Two Cents

This is the last part of a six part series of behind the scenes blog posts about the making of the latest QUT television commercials.

Mustangs suck.

Sure, they might look cool from the outside, but if you’re over 5 foot tall and jammed in the tiny back seat for 500 miles back and forth across LA, banging your scone on the rear window every time the car hits a divot, no amount of cool is gonna soothe your headache.

We didn’t miss much of LA today.

First up, the madness of Hollwood Boulevard, shooting the freaks and weirdos outside the Kodak Theatre (Oscars central). Those Angelenos sure know how to do tacky. The souvenir shops opposite the Chinese Theatre (handprints in cement of stars you’ve never heard of) flog plastic Oscar trophies in every possible designation. Hamster of the Year, Boss of the Year (sadly, I couldn’t fit three of them in my tiny bag), Second Cousin of the Year, Art Director of the Year, Surrogate Mom of the Year – there must’ve been 500 different kinds.

Next, on to Hollywood Hills, then Rodeo Drive, a chopper ride out of Santa Monica to grab a smoggy aerial shot of the city, a baseball game at Dodger Stadium (in future, I’ll dodge the Dodger Dogs), gawping in Beverly Hills and Venice Beach, and concluding with a grease fix at the charmingly named In-n-out Burger.

Locals suggested In-n-out was one of the better burger chains, but I’m still unsure if the establishment was named thus for the speed of its drive-thru service or the effect of its cheesy comestibles upon the digestive tracts of the clientele.

This is part five of a series of behind the scenes blog posts about the making of the latest QUT television commercials.

3am of the morning after we flew in, and nothing was going to make me sleep.

So I dragged on the trainers and ran down Sunset Boulevard, as Bentleys propelled partygoers home and less well-heeled victims of the night’s excesses lolled in every second doorway. Spotted a place the divine Anastacia had put us onto – the Griddle Café – which we returned to a few hours later, and then every other morning we were there.

An effortlessly cool place for brekky – so cool, in fact, that I bought the t-shirt, a singularly uncool thing to do. A highlight of the Griddle menu is the superb fat pancakes the size of a Chevy hubcap. Director Gerard ordered the short stack and managed to eat less than a quarter of ONE. He looked embarrassed, and people were staring, with good reason. It was a very ordinary effort. The rest of us managed to finish everything on our plates.

Sated, we began in earnest to suss out shooting locations.

Grabbed a rental Mustang to avoid being held to ransom by malodorous, mumbling LA cabbies. Finding a path through the Hollywood Hills to a place we could get a good shot of the famous sign took all morning. Many dead ends before we stumbled upon a clear vantage point free of gawking tourists. Our business graduate, Michael, was a star in every sense of the word. Doing all the (wrong side of the road) driving, smoking the Firestones when we needed to be quickly on the other side of a six lane road to grab a shot, eternally positive and helpful and full of good local knowledge.

We wanted to keep him.

Andy was like a kid in a lolly shop. He wouldn’t stop photographing: signs, textures, California girls, billboards, buildings, girls in short skirts, outrageous cars, freaks, ghettoes, pretty girls with LA haircuts… an art director’s dream.

This is part four of a series of behind the scenes blog posts about the making of the latest QUT television commercials.

There’s nothing like a big dose of jet-lag to blunt one’s fascination with a new city.

Los Angeles is irresistibly shiny, brash, loud, dirty, mean and sexy all at once. When we first laid eyes on her, all we wanted were chops and mashed potato and a nice lie down. Which is a bit sad when it’s Saturday night and the rest of the city is straightening its sun-kissed California tresses and lifting its hemlines for a night of fun and sin.

Four bedraggled Aussie blokes in jeans didn’t quite cut it (with the possible exception of our director, Gerard, who looks good in any kind of pants). But after accidentally stumbling into the lounge bar of the Mondrian on West Sunset Blvd, soothing our aches with a $13 Corona, and being attended to by an angel in white ankle-boots and nightie called Anastacia, things started looking up.

Anastacia clearly took pity on us, because she even had a word to the nine-foot black doorman at the Sky Bar next door who let us in ahead of a queue of much prettier people.

Sky Bar is so LA.

An outdoor bar overlooking the city with twinkling lights and topiarised magnolias and a pool and the world’s most beautiful bar staff with the world’s shiniest teeth and giant pouffes for cuddling on and oozing with wannabe starlets with legs up to there… aaaaahhh.