When All the World was Very Young..
courtesy of The Independent
I was working in the art department of RCA Records the year they held the David Bowie look=alike contest. He was a huge star on their label. They had their classical Red Seal but Bowie was the rocket ship that made RCA sexy.
These were the early days before everyone was in drag, costume or dressed up like Santa. So seeing people don the Bowie look was very exciting.
- A woman in my department got my vote. She was thin, with gorgeous sunken cheekbones and wore her naturally red hair in that Ziggy Bowie cut. Like a lot of people who identify with someone who shakes up the culture, she really lived everyday in his fashion. I’ve seen it with John Lennon a lot, but Bowie, being such a chameleon, offered a wonderful landscape of visual opportunities.
- I had one disappointment with him…when he got American teeth and lost his wonderful canines. They gave his face that extra lupine appeal that made him even more dangerous.
A major cultural force…. R.I.P.
The Little Short or Back Seat Driver
The white Honda came to a squeaky halt in front of 338 Lightfoot Street. Quickly a numbered placard was put in the window. The passenger to be, a well suited, dark haired banker started to bark through the slightly closed window, “I had asked for the second tier car, and ten minutes ago.”
Kim Ton, a new driver, responded slowing, her English halting, “Sorry, sir, they say I was car in area. Do you accept ride”. Shaking with impatience, he managed, “ Oh what the hell … just move quickly.”
The car was not new nor was it shiny. Kim Ton clearly did not know the streets and put the GPS on in her native tongue. This made the banker extremely uncomfortable. “I can tell you how to go…surely better than this chirping.”
Kim shook her head kindly and hoped he would understand that the route she programmed was for streets. Not so speedy and safer considering her newness at the wheel. Unfortunately for the banker, the frequent stop signs made the car lurch forward and the papers he was reading tumble to the floor.
“Bloody hell. It’s bad enough I’m sitting in a heap, but with a woman driver,” he bellowed, hoping he’d offend. This is the last time I use this blasted service. It’s appalling.” Getting no reaction, he continued, “How do I know what the voice is saying? You could be stretching out this trip to make more money. Switch it to English.”
Kim shook at the power of his voice. She patted her stomach, hoping her daughter would not feel the stress from this passenger.
“I want English.” Nervously she pressed the buttons and the GPS was now in English. “Keep right ahead .8 of a mile and turn right onto Sunset.”
The car went forward a bit then turned onto Brassten.
“What? Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear what that stupid thing said?”
Kim heard but didn’t understand English well enough to follow. She was counting on intuition. Forward seemed best.
Brassten was swollen with traffic. The banker was seething and threatened to jump out. Kim squeezed on the steering wheel wishing she were on a farm.
“That’s it. Stop here.” It was the middle of the block, middle of the road. But Kim was flustered.
She brought the car to a complete stop. Frantic, the banker opened the door to leap out. Immediately, he was hit by a car that was focused on traffic far ahead. Kim threw up on her own lap.
……
Hospitals are busy places. They move ‘em in, they move ‘em out. Nurses and doctors can work incredibly long shifts and it is to their credit that most peoples’ stay in hospitals are ok enough and eventually they all go home. Sometimes accidents can happen and babies are switched. But that’s rare.
The banker was fast asleep on the gurney. He was given shots for the pain. His wife, flying into town that night, should be there after surgery. Though there was damage, the residents all agreed that it was not so severe and he should respond well in recovery.
Drs. Levy and Jones had time for a quick coffee while the pre op was being ordered. As they headed down to the cafeteria, another patient, a Mr. Vale was parked next to the banker. Like peaceful children, they slept on, perhaps dreaming, waiting for their future.
……………….
Terribly wounded soldiers often speak of their ghost limbs. The arm that was blown off by shrapnel feels so real, like he could throw a ball with it. The leg that used to hike up Mt. Shasta, now only air, but feeling so heavy, like his boots were still on. Perhaps it’s a phenomenon that helps people accommodate to the shock of loss. Belief in ghosts may have always served that purpose. To help make peace with the empty space, the quiet corner.
