Photos From Hollywood

My wife and I took the train up to Los Angeles and the subway on to Hollywood to walk around the watch the people parade for awhile.  I took a few shots with the camera on my phone:

The first thing we were greeted with was a group of LAPD patrol cars speeding by with lights and sirens. Almost looked like a movie shoot.  I grabbed some quick video.

Our usual lunch spot is a Baja Fresh across the street from the Chinese Theater.  It's always entertaining to sit and watch the crowds and the people who dress up as various characters and take photos with the tourists.  There were no less than three Johnny Dep characters - Willie Wonka, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Mad Hatter.

We had lunch with Bill Cosby, Bette Midler and Carol Lombard.  At least with their stars which were on the sidewalk outside Baha Fresh.

I took this at the Hollywood-Highland center looking off toward the Hollywood sign on the hill in the back.

In honor of The Simpsons 500th episode they were having a fan challenge in which contestants were supposed to watch all 500 episodes back-to-back with only a 10 minute break every two hours.  The winner gets $10,000.   They were not allowed to take their eyes off the screen whenever the shows were playing.  Not enough for me.

Some of the Babylonian architecture on the Hollywood-Highland Center.

I stopped by the Capitol Records building to record my latest Top-40 hit single.  I let you know when it comes out.

Union Station in downtown L.A.

We spent the last hour or so in L.A. hanging out in Union Station.  My wife was reading her new book while munching the Valentine's Day candy I got her (yes, I shared the box).

Our ride home.

Abortion and the Movies

Rob Port has an interesting piece on the lack of abortions in the movies, and why Hollywood, a bastion of pro-choice liberals, seems so reluctant to include that barbaric practice in their pictures:

Mary Elizabeth Williams, a staff writer for Salon, is upset that in the Twilight movie the main character didn’t have an abortion. In fact, she’s upset that abortions don’t happen more often in movies in general.

She’s right about the trend. Whether it’s the Twlight movie (yes, I did go see it, though in my defense it was under duress) or other movies like Juno or Knocked Up or dozens of others I could name, abortion isn’t a common theme in the movies.

Which is curious. Hollywood, after all, is one of the great bastions of liberalism in America. Certainly abortion isn’t swept under the rug by Hollywood writers and producers because of religious, or even just generally pro-life, sympathies. There has to be some other reason for the trend, so what is it?

It’s pretty simple actually. People want heroes, or at least sympathetic characters, in their movies and there’s not a lot that’s heroic, or even sympathetic, with abortion. People want characters that overcome adversity. Abortion is a cop out.

Read the rest of it here. Rob makes some good points and I think he's right on the money.

There are plenty of examples in TV as well.  I've seen a number of Friends reruns lately, including episodes in which Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) finds herself single and pregnant and abortion doesn't even seem to be a serious consideration.  As a young, single professional woman in New York City she'd be the classic liberal abortion rights activist type.

She goes on to have the baby, and although her daughter doesn't figure prominently in future episodes, she is part of the show's story from that point on.

On the other hand, the sluts ladies of Sex and the City were regular abortion machines.  But of course, HBO targeted a different audience.

Was Hollywood Changed by 9/11?

First, this from the Daily Caller:

Disney sends 9/11 docudrama to Never Never Land -- TheDC's Matthew Boyle reports: "Activists tell The Daily Caller that The Walt Disney Company is refusing to re-air a 9/11-related docudrama, effectively burying politically inconvenient facts about the events which led to the 9/11 terror attacks, in order to protect the political future of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 'The Path to 9/11,' first aired on ABC in 2006, portrayed President Bill Clinton's administration as ignoring warnings and signs that Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were planning a major attack on the United States — a finding supported by The 9/11 Commission Report. But since 2006 Disney CEO Bob Iger has repeatedly refused to rebroadcast it, or to sell the rights to other broadcasters... 'The Path to 9/11' was nominated for seven Emmy awards, and won one. It also received an American Cinema Editors 'Eddie' award. But the film, which cost $40 million to make, has not aired in the U.S. since, nor has it been released on DVD... Tom Borelli, the director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise project and a Disney shareholder, told The Daily Caller that he has formally offered to purchase the film's rights from Disney — only to be ignored... Borelli has pressed Iger on the film's disposition at several Disney shareholder meetings, but the CEO hasn't budged for years on the issue — even telling Borelli 'F*** you!' during one such meeting." 9/11: Never forget... unless it reflects badly on the Democrats.

