Film Makers’ Phone Book
Whaddya want?
An insect? Living or prepared?
A model with good hands? One with good toes? Maybe a barnyard animal? A high-diving mule, or a racing ostrich?
You may not need this stuff, but you can find out where to get it in a little $45 book called LA 411. This is not your regular Yellow Pages, smart or otherwise. The listings are a little quirky, but Hollywood types often turn to the 2-inch thick directory, which bills itself as “The Professional Reference for Commercial Film and Tape Production.”
The directory has been published annually for nine years by LA 411 Publishing Co. of Los Angeles and is available in major bookstores. It can tell you where to get plastic snowflakes or, appropriately these days in Hollywood, how to find the unemployment office. There’s a table listing the time of sunrises and sunsets for every day of the year. Or, should blue skies prove elusive, there’s a firm offering “diverse sky and mottled backdrops.”
When it comes to hand and leg models, there are 22 listings for things such as “hands of experience,” “child size hands” and a “sleight of hand specialist.” And if you’re aching from too much hand, leg or back movement, 12 specialists offer “massages on the set.”
Cracks and Confusion
Employees of ailing Gibraltar Financial got some pretty candid talk about the Beverly Hills S&L;’s finances in a recent company newsletter. New Chief Executive James Thayer declared: “If we get a significant rise in interest rates which persists for a long time, it will be very difficult to generate the earnings which are necessary (for a recovery).”
But on some points Thayer was pretty vague. Why, he was asked by a newsletter interviewer, was former CEO Herb Young still on the board? “What we’ve heard from the company and what we’ve read in the newspapers are conflicting stories,” the interviewer said. Thayer’s answer: “It does give a confusing message. It’s hard in any case to overcome the tendency of the press to draw conclusions and thereby make statements, oftentimes based on a lack of real information and knowledge. That’s about as far as I can go with that.”
Former President Jerry Nussbaum, the interviewer said, seems to have “disappeared through the cracks. What is his status with the company?” Thayer: “He’s technically still an employee, and, if we were to call on him at this point to do something, he’d be obligated to do it.”
And will there be layoffs at Gibraltar? Said Thayer: “I don’t know the answer to that. It’s too soon for me.”
Selling the Sea
“ Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink ,” the lament of Samuel T. Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner remembering life adrift upon the open ocean, may become the lighthearted refrain of pet store customers confronted by rows of bottled water. That’s because the large plastic containers are full of “all natural” salt water.
Marketed by Real Ocean Inc., the salt water is not intended to compete with such gourmet freshwater brands as Perrier or Evian. Instead, Real Ocean caters to marine tropical fish fanciers who need to keep their aquariums full. The Carson firm sells water gathered from a depth of 22 feet at a site 6 miles off the coast of Catalina Island. Real Ocean claims that genuine sea water is healthier for pet marine fish than the traditional brew of special salt compounds mixed with tap water--which may contain metal contaminants from aging pipes.
With hundreds of miles of coastline practically at the doorstep, do Southern Californians really need to buy salt water? Real Ocean President Lewis J. Wright says coastal waves continually churn up old pollution in sediment and make it impossible to find completely pure shoreline water. Aquarium enthusiasts and wholesale tropical fish distributors are buying up to 60,000 gallons a month, he said, for as much as $1.80 per gallon.