Mean Streets Hollywood Milieu©2010

Written by Denny Dormody

I’ve walked through snow on these streets. I’ve actually slept on these streets. These aren’t the mean streets on the wrong-side of Crenshaw Boulevard here in LA. These are the New York mean streets here in Burbank. The mean streets on the back lot at Warner Brothers.

How many times have I walked these streets? Let me count the ways. As a cop on ER I’ve wandered the store fronts, armed with a plastic weapon. I’ve played a high school principal visiting with grieving students on the Midwest street after one of their own was killed in a freak accident on The Ghost Whisperer. I know these back lot streets, like the back of my hand. When I walk these streets I feel calm and at peace. Like when a babe loves only you and your six-pack. Only you and your six-pack of Bud Light.

I’ve sat at a fancy restaurant on Embassy Row nursing a glass of phony red wine on the now-gone short-lived vampire show Midnight. Nearby on French Street, I shook hands with singer-songwriter Dave Mathews, after his make-up call on Zohan.

Aerial View of Warner Brothers Image by HeliPhoto.net

I’ve had a few fake brewskies inside Ike Ryan’s Irish Pub. Once, while sitting across the street from Ike Ryan’s, I fell asleep. I’m dozing off on the curb in front of the famous theater facade. Imagine me, dozing off! It was a 14 hour day on ER, an almost all-niter and at 330 am on a Saturday morning, I took a quick cat nap to recharge the acting batteries.

The parking lot. Near Gate 7. Off Forest Lawn Drive. I played a UFO Roswell geek convention fan. A convention of geeks with pen protectors big and small, complete with alien autopsies on The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

For TV’s Without a Trace, I’ve driven my car in a twenty-car traffic loop on Warner Brother’s Hennesy Street around the corner from ER’s Chicago Jumbo Mart.

Stage 23. The West Wing’s Requiem for John Spencer. President Martin Sheen shakes hands with all the background extras. What a guy. A few seasons earlier. Stage 18. The West Wing had been ‘picked up’ for a second season. Actors and extras all toasted with bubbly champagne in Dixie cups.

Riding The HOLLYWOOD GLACIER

Batman Returns. Early background work. I needed to cauterize my cash flow. Gotham City. It’s winter. Overcoats. Scarfs. The air conditioning is on so high, you can see your breath. Nasty shape-shifter Christopher Walken speaks to the citizens. Friends. Romans. Machine-gun toting Harlequin clowns arrive on bicycles and add madness to the mayhem. The stunt guys told us to let them do the heavy lifting in the scene. We did.

Lately, on these streets and all across this cool lot I’ve worked as a background extra on Aussie Simon Baker’s detective TV show The Mentalist.

From James Cagney’s The Public Enemy to Humphrey Bogart’s Casablanca to Bette Davis’s Now Voyager to Jame Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause to Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby to George Clooney playing Danny Ocean in Ocean’s 11, the Warner Brothers back lot glows with the magic of stories well told. This is one cool place.

Another cool place or places: The screening room in the shadows of the WB water tower where I saw Invictus weeks before anyone else. The commissary with lunch time computer and wi-fi access. A great place to g-mail acting submissions to LA Casting. The WB museum with memorabilia, like scripts from The Departed and props from the Harry Potter movie franchise. The WB Mill store with DVD discounts. The Brooklyn brown stones on Ashley Avenue. Phony streets. Phony store fronts. I feel right at home.

I’m going to keep acting. To pay my bills. To put food on the table. You know, I’m going to keep walking these mean streets. You know these mean streets, aren’t so mean after all.

Denny Dormody is a Los Angeles Times Magazine published comedy writer and author of Riding the Hollywood Glacier: dennydormody@gmail.com