Protecting the Clinton Administration has been a recurring theme in Hollywood, while denigrating America has become a consistent post-911 theme.

Last night I was watching KTLA in Los Angeles and their entertainment reporter Sam Rubin did a piece on whether Hollywood was changed by 9/11. He went on to recount a number of post-911 themed movies, most of which involved war movies based in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how badly those movies did at the box office. His conclusion was that moviegoers weren't interested in the subject and that's why the movies did so poorly.

He missed the point.

These movies tanked at the box office because almost without exception they had a decidedly anti-American tone. American soldiers and policymakers were the bad guys, terrorists were just poor misunderstood freedom fighters, and all that nonsense. Americans don't want to pay good money to see their country maligned on the big screen.

The people that made these movies, like The Hurt Locker or Redacted, love to claim that such moviemaking is "courageous", but there's nothing courageous about making a film that mirrors Hollywood's animosity towards America and its military. Had someone tried to make a move showing George W. Bush as a strong leader and our military as selfless heroes, THAT would have been courageous. And that guy would probably never get a job in Hollywood again.

I'm convinced that people who make these kinds of movies don't make them for the moviegoers, they make them for each other so they can win awards and peer recognition. The Hurt Locker won an Academy Award and yet it had the poorest box office in history for an Oscar-winning movie. I'm sure that didn't really bother the producers at all. They got what they wanted.

Rubin also wondered about the next post-911 movie on the killing of Osama bin Laden which is due out next Fall. I can tell him right now that this movie will be another box office disaster. Why? Two reasons. Number one, by the time the movie comes out bin Laden will have been dead for almost a year-and-a-half and will be an afterthought for most people. Secondly, the timing of this movie is a clear attempt by Hollywood to influence the election. I guarantee you that the hero in this movie will not be Seal Team 6 that carried out the attack, but the president that ordered it. It will be seen by moviegoers as a desperate attempt to save Obama and they won't appreciate it. Nor will they buy tickets to see it.

Yes, Hollywood was changed by 9/11.  They became more rabidly anti-American and anti-military.  Maybe if a Democrat had been president when it happened and had ordered the retaliatory attacks things would be different.  We'll never know.

Entertainment Quote of the Day

From CBS:

"After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen’s services on Two and a Half Men effective immediately."

The highest paid actor on the highest rated show gets axed being too crazy even for Hollywood. And I've never even seen a single episode of the show.

Why So Many Lefties in Hollywood?

In the previous post we had dim bulb filmmaker Michael Moore explaining how rich people's money is really a natural resource that belongs to everybody.  Sadly, he's typical of the kind of lefty that infects the Hollywood community.

Pat Sajak explains why there seem to be so many of them:

At a dinner party in Washington the other night, I was asked a question I’m often asked. No, not, “Can I buy a vowel?” but, rather, “Why is Hollywood so uniformly made up of liberal Democrats?” There are a lot of theories on the subject, and I have a few of my own. First, I would strongly argue with the premise. My industry is certainly made up predominantly of liberal Democrats, but there is a surprising number found on the other side of the political spectrum. Lots of writers, producers, directors and performers are quite conservative in their views, but you don’t hear from them as much or as noisily as you do from the Left. Part of it, sadly, is the fear that they’ll suffer professionally if they’re “outed”, and a number of them have stories to tell about being confronted on the issue. But another factor is they’re far less comfortable lecturing their fellow citizens on how to live their lives. You’re much more likely to see a liberal singer interrupt his performance with a global warming diatribe than you are to see a conservative singer praising the free enterprise system between songs.

Read the rest of it here.

