Ode to Hollywood

This summer was full of excitment for those of us who witnessed first hand the behind the scenes action related to a movie filming in our Green Harbor neighborhood.   Hollywood came to town to shoot a movie called "The Way, Way Back."   What has always been a mostly quiet street became a busy thoroughfare during the months of June and July. 

Several of the cast and crew members including the Executive Producer, Directors/Writers and Actors lived in several of the homes around me.   In total, we heard that around one hundred people were involved in the making of the movie.    It was commonplace to see stars and cast pedaling their bikes, or riding in golf carts to and from the filming site including Toni Colette, Mya Rudolfand Steve Carell.

One Saturday morning in June many cars started arriving for what seemed like a movie kick-off meeting in the Directors' house next door.  We saw many of the primary figures working on the movie such as George Parra (Executive Producer), Jim Rash and Nat Faxon (Directors/Writers), Liam James (Boy Star), Toni Colette (Actress).    Other nights including the infamous 3rd of July attracted the cast and crew to the house to enjoy our annual party and fireworks spectacle for as far as the eye can see.   My interest in the movie didn't take over my life, but I do confess that I was keeping close tabs on the activity whenever I was around.

I wasn't the only one.  Interested observers from near and far made a daily walk, bike ride, or car ride down our street to investigate what was happening on the movie during the weeks they were shooting.  Although I did hear some neighborhood grumbling at times regarding traffic and road closures, I was thinking how lucky we were to have all this excitment happening right in our midst.   It's not every day that a movie is filmed on your doorstep.


They left yesterday so things are getting back to normal.  There are no transport vans and equipment trucks rumbling by, nor is there any police detail preventing stray cars from wandering down to the movie set.

I thought it was quite a coincidence when I came across an advertisement for an art contest entitled "Ode to Hollywood."   I immediately thought of a couple of "in-progress" scenes that I had witnessed that captured the feel of the movie being filmed, and something I could paint.    I decided on a scene depicting a segment in which a car was driving down the street toward a young girl on a bicycle.   Multiple takes were done of this scene using a big white screen measuring about twenty feet high and fifteen feet wide.   The screen was erected across the road, presumably to mask the houses and spectators further down on the corner.    To the right of the white screen, some under a white umbrella, were a dozen or more movie crew members with equipment, filming, directing and watching the scene unfold.

I began with a previously painted canvas of bright warm blocks of color, entitled "three." (Triplets, three legged dog, three breasted woman). I turned it upside down to do a block in of the painting it was going to become.   If you want to see the old painting right side up, either turn your computer up side down, or stand on your head - haha.


For the painting, I liked working on the challenge of various distances from the far beach houses to the crowd of movie crew characters, the car and the primary focal point, the girl on the bike.   The span of distance was probably a quarter of a mile.  The bright colorful crowd balanced the larger blocks of neutral areas (screen, houses, pavement).   I painted the very busy area of the movie crew crowd by thinking of it as an abstract area colored shapes and dots, at least for the first pass.   Then I stepped back and assessed if this area looked like a crowd of people.   Because the photo I was working from was taken from a long distance, the bumps in the street make the yellow double line disappear and reappear with the changing levels.



Girl on Bicycle - Take Two

Okay.  I am out of time.  No danger of overworking this painting for the contest as I will submit it today.   I still welcome comments and reserve the right to fine tune further as always.

 I cannot wait to see this movie and match up what I saw to what is actually happening in the film.   Fascinating!








Postscript:   The painting was selected for display at the Jeanie Madsen Gallery in Santa Monica, CA as part of the "Ode to Hollywood" Exhibition, from August 25 through September, 2012.