It was a ghost the banker would now live with. It was a ghost that would color all of his days and certainly his nights. He would no longer need to zip up the fly of his Brioni trousers. He would no longer need to hire sex workers when his wife was away. He was changed. He did not ask for it. Sometimes babies are switched. Shit happens. Perhaps he would learn to be happy.
Of course, he didn’t have any of these thoughts …not right away. First he would have to scream till he cried.. Then he would threaten lawsuits. Finally, when he was most tired, and wanted more than anything to grab something known, warm, and familiar, he might even pray. That the ghost would come.
Brother, Where Art Thou?
Crossing Delancey, I found myself eventually on Canal Street where I was lucky to see the Feminist Art Show before it closed. The F Word at the Untitled Space Gallery was a wonderful send up on feminine imagery…one piece by artist Frances Goodman is an actual Dodge Ram Hood with bullet holes, filled in with pink LED light that spells out Ok, the Crazy Bitch. You can almost see the story happening… betrayed woman takes out her vengeance on the American phallic symbol. Mixed media Colonization and Assimilation by artist Elektra KB works with thread i that spells out “we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, either one must remain terrified or become terrifying. In other words, up against the wall MutherFuggers. Strong ideas, but feminist art must be political by definition.
It was with an inspired mind and satisfied eye that I left Lispenard Street and headed back to Canal for the subway. Out of nowhere one apparent vendor started screaming at a man who looked to me like one of New York’s many homeless mental patients. The vendor was brandishing a wooden stick. The other man didn’t look dangerous though he may have been provocative. Within seconds another vendor jumped out with some sort of Chinese weapon that looked like a short pole with a chain that swings another metal piece. Not pretty. The two men chased after the third, landing blows on him and beating him with their sticks. It didn’t take long for them to get him on the ground where the beating had a better chance of landing. I called on my cell for the police but realized that I had called the T-Mobile payment line instead.
There were at least thirty other people around, but it seemed as if they were busy taking photos instead of calling 911. One tourist even took a selfie! Finally in desperation, I called over a traffic cop and though the victim had gotten up, he was soon brought back down again by the weaponed warriors. I wasn’t sure what traffic cop could do , but a young woman assured me he was calling the ahem, the big guns.
Within minutes the whole thing was over and I have no idea what happened to the men involved. I said to a passing Indian woman that I want to leave New York, I couldn’t take all this male violence anymore…in fact I want to leave the planet. With a knowing glance, she grabbed my hand and laughingly said, “where you going to go? It’s the same everywhere.”
I knew where to go…for a dumpling.
Achtung! Gesundheit! Uber Alles!
If these words come to mind when you think of how funny German can be, then wait till you see Bavarian comedian Michael Mittermeier culturally reflective new show, Das Blackout at the Culture Project. Michael, an erudite fellow, lived in New York after 9/ll and has a deep affection for the simpleness of the American education. When he relates a story about a mythical ‘Tiffany’ asking him questions about world history, primarily because he is an educated German, you really get the shock and awe that the rest of the world experienced when the US, as in Bush, not us, decided to invade Iraq.
Michael has a way of mixing politics and cultural observations that is both wry and perceptive. Like Germany’s devotion to the environment, while at the same time being the world leader in car manufacturing.
But lest you think he is all head, think again. His “Fritz’, the everyman German who appears in WW2 movies as the lug who guards the gate, is hilarious. For a handsome man, he has a very mobile face, and superb comic body gestures. His frightened “chicken Japanese walk” is beautifully accomplished and a visual scream.
Comedian Eddie Izzard has spoken highly of Michael and it’s easy to see why. They both come from a highly intellectual platform. Sure, Michael makes jokes about German lovemaking sounds, but he is never grubby for the sake of a cheap joke. He is always saying something deeper, and much about the perceived view of Germans since the wars and the legacy left behind of German traits from shows like Hogans Heroes.
