1994

Allstate Insurance Co. has sued a Los Angeles consulting firm for allegedly encouraging homeowners to file false claims after the Northridge earthquake, as part of a scheme to allegedly skim as much as half of all proceeds coming from the claims. Allstate itself is currently the focus of a federal investigation stemming from the 1994 temblor for allegedly falsifying engineering reports to minimize claims.

Once again, the entertainment story of the year didn't come from Holly wood, Broadway or the television networks' entertainment divisions. The year's most gripping story began with sketchy reports of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson, the former wife of football great O.J. Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. By the time Simpson was about to be charged with the murders, what seemed like the ultimate "tabloid TV" story had busted out of the realm of "Hard Copy" and "Inside Edition."

Perhaps there were signs in the heavens and the earth. A quake registering magnitude 6.8 jolted Los Angeles in January and amid the widespread destruction and frayed nerves, production in the area's huge entertainment industry came to a virtual standstill for weeks. A helicopter plunged out of the sky in April, killing a top executive of the Walt Disney Co., and one of the most stable of entertainment firms was suddenly wracked with acrimony and turmoil at the highest levels.

The defining rock 'n' roll moment of 1994 for me didn't occur in a concert hall but on a Seattle street corner in April. On this night--two days after Kurt Cobain's body was discovered--the corner served as a chilling dividing line between the opposing sides in the deepest generation gap in rock's 40-year history. Waiting for the light to change, you could see outlines three blocks away of 5,000 young people leaving a park surrounding the towering Space Needle.

A Day Without O.J. Is Like a Day Without Live Team Coverage of Absolutely Nothing, Soon to Be a Movie of the Week "Somebody's in the back! ... Somebody's in the back! ... I can't see who it is! ... Now they're pulling away! ... No ... that's a woman I can't identify!" --KTLA-TV reporter Ron Olsen, in reportage typical of that from those on watch outside O.J. Simpson's mansion the day he disappeared (Calendar, June 19). * "As far as I'm concerned, it's a reprieve.

Can a documentary be considered the best film of the year? It depends on the documentary, and it depends on the year. And in 1994, everything points to the landmark American doc "Hoop Dreams" as the No. 1 pick for the preceding 12 months.

In considering the year in movies, the word \o7 disappointing \f7 springs quickly to mind. But why? Is it that it's impossible to impress an audience in the afterglow of a season of cinema that reached a peak with notable efforts like "The Remains of the Day" and "Schindler's List"? Or was this year, with a few exceptions, simply riddled with bombs and stinkers? Then again, perhaps 1994 offered some pretty good movies, but we forget because it also produced "Bad Girls."

Performing in a small theater in Los Angeles can be seen as an act of love or an act of vanity, depending on the quality of the show. Actors make as little as $5 per performance if the number of seats is less than 99. Often volunteers operate the lighting and sound boards, where they can easily throw off pacing and destroy atmosphere. Yet somehow, miraculously, real theater companies manage to spring up.

So much professional theater takes place in the Los Angeles area that any "best of" list is bound to be unfair, because no one has the time to see even half of what's available. I saw 141 performances this year--all but a handful of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties. That may sound like a lot. But it's not even a quarter of the shows that are offered under Actors' Equity agreements in Southern California during an average year (final figures for 1994 are not in).

The "Sunset" Saga: After Glenn Close got the nod to star in the Broadway production of "Sunset Boulevard," Andrew Lloyd Webber asked Faye Dunaway to replace her in L.A. But a few weeks later he changed his mind, decreeing that Dunaway couldn't sing. With no time to find yet another Norma Desmond, and with slumping summer advances, Lloyd Webber closed the L.A. run with Close's final performance. Dunaway sued Lloyd Webber, but an out-of-court settlement is likely.