Hollywood isnt dead, its working at Starbucks

Hollywood, they say, is dying.But at my local Starbucks in LA, the creative culture of Tinseltown is very much alive. LA seems to have developed a peculiar enthusiasm for writing its own obituary.

Studios are cutting spending.Film production is migrating elsewhere.But I’m still holding out hope for Hollywood, even as jobs disappear.

Because the entertainment industry and the creative culture that sustains it are not the same thing, and the latter is very much alive.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story I meet the people at the heart of Hollywood every time I go to my local Starbucks on McCadden Place and Hollywood Boulevard.The most familiar face at the register is one of those cheerful twenty-three-year-olds whose untainted happiness makes you feel both ancient and vaguely protective of him.He has a more seasoned colleague who says he is “thirty, but emotionally forty.”I didn’t learn he was an actor until I asked how he was doing, and he said he felt like he just fell off a horse.“Don’t we all,” I replied.“No, literally,” he said.“I fell off a horse yesterday.”He was learning to ride for a film role, he explained.

And with that fact, he opened up his green apron.The Actor — as I began to call him — is also taking clowning classes, although he specified “not the big red nose kind.” Think Buster Keaton-style clowning in the vein of performance art.The guy drizzling caramel syrup at 8:00 a.m.

is an immersive theater actor. And as for my beaming barista at the register — well, it turns out that he makes short films.The Filmmaker is shooting a film and has another in post-production.He enjoys making films about musicians.He works the register, sending orders to the Actor for candy-colored atrocities that seem to have forgotten thei...