When he tells us how German parents in the fifties never mentioned the Nazis and in fact, said that they didn’t know anything ‘because they were all on vacation in another country at that time’, you get the point. Michael’s generation has accepted the generational guilt which has given him much fodder.
The only thing that I missed in this very timely, German correctness being an hour and 29 minute show, is his non-jokes about Jews. He starts out asking how many Jews are in the house, and later jokes about Greeks and French, but never really goes back to the big Questions: Why did Martin Heidegger date a Jewess and what do Germans and Jews say when they make love?
See Michael at the Culture Project Oct 24, 28 and 29. He is Vundabar!
Cinderella Stepping Up
If all fairytales were like this version of Cinderella, our childhoods would be much less traumatic. Based on the baroque tale by Charles Perrault, this amazing production by Company XIV, known for Nutcracker Rouge, fuses dance, opera, burlesque and vaudeville in a dream evening that oozes with pleasure for eye and ear.
photo by Nancy Cohen
The stage appears as if a French courtesan had recently dipped her puff into her powder, pink dust lighting, floating, flattering and cajoling.
We are slowly introduced into a world of beautiful bodies, elegantly costumed to perfection, muscled buttocks leading the parade, transcending gender difference as they slither, catapult, prance and entwine around each other. Sometimes they’re on the floor; at other moments in the air on a circus ring.. Of course, it’s erotic, but there is so much humor in the singing and sensual play that you re-remember something about the body, long lost in a Puritanical over sexualized society. Here, there is acceptance, strength and vulnerability.
Cinderella, with its subtext of sexual jealousy and yearning is a perfect story to tell in this magical style. The evil stepmother is pure Grace Jones and vamps for all he’s worth. Artistic director Austin McCormick should get the genius award for his conception, choreography and direction of this adult dessert. That you can imbibe on champagne or other grown up drinks only makes the evening more perfect.
The cast for Cinderella includes Hilly Bodin, Katrina Cunningham, Lea Helle, Jakob Karr, Nicholas Katen, Malik Kitchen, Mark Osmundsen, Davon Rainey, Marcy Richardson, Steven Trumon Gray, Allison Ulrich and Brett Umlauf.
Shows take place at the Minetta Lane Theatre, located at 18 Minetta Lane between MacDougal Street and 6th Avenue in New York City.
Performances are Tuesdays – Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 5pm. The shows
contain partial nudity – 16 & over admitted.
To Not Die in Palermo…Wim Wenders Lives On in Palermo Shooting
Palermo Shooting had never been shown in the United States before the IFC housed a retrospective of the films of Wim Wenders. In the after talk following the screening, admitted to being wary of making a film about death… he was told it’s always been success killer, Woody Allen’s Love and Death not included. But luckily for us, that don’t do death dictum didn’t stop him.
Palermo Shooting is not a perfect film. At points, I was thinking…ok, just go with it. But there are so many fascinating moments that it really deserves a wide US distribution. Not the least, America’s best bad boy, Dennis Hopper gets to play his old nemesis …death.
According to Wenders, Hopper faced and escaped death many times. Unlike James Dean, he continued to ride his bike into the sunset. When I last saw him at a gallery opening in Taos, he was surrounded by fans and friends…of his film work and his art. Of course, Wenders worked with him before, in My American Friend and speaks of him with real warmth.
Palermo Shooting centers on Finn (Campino, singer from German punk band Die Toten Hosen) a highly successful art and fashion photographer who has lost the plot. The world gives him everything that we all dream of…money, accessibility, artistic control and ex-lovers. But after a shoot with a very happy pregnant model in Palermo (Milla Jovovich), Finn decides to stay on in the old town and face his demons, most importantly his fear of death.
The cinematography by Franz Lustig is exquisite. Images bend and expand and we feel as if we’re living inside Finn’s visual head. His rock music, which we hear through his headphones, also helps bring us into his world; the rhythms that are broken only when he pulls them out of his ears and we’re back in the reality of everyday Italian life.
