Hollywood, as everyone knows, is a politically progressive town. Officially, anyway. When President Obama comes to town, powerful studio executives and movie stars and assorted moguls pay a lot of money to have dinner with him.
But “having dinner” with a president isn’t quite like “having dinner” with, say, me. In the first place, when you have dinner with the president of the United States, more often than not you’ve paid handsomely for the privilege.
When Barack Obama jetted into Los Angeles this past weekend, he wasn’t there on official business. It was a political fund-raising trip, and it included a lunchtime event at film director JJ Abrams’ house in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles and a concert featuring comedian and pop star Jamie Foxx, followed by a dinner at a large estate in Bel Air.
That’s three separate events – all in one whirlwind day – for which different sets of rich Hollywood power players vied for tickets and proximity to the most powerful man in the world, if you don’t include Vladimir Putin.
All of the money raised will go in some form or another towards the operations of the Democratic Party, and though they’ll never reveal the exact figure, the president’s one-day swoop through Hollywood is probably going to net a tidy sum.
It also, of course, utterly snarled traffic. For the president’s visit, several large thoroughfares were closed entirely to traffic. Some of the larger east-to-west boulevards were blocked during the afternoon, and the two large arteries – the 405 motorway and the 10 motorway – that deliver agents, actors, writers and assorted other Hollywood denizens to their meetings and auditions and pitch sessions were locked down tight.
People in the entertainment industry do an enormous amount of business in their cars as it is – getting from one side of town to the other in the middle of the day can take anywhere from one to two hours – so anything that alters the already-packed Los Angeles streets causes panic and, it seems, a certain amount of political fallout.
“I love the guy,” an agent friend of mine told me, “and I voted for him twice. But I’m telling you, I have a hard time giving someone my support if he keeps making me late to my lunch thing.”
An actor I know – someone who has spent decades in vocal and enthusiastic support of the Democratic party and its policies – told me that he was “giving the Republicans a second look”. All because he couldn’t get to his son’s football game on time – the Secret Service had shut down most of Sunset Boulevard the last time the president came for a visit.
It’s easy to blame the president, of course, but it really isn’t in his control. Most modern presidents since Ronald Reagan have bristled at the security apparatus that keeps them hemmed in, though none have gone so far as to demand to be stuck in traffic jams and stopped at red traffic lights, just like their loyal subjects. There is something intoxicating about gliding through life with zero physical impediments – with empty motorways and acres of obstruction-free asphalt ahead. And it must be a terrible shock when it all comes to a democratically-ordained end.
Which differentiates them from most of the folks they socialise with in Hollywood. One of the biggest actresses in town – a woman who, in industry jargon, can “open a movie” – complained to a few of us one day over lunch that the real problem with the president’s visits is that the authorities shut down the airport. “You have to wait for hours,” she said.
I gingerly replied that this probably wasn’t due to the president’s visit. They only close the airspace around Los Angeles airport, I said, for the few minutes the president’s plane is either landing or taking off.
She shrugged. “Maybe,” she said, “but I’m not talking about that airport. I’m talking about the private one in Santa Monica. They shut that for, like, hours.”
You know you’ve reached a certain level of society when you can listen to an extremely privileged person complain that the privileges of another extremely privileged person somehow inconvenience her. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, I have to get to the Los Angeles airport early to beat the traffic and fight the security lines and struggle on board and skirmish for space in the overhead bins.
I thought all of those things to myself, but what I said was: “Oh, wow. That sounds like a nightmare.”
She nodded. In me, she felt, she had found a kindred spirit. “Will I see you at JJ’s house?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
But of course I did miss it, because the ticket price was roughly equal to that of a solidly dependable small car. If she noticed that I wasn’t there and asks about it later, I know what I’ll say. “Couldn’t get there,” I’ll say. “Too much traffic.”
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl