Kicking Around Too Long

Yesterday, I went to a panel discussion with film producers and development execs, put on by

the Scriptwriters Network at Raleigh Studios and I learned something -- I've been kicking around this business too long. It wasn't that the panelists were uninformative, they were genuinely trying to be helpful for the writers in the group -- except that, everything they said, I know... I've heard before... more than once. Yes, I think I've been kicking around this business too long.

The best part was being on the Raleigh Studios lot. Yes I was having a nostalgic moment. I never worked at Raleigh, but I've come here for screenings. And when I worked at Paramount which is just across the street, we often came to eat lunch at the little pink hacienda cafe. Its food was a hundred times better than that at the Paramount commissary. At lunch time, you could see the stream of people walking out the Paramount main gate, crossing the street, and entering Raleigh.

The Charlie Chaplin Theater, in which we had the panel discussion, was, like all theaters, too dimly lit to take photos of the guests.

It's a grand little lot, as you can see from the couple of pictures I shot. It's been operating since 1915 continuously. Of course it wasn't called Raleigh then, but Famous Players Fiction Studios. But Paramount wasn't exactly Paramount as we know it either... it was actually four studios. Many famous people called Raleigh home at one time or another, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks for two. I wonder if the pages roaming the Paramount lot still tell guests that Betty Davis made Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? right across the street at Raleigh?