There is something of this film that is reminiscent of Don’t Look Now, by Nicolas Roeg, where a phantom in a little hooded cloak torments the leads, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, as she pops in and out of Venice’s vaporettos, leading the couple further and further to facing the death of their child.
In Palermo Shooting, it is Hopper in a hooded cloak, drawing Finn closer and closer to his own fears.
This film is as much a treatise on photography as it is death …and apparently the two have been closely linked in literature. Writer Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida:
In the final analysis, what I really find fascinating about photographs, and they do fascinate me, is something that probably has to do with death. Perhaps it’s an interest that is tinged with necrophilia, to be honest, a fascination with what has died but is represented as wanting to be alive.
Finn can’t stop shooting and perhaps it’s not until he loses his camera in the dangerous water yet survives, that he begins to enter the now of living again.
The film brought to mind my own memories of both Wim Wenders and Dennis Hopper. As an invited student to the Talent Campus in Berlin, part of the Berlinale Film Festival, I thought I remembered hearing Wenders speak about the change in his filmmaking… and that change was involved with falling in love and having a new partner. I didn’t get the opportunity at the IFC screening to ask him about the autobiographical aspects of Palermo Shooting, but in the film Finn do meet a lovely Italian art restorer (Givoanna Messogiorno) and things begin to shift.
That same year, Mr. Hopper was being honored by the Festival. I was excited because Hopper and I share a birthdate and I’m always hopeful to better understand my own life by studying people born on the same day. In an auditorium of thousands of liberal German film fans, I had the gall to ask Hopper a question. Here he was – getting a well-deserved award after so many years of having ‘issues’ and still I couldn’t help but ask him out loud why he had voted Republican in the last few elections. You could have heard a pin drop in the joint. Truthfully, I don’t recall his response as there was such shock from the adoring throngs…probably more at me for spoiling the ceremony… Hopper mumbled something, recovered and then continued to be cheered for his filmography, not his politics.
Hopper plays death very nicely. At the end you almost want to pinch his cheek. Of course, it is Mr. Wender’s writing; his attempt at trying to understand death’s role in our lives and inadvertently help his audience make peace with it.
Someone in the Q &A following the screening suggested that the film should be shown at hospices. I think that’s pushing it; but in the way that it is thought that Spielberg helped prepare our consciousness for the idea of accepting alien life through E.T. and Contact, Mr. Wenders takes on the mission of making this death character a whole lot friendlier. I believe he succeeds
Cold Days for a Neighborhood’s Spirit
My neighborhood gets sadder and sadder. As the greed machine grows and grows, so goes community and individual enterprise.
In the past two months I have seen four wonderful businesses pushed out by evil, selfish, greedy landlords. Yes, I spare no adjective. These are not humans…they must be pure corporate selfishness. I can’t accept that a decent landlord would make it impossible for well run, well served businesses to be forced to give up because they insist on tripling their rents.
Cafe Pick Me Up dished up wonderful and inexpensive food for twenty years. It was a meeting point for people from all over…coffee, wine, conversations and great pasta. The Italian owner couldn’t have been sweeter. Now an emtpy ugly closed building sits on the corner.
A sustainable green store closed last week. They sold terrific products made from recycled goods, from shoes to candles to art. They made good coffee and were a wonderful place to pick up a little last minute gift.
Dusty Buttons also closed down. The landlord threatened to raise their rent by 125%. For six years, Amanda sold adorable vintage and vintage like clothes along with antiques. She may move to Philadelphia.
My personal favorite, newcomer Glasgow Vintage, after only one year, has packed up the family to return to Scotland. They had always dreamed of having a shop in New York’s East Village, after successfully owning a top vintage store in Glasgow. What they didn’t bargain for was an avaricious landlord who had scaffolding and a trash bin in front of his shop for most of the year. The company was very busy building upward on the old tenement. That meant that shoppers couldn’t easily see the shop to come in and browse. Naturally, the landlord wouldn’t give these decent folk a break.
