"Coming Soon."
I loved seeing those words on movie posters when I was a kid growing up in the Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. Those words had power. They had meaning. To me, they meant E.T., that lovable extra-terrestrial who befriended little Drew Barrymore and her lonely on-screen brother Elliott played by Henry Thomas in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," would be coming to the twinplex movie theater in Delran, N.J.
This was in the days long before stadium seating, big buckets of buttery popcorn and jumbo $5 sodas and the 20-screen movie complexes. People waited in line at the old Millside Heights Shopping Center that had a Kmart and a Taco Bell and several stores I no longer remember. This was long before anyone thought about streaming entertainment services, ordering movie tickets online or being able to eat an entire meal and sip cocktails and craft beer while watching a flick on the big screen as I did dozens of times at my favorite movie theater chain, Alamo Drafthouse. (I've read the rumors that a location might open in Los Angeles one day. I hope it does because there's nothing better than eating hot chocolate chip cookies while watching a film.)
As I recall, it took my family and our neighbors four or five visits to the theater over several weeks during the summer of 1982 before we finally saw E.T., the adorable alien, try to phone home. The showings were always sold out, and my little heart sank each time we got to that twinplex to find a line of people 200 or 300 deep, everyone waiting and wanting to see this Spielberg classic.
If you know me well, it shouldn't be a surprise that a childhood filled with movies, television, fashion and pop culture would cause me to want to work in the industry. I was thrilled when I organized and styled a photo shoot about filmmaking in Austin, Texas, where I lived for six years before recently moving to California. For the photo above, my team — photographer Ben Sklar took the photo — used the old studio lights at Austin Studios to create a haunting image of our heroine in the elements. We took the shot as the sun was setting in the seven minutes we had left before the studio closed for the day.
It also shouldn't be a surprise that life eventually would lead me to La-La Land where I live and work among the creatives and studio execs and people longing to be stars.
Every day I love seeing those large white letters spelling the word "Hollywood" on a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains and I wonder what life was like here when this part of Los Angeles was called Hollywoodland.
"Coming Soon."
Those words always caused me to be filled with wonder, excitement and the desire to know what the Dark Knight or Rambo or James Bond would do on their next big adventure.
When I saw a movie poster or movie trailer in my younger days, I immediately wanted to know the film's entire story, the villains and the plot. I wanted to sit in a dark theater in awe and lose myself in the storytelling and visuals. All of the Hollywood moments of my childhood, the fan posters, the Oscars, the glossy magazines, the supermarket tabloids, the daily doses of "Entertainment Tonight," the soundtracks, still cause me to believe in the power of storytelling and marketing.
That's why I'm committed to helping my clients tell their stories using a variety of methods, including social media and press releases. That's also why I'm committed to writing and producing television and films. I want my stories to connect with people as volumes of movies and TV shows connected with me over the years and helped me better understand the world.
Hello, Hollywood. I'm finally here.