Anya Benton retweetledi
Dear LA,
The industry is not coming back.
In the entertainment capital of the world - “Hollywood” - there are fewer television shows and movies being produced today than when Governor Newsom was arresting people for going to the beach.
The downstream carnage is piling up across our city, and we aren’t going to shame or strike or tax our way out of it.
Drive down Sunset Blvd and you’ll see countless “Jay Luchs - For Lease” signs draped like flowers at a funeral.
Ask your friends working in retail, restaurants, or real estate just how bad things are, and you’ll be reminded that every business in our city flows downstream of the entertainment industry, the sword that LA lives by, and dies by.
Rick Caruso, native Angeleno, creator of the Grove, & former mayoral candidate, has recently begun pleading to “bring Hollywood back,” ironically via TikTok, in order to protect all of the adjacent “below the line” businesses.
It is the right end goal but the wrong strategy.
But what can Mr Caruso do to bring Hollywood back?
Ask the unions to ease up? They run this town, even when they cut off their nose to spite their face.
Ask Sacramento to give up their fruitless addiction to over-taxation & regulation? It would be easier to convince Count Dracula to give up blood.
Ask consumers to change their tastes and abandon TikTok? He’d certainly have my blessing, but that ship has sailed.
We can build our way out of LA’s cost-of-housing problem, as Caruso has rightfully pointed out, but more housing alone won’t be enough to save Los Angeles, any more than it would have been able to save Detroit after their own respective monopoly [automobiles] crumbled.
Beyond rebrands & gimmicks & political rhetoric, the time has come for a complete product refresh, starting with a reimagining of how LA entertains the world.
My idea is simple: pivot Los Angeles from the capital of production to the global capital of LIVE entertainment, events, & hospitality.
Almost everyone needed in production, and every business downstream of production, has a year-round parallel role to offer in the AI-proof world of LIVE events.
Actors can continue to delight audiences, but with a greater emphasis on in-person performances.
Production services can become event logistics providers.
And for everyone else it will be an all-hands-on-deck effort to ideate & create the new California dream.
Outside of the highly protected walls of Disneyland, a few gated communities in Brentwood, and the smoothie bar at Erewhon we’ve earned a bad reputation.
The tourist consensus is that LA is dirty, dangerous, & disappointing.
New travelers come to LA as a bucket list item, most vowing to never return, which never seemed to bother anyone, perhaps because previously we just didn’t need their business.
We need to become the city that people want to date, not take out for a one-night-stand.
And that starts by no longer acting like the prom-queen who peaked in high school.
We need to collectively clean up & reorganize our entire city from LAX-it’s uber-lot-from-hell all the way to the open air drug markets surrounding our hotels.
And I’m sorry if this hurts Mayor Bass’ feelings, but our inability to manage our addiction & mental health crisis should not be the burden of our guests.
The easiest place to start is Hollywood, my home of 18 years.
10,000,000 people travel annually to the Hollywood Walk of Fame despite its dubious honor as “the worst tourist trap in the world.”
Imagine a walk-of-fame permanently closed to car traffic, protected by security, with an open-carry-beverage farmer’s market, minus the pushy hustlers, that takes over the asphalt, leaving the stars for guided experiences.
Why-oh-why do we expect travelers to care about stars from 50 years ago when we refuse to make any effort to give them minimal context?
I see an LA that can take the same movie magic that made it the best marketed city on earth, and use it to deliver a travel experience that warrants a 2nd, 3rd & 4th helping.
The Olympics & World Cup both present once-in-a-generation opportunities for Los Angeles to reintroduce itself on a global stage.
But these tentpole events should be considered the grand re-opening of LA, not the grand finale.
Every celebrity on earth should already be living here, assuming they haven’t fled for their family’s own well being after we seemingly abandoned law & order sometime around 2020, so it is easy to imagine around the clock creator driven events led by Gen-Z stars from Mr Beast to Alix Earle, galvanizing their fan bases alongside our own versions of Graceland for names like Cruise, Hepburn, & Kobe.
This plan offers a little bit of something for everyone, even our wealth-gap obsessed activist class, as hospitality outcomes are flatter and more egalitarian, something our Hollywood elite at least claim they want.
The biggest challenge to making Los Angeles the LIVE entertainment capital of the world will be getting our political leaders to stop sabotaging us with endless red tape, excuses, and kleptocracy.
Rampant political corruption has been enabled by LA’s toothless media who, aside from Elex Michaelson & Bill Melugin - both formerly of FoxLA, have been unable to hold our politicians accountable.
Reality TV star turned Influencer turned mayoral candidate (as of yesterday) Spencer Pratt has been effective in keeping the media from completely ignoring the victims of the Palisades fire, but LA still considers my former employers - KTLA & the LA TIMES- to be the watchdogs of record.
Without mainstream media support I fear our new media warriors won’t be enough to prevent leaders like Gavin Newsom & Karen Bass from continuing to pillage California with a trail of failed programs, despite bottomless budgets, that make Minnesota’s recently unearthed $18 billion fraud scheme seem like, forgive my pun, kiddie stakes.
Can someone please light the Bat-Signal for Nick Shirley? Gotham *cough cough* I mean LA needs him.
Some might remember in the last mayor's race when Karen Bass said that if we elected Rick Caruso “he’d just turn LA into The Grove!”
I believe the Grove’ification of LA is exactly what we need to successfully pivot as a city, and it would ultimately mean cheaper housing, better jobs for everyone, and happier repeat travelers.
So to echo Elex Michaelson, who aptly quipped back at Bass, “what’s wrong with that?”
But why hasn’t Caruso declared himself in the next mayor’s race?
Maybe it’s because he has his sights set on a California gubernatorial run or maybe he just doesn’t want to risk another disheartening defeat.
Not even his inner circle knows what he’ll do next.
But I do know one thing…
Many of the most successful people in the world call California home and we are going to need them if Los Angeles is ever going to make its comeback.
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