Here is an email I received from the shopkeep, now headed back to Scotland:
Hi Nancy
We were walking by the shop tonight and got your card, thanks so much for all your kind words! We have tried our best to fit in here but it has never felt quite right for us and what with all the trouble at the shop we decided to stop trying. It has been a real experience being here and meeting real people like you has made it so worthwhile and given us a glimpse of what this city maybe once was.
Ok, so what’s next? More 7/11’s, chain stores or bars which mainly serve visiting children who think that drinking below 14th street is their right.
We are in a country that calls out for a sense of community in every community. Is it still possible in this unfettered capitalistic dream that real estateNew York has become? Let’s hope so.
psa
Schooled by Lisa Lewis at the Fringe
The New York International Fringe Festival offers a terrific opportunity to catch writers in their breakout plays. Even writers who have already had successes get a great chance to showcase new ideas. Schooled by Lisa Lewis, who has spent lots of time in the film world, really works because it offers the sticky truth about show biz… people will do anything to catch their dream. Even not sleep with somebody.
As an ahem, aging, screenwriter and professor, Quentin Mare’s Andrew starts off his class by telling his hungry cine- sharks that they will never be satisfied… the first ten minutes of success are the best and after that, it’s like catching up with yourself to stay on top. He is cynical despite the fact that he’s got a pretty good writing career, a young vital family and tenure. But his heavy drinking belies his satisfaction; when Claire (Lillie Stein) offers to drink with him in exchange for writing tips, they’ve both stepped into the place where the light doesn’t shine. Meanwhile, Jake, (Stephen Friedrich), Claire’s privileged genius boyfriend wants to move in together but still tries to sidestep her for the prestigious film grant offered by the school.
Lots of the dialogue is witty and on the mark. Lisa is smart. The characters are smart. They’re writers after all and they wear glasses. I did find some of Claire’s back- sob- story a bit tedious and questioned if Andrew really could confuse cocktail servers with purveyors of sex …he wasn’t that old? It might have been more riveting if the scripts they each were working on were mirrored more in their behavior. I liked it that he urged her to shorten her script’s endless narration; sort of wish Lisa had gotten them past their bantering wordplay into something deeper…earlier.
Three quarters through the play I realized why I was getting annoyed. Claire’s pretense at innocence slash nobility grated on me. At first I defended her and it as self-protection but then recalled my own dalliance with a mentor. The difference was in I fell in in love with mine . Of course, I too wanted male approval but as a dyed -in-the-wool romantic, I never even thought of using him for my career. Times have changed and women realize that they have to push for their own breaks in film, even if it ain’t pretty.
The final redemption scene might have worked just as well if their lives hadn’t tied up quite so neatly. Still, it’s a play about movie making and with movies … between the focus groups, Tent Pole Films and twenty-somethings running Hollywood, a relative happy, hopeful ending makes sense.
Well-acted by all and neatly directed by James Kautz.
LA Confidential- 4DX
My name goes here!!
LA…the city that seduces but rarely delivers.
Once again, I attempted to break through the mystique that is LA success. My real reason for visiting Los Angeles is to spend time with a beloved cousin, now suffering with issues of old age. But in the spare hours, I resume the role of ‘could I live here and prosper’ questioner, a role that I play out every few years or so.
This time I actually had an event. Reba Merrill, an award-winning journalist, PR professional and author, invited me to be a guest on her talk show, Reel Hollywood Live, a podcast production hosted with Ben Oberman. Reba, stunning at 80, found me through the internet, likes my writing and my brain. As that puts her in a class of two, I decided to honor her good taste and go on the show.
First challenge: the makeup. Not knowing how bright the lights might be, I only purchased a thin powder to deflect shine. I’m afraid I looked rather Geisha white. I also spent time worrying about whether to hair blow or not. At forty-five dollars a blow, I opted for the flat, listless look. But at least the dress was new.
