Los Angeles, Je t’aime : The French Have Their Ways. And Currently They’re Having Their Way With California Culture

Any Saturday, about the time that Angelenos are sitting down to their morning croissants and cafe au lait , a few hundred thousand Parisians are tuning their radios to “Hollywood Music,” a program on Radio RFM, one of the largest commercial stations in France. Starting off in English with “Well, well, well, here we go again,” deejay Laurence Boccolini switches into hip Franglais for an hour of pop music, interviews and news exclusively from the City of the Angels.

Her broadcasts have included reports on the Shangri-La Hotel in Santa Monica, rent-a-Rolls agencies, Gene Autry’s Western-style office and a movie special-effects man. Sometimes, she will simply play minutes-long stretches of radio broadcasts, including commercials, recorded verbatim in Los Angeles, which fascinate French listeners, even--or especially--those who understand very little English.

Once, New York was the American city Parisians loved most, but these days Los Angeles is their infatuation. A recent article in the news magazine L’Express was typical of the French media’s exalted view of Los Angeles. The writer praised our “heart-shaped, turquoise swimming pools” and “the blond beaches of the Pacific.” True, these rhapsodies can occasionally be somewhat inaccurate: In the same article, L’Express suggested taking a drive from Malibu to Laguna Beach “by way of Venice and Palm Spring (sic). “

A few years back, some smart American entrepreneur discovered that putting the French article le in front of any English word was a way to make a profit on the American fascination with things French. The word California is now used to similar effect in France. Take the Galleries Lafayette department-store chain’s summer ad campaign: Throughout an often chilly and dismal late spring, Parisians descending into the subway were confronted with a row of 20-foot-high posters featuring a sun-bronzed young couple and a toddler, all in bright aloha shirts, reclining on the hood of a pink Cadillac. The headline above them announced a “California Summer,” an optimistic prediction.

“California has become stylish in the last few years,” says Anne-Claude Villemin, account executive for the “California Summer” campaign at Publicis Conseil, France’s largest commercial advertising agency. “Aerobics were very strong for a while, and that’s when we really began to talk about California.”

And although aerobics classes are no longer the fad they once were in Paris--”The French just don’t want to sweat,” concludes Mary Ann Schaefer, a Southern Californian who worked as an aerobics instructor there-- le musculation , or body building, is gaining momentum as an exercise trend. One of the most popular television shows in France remains “Gym Tonic,” a Sunday morning, half-hour, Jane Fonda-style workout, and many French health professionals credit the growing interest in fitness to the California influence. Not that all Parisians like to talk about it--”I jog every weekend, but I don’t want anyone to know,” a prominent lawyer confides.

The fitness craze and the ’84 Summer Olympics focused the attention of the French on Los Angeles, and they have since discovered the other charms of the West Coast. “L.A. provides us with a vision of the future,” says Jean-Pascal Billaud, editor-in-chief of City, a glossy travel and cultural magazine published in Paris and distributed internationally. It’s the adventurous image--the Far West, the ultimate, the end of the occidental world.”

The magazine profiles different cities of the world each month; Los Angeles is one of the select few included in every issue. Its readers tend to fall into the small, well-traveled group of French cognoscenti that calls Los Angeles “El Lay” and competes in one-upmanship games, such as where to find the best burrito in Boyle Heights. However, for many of the French, enthusiasm for Los Angeles is tempered by the knowledge that the Southern California life style and personality are polar opposites of the Parisian.

“L.A. is a sort of volcano of activity because people take risks; they don’t have the cultural weight on them that we have in Europe,” says Alice Morgaine, editor of the influential fashion magazine Jardin des Modes. “We Europeans hold ourselves back. We have too much restraint. You dare. We admire your daring, but we don’t dare.” Richard Cooper, an American who has lived for years in Paris, adds: “The French have a love-hate relationship with California. They’re fascinated but they deny it because imitation implies cultural inferiority.”

When they actually arrive, however, “all French people hate L.A.,” Parisian Jean Gremion asserts. “They like the dream but they hate the reality. They think of Hollywood like Lourdes or the Vatican, and they are quite surprised when they get there.”

According to Gremion, the French are simultaneously repelled and attracted by the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” attitude toward money prevalent under the Southern California sun. “They are interested in the very vulgar way that people show their money in Los Angeles, the Rolls-Royces in the driveways, the extravagant houses. It’s fascinating to French people because we’ve lost our empire.”

“For us, California is an esprit ,” Morgaine says. “More than the jogging or roller skating or anything specific, it’s all the craziness altogether, and a big dose of insolence and creativity.”

