Saturday 25 July 2009

Geeking in L.A.

Originally published on official Sci Fi Channel websites in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Russia.

Before heading to Comic-Con in San Diego I spent a few days in L.A. with director of Schrödinger's Girl Huw Bowen and fellow actor in the film Damian Hayes (www.damianhayes.com). Between the meetings, the huge amounts of food and attempting to adapt our pasty English selves to the heat we managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing and I spotted a few things along the way that I thought you might like.

First off, advertising is totally different in L.A. to how it is in England. If there's a film coming out soon you'll not only see posters and TV ads for it but also a mass of other innovative and unusual marketing strategies and I particularly liked the 'go back where you came from, alien scum' themed advertising that's been done for upcoming feature 'District 9' (which, from the looks of the trailer, is going to kick a serious amount of rear end). A lot of L.A.'s public benches are now officially for humans only and there are similar signs all over the place - busses, toilets... It's very cool. Humans rule. Whoo!

Of course there was the obligatory trip up to the Hollywood hills to see the famous sign and while we were up there we popped into the observatory for a good healthy dose of science (and some tesla coil-fuelled 'Tomb Raider: Legend' flashbacks). I also had to check out the legendary walk of fame which, despite sounding quite grand, is really just a normal street which just happens to have a bunch of stars embedded along it. To the side of this street, however, I found the footprints and signatures of R2D2, Anthony Daniels and Darth Vader, immortalized forever in concrete during the 1977 promotion for Star Wars. Nice.

Yoda appears to have relocated here from Dagobah and I must admit I'm sorely tempted to do the same. What a fantastic town. This is just the warm-up for this trip, though - next stop San Diego for Comic-Con!

Eeep, squeee and other sounds of barely restrained excitement,

Milly x

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