Hollywood Courage

Hollywood courageously stands up to all comers when it comes to offending religions...except one:

Don't mess with Allah. That's the new, unwritten code in Hollywood following the one-two punch of Islamic extremists' threats against the creators of "South Park" and the failed bombing attempt outside the cartoon’s parent company, Viacom, in New York's Times Square.

In the current, supercharged climate, it just isn’t worth endangering the safety of an entire production staff or network by pursuing a storyline that Muslim extremists might find offensive, media executives and writers tell Fox411.com.

Aasif Mandvi, a self-described “liberal Muslim” and the “senior Islamic correspondent” for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, said on air after the “South Park” threats that it would upset him to see the Prophet Muhammad depicted in a cartoon. But, he added: “Here’s what’s more upsetting. Someone, in the name of a faith that I believe in, threatening another person for doing it.”

But after the failed Times Square terror attack, "The Daily Show" asked Mandvi not to comment further on the matter, according to his spokesman. In fact, reps for the networks and television shows reached for comment on this article, including Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, FOX, NBC, and CBS, either failed to respond or asked to speak on background for fear of retribution.

And it isn’t just comedians on fake newscasts who are being muzzled. One writer for a scripted drama fold Fox411.com that in one of his show's final episodes, there had been a minor plot point involving a Muslim extremist. Last week it was removed and the script was rewritten, he said.

Hussein Rashid, religion professor and religion dispatches associate editor at Hofstra University, said he is concerned that self-censorship will lead to a shutdown of the dialogue that must continue if people can be brought to understand the true meaning of Islam.

“I don’t think it is ever smart to self-censor,” Rashid told Fox411.com. “I am a big believer that the response to speech should always be more speech. I think this ‘South Park’ episode has been good for that conversation.”

But when it comes to Islam, the conversation seems only to be getting quieter.

Meanwhile, back at the studio:

"JC" is one of 23 potential series the network said it has in development. It depicts Christ as a "regular guy" who moves to New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow."

His father is presented as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life, according to Comedy Central's thumbnail sketch of the idea. Reveille, the production company behind "The Office," "Ugly Betty" and "The Biggest Loser," is making "JC."

It wouldn't be the first time Jesus Christ has been on a Comedy Central cartoon; he's a recurring character on the long-running "South Park."

Maybe a church bus full of fertilizer parked in front of Viacom would cause them to treat Christianity with the respect they now show Islam?

But we don't do that sort of stuff.  And they can keep their heads too.

Boobs in the News

First we have Hollywood moron James Cameron calling out Glenn Beck and offering to debate global warming with him, but I'm not going to waste any more time on that idiot.

Yesterday we had the story about Disney's wench hunt for the next Pirates movie and their "no silicone" requirement, and today we have the next fad in cosmetic surgery and Islamic terrorism - Boob Bombers:

Female homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women's breasts during plastic surgery — making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines."

It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male bombers.

"Women suicide bombers recruited by Al Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery," Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims.

So, is this going to open up a whole new career path for TSA officers?

TSA Agent 1: "So, are you still in luggage searches?"

TSA Agent 2: "No, I was promoted to boob examination."

TSA Agent 1: "You get all the breaks."

For One Oscar Nominee the Magic May Be Over

I must admit I did watch the Oscars with my wife last night, but in a concession to my general hatred of the event we used the DVR to our advantage and didn't start watching until the program was already about an hour old. That way I could zip through the multitude of commercials, and zip through every acceptance speech...except Sandra Bullock's. We watched that one because she was the one nominee that I was glad to see win. She portrayed the mother in a Christian family, and an NRA member to boot, whose Christ-like behavior is a model that Hollywood rarely acknowledges, let alone honors. Hers was a surprise win.

One advantage of watching the show that way was that, thanks to Twitter, I knew who the winners were before they came on TV. I was able to make a number of amazingly accurate predictions...before my wife figured it out.

Given the way Hollywood loves to honor dreary stories and political correctness I thought for sure that newcomer Gabourey Sidibe would win for her role in Precious, a depressing piece of filmmaking that I'll never see because I can't think of anything that would interest me less. And it's her that I'm thinking about in the title of this post.

