you’ll see on TV, the shiny face of the Oscars is, sadly, just that.
A well-constructed, manufactured, coiffured, Botoxed face.
A couple of nights ago, I was feeling lucky as I walked along Hollywood Boulevard after a mind blowing steak at Musso & Frank, the oldest restaurant in LA.
It was a warm night, everyone was cheery and the vibe was chilled.
Then two cops drove their cruiser fast at a young black man who was crossing the road ahead of me outside the famous Roosevelt Hotel, a trail of pot smoke following behind him.
The smoke was in no way unusual, since recreational marijuana is legal here in California and the air in this touristy pocket is literally thick with it.
The only different thing in the crowd about this sharply dressed, well groomed young man was that he was black, and as they pushed him against a wall and patted him down, he seemed resigned as he asked “What did I do?”.
“You know what you did,” snarled one of the white cops.
What the young man “did” remained a mystery to the rest of us. But his crime, in this ratty, gritty town that does its stuff underneath breathtaking blue skies hovering above knifelike mountain peaks, was probably to be the wrong colour.
Intriguingly, he was pinned by a white cop to a shopfront that specialised in selling memorabilia dedicated to the memory of one of the most revered black Americans in the city of angels, Kobe Bryant.
LA is just one big Kobe souvenir shop right now. His face is on every T-shirt they are selling, including some heartbreaking ones with his daughter, Gigi, which the shop assistant said were selling like hot cakes: for $19.99, plus tax.
“We’ve got them in every size,” she said.
Almost every day here, you are reminded that America is arguably the world’s greatest and most enduringly fascinating case study in the vast gap between perceptions and reality.
Sarah Blake is News Corp’s North America correspondent
Originally published as Grim reality behind glitzy LA