Sunset from the 30th Floor

Been a tough couple of days at the office, which you might have read about. Here’s wishing some of my former colleagues the best.

Sucky Jobs: High-Rise Window Washer

More from Variety’s new 30th floor digs on the Miracle Mile: There’s something quite bizarre in suddenly seeing people outside the office window that high up. Not sure you could pay me enough to do that job…

Retro Friday: "Miracle Mile"

As Will mentioned below in the Variety sign post, our new offices here at 5900 Wilshire play a big part in the 1988 cult classic thriller “Miracle Mile.”

Plot aside, I just love watching these clips to get a glimpse of the Mid-Wilshire area 20 years ago. Check out Johnie’s in full, light bulb glory — complete with the old Johnie’s Fat Boy sign (whatever happened to that?). There’s the old May Co. building at Fairfax and Wilshire — now a part of LACMA — back when it was still operating as a department store. Check out the boarded-up Pan-Pacific Auditorium, before its mysterious destruction by fire.

And then there’s the 5900 Wilshire building, here in its days as the Mutual Benefit Life building.

Meanwhile, speaking of the Pan-Pacific, here’s a home video of the structure, taken in 1987 by Dean Mardon:

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1815802809621295455&hl=en&fs=true

Variety Lights Up

I took a momentary break from my all-Jay-Leno-all-the-time coverage to join in the Wednesday night festivities formally welcoming Variety to its new 5900 Wilshire home.

City Councilman Tom LaBonge said a few words — and handed a loaf of pumpkin bread from Hollywood’s Monastery of the Angels (it’s famously LaBonge’s calling card) to 5900 Wilshire developer Wayne Ratkovich.

Ratkovich spent $34 million renovating the skyscraper, which as of last night now features a fully-lit Variety logo on the top, facing north and south.

Also attending the sign lighting: L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart and Variety publisher Neil Stiles.

Variety has more here. The building, meanwhile, noted a few facts about the sign:

Size of the Variety Sign: Overall layout is 11.6 ft. x 44.2 ft. with the ‘V’ being 11.6 ft. and the remaining letters at approx 8 ft. in height.

Weighing the Variety Sign Letters: The ‘V’ is the heaviest letter at approximately 300 lbs, not including the ‘V’ swoosh that was fabricated in sections and assembled on the building. Letters were kept as light as possible using all aluminum construction and no steel framing. Also, LED lights were used to illuminate the sign, which is much lighter than neon components.

Hanging the Variety Sign: It took three crew workers two weeks to haul the fourteen sign letters for the north and south side signs to the top of the 31-story tower, install them and complete wiring and test illumination.

Lighting the Variety Sign: Signs are illuminated with red mini LEDs from SloanLED, Inc. Each set of letters utilizes approximately 1400 LEDs and 15 power 60 watt power supplies, or about 900watts (7.5 amps at 120v). In comparison, neon illumination would have required approximately eight and a half times the power or about 64-70 amps. LEDs are also more energy efficient than neon lighting.

The building had previously sported a sign for People’s Bank on the west and east sides; those letters came down a year or so ago.

The View from Variety’s New Digs

Looking East, toward downtown

My Variety colleague Kirstin Wilder took some great pics last week from the windows of our new Variety offices, high above the city.

Variety moved a few blocks down last week, to the skyscraper across the street from LACMA. Newly renamed the “Variety Building” (I prefer “Variety Tower”), it’s quite a change from our old Wilshire Courtyard stomping grounds.

For starters, that’s because we now occupy the 30th floor, rather than the first. As a result, the view’s amazing… when the haze doesn’t cover things up. Last week’s fog provided some great sights too. A few more of Kirstin’s shots:

Looking North, toward the Hollywood sign

Looking West, toward Century City

The Variety Tower Sign Goes Up

They’re prepping the new sign touting Variety at 5900 Wilshire Blvd., the skyscraper across the street from LACMA. Soon to be named “The Variety Tower,” here are a few shots (taken by my colleague, Kirsten Wilder) of the letters being installed.

The tower’s naming rights were formerly held by People’s Bank, which was pasted atop the building for several years. 5900 Wilshire, where Variety moves in at the end of the month, has been undergoing a major $34 million rehab over the past few years. The relocation of Variety resulted from developer The Ratkovich Company’s interest in attracting a marquee tenant.

The red Variety lettering will appear on the building’s north and south sides.

Meanwhile, Variety legend Army Archerd — who’s been with the publication more than 55 years — recounted the newspaper’s homes through the years:

I started April 24, 1953 in Variety’s Hollywood office at 6311 Yucca Street. It was Variety’s second Hollywood site, having launched on Vine Street in 1933. In those days the office was filled with the sound of crackling typewriters, rude telephone rings with loud conversations to match. Carol Burnett’s mother Louise worked the switchboard. “I visited her to see her plug in the calls,” Carol recalls. “She told me about you. I was at UCLA majoring in theater and working as an usher at the Warner Brothers theater on Wilcox”–from which she was fired for refusing to seat a customer on the final minutes of Hitchcock’s “Stranger On A Train.”

“The manager ripped my epaulettes off my shoulder,” Carol now laughs. The theater’s since demolisher but Carol has one of its doors in her Montecito home’s media room.”

