Looking East From California

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 5, 1999 | by Jamie Dettmer

In mind and spirit, Tinseltown is about as far outside the famous Washington Beltway as one can get, How do things look from Hollywood as the movie industry prepares to celebrate itself?

The nation's scandal-wracked capital and its smoke-filled rooms seem far away. In the no-smoking restaurants along West Hollywood's traffic-choked Sunset Boulevard, and in the clean-air hotel bars of the Avenue of the Stars, the chatter isn't about Beverly Hills' most famous native daughter Monica "The Thong" Lewinsky or even about the potential damage wrought on U.S. national security by spies pilfering U.S. nuclear secrets for President Clinton's "strategic partner," otherwise known as China. Matters dearer to L.A. hearts predominate instead.

It was the second week of March, and the L.A. media were focused on two movie-industry stories: the surprise death from a heart attack of maverick director Stanley Kubrick, and the aggressive marketing and lobbying blitz by movie titan Miramax, which is seeking to raise industry support for its Oscar-nominated film Shakespeare in Love. Politicos may believe that there is nothing like a presidential race to generate heat, but they have no idea. In the run-up to Tinseltown's favorite annual awards ceremony, punches are not spared and even old pals are happy to engage in a no-holds-barred war with each other in their bid to grasp a little gold figurine or two. Of course, millions of dollars of box-office returns ride on who wins and who loses.

"Shakespeare Ad Blitz Has Ryan Returning Fire" was the headline in the arts and entertainment section of the Los Angeles Times. The subhead read: "Miramax's $15 million onslaught heats up Oscar campaign at DreamWorks. Outbreaks of sniping reported." The competition between Miramax head Harvey Weinstein and DreamWorks bosses Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who are lobbying for their movie, Saving Private Ryan, to sweep this year's honors, has Hollywood agog. And the military metaphors pour forth whenever the clash between the movie giants is described. Both studios accuse the other of strong-arm tactics, of underhandedness and even of --heaven forfend --planting false stories in the press. It all makes the start-up of the year 2000 White House race seem limp by comparison.

In some ways, admittedly, that isn't difficult. Who can blame Californians for being singularly underwhelmed by the crop of White House wanna-bes so far officially in the race? The presidential declaration by Lamar Alexander and exploratory-campaign announcement by Elizabeth Dole during the second week of March hardly were the stuff of suspense-driven movies. Neither of them came out of the blue, having been trailered heavily in advance.

And no one realized that Alexander actually had stopped running since the last presidential election. Washington's Week was under the firm impression that the former Bush education secretary was engaging merely in a fashion run when he appeared on March 9 before a row of unfurled American flags in a marble-columned chamber in the Tennessee capitol. Wasn't this just an event to announce a change of campaign wardrobe-from last season's red-and-black flannel shirt and old lumberjack boots to this year's line of dress-down duds and somber charcoal business suits?

Certainly Manhattan Beach's Daily Breeze newspaper thought so, relegating to page A5 its report on "Alexander Confirms Bid for Presidency" (that's the kind of headline to sell newspapers) and leading instead on a story about the local chamber of commerce using a private gumshoe to investigate the motives and background of the author of a controversial community initiative (sounds almost Washingtonian).

All politics is local, as the cliche goes--and that in many ways is as it should be. Most people are not ideologues and they vote--if they vote at all--because of issues they believe directly affect them and their kids. The local issues dominating the voter-rich state of California are ones Democrats long have claimed as their own --education, Social Security and health care. Away from movie news, the California media are full of coverage of all three.

Education tops the list in the Golden State, as it did last year during the gubernatorial race when Democrat Gray Davis ran hard on a platform of improving the quality of curriculum and teachers and trounced the education-deaf Republican Dan Lungren. As L.A. Times columnist George Skelton wrote recently, "For some time, education has been the winning issue for California politicians."

With new figures showing that California ranks next to last nationally in fourth-grade reading skills, education seems set to have a lot of electoral steam behind it. A survey conducted there by GOP pollster Steve Kinney suggests that 80 percent of voters identify the sorry state of California's schools as their No. 1 concern. From anecdotal evidence--conversations with Californians from all walks of life --there are scant signs that the Republicans are trusted to fix the problem, partly because few people have any notion of the GOP's ideas on education. After the president's "Mediscare" performance in the last election, they're also doubtful about entrusting Republicans with healthcare reform.