Day 4 - Paramount Studios/Hollywood Forever

This morning I got up and walked approximately 4km from my hotel to Paramount Studios where I was taking a studio tour, I overestimated how much time it would take so found a small cafe funny enough called Food & Coffee and grabbed a drink while I waited until closer to the time.

The tour rules said no photography and then our guides told us we could in places so I did limit the photos I took. This was a part walk part electric cart tour where they took us around the studio telling us stories and showing us some of the studios. A lot of tv shows are filmed at paramount studios even though it doesn't produce any currently (apparently they are setting up a tv division and just had a

Beverly Hills Cop tv show declined by CBS so it is currently getting sent around other distributors. Apparently it follows Eddie Murphy's nephew who follows in Eddies footsteps. A couple of the shows that are filmed there are Glee, NCIS:LA and SeeDadRun. Paramount itself is more known for its movies including Jack Reacher, the new Star Trek movies and best picture winners The Godfather Part 1 and 2. Paramount have had 12 best picture Academy Award winners including the first ever best picture award (Wings awarded in 1929) and also the only sequel to ever win best picture The Godfather Part 2.

We were shown the entrance to the studio which was used in the Godfather when they visit a studio. A couple of facts they told us were that in rehearsals the severed head was a dummy but then in the actual shoot they used a real horses head they obtained from a glue factory without the actor knowing so the reaction was real. Also apparently the mafia wasn't too happy that the film was getting made so had two conditions: 1. Francis Ford Copella direct (he's from Sicily in Italy) and 2. They had consultants on set (by consultants they meant two mafioso).

We also went past the soundstage the original King Kong was filmed on and apparently the hand that grabbed Fay Wray was one of the

first animatronics ever used and they didn't know the power of it. The shot actually used in the film was when she got grabbed so hard that two of her ribs were broken.

We went past one of the studios Glee is made in one interesting thing is that the auditorium is actually a soundstage at Paramount Studios, I just assumed it was a real auditorium they rented out. The store and cafe where you start and finish the tour doubles as the Lima Bean from Glee and we also drove past the frontage that they use as the Breadsticks entrance. At one point we saw a cat, the tour guide said it is one of two resident cats. Apparently they had kittens and each of the kittens got adopted by one of the kids from Glee.

One area of the car park is dug down into the ground and has a fake sky behind it, this area can be filled with water and used for shooting water scenes. Apparently one of the final episodes for a season of Cheers sees Ted Dansons character proposing to his girlfriend who was played by Shelley Long, she was meant to drop the ring and dive into the water after it. She felt the water and it was too cold so they had to empty the tank and refill it with warmer water which takes a day for each apparently Shelley felt the water again and it was still too cold but this time they told her too bad. Coincidentally without explanation Shelley Long was replaced in the next season by Kirsty Alley.

They took us on to the set of a talk show called the Doctors and also onto the set of SeeDadRun.

They have a few streets set up that they call their New York District. A number of films and tv shows have been filmed here including Seinfeld, a scene from Friends, Vanilla Sky and Cloverfield where the head of the Statue of Liberty is thrown along the street. This was actually a giant foam ball covered in green screen rolling through the street. They were currently filming a scene for a reality tv show about business, I actually saw Peter Jones (one of the dragons from UK Dragons Den) a couple of times.

It was a great tour and the guides were great there was two of them with only four people on the tour including me, I don't think the others could speak much English so the tour guides focused a lot on me so it felt like my own private tour which was cool. I don't know why but I prefer the Warner Bros Studio Tour, possibly because more tv has been filmed there which was more recognizable to me than at Paramount.

Both Warner Bros and Paramount have big water towers (the Warner Bros one being quite well known) I asked why this was and it is because when the studios were first built they weren't near a reliable water source so they needed water towers which has kind of become a symbol for the studios. The tour guide told me that Paramount was the first to have a water tower.

If you are a fan of TV and movies then I definitely recommend these two tours they are a great.

After the tour I went for a quick walk around Hollywood Forever Cemetery (this is the weird thing I mentioned yesterday) I saw this on TripAdvisor but I didn't

spend much time there as I didn't recognized any names, most of them seemed foreign but I did see a memorial for the dog that was Toto in Wizard of Oz and a gravestone for Johnny Ramone and Mel Blanc (he was the voice for many of the Looney Tunes Characters). This cemetery is where they filmed the funeral scene from the latest season of Californication.

On the way back to the hotel I happened across a Taco Bell so though I better give that a try. It was actually pretty good the problem is being a taco the fillings fell out the back a little.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at the hotel chilling out. That is all my studio tours done, apparently Sony Picture has a studio tour but it is a bit far away for me to go to and I imagine it wouldn't be as good. Another random fact is that Paramount Studios is the only studio to still be in the heart of Hollywood all the others are on the outskirts. I haven't got much planned for tomorrow so should be a short update but planning quite a large outing in a couple of days which might give me a bit to talk about. Check in later.