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On Radford just north of Ventura in Studio City, the offices near CBS where John Wayne hung out when the studio was Republic Pictures, where MTM writers turned out sitcoms and where John Herzfeld wrote Two Days In the Valley are destined to be razed for condos. Erik Himmelsbach laments in CityBeat, remembering the buildings' 50-year history as "a circus and a sanctuary" for Hollywood writers on the Valley side of the hill.
Ross Johnson is a journalist who works in a shoebox-sized hovel at the Radford complex. Equally hyper and hard-boiled, Johnson shares a kinship with many other tenants in that his decades-long career has undergone many extreme makeovers, most by necessity rather than by choice. He comes here to work, but he never tires of the daily freak show. “One day there would be 10 sumo wrestlers looking for a part in the hallway outside my door,” he says. “The next day they would be casting Asian strippers, or Britney Spears look-alikes. Then one day I’d open my door and Terence Stamp would be sitting there and we could rap about The Limey.”Neil Tolkin has been in and out of these offices since 1990, depending on the worth of his Hollywood stock at a given moment. A screenwriter with an admirable résumé (License to Drive, Richie Rich, and The Emperor’s Club are among his credits), he heard about the demise of the office two months ago, but the landlords, Tustin Properties (which could not be reached for comment), have been mum about the details. “It’s a comfort zone,” he says. “It’s always been great, there’s always people working. It inspires you. I used to look out my window and I could see Sydney Pollack editing The Firm. He wore the same clothes every single day – jeans and a jean shirt.”
It’s been a good place, a perfect place, for writers to do what they do. “What is a good writers building?” Johnson asks. “It’s gotta have light, it’s gotta be close to a coffee joint and a liquor store. Cheap sushi and Chinese gotta be down the block. Bookstore has to be close by. Free offstreet parking. Gotta be quiet, and have good air conditioning if it’s in the Valley. This place has it all.”
Everything, it seems, except a happy ending.
Himmelsbach also credits the Hollywood presence with turning Ventura Boulevard into a culinary oasis: "There’s no other explanation for the glut of exceptional sushi between Colfax and Coldwater....You think it’s to cater to the family of five from Reseda? Don’t make me laugh–that’s what the Olive Garden’s for."
Also posted at my recently revived Valley-centric site, America's Suburb.com.