August 26th, 2006 -- Written by John Campea
Hey there guys, John here.
Sorry about the lack of posts on my part (Rodney is doing a good job!), but as most of you know, I’m in Los Angeles at the moment and about to leave to go on my Transformers set visit. Should be fun. I’ll be joined by guys from JoBlo, Latino Review, Chud, AICN, Cooming Soon and a bunch of others. Should be fun.
Ok, so here’s my rundown so far:
Thursday 5:45am - Woke up to get ready to leave for the airport. My shuttle was picking me up at 6:45am. My flight was scheduled for 10am with a connection in Chicago.
Thursday 8am - Arrive at the airport and get through customs and security
Thursday 9am - A nice staff person informed me that an earlier flight to Chicago has room available and that I was free to take it instead of the 10am. I decided to wait in Toronto since my flight was continuing to LA… so it was either sit on my ass in Toronton or sit on my ass in Chicago. I decided to wait.
Thursday 10am - MY FLIGHT GETS CANCELED due to severe thunderstorms in Chicago. So I’m scheduled to take a direct flight to LA at 6pm… 8 hours to wait. I decide to wait at the airport.
Thursday 6pm - My flight leaves for LA
Thursday 8pm (LA time) - I land in LA after a 5 hour flight and a limo is waiting to pick me up and take me to my hotel. The driver is this big young guy who talks to me a bout surfing. Glad to see stereotypes are still alive and well. :)
Thursday 8:45pm - I get to my hotel. The Renaissance Hollywood Hotel right on Hollywood and Highland. Right beside the Kodiak Theater (where they hold the Oscars), the Manns Chinese Theater on right on the Walk of Fame. I can see the Hollywood sign from my room. It’s amazing.
Thrusday 11pm - Sharon Dewit comes over and we chat and go for a bite to eat (she lives down here now)
Friday 9:45am - I grab a cab and head over to Lakeshore Entertainment to meet with Brendan, who is their web marketing guy (I still don’t know his full title there). Brendan is a fantastic guy.
Friday 10am - Brendan takes me in to meet the President of Lakeshore, Gary Lucchesi (He has also produced films like Underworld, Million Dollar Baby, The Mothman Prophecies, Primal Fear, The Gift, and the upcoming films “The Covenant” and Zach Braffs new flick “The Last Kiss”). Gary is a pure joy to talk to. I thought I’d get a quick hand shake and hello. Instead, he had us sit down in his office and we just talked about movies and the movie business for almost 45 minutes. This guy LOVES the movies and everything about them. He ignored phone calls and seemed to actually be interested in my opinions on what was wrong with the movie industry today. He was amazing to yack with. A real first rate guy and I can’t wait to come back to LA to meet with him again.
Friday 10:45am - Brendan then takes me to meet Gary’s right hand guy named Bob (who I’m ashamed to admit I can’t remember his last name). Bob has been in the movie business for decades. We sat in their conference room… and Bob just talked about movies. This guy also LOVES movies. Most of us think of Movie execs as these stuffy guys who could actually care less about film… but not the guys at Lakeshore. It was so refreshing to listen to how passionate these guys are about the movies. They’re still kids, and that was great to see!!!
Friday 11:10am - Brendan takes me into meet Robert Burke, the Vice President of Lakeshore and head of the Marketing Dept. He is another very cool guy. he’s coming up to Toronto for the Film Fest, and we’re going to hook up again up there.
Friday 11:20am - Brendan and I finally have a chance to sit and chat for a few minutes. Brendan is someone who really understands the role the internet has to play in the new age of promoting movies. The other studios need guys like Brendan.
Friday 11:30am - I have them call me a cab since I have to be a Paramount Studios at Noon.
Friday 12pm - I arrive at the MASSIVE Paramount Pictures campus. It’s intimidating. It’s like a little city in the middle of LA.
Friday 12:10pm - I go to the office of Amy Powell, Senior Vice President at Paramount. We chat a little bit about “The Incident”… you know what I’m talking about… and the nature of the internet with regards to the movie biz.
