MeL's Point - LA Edition (Part 2)

By MeL on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - 14:09

“What happens in LA…”

There’s a saying about Las Vegas: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”.

Well, I wasn’t in Las Vegas, at least not this time, but last week, I met with a group of members of an international Ellen DeGeneres fan website to watch a taping of her talk show in Los Angeles, and we had an amazing time and a lot of fun together. This was the second time this group met, and we again had so much fun that we decided to extend the above mentioned rule to Los Angeles.

But I’m still allowed to report about some of the highlights, so here they are:

“The Ellen DeGeneres Show”

Visiting a taping of Ellen’s show was of course THE highlight of the trip.  

If you ever go to a taping of the show, be forewarn and make sure to bring a sweater or a jacket, because it is freeeeeeezing in the studio. But you won’t be cold for long, because you will be dancing – a lot! They make you dance before the show and in every commercial break, and you have to be careful not to be distracted too much to actually still pay attention to what’s going on, especially during the commercial breaks. That’s what happened to me the first time I went to a taping, until I realized that I wasn’t there to dance, but to see Ellen, and this time I was prepared and concentrated on watching her. And what a sweetheart she is! During the show, when she’s on camera, she’s of course very professional, but still seems very relaxed. During commercial breaks, she talks to her producers and writers or reads the teleprompter to prepare for the next segment, but if there’s some time left, she’ll connect to the audience, wave and smile to them, and sometimes she even starts to sing along to the song her DJ Tony is playing and to dance a little more. During one break, she came over to one of our group whose birthday it was and gave her a t-shirt. Ellen keeps saying that she enjoys doing the show, and that’s very obvious when you watch her during a taping. And she makes sure that not only she’s having a great time, but her audience as well.  

As for the show, the guests were actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“The new adventures of old Christine), who was hilarious, actor Johnny Lee Miller (“Eli Stone”) and a couple from Dancing with the Stars. She also made audience members show their hidden talents, of course danced, made fun of her producer Andy, read emails from viewers and dunked sprinter Maurice Green in a dunk tank for a good cause.  

Ellens Studio - (c) by MeL
"Ticket" - (c) by MeL

“Tonight Show with Jay Leno”

On September 30th, Ellen was a guest on the tonight show with Jay Leno, and some of the group were lucky to get enough tickets so that all of us who were already in LA that day could go.  

Ellen looked great and was hilarious, as always. She and Jay have been friends for a long time, and it turned out to be Ellen’s 28th time on the show. They talked about the economic crisis (Ellen joked that she had pulled her money out of the stock market and spent it all in commemorative plates), about Breast Cancer Awareness Month, about Ellen's move to a new studio on the Warner Bros. lot (before that, her show was being taped in the NBC studios right next to Jay Leno’s studio), and of course her marriage and how different it felt to be married but what a great experience it was, and joked that she “can finally go off the pill”. Asked about kids, Ellen said that she doesn’t think that they will have kids (she said it twice, and it sounded a lot like “Stop asking already”). She then talked about Proposition 8, and asked anybody watching to vote “No” on 8.

Unfortunately, as she had to do a taping of her own show that day, she had to leave after her interview. Jay’s next guest was actor Robert Wagner, who most people from my generation probably know from the TV show “Hart to Hart”. As a kid, I loved that show, and during the whole interview I kept thinking “That’s Jonathan Hart!”. Musical guest was singer Jazmine Sullivan.

Nightlife in West Hollywood

If you’re gay and in LA, one area you might want to go to is West Hollywood, the “gay area” of LA. Of course, that’s where we went to celebrate after the taping of the show.

Last year, we had a great time at a nightclub called “Eleven”. It was women’s night, and even if there were a lot of straight, married women in our group, we had a blast. There even was a celebrity sighting – unfortunately I only realized about three weeks later that I had smiled at actress Michelle Wolff (“Mango Kiss”) for quite a while. This year, it was men’s night at “Eleven”, so we decided to move on and ended up in another club called “The Abbey”, where we danced the night away until closing time.   

The Warner Bros. VIP Studio Tour

If you are a tourist in LA and happen to like movies and American TV shows, a great thing to do is to go on a Warner Bros. VIP Studio Tour. We went with a whole group, and drove our poor tour guide crazy because we knew so much about the studios already, even things that he said he wouldn’t have been allowed to tell us. It was of course Ellen who had shown her audience her new studio and it’s surroundings. Apart from driving past Ellen’s new production offices, we also saw the sets of “Friends” and “ER”, a lot of props from the “Matrix” and the “Harry Potter” movies, and learned a lot about the illusions that are being created during the process of filmmaking.  

Set of "Friends" - (c) by MeL

Set of "ER" -(c) by MeL

Vote “No” on 8

One subject that came up a lot during this past week was Proposition 8. As Ellen explained on Jay Leno and also on her website, the aim of the proposition is to make same-sex marriages illegal again in California by amending the constitution. A lot of celebrities have come out against “Prop 8”, including Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who even talked about this on Ellen’s show. While in West Hollywood, I talked to a woman who was collecting donations for the fight against Prop 8, and she told me that – in spite of donations from a lot of celebrities - the supporters of the proposition were able to raise a lot more money than the opponents and that their whole campaign was based on creating fear. So come Nov. 4th, let’s keep our fingers crossed that the voters in California don’t give in to fear but vote “No” on Prop 8 – and let Ellen keep her new toaster oven.

For more information on Ellen and her show, you can go to her official website.