Edward_Lee_Whiteside@cup.portal.com (05/29/91)
Jim, here's my report on the Paramount Studios tour. My access to USENET (Portal) appears to have the USENET news feed hosed up (as well as outgoing news posts). email appears to be functioning. I'm not sure if my post to rec.arts.startrek went out or not. The latest news articles on anything are Thursday and I posted it last Thursday (it's now SUNDAY). So here's the report and details so you can put it in rec.arts.startrek.info. The Paramount Studios Tour (or the best kept secret in Hollywood) Paramount Studios has a low-key walking studio tour which lasts about two hours. The cost is $10 with tours at 11 am and 2 pm weekdays. Paramount is located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, but the studio tour entrance is along Gower Street on the west side of the lot (same entrance used for Arsenio Hall and other shows taped in front of a live audience). It is supposedly limited to 15 people, so it is best to get there about a half hour early (my group was twelve people). There is a parking garage on Gower a bit south of the entrance which is fairly inexpensive. You can get on Gower from 101 a few miles to the north or Melrose from 101 a mile or two to the East. The Paramount switchboard has a recorded message for the tour at 213-956-5000 for any details I may have missed. You can also get tickets for the Arsenio Hall show, which tapes at 5 pm at the entrance and tickets for any other shows taping with an audience as well. Now, on to the tour. The first thing you see is the Arsenio set. They take you into the audience seats and talk about the various parts of the stage. Its quite likely you will see the stage being set up for the musical guests. A lot of what you see depends on what is going on at the studios. In early May, the regular series were all on hiatus, so we didn't get to see any sets or actors. Other people who have taken the tour have seen the Cheers set or even got to watch the cast rehearse. Our group got to watch the crew of Hard Copy getting ready to tape a show. All during the tour, the guide will point out buildings used for famous scenes or for TV shows (The high school in Happy Days, the brewery for Laverne & Shirley, the water tank used for Star Trek IV, and many other sites). Other regular stops on the tour are a quick look in the wardrobe building where costumes and various clothing are stored, a fairly long stop in the prop building where all sorts of standing props and hand props are stored. During the tour, no photos are allowed. The only exception is when you step outside the lot at the original Paramount Pictures entry gate. I've been told that when the regular series are in production, you can also see the set for Cheers and maybe watch them rehearse a show they will be taping later. There is also a Paramount "Company Store" that you can buy merchandise at, although the selection is not as good as I would have expected. Most of the Star Trek items there you can find elsewhere, but if you want to pick up items with Arsenio or Cheers logos on them, there is a lot of things you won't find anywhere else. You may have to remind the tour guide about the store, though. The Star Trek: The Next Generation sets are off-limits for the tour, but our guide did show us some of the set pieces in storage for things like the shuttle pods, Klingon bridge pieces, and the walls used for the holodeck when it is turned off. Currently filming is Star Trek VI and they may be filming on "closed sets", but this means mostly that on the large sound stages, they still leave the giant doors up such that you can look inside. There are signs right by the doors proclaiming "CLOSED SET" and they go on to say there is supposed to be a security guard on duty. On our tour, we were able to look through the doors at several sets, including the bridge set, some corridoors, the Klingon bridge (and other Klingon interior sets), an ice planet set (right after they filmed, with mist still in the air), and what looked like a Vulcan arena being assembled. To top things off, we got to see Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and Walter Koenig being dropped off at their trailers for lunch (surprisingly, Shatner and Nimoy's trailers were the same size as the trailers for the other cast members). We then saw Shatner and Nicholas Meyer walking back to Shatner's trailer. Shatner had makeup on that made it look like he had been out in very frigid air and all of the cast we saw had on fuzzy animal skin boots for walking in the snow and ice. We also saw other set pieces under construction in the fiberglass shop which were probably being made for the movie. All in all, it was definitely worth the $10 for the tour, letting you see more of the actual studio at work than you would on the Universal Studios tram ride. Lee Whiteside USENET: Edward_Lee_Whiteside@cup.portal.com CI$ : 76044,502 GEnie : L.WHITESIDE The Magrathea BBS 1-602-833-9216 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Griffith /--OO--\ | Two great powers are on our side: the power of griffith@dweeb.fx.com | Love and the power of Arithmetic. These two are BEWARE BATS WITHOUT NOSES! | stronger than anything else in the world.