As Hollywood celebrates the film industry at this weekend’s Academy Awards, not far away from where finishing touches are being put to the red carpet, communities are still coming to terms with the impact of the wildfires which ravaged areas of Los Angeles earlier this year.
Prop master Adam Jette – and his wife and son – lost their home in Altadena.
“Even coming back into the neighbourhood is really, really hard,” he tells Sky News.
“You’re coming back to what it is, which is a disaster site, the whole neighbourhood is gone.”
He says he and others in the same position have no choice but to keep going.
“We all have to keep working in order to support ourselves, in order to have our health insurance, in order to be able to move forward and rebuild.
“And yet the only thing you want to do is just, you know, sit there in misery.”
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In Hollywood, few productions have had to be paused because less is being shot here these days, the fires adding to the existential crisis the city was already facing.
Wes Bailey’s company SirReel has been renting out film and TV production equipment in Los Angeles since the 1990s – but in recent years work in the city of dreams has dried up.
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First COVID-19, then strikes and now, after a race for scale to commission content for streaming platforms, the industry is facing a production contraction and Bailey says it needs help.
“The fires were, I think, the catalyst to really get people to say ‘we’ve got an emergency here’,” he says.
“You go into the UK and you get a 40% return on your money.
“I think the way that California delivers that incentive has been sloppy, it’s been inconsistent.”
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For glossy reality show Selling Sunset, set around high-end real estate in LA, production has now resumed after pausing when the fires broke out.
One of the show’s stars, Jason Oppenheim, says he’s had “many, many” emotional calls from clients.
“I’m 30% therapist right now, 20% attorney, 20% contractor and 30% real estate agent,” he tells Sky News.
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He says Los Angeles has issues that need resolving if it wants to continue to attract investment.
“We obviously have a crime problem, we have a homelessness problem, we’ve obviously taxed to the point where we discourage development, and we obviously have seen significant loss of wealthy people leaving the state.
“If you really want to have a healthy, functioning society that’s egalitarian and creates opportunity for everyone, you’re going to need a lot of wealthy people in that city paying taxes, so you cannot force them away and that’s just a fact.”
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Yet despite the frustration, he’s optimistic for the future of the Palisades – another area devastated by the fires.
“I would bet anything that the Palisades will be one of the most desirable areas on the planet to live in five years,” he says.
“The houses will be stunning, fireproof, beautiful architecture.”
But that seems a long way off now, and in the meantime for those left with nothing the little they can salvage becomes special.
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For Adam Jette that’s even an iron saucepan.
“To be able to pull anything out of this wreckage and have it, it’s so meaningful,” he says.
“It didn’t take our pets and it didn’t take our family, it just took stuff, but even just some of that surviving it really, it means something.”
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Buried in the ashes following the wildfires is a lesson in what matters to those who keep this industry going – and it’s not red carpets or golden statuettes.
