By SHANNON SMITH
J Alumni News staff
Shannon Smith
Jon Hamm is as handsome as he looks on TV. Elisabeth Moss is not homely like Peggy; she is actually stunning.
I was in the crowd with them, watching the “Mad Men” season premiere at a theater in West Hollywood with the people who actually created it. The people on the screen were in the rows beside me.
Being a reporter for Variety has its perks. Actually, it is all perks. Go straight to the front of the line, cut through crowds with the publicist, talk to celebrities, eat free food, go to the after-party and act like royalty.
Culture shock for a small town girl
For a Midwestern girl, spending the summer in a city with a larger population than the entire state of Nebraska was a bit of culture shock. During my summer internship at Variety, I also discovered there’s more to Los Angeles than fake perma-green grass and Botox smiles.
I am not used to glitz and glamour. I am used to laid-back charm, unassuming people, slow-moving tractors and $3 pitchers at Duffy’s. Instead, I was in a place where mojitos cost $14, everyone wants publicity and drivers act like red is just a suggestion.
When I got the offer from Variety, I literally jumped up and down in the hallway of my dorm. I was going to get the chance of a lifetime to work in an industry I have always loved.
Variety gave me an opportunity to explore Los Angeles and the entertainment industry. I covered movie premieres, wrote about the job market, attended a technology conference, discovered decaying movie artifacts in a closing prop shop, profiled Taylor Swift and handled dozens of other topics.
City of Angels is a city of opposites
Beyond my internship, what really stood out about my summer was the polarity of my Los Angeles experience. The place I lived, near the Miracle Mile District, was very safe. Kirstin Wilder, a University of Nebraska graduate and my boss at Variety, took care of me. Thanks to her, I lived in a nice house in a quiet residential area with an older woman for dirt-cheap.
I biked to work and was five minutes from Wilshire Boulevard and 10 minutes from the Farmer’s Market at the Grove mall. The ocean and 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica were a $1.25 bus ride away. The stars on Hollywood Boulevard were a short subway ride away.
Everything was convenient, and I felt lucky. At times I felt like I was back in Hickman, Neb., except people weren’t quite as friendly or were a little too friendly. But corn was growing in the backyard, and a Huskers windmill stood watch over the garden, so it felt like home.
But outside our bubble was the city: dirty, polluted, corrupt, broke and burning.
I would live high profile events, like the “Mad Men” premiere, in a cocktail dress, interviewing actors, producers and directors. And while the rich and famous were leaving in limos, I would walk around the street corner and wait for the 217 bus. It was much more difficult not having a car in LA than I expected it would be. But it forced me to open my eyes and see the entirety of the city, instead of getting lost in a small part of it.
The rich elite of the movie industry and the struggling workers filling the public transit system illustrate the jarring disparity between classes in Los Angeles. It is a city of wasteful excess and startling poverty, with both a high unemployment rate and some of the highest incomes in the country. It’s a city where people complain about hard times while they keep a gardener and Latino nanny on retainer. They complain about fire and drought but secretly turn on sprinklers at night to avoid the water police.
You could say Los Angeles captures the image of America in a single city: the melting pot where all cultures and people mix. Except in LA, they don’t so much mix as collide. The frictions between races and classes move against each other like the tectonic plates the city is placed on, constantly grinding until one side breaks.
I was going from movie premieres with free booze flowing to riding the bus home with working class women hoping to get a drink to relax before going to sleep so they can do it all over again. I slept in a nice house, where I felt completely secure. But when I slept at a friend’s, he would give me a hunting knife to put under the pillow because it was a first-floor apartment in Koreatown and the 30-year-old windows didn’t lock. I went to a movie at a high school baseball field and wondered if private school kids even knew what summer nights, baseball, hot dogs and simplicity were like. My dual life in Los Angeles opened my eyes to the spectrum of the human experience and the way it plays out daily.
As a journalist, it was amazing to be in the city of contradictions. By keeping my eyes open, I experienced so much.
I enjoyed every moment of my three months at Variety. I learned how to report for a specific audience, write with a certain tone and get killer quotes quickly. I wouldn’t trade the amazing experiences I had for anything, but I am not sure I could live in Los Angeles for more than five years without becoming part of the broken machine.
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