She may have been perfectly suited to the role she played in Precious, but I can't help but think she has now reached the high point of her movie career and the downhill slide will be fast. She had a Cinderella moment, but the ball's over and the clock has hit midnight. Most Oscar nominees could count on a stack of scripts to choose from for their next project, but sadly for Sidibe that's probably not happening. She may end up as the most typecast actress in history, and parts like that aren't going to come along very often. Unfortunately, her physical presence is going to be a very limiting factor for any acting career for which she might have hoped.

I hope she got the most out of her moment in the spotlight.

Oh, and next year, just go with Steve Martin. Alec Baldwin really didn't add much to the hosting duties.

Oscar Tweet of the Night

From Mark Davis (WBAP Dallas):

@markdavis:KNOCK ME OVER WITH A FEATHER! H'wood honors portrayal of a woman of God in a film about her Christlike behavior

And an NRA member at that. Congrats Sandra Bullock for her role in The Blind Side.

Bonus tweet, from Jim Nolte:

"By end of night, "Hurt Locker" will have one award for each ticket sold.

That pretty much goes along with the Drudge headline:

'BEST PICTURE' NO ONE EVER SAW

Entertainment Headline of the Day

From Fox News:

3.1M Customers Face Oscar Night Without Broadcast

Lucky 3.1 million people.

And a bonus headline:

The Real Oscar Race: Who Will Say The Dumbest Thing?

I'm guessing it will be about a 40-way tie.

Hollywood's Iraq War Fantasy

The Hurt Locker, Hollywood's latest attempt at an Iraq war movie, is a favorite for this year's Oscar but is not drawing raves from soldiers who actually served in Iraq:

Time magazine called "The Hurt Locker" "a near-perfect war film," but Ryan Gallucci, an Iraq war veteran, had to turn the movie off three times, he says, "or else I would have thrown my remote through the television."

Critics adore the film and it has been nominated for nine Oscars -- a feat matched only by "Avatar," the top-grossing movie of all time -- but Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says that's "nine more Oscar nominations than it deserves. I don't know why critics love this silly, inaccurate film so much," he wrote on his Facebook page.

Many in the military say "Hurt Locker" is plagued by unforgivable inaccuracies that make the most critically acclaimed Iraq war film to date more a Hollywood fantasy than the searingly realistic rendition that civilians take it for.

To which you might say: It's just a movie and an action flick at that. It's Tinseltown fiction -- an interpretation of war such as "Full Metal Jacket" or "Apocalypse Now." It's supposed to entertain. It's not a documentary, not real life.

But to those who were there, Iraq is real life. And they're very sensitive -- some would say overly so -- when their war is portrayed via a central character who is a reckless rogue.

Hence a rising backlash from people in uniform, such as this response on Rieckhoff's Facebook page from a self-identified Army Airborne Ranger:

"[I]f this movie was based on a war that never existed, I would have nothing to comment about. This movie is not based on a true story, but on a true war, a war in which I have seen my friends killed, a war in which I witnessed my ranger buddy get both his legs blown off. So for Hollywood to glorify this crap is a huge slap in the face to every soldier who's been on the front line."

Even Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor, took a shot on his blog, writing a post titled, "The Hurt Locker: Hurting for a fact-checker." The movie's positive reviews could not have been "written by anyone who had spent any time with U.S. armed forces in Iraq," he wrote, wondering why none of the soldiers in the movie dipped smokeless tobacco or said "hoo-ah" -- "the universal term for hello, goodbye, understood, etc."

There's more to the story at the link. It's certainly not unusual for Hollywood to play fast and loose with the facts of a particular war, but with so many veterans able to refute the premise of the movie and the communication avenues they have available to them, you'd think they'd try to get it at least a little closer to reality.

Avatar is the Most Flamboyent, Liberal Left Movie Ever Made

That's the opinion of Hollywood Elsewhere, who in typical Hollywood fashion, is quite happy about it:

The political import of Avatar -- and, there's no waving this aspect away because it's right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act -- is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc.

