I do teleprompting for a living. Recently I had a job where our location was on Rodeo Drive. Like, on the sidewalk, in front of Chanel.
Rodeo Drive is a VERY rarefied atmosphere, and you better have a permit to shoot there or else. The producers had obtained a valid permit, we all dressed up in our best jeans, and we still had four visits from the Permit Enforcers. One grinning cop had just come from busting a hapless Japanese film crew. The fresh notch on his gun handle did not escape me.
Turns out the BH Permit Department, which had ok'd a teleprompter for the production, thought a teleprompter was just a monitor. They were unhappy to learn that it includes batteries (because you can't plug into a palm tree, people), and worse, a blue collar person to run it, who sits in a chair, all in full view of rich people. The cop was eyeballing my Coleman camping chair and threatened that he may have to take it away from me because it was not Herman Miller.
I do understand. Rodeo Drive is ALL about image. Which of these two images screams "Rodeo Drive" to you?
A) Woman in scruffy camping chair doing professional work on the sidewalk
B) Woman in designer kneepads doing professional work on the sidewalk
Of course the right answer is B).
But if they were going to arrest my chair, I'd be ok because I'd already picked out a pair of Chanel kneepads in Orchid Haze that would not only be a business expense, but useful at home (particularly over the holidays).
BH residents take no shit off anyone trying to parallel park on Rodeo Drive; they just lay on the horn until the driver is bleeding from the ears and drives off to the hospital and then they take their parking space. Do you know how LOUD a Rolls Royce horn is? OMG.
Larry King strode by on his morning Rodeo Drive constitutional... I saw Reese Witherspoon in the Chanel Kneepad aisle, and Sylvester Stallone walked by us having a very animated conversation with another guy, the main recognizeable words of which were "fuck", "fuckin'," and "fuckin' asshole." Twenty minutes later, Stallone and the same guy walk back past us. This time the recognizeable words were, "shit", "shitty", and "shitfaced asshole." I enjoy being around the rich and classy.
The Permit cop didn't confiscate my chair. I'm glad about that. And Tom is very complimentary of my new kneepads...
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