In The ’50s, Variety’s office air was filled with cigarette smoke–some of it mine–and that of vet TV/radio editor Jack Hellman’s cigar–when he wasn’t long-lunching at the nearby Brown Derby on Vine Street. There was no air conditioning in that first office, and during one blistering heat wave I daringly wore shorts (and a tie, of course) to the office. Editor Joe Schoenfeld was not amused.

Variety then moved to offices on the second floor of the Gang, Kopp, and Tyre bui0lding on 6404 Sunset where young attorney Bruce Ramer was soon to become a partner as they moved to Beverly Hills as Gang, Tyre, Ramer and Brown. We moved down the street to 1400 North Cahuenga in a building which formerly housed the Alan Gordon camera company. We were still close enough to Vine Street where many staffers enjoyed (lengthy) lunch interviews. We expanded and this time moved up to the new Wilshire Courtyard.

Daily Variety just celebrated its 75th anniversary in Hollywood; the Variety mothership is now 103 years old.

Worst Emmys Ever

That seems to be the collective reaction to last night’s Primetime Emmy Awards — yikes was it bad. As usual, I was backstage in the deadline press room, writing up an analysis piece as it happened.

Check out Variety’s full Emmy coverage here.

My thoughts: No more lip service, the TV academy needs to overhaul this thing. Create a new longform Emmys ceremony, for starters — and perhaps televise it on HBO. That will free up some time for the awards show to add more entertaining elements and not just go from category to category.

Another thing: Comedians should always host. The end. Reality hosts’ strong suits — keeping a show moving and blending into the scenery — doesn’t work for an awards show, where spontaneous, improved humor is a must.

And please, no more half-assed looking back at the past. Either make it a truly big, memorable moment, or stick with honoring what’s great about TV now. (That “Laugh-In” bit probably looked great on paper, but was such a disaster that it’s probably ruined people’s fond memories of that groundbreaking show.)

My pal Tim Goodman has even more ideas in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Now that you’ve given director Louis J. Horvitz (yet another) Emmy, it’s time to fire him. He certainly bears a great deal of the blame here.

It’s also time to fire pretty much everybody with their name in the credits last night. Listen, when the people you’re honoring are making fun of how god-awful the event is, you are past due on change.

You should view last night’s effort as a cry for help from the people inside the industry. They knew it was bad almost immediately. They talked about how inept the writing was and how the pacing rushed off the actors and writers normal folks actually tune in to see and hear. Your inability to fix the Emmys when year after year critics tell you how broke the thing is can no longer be tolerated.

For the love of God and all things entertaining, flush out the old guard and bring in some new blood. Last night was the nadir. Last night your cluelessness was mocked by the people you were trying to celebrate. Open your eyes – they were directing those jabs at you. Maybe they thought that by admitting – live on television – how bad the show was that maybe you’d fix it. Whatever cache the Emmys had evaporated last night.

If you value these awards, come out of the bunker and blow the thing to pieces and restart. Otherwise you might as well just put on the People’s Choice Awards or the Billboard Awards or something equally pathetic.

Embrace change. And start now. No, really, right now.

But first, take out full page ads in Daily Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and Television Week – and apologize. To the industry. And to viewers.

Ted’s Most Unexcellent Minnesota Adventure

I’m still stunned and angered at what happened to my Variety colleague Ted Johnson yesterday in Minnesota. Despite being a credentialed member of the media, reporting on a demonstration outside the Republican National Convention, police didn’t make that distinction — and hauled him (and other journalists) in with the protesters. He was charged with “presence at an unlawful assembly.”

Unbelievable. My hat’s off to Ted for covering the protest and apparently risking a police record in the process. Considering everything that happened, his post on the arrest was pretty calm and cool.

But after he had a chance to sleep on it, Ted woke up Friday morning a bit more steamed. As he should be. Ted writes:

I’ve had a chance to reflect a bit on the insanity of journalists being arrested for just doing their job, which was to cover a genuine story at the Republican National Convention.

Our charge was “presence at an unlawful assembly,” which is described in part by Minnesota state statute as refusal to leave the scene when ordered to do so. As I stated in my earlier post, I never heard such an order given, nor did any of the journalists I was with. We were trying to get away from the line of fire of smoke bombs and flash grenades, and eventually fled to the Marion Street bridge, which looked like the only option out. It was there that we were informed that everyone was under arrest.

There’s still no answer to the question of why journalists, fully identified by their credentials, were detained, booked and processed, their means of reporting taken away. It was a story that the news media had a right to cover whether or not the protest permit ended at 5 p.m., or whether police gave an order sometime after that. We were covering the story, we were not the story. It gives me a new, hardened and more cynical perspective on the security state that we are in, and how it is being used to justify what are ultimately restrictions on press freedom.

Freedom of the press, 2008.

Metromix Gets Hot and Bothered

A former Variety colleague, Peter Gilstrap, has just launched a new sex and relationship column over at Metromix (where another old Variety pal, Geoff Berkshire, is film editor). Check it out online, or Metromix is also available in print at various locales around town. Peter writes Franklin Avenue to note he’s on the lookout for good questions — so go check it out.

Liveblogging the Oddball Golden Globes

The review is in! “Not funny,” says one commenter. All right! Judge for yourself… my Variety partner Joe and I decided to double team and liveblog last night’s strange Golden Globes… and came up with this. Enjoy. (Or don’t.)