I don’t know much about birds or Capistrano, but TV writers and critics have returned to Beverly Hills for the summer TV critics press tour that starts today with a roster of set visits from Wisteria Lane to the Braverman home (on another fictional street) used in “Parenthood.”
In the middle, there are stops at the set of a new show about sexy spies called “Undercovers” (get it?) and a ride on the “King Kong” ride at Universal. Hey, I still haven’t been on “The Simpsons” ride..
Good to see my colleagues from farflung areas, all dealing with the same kind of problems of the newspaper industry, still working to inform and entertain their audiences despite conditions.
It’s a shorter press tour than the summer events sometimes are. Which is a good thing in many ways – these things would stretch out to three weeks at time and you’d get sick of even the most deluxe hotels.
But this time, networks are packing all of their new fall offerings into one day sessions, into which they’ve also added in sessions from their cable holdings. Days start earlier, too, at 8 or 8:30 a.m. instead of the normal 9.
Writers still have to find time to do writing amid all the action. Fewer of us hold stories to run at their leisure in the fall and just go with it, in many cases, as it happens. And the socializing is important too.
The weather in Beverly Hills seemed a little cold to me; of course that’s coming from the East Coast, where it’s been up to 100 a few times already this summer.
And the hotel is very nice. Got a room back at pool level, which is a cool area. Until I found that I have a speaker that plays lite jazz at annoying levels right outside my door all day long. So I haven’t been sliding the door open. (If the music were better, I don’t think I would have minded.)
A friend over in a different area of the hotel swears she’s two doors from Russell Hantz, the “Survivor” troll. Judging from his actions in two straight seasons, I think I’d change rooms if I were her. That’s the fun here, though: Weird, low grade celebrities among the reporters, who are pretty weird and lowgrade ourselves.
It’s a pleasant enough town of course. Saw a homeless guy with a sign that said “SAG is to Blame!” That is to say, the Screen Actors Guild. The sign also said he knew Frank Sinatra. These are two facts that are left off of signs of most homeless people outside of Los Angeles, I imagine.
I’ll be updating progress from the TV Critics Press tour in this space throughout the event. As Jed Clampett used to say, “Y’all come back, y’hear?”