Underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger referred to Hollywood as Babylon in his 1959 book of film industry scandals, and over the past week Babylon has been burning (to borrow from punk band The Ruts) as the LA wildfires wreak havoc, killing 25 people, destroying 12,000 structures and causing about $250bn in damage.
The fires have also displaced thousands, with 100,000 people under evacuation orders and warnings from the LA fire department this week that more strong winds could result in further spread of the inferno. Some cynics have taken to social media to cruelly jeer at the destruction, posting videos of the blaze accompanied by Public Enemy’s 1990 anthem Burn Hollywood Burn. However, the rap group’s frontman, Chuck D, took to social media to remind ignorant youngsters that the song has “nothing to do with families losing everything they have”.
The overall response from celebrities, the American public and the entertainment industry has been a reassuring reminder that in times of peril even a nation as ideologically divided as the US can mostly work together for the greater good of those who have lost everything.
It’s only Elon Musk, Republican legislators, president-elect Donald Trump and right-wing media outlets that have used the fires to score political points, blaming them on the LA fire department’s diversity hiring policies and demanding that federal aid be released only if the liberal California government agrees to substantial policy changes. It is almost as if they see this natural disaster as divine retribution visited on the sinful, morally bankrupt denizens of Babylon. Everyone else understands that at times like these there’s no place for politics.
The fires don’t burn red or blue, and the devastation that they’ve wrought is likely to affect an industry that’s only just emerged from the setbacks of the Covid pandemic and the 2023 strikes.
The first stories to grab headlines focused on the growing list of celebrities whose beach houses had been burnt to the ground. Everyone from Paris Hilton to Mel Gibson, Billy Crystal, James Woods, Steve Guttenberg, Hip Hop producer Madlib, powerful Hollywood agents and executives saw their homes going up in smoke. Then the fires began to move into Los Angeles itself and several iconic venues within the city shut their doors. The TCL Chinese Theatre (still popularly known by its former name of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre), the Dolby Theatre (home to the Oscars ceremony), the Hollywood Bowl — all shuttered as employees fled under evacuation orders.
The fires could not have arrived at a worse time for Hollywood’s annual gala-stuffed, star-studded awards season and several glitzy annual events and ceremonies have been cancelled, postponed or still await their fate. The list of ceremonies thus far delayed includes the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the nomination announcements for the Writers Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild and Producers Guild of America awards are all delayed.
The Oscars, which everyone in Hollywood has been watching to gauge reaction to the fires, pushed its deadline for nominations from January 17 to January 19 and then again this week to January 23, even as the scheduled date of the winners’ announcement on March 5 remains in place. The Sundance Film Festival has announced it will still take place next week, as will the Grammy Awards in February.
Actors like Patricia Arquette and Hacks star Jean Smart are already calling on the academy and other institutions to forget about awards altogether in the face of the tragedy or at least to turn them into telethons for fundraising to help the thousands of people who have lost everything. Smart posted on Instagram this week: “With ALL due respect, during Hollywood’s season of celebration, I hope any of the networks televising the upcoming awards will seriously consider NOT televising them and donating the revenue they would have garnered to victims of the fires and the firefighters.”
Many celebrities, lucky enough to have the kind of bank balances that haven’t been completely wiped out by the inferno, have donated large sums to the relief efforts, with Jamie Lee Curtis donating $1m and Sharon Stone turning a high-end Beverly Boulevard boutique into a distribution centre for donations of clothing and essential goods.
Finally, there is the question of what, once the smoke has cleared, the effect of the fires will be on Hollywood’s main source of revenue: the production of films and television. Deadline.com reports that the reality of the fires has burst the bubble of enthusiasm for a productive and profitable 2025 that seemed to have pervaded industry gatherings towards the end of last year and that now, “trying to carry on with work may remain difficult for a while”.
As one TV executive told the website, “People are being mindful that we need to take care of below-the-line workers who just came out of a pandemic and two strikes and are finally getting on their feet … We have to make sure not to derail that too much while also making sure everyone feels safe and comfortable.”
Production has been shut down on the lots of Universal and Warner Bros studios, affecting shows from Abbott Elementary to Hacks, Ted and Suits LA. Whatever happens though, it’s likely that Hollywood will have to face another reset once things return to normal, “whatever normal means now”, as one agency insider told Deadline.
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