Goodbye Hello Ladies, for now. Before the season finale, about making the anti-Entourage.
From a British perspective does coming to Hollywood have a different meaning?
I was talking to the writers about this, who are American themselves, and I was saying it’s a long journey. It feels like it’s a long journey to have gone from a small town in the Southwest of England to living in the base of the Hollywood Hills. And they were saying, well, I think it’s probably true if you come from the middle of Idaho and you got on the bus and you went there. Wherever you are in the world, wherever you are even in the States, there is an allure — a sheen to Hollywood and Los Angeles — that we’re being sold constantly. It’s exploited, not even necessarily by the movies, but by all of the paraphernalia that surrounds it, and I think it probably also started even in the ’50s seeing those kind of tabloid magazines they use to have in the ’50s. Here’s Rock Hudson by his pool in the Hollywood Hills. It’s just that fantasy of the sunlight and just that sense of Shangri-La quality to it that almost nowhere else possesses. And yet, of course, when you go there it’s far from a Shangri-La. It’s kind of an ugly place with no real hub, it’s a very lowly city and you sort of sense the Shangri-La’s are behind these big gates … inside these gated homes that the star tours bus will drive you past, but you’ll never penetrate.
Have you gotten a glimpse of the actual Shangri-Las since you’ve been here?
I’ve sometimes gone behind the gates and I’ve seen inside and I’ve seen beautiful homes. I’ve had conversations with glamorous people, some who are lovely and some who are a—holes. This is something I try to talk about it my stand-up. In the end it kind of underlines the series, the old sort of cliché that you see on mugs and tee shirts: “Happiness Is a Journey, Not a Destination.” Trite as that is, I think there is a lot of truth in it. I remember when “The Office” was a success, I sort of thought, well, everything I have been trying for all of these years to prove yourself to the World, we sort of did it. But it’s not like someone opened the door, and went the rest of your real life is through this door come through; it’s happiness and it’s bliss. You get the opportunity to experience those things and some of those people are happy and some are not, but in the end you can go into a bigger house with a beautiful view and it’s owned by a superstar, but that doesn’t affect you. Who knows what their life’s like. You leave the big house with the superstar and you go back to wherever you’re living. So, you get the opportunity to date beautiful women, but when that beautiful woman dumps you, now you were dumped by an even more beautiful woman than when you were nobody. It doesn’t fundamentally change you, it gives you opportunity, opens things up to you, but it doesn’t make life easier to manage.
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