Boulevard of Dreams

Boulevard of Dreams Stars

Carmen Electra	Raquel Welch	Maitland Ward	Jon Voight
Jean-Claude Van Damme	Michael Keaton	Pamela Anderson	Matthew McConaughey
Anthony Hopkins	Liv Tyler	Stockard Channing	Andie Macdowell

Synopsis

In 1996 Carmen Electra and Jamie King were amongst a group of nine young performers who enrolled in a project called Boulevard of Dreams.

South African TV director Jan Groenewald had come to Los Angeles to discover why some make it in Hollywood and others don't. All of these performers shared the same dream: fame and fortune, to have their names up in bright lights. For all of them, it was an obsession. All nine had talent, but even more, a burning ambition that had driven them to Hollywood.

TV cameras were around them all day long as they pursued their daily routine, continuously present at auditions, in their private lives. The camera was a constant voyeur. Where are these participants now? Who have they become and what have they been up to the last 14 years?

Hollywood is a discipline, a science in idealism, rewarding some with great success. 15 years ago Charlize Theron's name was not even murmured in Hollywood. She stepped out onto the luminous Boulevard of Dreams. Her dreams became a reality. That is Hollywood's reality: the people making up Hollywood. Hollywood often appears to be a myth, an illusion, a figment of the imagination, but yet it is made real by some. There are people who have discovered the secret pin-code of fame and fortune but not necessarily the pin-code of love and happiness. Their obsession with fame and fortune is larger than their own lives. Personal happiness and love are often mere trivia readily sacrificed in the drive towards their goal. There are millions of young people with a burning desire to unlock this secret pin-code that will lead them to that wondrous big silver screen. It is a magnified ego-trip: dreams of their faces, bodies and the characters that they portray coming to life on screens worldwide. In thousands of theatres scattered all over the globe people will look at them and fall in love … In fact, in order to make their dreams real, our participants, the “players” in Boulevard of Dreams, would have had to become mere commodities, their faces not only on the silver screen but also in bookshops, on newspaper stands, on life-size posters and cover pages of magazines, on subway walls and public lavatories, everywhere... Then they would have become super-stars.

Jan spoke to Anna Strassberg from the Lee Strassberg Institute in Hollywood - one of the finest drama schools in the world. If anybody knows what it takes, she does. She was married to coach master of the stars, Lee, for many decades and she worked and taught with him. Thousands upon thousands of young people arrive in Hollywood every year, all with starry eyes - so positive that they will crack that magical pin-code. Not even a percentage point will succeed. Most of them are exquisitely beautiful with magnificent bodies and great voices. They are there trying to crack that code - but most leave tinsel-town disillusioned and unhappy. Anna talks about what she believes makes a great star: an inner voyage to discover the uniqueness of your own being. And then adding another component, almost Biblical but as applicable in Hollywood as anywhere else - belief. There are those who have mastered the magic of belief.

This series is all about miracles and broken Dreams. A Boulevard of Dreams. Apart from posing for a centre-fold spread for Playboy, Carman Electra was not famous. She was willing to enter the game, defenceless, prepared to expose all as she was to striding forward along the Boulevard of Dreams. She was determined to make it. And the cameras were observing her step by step. As with all our participants, she improvised to create a role for herself in a self-made soap opera - one of the Boulevard of Dreams projects. As she improvised, it became clear that she would succeed one day. And her name has indeed been written on a star. Other participants were equally ingenious. There was Jamie King, a beautiful and attractive young African American man, a choreographer of note, 14 years ago, choreographer for the Oscar extravagance. He had worked with Madonna and Michael Jackson on more than one occasion. There was also Arthur Trowbridge, a trained Shakespearian actor just looking for his big break. The players were: Arthur Trowbridge Rebecca Bowman Jamie King Carmen Electra Promise LaMarco Shaun Patrick Barry Roberta Kent Elma Vann Joe Watson The producers of Boulevard of Dreams are looking for them. If you know where to find them, please let us know. Are they happy and living somewhere with new dreams? Are they still alive? Help us in tracing them to produce a new series Boulevard of Dreams: 15 years later. Boulevard of Dreams was distributed by WTN (World Television News) and broadcast in many European countries.