2009 March | FISHING

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Custom Painted Musky

Posted on March 31, 2009 at 5:30 pm

The Look of Appraisal

Eye contact in communication can be dicey. A look can be an invitation or an invasion, a challenge or an appraisal. A lot of appraising goes on in Los Angeles.

I flew out there recently from Pittsburgh, visiting Diana, a producer friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen in several years. The trip was a combination of research for a script that I’m rewriting, meetings with industry people, and catching up on old times. Part of the research was checking out the Hollywood culture.

One evening, we had dinner at the Palm Restaurant, a rustic, semi-pricey watering hole billed as a hangout for celebrities. Diana wanted to check it out as background for the characters in the script. The appraising started as soon as we were led to our table.

Every now and then, people tell me that I look “distinguished.” I’m in my late fifties, and I choose to believe they mean it and that the phrase is not code for “getting up there.” As Diana and I walked to our table, we passed a couple seated at a booth. The young woman seated there looked at me – this is the best adverb I can come up with – thoroughly. It could have been my musky animal magnetism, but more likely she was wondering if I was anybody.

That feeling suddenly went two-way when we were seated in our booth. After I had checked out the more or less identifiable caricatures of movie stars painted on every visible wall, I looked around at the actual people. A young man was sitting in another booth diagonally from us with another man whose back was to me. The young man looked familiar: dark hair, movie-star good looks. I knew he was somebody. Periodically, I darted random glances at him, trying to remember his name. The interesting thing is that he kept glancing at me; he was trying to figure out who I was.

The same thing happened the next evening in the restaurant of the Four Seasons, but with a difference. Diana wanted to show me the famous hotel, so after a charity screening of A Place in the Sun at Paramount, we went to the Four Seasons for dessert and coffee.

This is a completely different venue from The Palm: elegantly appointed with a lot of glass and dark wood, high ceilings, subdued lighting, and a nice audio overlay of jazz. As we walked through the bar, I realized the difference from the Palm. The previous evening, the appraising looks had been subtle and sidelong. Here the looks of some of the patrons are silent, but unmistakably direct, questions: “Who are you and what can you do for me?” (We saw no celebrities at the Four Seasons, but the buttermilk chocolate cake was star quality.)

Of course, not everyone in L.A. stares at other people. It depends on where you are. I had some phone calls to make and writing to do during the day while my friend was at work, so I found a Borders book store in Sherman Oaks, a few miles from my hotel.

While working at a table in the café, I noticed there was no staring or even covert glances by the other customers. No one was looking at anyone else, other than the normal, everyday glances. True, many of the customers were doing L.A. things: one man read a book on being a producer, another talked on his cell phone about production values and creative strategies, and a third fellow was riffling through the pages of a script. But no gawking and no appraising; they were busy. (Apparently, I was the only one who was gawking.)

The entertainment industry is as competitive as NASCAR, with everyone racing around, trying to inch ahead of the pack, and with a script in the back seat. So there are places you go in L.A. to appraise and be appraised, like the Palm Restaurant and the Four Seasons. Not Borders.

Oh, back to the Palm Restaurant. I did figure out who that young man was when I got a look at his dinner companion. The man was John Stamos, and he was having dinner with his Full House co-star, Bob Saget. (Now you know: I’ll drop a name at the drop of a hat.)

But to show you that I’m not star-struck, I won’t dwell on the fact that Ray Liotta was on my flight back to Pittsburgh. And I didn’t stare.

About the Author

Jay Speyerer has been a writer, a speaker, and an educator for more than 30 years, successfully helping people achieve their communication goals in body language, memoir writing, e-mail, cross-cultural communication, and presentation skills. Want to communicate better? Find out how at his web site: =>
http://www.jayspeyerer.com

Mciever Muskie 2010