You never forget your first.

The front lot at Universal Studios Hollywood.

You never forget your first time.  I will never forget mine.  It was the summer of 1982.  I had just finished my first year of college in Los Angeles.  I anxiously waited for it my entire life, hoping, praying the day would come.  The moment had arrived.  I didn’t know then how many more there would be in my future.  I would lose count.  But I don’t think anyone ever forgets their first.  I never would.

I exited from the Hollywood Freeway and maneuvered my boxy, orange 1980  Toyota Tercel (don’t laugh – it had a killer sound system, and was very reliable) up Lankershim Boulevard.  My body was alive with a seeming charge of electricity running through every pore in anticipation of the moment that was just around the corner. The harsh Southern California sun bounced brightly off every surface of the car. 

I continued north on Lankershim and looked up at the gleaming black tower of glass and steel, rising off to my right.  All I could think of was the mid-1970’s disaster film Earthquake in Sensurround ™.   I recalled how this building collapsed in that movie as the Big One finally destroyed Los Angeles.  Not even Charlton Heston, Lorne Greene and George Kennedy COMBINED could save everyone in that building.

It was time.  I made the right turn off of Lankershim and slowly inched up to the guard shack.  There was a small, wooden gate blocking the entrance, and an older, thin, gray-haired man in a uniform, holding a clipboard, standing just outside a small guard shack in front of the gate.

“Should have a pass for Cleary.  Vince Cleary.”

The guard glanced down at his clipboard.

“Please be on the list.  Please be on the list,” I thought to myself.

It’s all about THE LIST in Hollywood.  Are you on the list?  Are you supposed to be on the list?  I don’t see you on the list.  Who can put me on the list?  I should be on the list.

A few weeks later I would wind up on the other side of this equation as the holder of THE LIST.  I quickly recognized that sense of desperation.  That brief look of fear in their eyes everyone has between when they inform you they’re on the list and you either find their name, or you don’t. 

And each time you knew you were on the list - you HAD to be on the list – you still held your breath for a moment just in case somebody had screwed up, a phone call wasn’t properly made or somebody along the line was just plain lazy. 

You live in Los Angeles long enough and you will find yourself going someplace where you don’t really care if you’re on the list or not, but at that moment you still automatically do the Hollywood prayer and think to yourself, “I hope I’m on the list.  They said they’d put me on the list.”

“Clearly?  I see a Clearly?”  Close enough.  “Yeah, that’s it.”

The guard continued to stare at his clipboard and contemplate if the name "Cleary" could conceivably be transposed to the name "Clearly."  

The line of cars behind me, waiting to go through this same routine, were starting to back up on to Lankershim Boulevard.  He took his eyes off the clipboard long enough to glance up at the line of cars.  Satisfied, he turned around and quickly grabbed a small piece of white paper from the guard shack and tucked it under the top of his clipboard.  He wrote something on the paper and shoved it under my face.

“Put this in a visible spot on your dash.  Have you been on the lot before?”

“Never.”

Long sigh. “Okay, (he’s now slightly annoyed that he’s forced to converse with a human who has never been on the lot before)…uh…just go straight through and turn left at Stage 37.  You’re going to the old machine shop.  Just outside 37.  Any open spot right there.”

“Great.  Thanks!” 

I’m in. For the first time in my life, I’m driving on a major motion picture studio lot.  Universal Studios!  Phantom of the Opera (the original 1925 silent version with Lon Chaney, not any of the later pretenders), All Quiet on the Western Front, Frankenstein, Shadow of a Doubt, the Abbot and Costello movies, Harvey, Winchester ’73, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Birds, To Kill a Mockingbird, Psycho, The Sting and hundreds of other films, some lost forever, and many fondly remembered by millions of people, had all been shot on these soundstages.  

Have you ever had a moment in life where you say to yourself, “this is so cool!”? I hope you have.  They don’t come often, so I think you have to savor every one.  Be prepared for those “so cool” moments and absorb as much as possible, so you can treasure the moment forever.  I was having a major “so cool” moment. 

I simultaneously tried to find my destination, contain my excitement, and absorb all the film history around me. I realized that I was now required to find an old building I’d never seen, in a place I’d never been, through a maze of nondescript large, gray buildings that each had a huge, hangar like door on one side, and a small, normal sized door down at the corner, right below a red light, that looks like it had been ripped off the top of an LAPD cruiser.

A few of the large hangar doors on several of the stages were open, allowing me a peek at the hive of activity, hammering, sawing and set building that’s was going on inside.  

I passed a stage where the red revolving light was lit up.  That meant the camera was rolling and NO ONE was to enter that door for ANY reason.  Then the red light suddenly turned off, and the door quickly flung open as crew members ran in and out, preparing for the next shot, or to grab a quick drag off a cigarette between takes.

Every one of the soundstages had a quiet, solid presence (if memory serves correctly, there were over thirty sound stages of various sizes at that time on the Universal lot.  Stage 12, the largest, was right in the front of the lot and was the size of a football field ), but every one was a monument to film history.  Every one of these large, square and rectangular buildings had a quiet story that added up to the history of Hollywood.

As I took all this in, and daydreamed of the sight of Cary Grant or Alfred Hitchcock or Jimmy Stewart walking in and out of one of those sound stages, I realized I also had to navigate narrow passageways without acting like any of this made any impact on me at all. 

People were walking and zigzagging through the lot on bikes and golf carts all around me, as they went about their work.  

Every few seconds another car, many of them exotic foreign sports cars, would buzz by me if there was an opening, or come at me so fast from the other direction that I couldn’t see how they were going to get by me without damaging both our cars.  I had to act like I did this every day.  Be cool.

I found my way to the building where I had my appointment.  I walked out after the interview unaware that this lot would be where I would work for the next four years.  And would be only the first of many film lots that I would drive or walk on in the coming years.   And the thrill I got every time I drove or stepped on to a movie lot never went away.  It never gets old.  But I’ll always remember my first time.