In the early hours of January 9th, flames tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena, forcing thousands to flee. Whole blocks were leveled, including entire streets filled with working filmmakers, composers, producers, and writers. Among the many industry professionals affected were Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter, Wicked and The Greatest Showman producer Greg Wells, and screenwriters like Meghan Malloy and Will Beall.
Now, six months later, more than 200,000 Angelenos remain displaced, and the rebuilding process is nowhere near complete.
A Creative Class Without a Compass
“This is how I know I’m not okay—I still can’t get my bearings,” says Wells, who lost everything in the fires. His frustration is echoed by many others navigating the surreal combination of insurance bureaucracy, trauma, and uncertainty.
Despite the occasional Instagram update from Mayor Karen Bass or the PR moment between her and developer Rick Caruso to announce the rebuilding of the Palisades Rec Center, the reality on the ground is far less polished.
“There are no good decisions,” Wells adds. “Just decisions that suck less.”
From Location Work to Location Life
Glatter compares her response to the fires to her work life as a director. “I approached it as though I were going on location,” she said. After losing her home, she opted not to stay near the wreckage, but to rent in a different part of the city (Outpost in the Hollywood Hills) treating it like an opportunity to reinvent, to reorient.
“I don’t want much anymore,” she says. “It’s been a shift in priorities. In some ways, it’s a forced reinvention.”
But that kind of resilience isn’t evenly distributed. Many survivors are still stuck in hotel rooms, temporary rentals, or worse, facing a bureaucratic mess of insurance rejections and construction delays.
Insurance Gridlock Meets Creative Burnout
One of the most common threads among survivors is the emotional and financial drain caused by navigating insurance claims. Rebuilding in L.A. is a Herculean task under normal circumstances. Add in trauma, rising construction costs, and delayed payouts, and it becomes a full-time job.
As one industry veteran put it: “I make TV for a living. But this? This is a drama I can’t write my way out of.”
The Long Shadow Over L.A.’s Film Workforce
The fires weren’t just a climate disaster. They were an industry disruption. When entire neighborhoods of crew members, editors, producers, and directors are displaced, that ripple extends to the projects they touch. One producer noted they had to step away from a production mid-prep to deal with family and housing logistics. Multiple writers admitted their development work ground to a halt.
This matters. These aren’t just anecdotes, they’re warnings. Hollywood’s physical community infrastructure is fragile, and disasters like this reveal just how thin the safety net really is for even the most “successful” creatives.
“People Are Not Okay”
As JSA+Partners founder Jennifer Acree put it bluntly: “People are not okay.” That’s the line that echoes most powerfully among the conversations with survivors. There’s grief, yes, but also exhaustion, confusion, and, most frustratingly, invisibility.
The news cycle has moved on. But for those still sifting through rubble (both literal and emotional) the crisis is ongoing.
The Path Forward? Reinvention and Support
If there’s a silver lining, it’s in the tiny acts of recalibration: friends finding new homes together, neighbors pooling resources, and survivors like Glatter using their director’s instinct to reshape a life from scratch.
But what the community needs most now is attention, investment, and policy, to make sure the industry doesn’t just rebuild its stages and studios, but protects the people who make the magic behind the scenes.
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