By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Robbie Baitz's "Leaving Los Angeles: Part Two"
Playwright and now former Californian Jon Robin Baitz etches his piercing envoi to life as a Los Angeles-centric writer of television after his ouster from the writing staff of a series. “Like many of the people I met who write about TV, (most of whom can be bought for the price of a single commissary crepe-suzette, a keychain with the show’s logo on it, and a set-visit with its grimacing star), he was possessed of the winning duo of wild arrogance and a staggering un-athletic ignorance of all life outside of prime time, the culture of which depends on low-rent journalistic toadies penning breathless wooze in exchange for future favors and future keychains, and handshakes with future stars. When I left for New York in 1985, 
I was a young playwright with the residuals of the South African accent acquired in my teens. My friends were a boozy-druggy lot of Bohemian wrecked hipsters who made up the vibrant LA theater scene, which was exceptionally fecund back then. There was heroin, there was methadone, there was booze in spades, and fragile bits of sobriety to frame it all. When I returned to Los Angeles, in late 2002, it was as a member of the “writing-establishment,” a decade and a half older, no more accent, just the slightly false schoolboy manners remained, manners which had done me no good, and with the goal of finally putting away some money, just a bit, so I would never have to think about lucre much ever again, (artists dream of money, etc.) for the remainder of my playwright’s life… The online thing is not just an LA thing by any means. However, in New York, the life of the street, the flirtation and ebb and flow of strangers getting off of the bus, makes for a perpetual energy machine. New York is just sexier, smarter, and better dressed, less vulgar, more diverse, filled with accident, and unexpected encounters, as a rule. There is the Neue Gallery across from the Met, down the street from the Guggenheim, which is up from the Whitney, just a twenty minute walk to MOMA, across Central Park, etc, etc, forever and ever. You will see, smile at, spy on, talk to, stare at, be enchanted by any number of utterly different kinds of people within twenty minutes of leaving your apartment in NYC. A barrage rather than the white noise of the undulating palms and brackish skies of the dream coast.” [Much much more at the link and the earlier installment at the link.]
