The Hollywood Sign Isn’t on Fire — but It’s OK to Ask
As sympathy pours in for the devastated families and businesses scattered around fire-ravaged Los Angeles, resentment is creeping toward the Hollywood Sign.
Tourists accidentally sparked controversy on social media last Tuesday when they asked about the iconic landmark amid record-breaking wildfires in LA. The hilltop monument wasn’t anywhere near the destructive blazes that night — the fires were too busy destroying residential communities then — but the thought pulled focus from real relief efforts.
Despite the insistence of several apocalyptic films (“Escape from LA” among them), the Hollywood Sign has never caught fire. It was erected from wood and sheet metal in 1923 to promote the “Hollywoodland” housing development and, in keeping with current events, fell into disrepair because of extreme winds. That lead to the 50-foot-tall letters’ restoration in 1978, an effort fortified in white steel and funded by several entertainment heavyweights including Alice Cooper and Warner Bros. (The choice to drop “LAND” from “HOLLYWOOD” years earlier was unrelated and made by the Chamber of Commerce, which still oversees the sign and surrounding Griffith Park.)
Out-of-towners had their concerns about the Hollywood Sign quickly dismissed last week through a dogpile comprised of both polite detractors — gently urging perspective for the sake of thousands of Angelenos who’d just lost everything — and a slew of critics who were less forgiving. The online discourse got worse when an A.I. generated clip depicting the sign engulfed in flames circulated a few days later. The fake image had an extra “L” in “HOLLYWOOD,” but still duped its way to trending on platforms X and TikTok.
Exasperated locals rolled their eyes at the misguided sentimentality and instead promoted genuine recovery plans as they ramped up. Simultaneously, alt-right trolls and religious extremists compared Hollywood to the biblical city of Sodom and spoke about the fires (a direct result of the climate change so many in those groups deny) as if the blazes were a modern plague sent by God. The catastrophic event has been met by unprecedented firefighting efforts and a display of kindness our city hasn’t known since the LA riots in 1992 — COVID included. And yet, scads of commenters openly cheered the destruction. They said they hoped Hollywood would burn. They laughed, jeered, and even wished others dead on their way to turning a tragic natural disaster into a political talking point.
An uncanny number of millionaires drive up the per capita income of Los Angeles County each year, but the region’s diverse economy reflects various walks of life. Despite the optics of actor Steve Guttenberg helping to move abandoned cars in the Pacific Palisades — or movie star Jennifer Garner mourning a deceased friend on local news — the same class divide that tore the country apart during the last U.S. presidential election exists in LA and across entertainment too.
Working class film and TV hands have described feeling as if their industry has been on fire for years, picketing studio sidewalks and contending with the new technology reshaping content of all kinds. The thankless “day job” is a famously romanticized corner of Hollywood’s skeleton-filled closet. Even as thousands evacuated LA, many off-duty creatives still had to work their side gigs. In their roles as retail workers, servers, and drivers, they were required to clock in and forced to check on the safety of their belongings using fire maps on their phones. That lead to shaky days for many who were already in precarious positions.
Movie theaters aren’t dead and the “burst” streaming bubble from 2022 is starting to look only mostly deflated. But the recent period of contraction in metaphoric Hollywood is almost ready to be re-labeled an outright existential decline in the literal one. Many productions failed to return to LA after the COVID-19 lockdown, and social media influencers are bracing for the potential ban of TikTok next week. Work opportunities continue to dip across entertainment, news, and media job marketplaces nationwide — and although the mantra “Survive ‘til 25” gained popularity among struggling workers in LA in 2023 and 2024, the outlook for many in the industry is worse than ever.
Several entertainment professionals reevaluated that mentality for the L.A. Times at the end of last year. A few described patching together freelance work with what’s left of the gig economy to meet the high cost of living (inflation is worse in LA than many parts of the country), but others used the holidays to make good on their plans to flee. 2020 broke a long-running streak in California’s population increase when it saw the state narrowly lose more people than it gained for the first time in a century. Data from local organizations, national moving companies, and the U.S. Census Bureau suggest the state has made a comeback, but housing costs remain a top concern for those questioning whether LA and its flagship business can still be called “home.”
As insurance companies continue to refuse coverage for California homeowners precisely because they are in high-risk areas for natural disasters, many successful creatives who had “made it” before this year are left with nothing after the fires. If those professionals leave LA, they take both their industry experience and whatever power they have to make new employment opportunities for less seasoned workers with them. According to a new report from FilmLA, 2024 marked a historic low for the city, with the fewest film and TV productions shot there in the past three decades (excluding the pandemic years). Plenty of projects that would have been made here are now going to workers in Canada, the U.K., and competing U.S. states with governments willing to offer big tax breaks to eat LA’s lunch.
Over the weekend, GoFundMe pages appeared across social media for those who lost their cars, homes, communities, and in some cases loved ones to the fires. (At the time of writing, 25 people are confirmed dead and as many are still missing.) From between the dozens of adorable family photos — temporarily compiled into a tragic sort of yearbook on LA’s Instagram Stories — a different request began to resonate with film lovers.
“If you’re a producer and you’re seeing this PLEASE bring work to our city,” read one post, from the meme account Freaks of Sunset. “The city’s freelancer army needs work if Los Angeles is going to survive this catastrophe.”
Another from director Rachel Morrison (“The Fire Inside”) echoed similar sentiments. She wrote, “One of the biggest things you can do to help our city is to shoot here. We have some of the best crews in the world who need work now more than ever. Not to mention great stages and consistent sunlight. Push to shoot in LA whenever possible.”
These posts reflect the heart of the anguish for countless creatives in Los Angeles. Like a tectonic plate of unspoken emergency etiquette, there is a quiet divide emerging between the parts of the city that are still in active crisis and the parts that are attempting to go about business as usual. For many exhausted entertainment workers, that’s a scene as familiar as going into debt against the backdrop of awards season. Even still, it is devastating for many to have survived a global healthcare crisis and multiple Hollywood strikes to realize that hope and healing may never come.
Some friends came to my apartment last week for a dose of normalcy. Surrounded by an oasis of concrete, I’m far away from the city’s most active fires and can just make out the Hollywood Sign from my window when there isn’t smoke in the air. Eating pizza and watching a movie, we sat in surreal denial. One friend, who I’ve known as a diehard industry professional since we met several years ago, was eventually asked what she did for a living.
“I used to be a TV writer,” she said. “But that isn’t a job anymore.”
The Hollywood Sign isn’t on fire today, and there’s no reason to think it will be on fire tomorrow. But embers are fickle, and if there isn’t enough rain or we get the wrong wind, that apocalyptic scene could happen. The aftermath of this disaster will leave thousands of entertainment laborers — many hard-working people who get up early and stay late for jobs that are low-paid and uncertain — blowing in the breeze. Currently, some are sifting through the ashes and looking for whatever can be salvaged of their lives.
The city’s crowning trademark shouldn’t be your first concern when praying for LA. But the Hollywood Sign is a beacon that has drawn millions here for generations. In a time when storytelling has never seemed more essential, it’s OK to keep watch. The people and the dreams they had, beneath a real estate sign of all things, may not be here forever.
