Life on the sleazy stage

DESPITE failing to finish my first PhD (which was, ironically, about why people fail to finish their PhDs), I am pleased to announce that I have just completed a second doctoral research thesis, about the meal that sets you up for the day: breakfast. After lengthy investigation, I can confirm that the box containing Special K is tastier than the Special K itself (though I haven't managed to track down a packet of Normal K with which to compare it). I have also established that the French begin eating their cereal at 7:59 precisely (that's why it's called huit heures bix), and have defined the correct ingredients for a "Boxer's Breakfast" (eaten by people who never get up before 10am). But most fascinating of all is the " California Breakfast" because, if you take out the fruits and the nuts, you're left with the flakes.

Miles of recording tape has been wasted on Californian flakes in the past few years, but experience has taught me that the real flakes in LA are usually found behind the camera. Like the motley crew who brought us last night's Hollywood Vice (E4), "a tale of excess" filmed entirely in West Hollywood, where some 300,000 people congregate each Friday night to party right through the weekend. Despite a thin veneer of editorial disdain, and a dispassionately haughty narration (Kate Buffery sounding not unlike Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children, only on Mogadon), the whole production was dubiously flaky from start to finish.

And beneath the tone of mild disapproval lay the same voyeuristic principles that fuel Ibiza Uncovered and Club Reps, the whoresandbores format of testosterone, titties, beer and cops that is increasingly being smeared across our screens like excrement.

With New York still in a shocked semi-coma, Los Angeles has become the city that never sleeps (and it really does look like it next morning), so the camera didn't have to work hard to find plenty of nocturnal lowlife to film.

Young women happily flashed their breasts at the lens (having first made sure that the red light was on and that this was a bona fide recording, because they weren't sluts, they were aspiring actresses), gangs of teenage girls powdered their noses and screwed in public, and regulars at the Rainbow Rooms boasted of the establishment's top-notch clientele ("porn stars, rock stars, groupies, everything you want"). Almost every Lalaland clich was here, from the police car shrieking along Sunset Boulevard to pixilated shots of pixilated people, although the director did at least avoid filming the HOLLYWOOD sign (the establishing shot beloved of third-rate documentary crews, who shoot it the moment they step off the plane). Did I ever tell you that I used to live in that sign? It's true. If you look very closely at old documentaries about Tinsel Town, you'll probably see me relaxing in the crux of the Y, or exercising like a giant hamster by running inside the O, or using the H to practise my rugby kicks. I was a star in those days, I tell you, I was big. In fact, I still am big. It's the pictures that got small.

To lend a spurious air of social responsibility to this chronicle of debauchery, we also followed a police patrol car and listened to the heady philosophy of its occupant, Deputy Cort Bishop. Cort ( presumably short for corticallychallenged) was a wannabee actor who seemed more interested in his ambition than in his job. Despite having more than 100 calls to attend to each night, he was never too busy to offer parking favours to soap starlets (in return for photoopportunities), or to reminisce about the time he stood near Billy Bob Thornton. In between celebrity encounters, he scooped inert bodies off the sidewalk and tried to persuade a failed stand-up comedian not to commit suicide, though I don't know why he bothered. I mean, how can you protect someone whose profession involves dying every night on stage?

IN the early stages of assembling a documentary, producers or directors usually record a first rough reading of the script (known as the "gash") for editing purposes, before a professional voiceover artist is hired for the final version.

Last night's narration would barely have passed muster even as a gash, and the construction of the programme was equally crude, not to mention hypocritically tabloidal, taking the moral high ground yet seemingly getting involved in coke snorting (isn't that contrary to ITC rulings?). The result was an artless, brainless version of an Andy Warhol movie, without even the wit to elaborate on the irony of a cop who wants to become a thespian.

After all, most policemen can act the arse off your typical Rada graduate (their repertoire running the gamut from roadside sarcasm to extreme intimidation), and some of the barefaced lies I used to hear pouring from the mouths of cops in court during my days as a cub reporter truly deserved an Oscar.

Copyright 2002
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