No Man’s Land

Posted on 03 February 2010

I was turning left off Barham Boulevard the other evening from Warner Brother’s Studios where I had been preparing to direct The Mentalist for CBS. It had been a good day, a fun day – scouting locations, casting, going over the script. I was headed toward Hollywood, along Caheunga Boulevard West. It’s a strange road as you come through the pass from “the valley” into LA proper. On the right there is chaparral (scrub and rocks – generally bleak hillsides, but green from the recent heavy rains). Almost a wilderness, except near the top there are high-end modern and post-modern homes, looking out over the city. On the left is the Hollywood Freeway – a brutal mass of complex concrete with hurtling cars and trucks.

Caheunga Boulevard is a lot of concrete too – four curving lanes’ worth – and one can almost keep even with the freeway traffic, which makes the whole experience a bit dangerous. Street lamps zip by. There are no sidewalks. Pockets of litter swirl anxiously. Its a kind of a purgatory with hell emanating from the nasty freeway traffic to your left and heaven drifting down somewhere from up there in the hills. I was slowing for a traffic light that leads off to Mulholland Drive on the right. David Lynch made a movie, Mullholland Drive.

A bus was just in front, cars scattered around me, waiting for the light – rumbling – a slight shimmer of exhaust. It was just in front of the bus that I saw this man kiss another man, balanced on the cracked curb with only a dirt path behind him. Why did this kiss catch me – I’d seen plenty of men kiss each other before? The location was strange, sure, but that wasn’t it. The taller of the two was the one being kissed. The shorter man (a bit overweight) was also gently slipping a jacket over this taller man’s shoulders. The cars were edging forward now so my view was improving. Both men had shaved heads. Were they Buddhists? Were they gay? Their clothes seemed monkish, but maybe it was just that baggy fashion – hip, street-smart. It’s hard to remember. Actually the kisser – kissing the taller man on the face now again – then again – then again – seemed like a boy. Like a baby, even though he was probably thirty-five or forty. Too much affection for a man that age. Too much abandon. Was he retarded? Yes. No.

The cars were getting edgy. The shorter man adjusted the lapel of the taller man’s maroon jacket with the gentleness and affection of a coddling mother. It was just not right. Too intimate. Had the taller man been bare-chested before the jacket? Yes. No. Was my jarred imagination playing dirty tricks? They didn’t seem gay. The shorter one did seem retarded, though, or something, or…

The light turned. All the cars and bus quickly picked up speed as the shorter man clung to the maroon jacket, which I now saw had cowboy-like designs, stitched black and circular. This shorter man (growing smaller now) pulled the taller man’s head down to his chest so that he could kiss the top of the taller man’s shaved head over and over and over. The taller man, almost unperturbed, seemed suddenly like a big brother, but it was all too troubling and my rear view mirror was losing them. Awful. Creepy. Only now the skyline of Hollywood was rising up to greet me with its familiar buildings, billboards and neon. Off to my right was the overwhelming and comforting mall of Hollywood and Highland. A splash of lined-up brake lights turned everything red and glowing. All of it helped to pull me into the comforting, inhuman and predictable safety of concrete, steel and glass.