REMAKE, REMODEL

 

Soon to become the Paramount Apartments?

What happens to a company town when the company leaves? Detroit provides an answer. Los Angeles could be next.

You may have heard that the Ellison family has threatened to move Paramount and Warner Bros. from Hollywood to the more welcoming corral of Austin, Texas if the merger isn't approved. 

Everybody sing: Hooray for Bayonne-wood!

It's not like the movie business hasn't been moving for years anyway. Paramount has already signed a 10-year deal to use soundstages at 1888 Studios in -- what the? -- Bayonne, New Jersey when construction is finished in 2028. Its art deco design will hark back to the movie industry's golden age -- which, if you want to get all technical, started in New Jersey.  The area on which it stands includes 22 acres of the surrounding harbor, where even more stages will be constructed on barges. Beat that, Burbank!

View of downtown, fully furnished,
move-in-ready.

I have no dog in this fight. Yes, I have a good friend in L.A. who works in "the industry" but I believe (or hope) he's been working steadily. And it isn't like Universal, Disney, and the others will fold their gilded tents overnight and move out. Yet if you scroll through enough videos of what downtown Los Angeles looks like these days, you'd think the place was dead already.

Television production has already been sneaking out the back door. It seems like for every series filmed in L.A., there's another filming in New York, New Jersey, Canada, or, in the case of the Fox sitcom Going Dutch, Ireland. Yes, it's cheaper to film an American TV series in Ireland than keeping the all-American cast in L.A. Want to hear something screwier? The show takes place in the Netherlands. 

Ship to shore no more.

Risk-averse studios being so fond of remakes begs the question: Could Hollywood remake itself? Such a thing can be done. I know, because I come from a town that was forced to do such a thing: Newport, RI.

Rewind to 1973. Pres. Richard Nixon orders the Navy Base closed after 143 years of patriotic service. Somewhere between 14,000 to 18,000 jobs were lost, sending local unemployment up 20% and costing a billion dollars to the economy. Even the Secretary of the Navy, hauled before Congress by Sen. John Pastore, admitted it wasn't necessarily a good idea. Officially, it was a cost-cutting measure, but suspicious locals claimed Nixon was still ticked off Rhode Island voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. 

Newport as I don't want to remember it.

Newporters went into a panic. What would they do without all those swabbies throwing their money around at the bars, tattoo parlors, and hookers? (I don't know for a fact there was sex trade in Newport, but where there's a horny military man...)

As the last ship sailed, the locals took a second look and realized that in depending only the Navy Base and summer tourists, they had allowed much of the city, especially the downtown shopping district, go to seed. 

Almost makes me want to visit the old place again.
Almost.

Over the next few years, the downtown area underwent a radical transformation. Rickety storefronts were razed, replaced by shiny new businesses. A new road made transportation easier, streets were cleaned, and shoppers returned.

As tourism gradually became a year-round business, Revolutionary War-era houses were restored and repainted, to resemble their original selves. The long-gone Jazz and Folk Festivals returned, this time on sunny afternoons along the water, all ages welcome. No longer was the Newport Creamery the epitome of fine dining, not with all the classy restaurants popping up along Thames Street. Even my crumbling old high school was rebuilt. 

Ignore this, however.

Newport completely remade itself -- and it took a potential disaster like the Navy Base to

do it. 

Now I'm not comparing my hometown to L.A., even if it does have something called NewportFilm, described as "A year-round documentary film organization presenting screenings, filmmaker conversations, and educational programs." But if those provincial folks could revitalize their city, surely the cosmopolitan Angelenos are capable of something similar. A brand-spanking new Navy Base could do the trick! 

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