 |
|
|
Down and Out on Hollywood Boulevard
by Gregory Freitas For most people, the redevelopment of Hollywood Boulevard is a wonderful thing. For the billionaire developers and L.A. city fatcats with their overinflated egos, buying their $26 hamburgers at Musso & Frank and their $88 corsets at Frederick's, putting a fresh coat of paint on the Boulevard couldn't have come sooner. The Average Joe and Josie will be happy about it too, until they realize that they'll pay $20 an hour for parking so that they can stand 150 yards away from Matt Damon at the Academy Awards, making him appear even shorter than he really is. For others though, reinventing Hollywood Boulevard is more serious. Take Cory Browne for example. Since 1992 he has held a strange occupation in Hollywood, one that has raised him up in the eyes of his peers and allowed him to hobnob with the elite. For the past eight years, Cory Browne has been Hollywood's most sought after technical advisor--on homelessness. And now he's about to lose his job. "My first tryout was back in the 80's for Down and Out in Beverly Hills ('86), but I didn't get it. It was embarrassing, Nick (Nolte) knew more about the street than I did. I was newly homeless at the time and I really screwed up the audition. Paul Mazursky finally just screamed 'Nolte, get that hand out and show this kid how it's done!' It worked out though, because Nick showed me this great dumpster in Santa Monica where I could sleep. I think he took a Smithee on the screen credit though," he said, referring to the shield of anonymity that some directors use to cower behind. |
 |
|
|
"A few years later I tried out for The Fisher King ('91), but Terry Gilliam wanted more East coast-style homeless, with all the rags and stuff. I said no, let's keep it clean, let's keep it pure. Then he brought out the charcoal." He goes on to explain that directors often resort to charcoal makeup for that homeless look, and they quickly lose their street cred with the retreads. It was a classic Hollywood case of creative differences. "I had a vision for that project and I refused to cave in," he fumes. Did he ever see the picture? Cory shakes his head slowly. "Too painful," he says, "the thought of Robin Williams making that same expression he always has, with all that charcoal everywhere..." He shudders. Then he got his first break, a job as a consulting assistant on the Mel Brooks movie Life Stinks ('91). "Mel was very smart, he was always asking questions. 'Why do you burn the garbage in trashcans?' he'd say. So I'd tell him that the metal cans radiate heat in a circle. And he'd think for awhile. 'And what's with the fishbones, always with the fishbones?!' he'd say. So I told him, you know, it's a regional thing. You see a lot more chicken bones in the Southwest, and pork ribs in the South, so forth. Then he'd pace some more, talking to himself in Yiddish. 'Well what KIND of fish is it!?' Mel was such a perfectionist." The next year Cory's dream came true when he was named head advisor for the ensemble indie, Where the Day Takes You ('92). "Being chief advisor is the life," he says, savoring the memory. "I got to share a trailer with Dermot Mulroney! Well, I got to sleep underneath it. But crafts services on that movie was amazing! I'd invite 50 or 60 kids from the neighborhood to come out to the truck as soon as the food was ready. I remember one day Will Smith was so pissed off!" He laughs so loud he has to compose himself. "He had his own chef, see? And I took my posse in there one day and we just cleaned him out! Took everything from the fridge, the pantry, everything, even some stuff that was left on the china. So when the chef comes back he's got nothing to cook for Will Smith. I think they had to send out for Yamashiro or something. He was so pissed." |
|
|
|||
 |
|
|
|
The next day armed guards greeted the street urchins as they prepared to descend on the food truck. Cory approached the goons. "I just said hey, why aren't you gonna let the hungry kids eat? We're under-budget and two days ahead of schedule." But the guards wouldn't back down. Then an angel arrived from her trailer. "I was just about to throw punches with the fat one when Lara Flynn Boyle came out for lunch. They said 'Miss Boyle...'" Cory gets confused for a second. "Or 'Miss Flynn Boyle', I can't remember which. 'If we let the kids eat there will be nothing left for you. And she goes, 'No big, I'll just smoke another cigarette.' And then she winked at me. Or it may have been something in her eye. Now I see her on the TVs in the windows of that pawn shop down on Western, sitting next to Jack Nicholson at the Lakers games! Sometimes I wonder if she remembers me," he says quietly. Cory's crowning achievement came in 1994 when he coached Oscar-winner Joe Pesci, one-on-one, for With Honors ('94). "Me! Teaching an Oscar winner! Everything he did was something I taught him. The walk, the talk, everything. I did an uncredited rewrite on that one too, the dialogue needed a little street punch-up. I'd say to him [he does his best Pesci impression, despite many missing teeth] 'You think I'm funny? Ha-Ha! You think I'm funny?' He didn't think that was very funny. Then he didn't even thank me in his speech." It was the last time Cory worked in Hollywood. At some point, a booming economy trickles down, even to streets like Hollywood Boulevard. And for those who have their mail sent to "Hollywood, CA c/o Mann's Chinese Theater", gentrification means the end of an era and a search for new digs. As Cory shuffles by the box office to pick up his residual checks, he contemplates his move up the hill, to a five bedroom house with a pool. "Jeffrey Tambor got me into tech stocks back in '94," he says sheepishly. "What can I say?" But Cory continues to fight for what's right. "They can take away my livelihood but they can't take my life," he says, "and Hollywood Boulevard is my life." And Cory walks down the street, his narrow shoulders bravely supporting a heavy plywood placard. It reads "Keep Our Streets Peopled With Street People!!!" |
|
|
||
 |