Please excuse cross postings!!

Here is an article that was run in the May 21st Los Angeles Times that may
be of interest.  I¹m including both a link to the online article and the
full text in case the link fails.

Daryl A. Maxwell 
Collections Specialist
Walt Disney Feature Animation
Animation Research Library

phone -- 818-544-4163
tie-line -- 8223-4163
fax -- 818-544-4192




http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/cl-ca-125city21may21,0,3166587.sto
ry


Alive with more than history
Villages of soundstages, theme streets and traditions, offering a sense of
place to those who shoot, hone and market movies. This is one studio's
story, but the feeling goes beyond Universal.
By Carla Hall
Times Staff Writer

May 21, 2006

It's been decades since movie studios had movie stars on contract. And
you're as likely to stumble across movie filming on a downtown L.A. street
as on the Universal Studios back lot these days. But the studios still have
that special feel of a gated village of the privileged, sprinkled with
producers' personal parking spaces, dotted with streets named for directors
and stars and charged with a frisson of excitement.

No one was more drawn to that electricity than the teenage Steven Spielberg,
who took a bus tour of the Universal lot one summer after his junior or
senior year in high school in the '60s (he can't remember which), ditched
his fellow tourists during the bathroom break, and ‹ in a scene that could
be from one of his movies ‹ set off to explore. "It was one of the best days
of my life," he recalls.

When he stumbled into an office to use a phone, a film librarian named Chuck
Silvers asked him what he was doing there. Spielberg confessed. At Silvers'
invitation, Spielberg came back the next day with two of his own short
films. After that, Silvers gave him passes for three more days on the lot.

Banking that the guard would recognize him after the fourth day, Spielberg,
dressed in "my bar mitzvah suit," simply walked back onto the lot, smiling
and waving to the guard. For two months, he continued. "I met film editors
and sound mixers and TV directors, and I met a lot of actors," he recalls.
"I was befriended by John Cassavetes."

Eventually, one of his short films made it into the hands of former studio
honcho Sid Sheinberg, who gave him his first professional directing job ‹ an
episode of the TV show "Night Gallery," which guest-starred Joan Crawford.

Universal gave him "Jaws" to direct in the '70s, which became the
blockbuster that began his rise to the stratosphere of Hollywood. In the
early '80s, following hit after hit, the studio built him his own offices ‹
a smart move on the part of bosses Lew Wasserman and Sheinberg, laughs
Spielberg, "because they betrothed me to the lot forever."

He installed his Amblin Entertainment production unit in the Santa Fe-style
building ‹ where any future Spielberg would have to sneak by Amblin's own
attentive guard. Indeed, he's been in residence on the lot ever since ‹ even
after co-creating his DreamWorks studio and selling most of it recently to
crosstown rival Paramount.

"I'm a traditionalist, and I owe a lot to this place," he says. "This is my
ancestral homelandŠ. I was the barbarian at the gate, at least as far as my
ambition goes."

People speak of Hollywood as an industry or a state of mind. But there still
are rambling, fascinating physical places where thousands go to make movies
‹ to shoot them, edit them, perfect their sound, hone their look and market
them. In a city notorious for tearing itself down, the historic studio lots
here are nearing their century mark, changed but still vital.

The Universal lot in the Hollywood Hills is an amalgam of television and
film production plus postproduction services. The main entrance is tucked
off busy Lankershim Boulevard. Beyond a less-than-grand gatehouse, Main
Street winds its way past office buildings and soundstages. On one side
rises the fabled Black Tower, once the perch of the shrewd, irascible
Wasserman, who reigned over Universal for several decades, and now the aerie
of Ron Meyer, the disarmingly casual chieftain who rode around the lot on
his bicycle, introducing himself when he first got his position.

It's been 92 years since Carl Laemmle, a German Jewish émigré, decided to
move all his operations here. His West Coast manager selected 230 acres of
land in the San Fernando Valley and paid $165,000. The Universal that
Laemmle founded is now part of NBC Universal, which is 80% owned by General
Electric and 20% by the French company Vivendi. Officials roughly estimate
the number of employees at 2,000. The lot, now 390 acres, is a pastiche of
all its eras ‹ Stage 28, which dates to 1924 (when it wasn't actually a
soundstage, because movies were silent then), the quaintly drab office
bungalows from the '40s, the stucco building where Rock Hudson held court in
the '50s, the eerily preserved disaster scene complete with a crashed jet
from last year's "War of the Worlds" (directed by Spielberg).

In recent decades, the company has coped with a $20-million fire in 1990
that destroyed 4 acres of sets ‹ even with a county fire station located on
the lot ‹ and a couple of shooting incidents, one in which a guard was
killed.

Through it all, though, the lot offers a sense of place. When producer Marc
Platt needs to clear his head, he leaves his bungalow, passes the sign that
bears the name of his eponymous production company and hops on his golf
cart. He motors around, pausing at the house where Anthony Perkins went
"Psycho," then moving on to the courthouse square where lightning struck and
Michael J. Fox went "Back to the Future."