Parisians see that California esprit wherever they turn. “We just open the L.A. Weekly and find thousands of ideas for the radio show,” says Patrick Meyer, director of Radio RFM. “Our choice of subjects is entirely subjective and entirely French. We’ve done a report on a place in L.A. where they do something called ‘the colon adventure’; for us, that’s absolutely crazy.”

Meyer’s enthusiasm is tinged with a little wistfulness. “We broadcast the Los Angeles weather reports all the time,” he says, looking out his office window at a rainy, 60-degree June day. “The biggest frustration in Paris regarding L.A. is that the weather implies a life style. We would love to copy the clothes--like Hawaiian shirts, for instance--but we can’t, because the weather’s only good two months a year.” He glances out the window again. “If that.”

Fashion aside, other aspects of California culture translate quite nicely to the streets of Paris. Auto dealer Didier Heidet, at his showroom Le Voiturium in the posh 16th arrondissement, is one of several dealers in Paris specializing in vintage American cars. He’s also president of the Thunderbird Club of France, a group of T-Bird owners who drive their restored vehicles on organized excursions or spontaneously faire le cruising on a weekend night.

The restaurant trade, too, is showing the L.A. influence. The newest in-crowd hangout in Paris is the City Rock Cafe, just off the Champs-Elysees--a shameless copy of the L.A. and New York Hard Rock Cafes. Decorated in a style described by the French press as americano-rock , the City Rock is festooned with movie memorabilia purported to be authentic, including John Belushi’s hat and the motorcycle Jack Nicholson rode in “Easy Rider.”

In the Les Halles district, Rene Pourcheresse, a Frenchman who wears cowboy boots, and his wife, Darilyn Rowe-Pourcheresse, a Long Beach native, have two very successful restaurants: Pacific Palisades and Magnetic Terrace. At Magnetic Terrace, named after a tiny, winding street in the hills above the Sunset Strip, waitresses in aerobics costumes fetch margaritas, daiquiris and other blender-made cocktails--just catching on with young Parisians--for patrons watching sports videos and enjoying the trendiest meal along the Seine: le brunch .

And in what could be interpreted as retribution for the onslaught of croissant shops in America, cookie shops are just starting to open in Paris; the first, on the rue de Rivoli, is called California Chip.

In Paris and on the Cote d’Azur last summer, the slogan “Santa-Monica, etanchez notre soif!” (“Santa Monica, quench our thirst!”) was plastered on the sides of buses and billboards. The ads were for Sunkist soft drinks being peddled with the motto “California in a can.”

“At first we didn’t think ‘Santa Monica’ said very much to the French public,” says senior account executive Philippe Herment of DDB2, the international advertising agency handling the campaign, “but we found out that, somehow, the name of the city reassures people and lets them know the product is really American. It said sun to the unconscious of the French. Frankly, though, our market research showed that 90% of the French don’t know whether Santa Monica is in California or Wyoming.”

They don’t know where UCLA is either. First-time visitors to Paris from Los Angeles are often surprised by the number of young people wearing T-shirts or sweaters with the letters UCLA . The French buy the shirts as an expression of their passion for the United States (various companies, none of them licensed by the university here, have been making them for years), but one is hard put to find anyone on the streets of Paris who has the slightest idea what the emblem stands for. “We call it ‘Oocla,’ ” explains a young man in purple-rimmed sunglasses. “Does it mean something?”

“It’s true that the French have taken a number of things from California, but they’ve dealt with them in a particularly French way--that is, they’ve almost always made them better,” says Bob Aubrey, a native Californian who works in Paris as a management consultant to French businesses. “Californians take a salad and put yogurt on it and then say: ‘This is good because it’s healthy.’ The French, on the other hand, will taste it and use their finesse, their intelligence, their critical spirit and improve on it to make something that tastes really good.”

If the last few years are any indication, the French will continue to laugh at, borrow and perhaps improve on ideas they find on the West Coast of the United States. Places like the Chateau de Chamarande, a conference center in the countryside near Paris, offer seminars in rebirthing, the I Ching, shamanism, stress reduction, gestalt and other subjects once considered the sole property of Californians. Apple France, the computer company, has pioneered what the French call “California-style” management techniques by installing an isolation tank, a sauna and hot tubs at their headquarters in the Parisian suburb of Les Ulis.

“In the typical French manner, they’ve gone the Californians one better,” says Aubrey, who consults for the firm. “The hot tubs are coed. Can you tell me about one company in America where you can be mixed and naked during working hours?”