Friday 12:30pm - I go in and meet with Tamar Teifeld of Interactive Promotions & Publicity at Paramount. She’s really wonderful. I’ve been doing most of my correspondence with Paramount through her. We just chatted about stuff for about 30 minutes.
Friday 1:30pm - I get back to my hotel, grab something to eat, shop a little bit and relaxed until Sharon Dewit and her boyfriend Dan came back to pick me up in the evening. We had some drinks and then went out to Santa Monica to see the pier and the beach. We hung out until they dropped me off at 9pm. I wasn’t feeling well, and just stayed in for the rest of the night… because I have a big day today.
Saturday 8am - I wake up and start writing this massive post.
Saturday 10:15am - Tamar from Paramount is going to be picking me up to take me to the Transformers set. We’ll be there for about 4 hours and have a chance to chat with Michael Bay and the cast. That’s nice… I’m really hoping John Knoll will be there (Head VFX Guru of ILM).
I’ll give you guys another report tonight when I get back.
Cheers!
~John
Posted in 
Thanks for the update John. It sounds awesome. FYI- You called Gary Lucchesi “Greg” twice in the post…
Yikes! you’re right i did. Fixed it. :)
Awsome… I can’t wait to hear how the set visit went!
Your so LUCKY!! I wish I were you. :(
Great stuff. Now if you can beat out AICN to the laptop after the T movie visit…I’m sort of hoping that Bay (or John Knoll, if he’s there) will do different one on one interviews with the folks visiting the set…
…and yes, John, I know you want to touch a leg of Bumblebee while you are there. Fight the urge, John! Avoid temptation! :)
Again, I envy you to some degree, John. The only thing better in my mind than visiting a set is working on one; it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe one of these days….
…and thanks for the update.
-Sealer
ok… uh im not sure how big paramount is but i bet universal is bigger
Lucky boy John! Have fun, can’t wait to read you Visit to the Set of Transformers post!
And I agree with Darren, fight the urge!!!
Hey John - sounds like you’re having good time, like a kid in the candy store. I know exactly where you’re staying (I live 30min away). Enjoy the rest of your stay in LA! I can’t wait to read about your trip to the Transformers set.
Very cool. Sounds like you are having a great time.
If there are so many people in Hollywood passionate about movies how come there is so many bad movies being made?
The Santa Monica Pier is my favorite place here in LA. It’s awesome that you got to stay by the Chinese theater, which is quite possibly the coolest huilding here. If you go there at night, there’s crazy yet fascinating homeless people who ask you to pay them to tell you stories about its history.
You really should move down here, if you’re seriously considering it. LA has everything.
Holy christ fuck….YOU’LL BE CHATTING TO BAY???? You lucky bastard. Have fun and tell us all :)
campea you are one lucky lucky lucky fucker, hope it all goes well for you.
John..man CONGRATS!! It’s funny to think all of this from a blog/podcast.
have fun dude!
Dont resist the urge.
Touch it. Touch it a lot. Who else will get that chance? A handful at most.
Steal a random peice of crap from the set. Discarded coffee cup. I dont care. Bring me something, or I post more about Hillary Duff.
John!
Thx for the updates, this is really kool of you to do this not just for your site , but for us, your fans, I will keep looking back to read them, thx agian and have fun, take care, your internet fan..
Jarrod-D
To think just a few short weeks have past since they had this site shut down. Now they have you touring the set. Your a lucky guy, makes me want to start up my own site.
I so want to be you right now.
Kodiak Theater? Isn’t that in Alaska?…I KID. Seriously though John, congratulations, you and the movieblog are among the big boys in Hollywoodland.
Why do you keep mentioning John Knoll? Scott Farrar is the VFX supervisor on the movie man. At least according to my research.
If you know something else, please post a link or something?
I bet Jon got abducted and sexually violated by Lindsay Lohan. Hence no Transformers update. Escaping THE FIREEE! is not easy, especially for a unsuspecting Canadian.