If you are serious about screenwriting, I highly suggest you come to L.A. to attend the Screenwriter’s Expo. It’s the largest event of its kind and offers hundreds of seminars and attracting thousands of writers (somewhat depressing when you see how many other people are trying to make it in the business). There are individual discussions with writers and panels with other filmmakers. The meeting before the last one featured an entire day of seminars by people from Pixar: Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton (yes, he did Crush for the audience) and many others. Their best presentation was the story behind
Toy Story and how they went the exact opposite way on everything that Disney told them to do. Last year they had the screenwriters from
Pirates of the Caribbean. The website for last year’s meetings is still up – go to
http://www.screenwritingexpo.com/seminars.html and you can see all that they offer. The event for this year hasn't been announced yet, but it's usually in late October or early November.
The library at the WGA is a great place to find scripts to read, but most of them are on the Internet now anyway. Try
http://www.dailyscript.com/ and
http://www.simplyscripts.com/ for good on-line libraries.
The other places to go are, of course, the studios. Universal offers a “VIP Tour” that’s still includes the theme park, but for real movie making go on the Warner Brothers’ tour. It’s takes you all over the lot, into the Warner Museum and to whatever set they’re using that day. You will see everything from hot sets to craft shops to dubbing sessions to editing bays. Paramount Studios and Sony also offer tours of their lots, but its more just pointing out historical buildings and sets and more limited about the “guts” of Hollywood.
Another thing to do is to get tickets to a taping with a live audience. The more you know about production the better a writer you will be – and nothing is more instructive than watching a bunch of sitcom writers try to fix a line that isn’t working while the director is screaming for time, the audience is squirming after the fiftieth take and the actress is throwing a temper tantrum. There’s nothing shooting at the moment because of the strike, but several shows are taped on the Disney lot (about the only way to got into the studio) and all throughout town. Yahoo for tv tickets.
Another stop might also be The Writer’s Store in West LA (
http://www.writersstore.com/). Although they sell everything over the Internet too, the store is filled with every screenwriting book, screenwriting software and writing aids you can imagine.
Hollywood and Los Angeles in general is about 30-40 miles northwest of
Disneyland. There is really nothing “Hollywood” down Orange County, so you made need to split your trip between Tinsel Town and Disneyland. Sorry to answer so late, but I hope this helps.
