Left Coast Thief!

One week down.

For starters, I’m attempting to keep a regular blog about all things relating to my experience of living in Los Angeles. My hopes are it will be a little entertaining, a little informative, and a way to keep people abreast of what I’m doing in both film school and life! Ideally, you will read, comment, and realize that the best way to hear about me and my life is to call, message, or Email me! HINT HINT HINT.


About a week ago, I arrived in Los Angeles, California, carrying over-stuffed bags, and a scarf. It was pouring rain, and kind of chilly. The complete opposite of the sunny southern California I was promised. There were thoughts of hopping another fight to a more dependable climate, like London, England, but this was an awfully silly idea, so I went to the car rental place instead.

My Civic is currently on route to L.A. It’s coming by train! I can only imagine what kind of wonderful adventures it’s having.

Thankfully, Greg and Rich were nice enough to offer me a futon to sleep on as I commenced my search for an apartment. I found out that night, a one bedroom opened up in my friend Josh’s apartment. When I would visit Josh, we would joke about me living across the walkway, so the timing couldn’t be more perfect. However, it was more than I hoped to pay for an apartment, so I spent the next two days checking out other places around Los Angeles. What I found sucked. A few were decent enough, but were expensive for studios, and none could guarantee a parking spot. A parking spot is worth more than kitchen in my opinion. Parking here is a bitch.

The most intriguing place I found was a peculiar cluster of gothic towers and huts complex, originally built by Charlie Chaplin. I found this oddity, nestled within a nice West Hollywood neighborhood. I waked under a wooden trestle, that lead me on curving paths around hills of mud and grass, creating a courtyard for the towers. It was nothing like I’ve ever seen. I had to live here. Fortunately, the landlord never called me back. Why fortunately? As a child I had an intense fear of Charlie Chaplin, and more than likely his ghost haunts these grounds. The chances of me being beaten to death by his rickety cane were pretty high.

I ended up taking the apartment across from my friend Josh. Mostly because it has a parking spot! Also, it’s a decent location (only 7 miles from school), lots of room, a very accommodating place for visitors to stay, HINT HINT HINT. But really, if you want to visit, or just need a place to stay, let me know!

Of course I had moments of panic, and homesickness. One cure though was found at the Culver City Ice Rink, a few minutes down the road. I pulled in, just to take a look at the rickety rink (reminds me of Superior Ice Rink in Kingspark for you Long Island folk), that was probably quite state-of-the-art in the early 80’s, What timing for my visit., I stepped inside to witness a pickup game of hockey in action. Just knowing I had place where I could play made me feel a lot better.
Other than that I spent some time hanging out with my friends here, watched some movies, went to some bars. I even got a part-time job secured. I guess that’s all there is …

Oh and that whole USC School of Cinematic Arts thing…

Yeah, so USC is a beautiful campus, compete with a fancy collegiate buildings, ivy, and best of all, the Cinema School. On Friday, we had our orientation meeting at the LUCAS building, next to the Spielberg Scoring Stage, down a block from the Zemeckis building…

…And let’s just say, they made no secret about it, this isn’t just starting school,, this is about all of us starting a career in cinema. They gave us a presentation of what to expect from the next few years, some do’s and don’ts in production class… some of the do’s include our own access to stunt actors and a fire marshal… if only I didn’t want to write dramatic character-driven-existential-digressions on monotony stories. I need to fit in some fire and fights. Because I can. But seriously, they live up to their reputation, or at least on the first day they made us believe we can really make it, and this is just the beginning.


In the coming days and weeks I’ll be adding photos and sharing anecdotes about my discoveries and stuff.

Stay tuned this week for:

Jeff goes to class

Jeff works in Hollywood! (Don’t get too excited, it’s actually a job at Borders) because some things don’t change, whichever coast I’m on.

And…

Jeff dates starlets!
Or at the very least, innocently stalks them!