While waiting in the Green Room, a tall brunette came in to wait for her radio interview. We chatted and she confided that she had lost three internal organs, had deep health challenges, and was leaving LA to care for her mother. I admired her strength. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jesus was also in the Green Room. She sincerely thanked him and the spirits for her life renewal and then came over to my seat to share a blessing. I have never been known to turn down a blessing, and as the singer was two parts Cherokee, I imagined that a little spirit magic might slip into the prayer as well.
It must have worked because in short time Reba and entourage arrived for the show pre-chat. Reba is warm and incisive. She gave me a copy of her autobiography and I presented her with a tin of mints emblazoned with Times Square’s finest, the Naked Guitarist.
A few minutes later, the real star guest of the show arrived with his blue beard and shades. Ira Steven Behr is a big deal writer…Outlander, Star Trek, Deep Six…and a pride to the South Bronx. His writer’s room stories were smart and funny –clearly he had done lots of these interviews before. As he went first, I had the chance to build up a case of nerves while watching from the Green Room. By the time I got into the studio, my hair had wilted like a summer’s lettuce but it didn’t matter — free sponsored wine was on tap. I thought we were supposed to drink it, not realizing it wasn’t the dinner scene from Tom Jones. Television can enhance every gesture.
When the show wrapped, we said our fond good-byes and I decided to do something I’d never attempted before. I toured up and down Hollywood Boulevard by foot. I was not alone in this idea. There were many families doing exactly the same thing. Did they step on the same cement stars I chose? Janet Jackson, of course, because we share a birthday and naturally Mel Brooks. Oh, but to step into his big shoes! I actually marched all the way to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and being a cinema junkie, bought a ticket for a little film called Mission Impossible.
The recently restored theatre is gorgeous as is the female lead, counter-spy Rebecca Ferguson. When you see a film in an edifice like this theater, you feel the occasion, even if the plot structure is a bit of letdown. There are only so many endings I can bear.
The next day I waited anxiously for the reviews of my interview to come pouring in. My film partner, Babis, admired my courage, but other than that, not a mention. But it didn’t matter. I had another goal for the trip. To experience 4DX!
I’m a huge fan of safe immersion. Danger, but virtual. I love the sensation without the risk. So when I noticed that Regal Cinemas were showing films in not only 3, but 4D, I bought. The sensation of being in your seat, moving and shaking according to the film script is a top idea. But it has to be the right film. Like the new film about Everest…because then you really do feel present with the characters, doing something most of us won’t ever attempt, like climbing one of the world’s highest mountains. But in The Man from Uncle, the shaking that is prompted by repeated and obnoxious car bumping is a drag. Before the film began, the logo presented a preview of the real possibility of 4DX…a roller coaster ride. That is really fun, with wind blowing in your face and water coming up from a nearby ‘lake.’ It’s a mechanical device that can either enhance a film experience or in the case of Uncle, merely prolong it.
Here seems to be a good moment to talk LA UBER. Though I have access to a vehicle, the prospect of having a couple of wines at night and not needing to negotiate the 405 was tempting. So I uber’d a lot and for the most part the rides were ok. The drivers were fun, sharing with me life stories of kidney replacements and devastating divorce settlements (Repo Man meets Kramer Vs. Kramer). I always arrived neatly to my destination and rarely tipped. But the night after the 4DX, I got into the car I app’d up and was heading home when my driver announced that I had gotten into the wrong vehicle or as I might put it, he picked up the wrong passenger. Apparently, I was in a town car and had only paid for a rickshaw. I apologized to him for both of our errors and then waited to be dropped off at my home. This he refused to do, which I believe is against Uber rules. He demanded cash for the privilege of being in such a luxury car and when I said I had none on me and my cousin would be asleep, he balked.
For a moment I thought I was either being extorted or kidnapped, being the product of too much noir. But no, he simply wouldn’t take me home because he was losing money and coldly dropped me off on Wilshire Boulevard at 12:30 am, without a charged cell phone to call another ride.
