Tomorrow is an exciting day because I have a meeting to play some new music for A Healthy Marriage that I’ve been cooking up for a while, but I am tinged with worry and sadness for my friends in LA.
In the biggest picture, California is a place I like- plain and simple. I’ve driven the coast, vacationed there, worked there, hiked, swam, ate, drank, prayed, cried, and always left transformed in some way. Narrowing my scope, watching movies is my #1 hobby. I feel grateful for and indebted to LA as an exporter of tremendous joy for me since I was a little kid and my dad started showing my brother and me his favorite Hollywood movies. As recently as last year, I turned into a wide-eyed kid again when I took my wife for her first ride on the Universal backlot tour. On the most personal level, I have family and friends who live right in the path of the Palisades Park and Eaton fires. Two of them have already reached out saying they’ve been evacuated from their homes and they may not have homes to return to. Both work in the industry, too. I’m in the industry too, and I know for a fact that whatever thoughts and prayers come their way in LA, losing a home will mean losing work. It means losing wifi, not having a blank wall to film pre screens, not having a desk, not having the time to devote to projects, jammed up unemployment services, molasses-like monetary relief, and trauma.
Money will help and everyone should donate to a well-vetted charity if they can. Only slightly less impactful than cash will be our collective effort to continue to employ, show patience to, and accommodate the new circumstances of a vast swath of film/tv artists who will be entering 2025 unmoored from whatever stability they may have relied upon until now.
LA-based friends, you’re on my mind and in my heart. I pray that the winds die down and the water runs quickly over the smoldering hills, and that rebuilding is an act of solidarity and expedience. I wish you luck, safety, and water.