On Location

I love shooting on location.  Mostly because it’s an excuse to get out of the office.  On my current show, we usually go to nice places, like the park or the beach.  It’s not like The Shield, where we’d be filming in Compton all the time.

(If you work for the The Shield, and I just spoiled your pet theory that the annoying kid in your office is me, sorry.)

Today, we were on location in one of my favorite neighborhoods, Los Feliz.  There’s an independent movie theater (which I will always remember as the place where I first saw Memento), an indie book store/coffee shop, and about a thousand used clothing stores.

There’s also a restaurant that I used to love, called Fred 62.  It’s what my mom calls a “greasy spoon:” the kind of place that serves breakfast all day long, and probably cooks it in the same grease all day long, too.  It’s got this cool, retro-future design, like a 50’s diner where all the waitresses dress like Barbarella.  It was a great place to hang out after pretending to enjoy a French film for two hours.

Then, one day, the restaurant realized it was cool.  They cleaned the place up, made the waitresses button up their shirts, and stopped serving food that would give your eyeballs cholesterol if you looked at it too long.  Suddenly, you saw teenagers in black sweaters with skulls on them, women in big sunglasses carrying small dogs, and dudes in ascots talking about French films like they really did enjoy them.

It was an embarassment.  The place went from cool to hip.  I won’t go there anymore.  Instead, I’ll just gorge myself on popcorn at the theater.

PS: It’s pronounced Lohs FehLEEZ, not Lohs FEElez.  If you’re going to Anglicize the second word, you should Anglicize the first, as well, just like, oh, I dunno, Los Angeles.