Guns & buttocks
There are many guns in Hollywood, and I’ve stared down the barrel of about 20 of them since I moved here. Fortunately, they’re all two-dimensional. I’m talking about billboards. Hollywood for some three decades now has had a tendency to produce action movie billboards with a hero pointing his gun directly in the viewer’s face. He’s usually making eye contact, too, leaving no doubt in mind that it’s you he’d like to blow away.
How this is meant to lure me closer, I’m not sure, but the film industry seems certain it will.
Those billboards that don’t feature guns directly pointed at the viewer sometimes include a gun simply pointed away, Jodie Foster’s current The Brave One being an example.
Occasionally, in the billboards, the viewer has the gun, which you can tell because some starlet is in your crosshairs. No wonder movie stars are scared of their fans. Half of them have faced us over a gun one way or another.
The other oddity that seems particular to Los Angeles advertising is the plethora of bare buttocks one encounters on Sunset Blvd. And these are big billboards. Big buttocks! Joe’s Jeans has run a particularly infamous ad campaign advertising a product I haven’t seen yet because most of the billboards simply feature naked buttocks. One featured seven naked butts of varying hues all in a row. It was startling enough to make you run off the road. Fortunately it was at an intersection, so you could rest at the red light and take in the huge butt rainbow at your leisure.
I wonder why they don’t combine these two most-favored images. I haven’t seen a butt and a gun together since James Bond was a brunette. I suppose, however, that it’s only a matter of time.