"It's like a dreamland," says Platt, a professed "movie geek" from
Baltimore. His own dreams have had their detours. He was head of movie
production here briefly in the late '90s; then, after being fired ‹ "It
wasn't the right fit," he says ‹ he set up his own company on the lot. It
was at Universal that Platt found the book "Wicked," started to turn it into
a movie, nixed the idea and developed it into the hit stage musical (with
Universal's blessing and financial backing).

"While the business evolves, while different owners come and go, the
soundstages are still there, the back lot is still there, the physical lot
is a constant," Platt says. "We all want a sense of constant in our lives."

The person responsible for maintaining all 2 million square feet of office
and production space also likes to crisscross the lot on his golf cart. Some
call him "the mayor of Universal," a term Jim Watters, president of
Universal Studios Operations Group, eschews. But he does have quite a
municipality to run.

Watters, 54, who started 29 years ago as an assistant film editor, has
survived five Universal administrations, facilitated the changeover to the
digital age, landscaped little pocket parks around the lot and battled an
infestation of bees on the "New York" streets of the back lot. As befits the
unflappable image he projects, when life gave him bees, he made honey.

"We put beehives up there," he says, gesturing as he motors past a grassy,
tree-dotted hillside. The hives drew the bees away from the New York part of
the lot, and now Watters has the honey harvested into about two dozen jars a
year that he gives to co-workers.

All in all, it's an extraordinary juxtaposition of high tech and low tech,
the new and the traditional. Fourteen of the 30 soundstages on the Universal
lot are wired for Internet access. But outside the soundstages, a pickup
truck trailing a rectangular magnet sweeps the roadways for nails and screws
‹ a byproduct of the constant production ‹ as has been done for decades.

As much as the executives like to talk about the people who work there as a
family, it's a family that has opened its house to boarders. These days,
Universal is in the business of offering its services to anyone who can pay.
The studio will host birthday parties and bar mitzvah celebrations for the
right fee. Movies, TV shows, commercials and music videos all film on
soundstages and the back lot or, like the sound editors on the TV pilot
"Shark," avail themselves of the technical resources. "We treat these people
like gods," says Karen Dean, executive director of sound services.

When James Woods spent a long day recently looping his voice for "Shark," he
found his favorite pineapple upside-down cake waiting for him. "Of course,
we knew!" Dean explained later. "We research it."

Forty percent of the business on the lot is not related to Universal.
"Desperate Housewives," which is not a Universal TV show, sets its now
famous Wisteria Lane on Colonial Street, tucked against a hillside. (Trivia
alert: The home of the housewife who committed suicide in the show's debut
was the house from the 1997 "Leave It to Beaver" movie.) A sign posted at
the opening of Wisteria Lane announces that it's a closed set. Just a few
faux houses away, a couple of deer who inhabit the hills munch away on a
grassy slope.

Watters grabs his golf cart whenever he has some time and checks the back
lot and all the "nooks and crannies" when he can. "I hate Dumpsters," he
notes as he drives past one parked outside Stage 28.

He pulls onto the labyrinth of streets that makes up the New York zone.
(Other faux exteriors include Mexican Street, Western Street, European
Street.) The dingy buildings look like an Edward Hopper painting come to
life. Watters drives on to the sprawling transportation department.

"Oh, there's Columbo's car," he says pointing to a battered convertible, one
of two that Peter Falk used as the disheveled TV detective. Reverentially,
the studio, so willing to rent out everything else, never lets these cars
budge off the lot. The studio might make another "Columbo," notes Watters.

The Columbo car aside, studios in general have a dismal record of preserving
their history.

"I've come to the conclusion that whenever history makers are making history
they really don't realize that," says Jeff Pirtle, 34, the manager of
archives and collections. When he joined Universal four years ago, he was
amazed to discover that staffers had long ago torn up many valuable
first-edition posters and used them to paper the wall of the commissary.
Oddly, though, the results are stunning.

Original posters that have been preserved, as well as actual film, are
stored in a giant limestone mine in Pennsylvania. Costumes and props of
historical value are stored in an unmarked warehouse in Sun Valley.

Still, unexpected treasures appear from time to time. "Want to see something
cool?" Pirtle asks, donning white cotton gloves. He opens a file cabinet
drawer and pulls out a detailed drawing of a woman in a spangly gown. It's
from the film "The Wanderer" (1925), and it is signed "Edith Head," the
legendary costume designer.

"This was one of her first credited productions," says Pirtle, who explains
that the drawing is a bit of a puzzle. It was recently discovered stashed in
a file cabinet. Head had worked at Universal, but she didn't work on "The
Wanderer" there. It was produced elsewhere.

It's the job of Pirtle and his staff of six to calculate what history is
being made right now. The archivists ask for items from films and TV shows.
As the long-running series "Will & Grace" neared its end, he was culling
items that embody the show's quirky characters.

"We wanted to get Jack's Cher doll, but we were told it wasn't available,"
he says. Instead, they'll preserve Rosario's maid's outfit, among other
relics.


Carla Hall is on the paper's Metro staff. She appeared in the pilot episode
of "Capital News," a TV show that had a very brief run in 1990.



A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>