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Hollywood Opening: White Elephants on Parade

Near the end of the Friday-morning opening ceremonies for Hollywood & Highland, TrizecHahn’s $615 million entertainment/retail complex vaunted as the centerpiece of a new Hollywood renaissance, Randy Newman took the stage to churn out a performance of “I Love L.A.” No one in the well-dressed crowd of city officials, TrizecHahn executives, industry types and the media, seated on folding chairs in the middle of a closed-off Hollywood Boulevard, seemed to care that Los Angeles’ unofficial anthem doesn’t even mention the city of Hollywood or Hollywood Boulevard. And Newman didn’t bother to rework the lyrics for the occasion.

The symbolic center of the film industry, Hollywood Boulevard has long been Los Angeles’ secret, sick joke on hopeful tourists. Even I once had a chance to deliver the punch line. Earlier this year, a British visitor, his girlfriend at his side, stopped me on the corner of Hollywood and Highland, not far from my apartment, to ask for directions. “Can you tell us where the Walk of Fame is?” I pointed toward the sidewalk. “You’re standing on it.” The couple followed my finger to Lou Costello’s radio star, and as they looked at the gritty tourist trap around them, their fresh young faces sank like stones. I left them standing on the corner with their disappointment.

On Friday, I was stopped again for directions by an elderly Filipino couple from the San Fernando Valley. “Please, where is the new big thing opening?” the husband asked in halting English. I pointed over his head to the complex’s towering replica of the Babylonian Gates from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. “That’s it there,” I said. “Just head toward the arch. Have you been to Hollywood before?” “No, this is our first time,” said the wife, as she and her husband turned eagerly toward their destination. Yes, as Rob Reiner, Anjelica Huston, TrizecHahn executive Lee Wagner, Police Chief Bernard Parks and Fire Chief William Bamattre each declared from the podium earlier in the morning with mercilessly optimistic rhetoric, things are looking up for the neighborhood.

When the speeches were over just after 10 a.m., a chorus line of men and women wearing tuxedos (the women in tights) flanked a red carpet as the dignitaries and celebrities made their way off the stage toward the Kodak Theater, the new permanent home of the Academy Awards. Suddenly, American flags were everywhere. They waved on temporary video monitors and in the hands of the chorus line. Air cannons fired blasts of red, white and â blue paper stars and red and gold streamers over the street. The loudspeakers blared “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and an LAPD helicopter circled overhead.

September 11 and its ongoing aftermath were evoked repeatedly throughout the ceremony, sometimes eloquently, sometimes less so. After pledging to keep the streets of Hollywood safe, Parks told the crowd, “Particularly after September 11, [Hollywood & Highland] brings back uncomplicated pleasure — just to stroll through a neighborhood.” Fire Chief Bamattre added, “The only fear we feel today is what Judy Garland described as ‘Lions and tigers and bears, oh boy.’” Oh my.

In all, the festivities were a let’s-go-on-with-the-show extravaganza, underpinned by the unspoken credo that now, more than ever, it’s our patriotic duty to shop. Still, while standing beneath the massive white elephants (themselves a spectacular tempting of fate), which reign above the mall’s central panopticon, the Babylon Court, and its warren of shops, it was hard to shake the impression that at a time when we should be turning our attention to the world, TrizecHahn has just opened the mother of all distractions. Of course, it’s easy to be cynical when you’re covered in confetti.

For Jacqueline and B.G. Beane, Hollywood & Highland was exactly what they’d hoped it would be. Native Angelenos and Hollywood residents since 1985, the couple arrived in the morning (Jacqueline took off work) just as the complex opened to the public and the UCLA marching band ran through its set at the foot of the mall’s Grand Staircase. They made their rounds of the facility, and by noon they had staked out a cozy spot on the fourth-floor walkway overlooking the Babylon Court in time to watch the crowds and the In Stylefashion show below. “Look at that view,” said B.G., a saxophone player who used to sell newspapers on the boulevard as a kid in the 1950s. “You can’t beat that.”

“This spot has brought a lot of class back to the neighborhood,” Jacqueline said. “It’s like a movie set.”

“It’s nice that we could walk out of the house and, after a few blocks, be here,” B.G. added. “Hollywood is our place.”

Hours later, as the sun set against the alabaster elephants and the palm trees along the Grand Staircase, B.G. and Jacqueline were still there, poring over the mall’s glossy directory, checking out upcoming events at the Kodak Theater, talking, people watching and making plans to stake out another good spot for the Hollywood Christmas Parade.