Real Hollywood Vs. Reel Hollywood: An Image in Dispute

At the tender age of 8, Molly Moore is already a Hollywood celebrity of sorts, nonchalantly rubbing elbows with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Jennifer Aniston and Nicholas Cage.

No child star, Molly is famous for being ordinary, just a regular kid who does her homework, eats her supper and hangs out at her parents’ restaurant, The Hollywood Hills Cafe.

As Molly’s mom, Susan Moore, likes to point out, there are two Hollywoods. One is a product, the other a place. They intersect at her coffee shop, where purple-haired club kids meet studio moguls, tourists meet transients, immigrants meet stars.

That Molly, a highly democratic table-hopper, is friends with them all is a reflection of her parents’ values. With family values having emerged as a key issue in the upcoming presidential election, Susan Moore is well aware of the discrepancies between her beliefs and Bob Dole’s.

“When Bob Dole talks about family values, he means a mother, father and kids in one household,” Moore says. “But to me, it’s the differences that make life so interesting.”

Those differences abound in polyglot Hollywood, a wildly mixed neighborhood that runs the gamut from nude shows to trendy boutiques, from seedy rooming houses to mansions. Vestiges of the old Hollywood, such as Mann’s Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame, can still be found here, but most of the stars live in Beverly Hills.

Roughly 18 square miles, Hollywood is home to nearly 300,000 people, 49% of them white, 40% Latino, 6% Asian and 3% black, the very poor and the very rich among them. The relative ease with which they coexist is a matter of great local pride.

Susan Moore isn’t the only one who perceives a subtext of intolerance in Dole’s attacks on her community for allegedly making movies and music that undermine family values. For many here, the very term “family values” has become synonymous with the religious right.

“ ‘Family values’ tends to be used as a code phrase to attack people who are gay, or [those who] other members of society want to consign to the outer fringes,” says Chris Dorr, a movie production company executive and father of two.

For many in this primarily Democratic, unabashedly liberal community, “family values” has a far different connotation. To Steve Cunningham, who sells digital audio equipment, it means “teaching children to love someone who may be different from you. It’s the right-or-wrong lessons: You don’t lie. You don’t steal.”

To his wife, Sue Horwitz, who sells advertising, family values means “my child has a right to an education that’s going to teach him something, a right to go to school without passing through a metal detector.”

A September survey for the National Parenting Assn. by the independent polling firm Penn and Schoen suggests many people agree with her definition, and not just in Hollywood.

The telephone survey of 500 mothers and fathers nationwide showed parents of varying income levels and ethnic backgrounds solidly united in their desire to protect children from violence and improve their schools. Their biggest worries are crime (30%) and drugs (21%). They look to government not for rhetoric but for practical help--tax breaks for college tuition, incentives for employers who adopt family-friendly policies.

The survey was remarkable for the parents’ consensus and for their complete lack of interest in the abstract ideological issues often espoused by politicians. Nobody raised abortion or homosexuality as a concern, and just 1% mentioned movie or television sex.

Attacking Hollywood “is a cynical appeal for votes,” says Dorr, who finds it interesting that in condemning film violence, “Dole didn’t mention movies with Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both make huge pictures with high body counts, and both are big supporters of the Republican Party.”

(Actually, Dole did mention Schwarzenegger’s violent comedy “True Lies,” lumping it in with films he considered family-friendly. He later acknowledged having not seen any of the movies he panned.)

Dorr agrees with the prevailing view that “politicians who aspire to be president should be thinking about other things.”

Actor David Wohl includes schools, unemployment, poverty, the environment, hunger and crime on his list of more pressing presidential concerns. Hollywood is a business like any other, he says. When sex and violence stop selling, Hollywood will stop making such movies. In the meantime, “it’s the parents’ responsibility to monitor what their children watch.”

Wohl, whose acting credits include the TV series “Brooklyn Bridge,” considers television “a terrible drug” for his three sons, ages 12, 10 and 5. Accordingly, he has banished the family’s set to a closet. Lest that seem harsh, Wohl notes that he used to keep it in the garage.

To Wohl, family values means “active participation in the life of your family, being involved in their schooling, their sports, their community. It’s the drudgery involved in maintaining a healthy family life: cooking, cleaning, shopping, driving.”

He speaks from experience. His wife, Eileen, just started a new job in New York. The family will join her at the end of the school year, but for now, it is Wohl who washes the kids’ clothes, makes their dinner and referees their fights, a situation he bets neither President Clinton nor Dole has ever faced.

Given people’s perceptions of Hollywood, Wohl isn’t surprised that it’s become a battleground in the war over family values.

“The average person thinks it’s a place where you can be rich and famous and on the cover of People magazine. But there’s not a lot of glitz in my life or in most people’s lives,” he says.

“We’re not as different as the rest of the world thinks. This is not Mars,” says Steve Cunningham. “The movers and shakers . . . there are maybe 5,000 of them. The problem is, those 5,000 are seen as more pervasive and important than the hundreds of thousands of us who are trying to get along, like the folks in Topeka. Many of us moved here from places like Topeka.”

And yet, life in Hollywood for most families is not without its reminders that they’re not in Kansas anymore.

A.J. Cunningham, 11, comes home to milk and cookies after school; he also attends a gay synagogue. “A.J. knows his uncle is gay, though he doesn’t quite know what it’s about yet,” says his dad. “We’ve taken him to gay restaurants, and he rode in a car in the Gay Pride Parade. We’re fine with that. There’s a certain set of family values that simply means having value in a family.”

There’s another set of values that figures prominently in this election: Those of the candidates themselves.

The latest poll of 1,126 voters by CBS News and the New York Times, conducted Oct. 10-13, showed that 70% of registered voters believe Dole shares the moral values most Americans try to live by, compared to 55% for Clinton. And 52% said Dole had more integrity than most people in public life, compared to Clinton’s 36%.

But except for Cunningham--the only confirmed Dole supporter in this group, and a “begrudging” one at that--none of these voters thinks presidential candidates should be held to a higher standard than anyone else.

“None of us is perfect,” says Chloe Eichenlaub, head of The Oaks School, a private elementary school in the heart of Hollywood. “Character is important. But so is the value of forgiveness.”