Yes, it's very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it's pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Naom Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, etc. Cameron is an earth-hugging lefty from way back (the flagrant despise-the-arrogant-rich current in Titanic being but one example) so this should come as no surprise to anyone. I for one am cheered and heartened.

If Sarah Palin sees Avatar and then sits down and actually thinks about what it's saying (which is always a dicey proposition, I admit), she'll hate this movie. Because Avatar hates her and her kind. Some righties will pretend to like it ("great popcorn flick! took my kids!"), but they'd have to be in major denial mode not to recognize that Avatar is much more MSNBC than Fox News. It really spits on the Fox News philosophy/worldview. If Cameron had for some inane reason put a Fox News-type character in the film, he/she would end up with a Na'vi arrow through his/her chest, trust me.

Call it the most flamboyant, costliest, grandest left-liberal super-movie anyone's ever seen -- a political tract that cost Rupert Murdoch God knows how many hundreds of millions to make and yet is totally pro-loincloth, pro-native, despise-the-greedy, hug-the-earth, worship-the-earth, down with the soulless short-end, down with the us-first, masters-of-the-universe thinking behind the Goldman Sachs/Timothy Geithner culture and up with the eternal/spiritual in all cultures and all corners of the globe. The tragedy of the Vietnam War echoes all through this film. Somewhere Ho Chi Minh is smiling.

Which, of course, means it's a shoe-in for the Oscar.

It'll make a zillion dollars because of the fantasy nature of the thing, but they'll lose a lot of money that might have made once the political angle of the movie gets out.

UPDATE: John Nolte also has a review:

REVIEW: Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy

Newsweek: Bad Movies are Bush's Fault

Do you wonder why Newsweek lost $30 million this year and is on the verge of disappearing? It could be because of writers who write stuff like this:

You can blame Hollywood’s doom and gloom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies.

Of course, George W. Bush caused Hollywood directors to forget how to make movies that the public is willing to go see and instead their depression drove them to produce crap that might win an award but will ultimately lose money.

Hollywood never has figured out one important rule of making money in the movies: Don't make an "R" rated film. "R" ratings limit the audience and have shown over time to make far less money than "G" or "PG" movies. Directors, in an effort for artistic purity and approving nods from their colleagues, end up adding gratuitous and frankly stupid sex scenes that don't advance the plot line one bit but guarantee them an "R" rating. It also guarantees them that the movie will not make as much money as it might otherwise have.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Hollywood Headline of the Day

From Drudge:

Hollywood braced for budget cuts; Studios set to tighten belts in after big budget flops...

I'm no expert in the movie business, but they could try making movies people actually want to see.

Hollywood All By Itself in Supporting Polanski

Child rapist Roman Polanski has gotten some high profile support from various Hollywood types who want to excuse his inexcusable behavior and set him free. The Hollywood folks are about the only ones who agree with their view of Polanski's past:

One-out-of two Americans aren’t paying much attention to the case of film director Roman Polanski recently arrested for the rape of a 13-year-old girl that he committed 32 years ago. But among those who are following the story somewhat or very closely, 78% say he should go to prison and just eight percent (8%) disagree.

Imagine that - Hollywood out-of-touch with America.

Hollywood Headline of the Day

From Drudge:

'Capitalism' Will Be Moore's Worst Performer Since 2002...

Darned capitalism. People are choosing to spend their money elsewhere.

Socialism and Atheism Tanking at Box Office

I told you yesterday about the new movie, The Invention of Lying, which portrays itself as a comedy but is actually one long lampooning of religion. It opened this weekend along with Michael Moore's latest brain fart anti-capitalism flick. So, how are they doing with the folks who buy the movie tickets?

Ricky Gervais has launched his second consecutive box office bomb as The Invention of Lying (Warner Bros) only mustered $2.2M or so to start the 3-day. The comedy should finish #5 with approximately $6.5M for the weekend. …

[B]ut the biggest disappointment of the weekend is Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (Overture). After a $57K per theatre average on 4 screens last weekend, the picture broke to a wider 962 locations with terrible results. The “documentary” only sold an estimated $1.3M in tickets to start the weekend, and it will finish at about $3.9M for a PTA of less than $4,000. That soft opening will almost certainly make Capitalism Moore’s weakest-grossing movie since 2002’s Bowling for Columbine ($21.5M domestic gross).

