August 14, 2008: Warner Bros Studios and the Craig Ferguson Show

All right, so I'm a "wee" bit behind in finishing off this trip blog. Sigh. The last two days in L.A. were ultra-busy and I kept saying I'd finish as soon as I got home, and, well...you know. But I was just looking at the photos again and remembering how much fun we had during the Warner Bros tour, so I finally got my butt in gear. So here's the play-by-play of what happened on our second-to-last day in California:

In the pic above, Sarah is standing in front of the hilltop Griffith Observatory, which apparently has lovely exhibits related to astronomy and myriad matters celestial, but we'll never know, because the damned guidebook got the opening hours WRONG! So much for our plan to check it out before our scheduled tour at the Warner Brothers Studio lot. The outside was kinda cool to look at though - the building has been featured in many films, from "Rebel Without a Cause" and "The Terminator", to that seminal cultural touchstone, "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle."

As we wound our way back down the hill, I managed to impress the heck out of Sarah with my uncanny ability to locate sources of really good food in the unlikeliest of places. I'd spotted a pie stand on the way up and insisted we try some on the way back down. After all, it was almost time for "elevensies". Let me go on record as saying the "Trails" cafe near Griffith Park has THE. MOST. AWESOMEST PIE. EVER. Note Sarah's soul-crushing disappointment at having finished most of hers. She had apple. I had strawberry-rhubarb. It was all home-made and still warm. The cafe is right in the middle of the park and they have tables under big leafy trees. Perfect.

As we continued our journey, I had a momentary thrill when I spotted a whole bunch of firetrucks parked by the road. Everyone knows I LOVE firefighters. Sadly, there were none in sight. It seems they park the rigs throughout the usual hotspots in L.A., so that if there's a wildfire, the crews already have their vehicles in place without having to battle L.A. traffic to get there. Sensible, yet disappointing on a deeply visceral level.

While doing our pre-trip info gathering, I discovered that there are many "studio" tours offered in L.A., but the one that comes most highly recommended is the Warner Bros Studio tour. It's not cheap ($45) per person, but definitely worth it. They take you around in small groups (10 people) for about 2 hours. Tickets are best ordered in advance because they often sell out. The whole adventure begins with a brief video introduction in a screening room and then everyone piles into one of those canopied golf cart thingees that seats 12. Our guide was yet another screenwriter/script editor in the making and was full of interesting anecdotes about the back lot and the shows/movies that have been filmed there.

Sarah's a real "Gilmore Girls" fan, and was excited to see the outdoor facades for Lorelai and Suki's homes. She actually managed to convince our guide to take us through the garage out back to see the "front" of Lorelai's home, which crew were in the process of cleaning out. It's actually a single structure, with two "fronts", so they can film on either side.

Construction crews were also in the process of rebuilding the town square from "Ghost Whisperer". The original set had been at Universal Studios and had burnt down in a recent fire. You can find all the pics on my Flickr page.

The generic "downtown, big city" street set is used for lots of movies and TV shows, including "ER" and the "Spiderman" movies. While we were listening to the guide's descriptions, the actor who plays Dr. Archie Grimes (Scott Morris) on ER pedalled by on his bike. They were in the middle of shooting the first few episodes of the last season of ER. We also got an up-close look at the "Central Perk" set from "Friends". It's amazing how much smaller the sets are in real life. They're also constructed to be much more shallow because depth of field is so exaggerated on camera.

The tour ended with a brief visit to their historical collection housed in the on-site Warner Bros museum. I wish we'd had more time, because they have the actual costumes from many of their big Oscar-winning productions and well-known television shows. Several of the actual Oscar statuettes were also on display. I got to try on the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. All good - I ended up in Gryffindor :)

After our tour, we rushed downtown to the NBC studios so that we could be members of a "live studio audience" at the Craig Ferguson Late Late Show (yes, that's two "lates", as they kept reminding us). Very entertaining, in that it provided a behind-the-scenes look at more of the fakery involved in creating television in Hollywood. The first guest had been filmed the night before, so we were asked to provide thunderous applause for Craig's monologue and a video bit he taped in advance. He's very good at playing to the camera. And that pretty much ended our Hollywood-immersion day in L.A. THE END.