Good.

Hollywood's Latest Assault on Religion

Kyle Smith, film critic for the New York Post, has a warning for filmgoers who may be inclined to check out Ricky Gervais' latest effort:

If you saw Ricky Gervais’s delightful romantic comedy “Ghost Town” last year and were looking forward to his new comedy, “The Invention of Lying,” be warned. The movie is a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.

Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.

Gervais’s character is the first man ever to think of lying. In order to comfort the dying, he randomly hits on the idea of telling them that they will go to a better place and enjoy an afterlife. Citizens who automatically believe what they’re told (since no one, even advertisers, has ever told an untruth) start to spread the word, and soon Gervais is doing a gruesomely unfunny parody of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Except his rules are ten lies written on pizza boxes.

Gervais sighs and winces as he spins his absurd made-up stories to the ignorant peoples of the world: There is a “Man in the Sky,” he says, who is looking down at all of us and is responsible for everything that happens. Yes, he explains to one woman, he gave your mom cancer — but he’s also responsible for curing her. The people aren’t happy that “The Man in the Sky” is behind all human suffering. “F— The Man in the Sky!” cries one citizen, and the crowd begins to get angry. A magazine cover exclaims, “Man in the Sky Kills 40,000 in Tsunami!” But Gervais’s character insists that whatever damage the Man in the Sky causes, he eventually makes up for it all in the end by providing a beautiful mansion for everyone after they die, at least for those who don’t commit three or more immoral acts, and by making it so that everyone can reunite with their loved ones in the next life. Later in the movie, Gervais will be outfitted like Jesus. The movie doesn’t have a joke to offer at this point; it just thinks it’s funny to show Gervais in long hair and a bedsheet. At the end, in a church, a minister is seen wearing a cross, so apparently somehow the Gervais character also came up with the Crucifixion story.

Gervais is an atheist, which is fine, but his mean-spiritedness (even before the atheism theme enters the movie, it’s sour and misanthropic) and the film’s reduction of all religion to an episode of crowd hysteria are not going to be warmly received. Except maybe by critics.

The advertising certainly doesn't give you any indication that this is something other than a light comedy-fantasy. I guess I can skip this one.

Astoundingly Brain Dead Quote of the Day

From Hollywood veteran Harvey Weinstein as part of a desperate attempt to defend child-rapist Roman Polanski:

“Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion”

Yes, I know I've always looked to Hollywood when I needed answers to deep moral questions.

What a bunch of arrogant fools.

Federal Housing Dollars for Circus Acts?

Cirque de Soleil is a tremendously successful organization, raking in millions from shows all over the world, including 6 or 8 shows in Las Vegas alone. They are apparently interested in starting a show at Hollywood's Kodak Theater, the home of the Oscars and a facility that's dark most of the year. That could be a good idea except for one thing - they and the City of Los Angeles are looking for federal loans to make it happen:

Federal money is being sought in an effort to make Cirque du Soleil comfortable when it swings into the Kodak Theatre.

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to consider the proposal Tuesday, which would lend the owner of the Hollywood & Highland complex $30 million in federal funds. The money would be used to build a rehearsal center and a sub-stage 45 feet below the existing stage. I

CIM Group, which owns the Hollywood & Highland complex and leases the Kodak Theatre, hopes to hold the first Cirque du Soleil show there in 2011 and keep the group there for about a decade.

Testifying before the Housing, Community and Economic Development committee last week, City Council President President Eric Garcetti called the plan "an amazing coup."

It's a coup alright, or perhaps a robbery would be a better description. The Hollywood area is not exactly hurting for tourists. I'e been up there several times in the last couple of years and there are plenty of tourists walking around. If they want a Cirque show at the Kodak, fine. Let Cirque fund it or the City of Los Angeles or the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Federal funding should not be used for this even if only a loan. Federal loans have a way of not being paid back.