Maybe Mission and Man From inspired me… I found myself bravely hiking into Westwood, to find the, a New York-style pizza shop just before closing. There, I hitched up my charger and hailed another Uber. The sympathetic clerk gave me a hot slice of New York BMT pizza for the ride home.
I mentioned the spiritual experience in the Green Room. It seems that a lot of LA people are talking about faith and the G word. From Uber drivers to singers to caregivers, religion is alive and well in Southern California. It may have something to do with the idea of California sinking.
After some good Pacific Ocean inhales, I was climbing up the plank at the Santa Monica pier, when an older beach boy- man, in blue trunks and deep tan, confided that we might all be walking towards The Mark of The Beast. I asked him if he were talking about that beast; he concurred and while I do agree the world is in a mad state, I am not au fait with the Book of Revelations. He assured me that it would all end soon though he wasn’t without hope. Now this man did not look or sound crazy and had been a musician in San Francisco in the sixties. If he hadn’t started talking about once working for renown Satan worshiper Anton LeVay, I might have thought he just took global warming too far. He insisted I check out a Dylan interview on YouTube where Dylan “practically admits to having sold his soul to the One for success.” Luckily, Ye Old King’s Head Gift Shoppe appeared and I dove in for a Cadbury’s chocolate and The Guardian in print.
Socializing in LA requires party invitations and luckily a good friend invited me to one. The host was a writer on two of my favorite comedy shows, so I expected to be peeing in my pants all night…What a surprise when I found myself instead, sitting alone at the barbecue pit, wondering whether I no longer spoke English. I had tried valiantly to engage in at least five conversations but failed to hit a mutual chord. I asked questions, I flattered…nothing. It seems that a lot of the guests knew each other from Ivy school land and were resume-citing. What I’ve noticed in LA is that there is a strong urge for people to talk about themselves for at least ten minutes straight, take a puff of air, and then talk about their work for another fifteen. The most interesting man I met was named after a Canadian river fish and the really big laugh of the night came from a French economist who lives in New York City.
One of the things about Hollywood royalty is that they are unfazed by the desperate clinging of those without Hollywood blood history. I was lucky to get to hear William Wellman, Jr. speak about his biography on his father, the great director (A Star is Born, Beau Geste) Wild Bill, Sr. Mild Bill, as he calls himself, is an articulate and witty man who through his dad and his own career as an actor, really knows film history. He shared his father’s stories and his own acting experiences like dealing with an arrogant Marlon Brando. It was like stepping back in time with a charming train conductor.
As LA is the land of dreams, I do dream a lot there. A dream is a wish your heart makes, and often the subject of my dreams is bags or purses. So I wasn’t surprised that on my last day, while walking down Wilshire Boulevard, a big expensive-looking black leather wallet drops from nowhere. (Sierra Madre!) I scooped it up, looked around, and saw a figure in the not so far distance. Torn between rifling through it for ID and interesting business cards or actually catching the person who might have dropped it, I opted for the guilt card. I had spotted someone not terribly far ahead and gave a “hey” yell twice.
After the third “hey”, I got a reaction. The man turned and I asked if he had lost something (no, I would never do this in New York). The guy felt his pants pocket as I ran ahead. Apparently, he had just come from the optician and was in enlarged pupil outer space. Not having his full bearings, he had dropped the wallet. I intuitively knew it must be his… he looked Brentwood. He looked like he had a big wallet. We introduced ourselves and off he went with my short-lived treasure. If you’re out there, Joel Rudnick of Paradigm Talent Agency…yes, that’s what I said… and you read this, I have a terrific script, once written for Ed Asner, but now perfect for the Divine Ms. M. I’m back in New York. I’ve got flight points on Jet Blue. Call me!
End of Film….or beginning of web series.
Me in Hollywood… Move Over Angela!
At last!! My first big interview in Hollywood since interviewing for an usher job at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
Reba Merrill is a hot tootsie whose age mystifies… she asked good questions and created a wonderfully friendly environment with the help of Curmudgeon Wine…not bad for 1:30 PM. Her co-host, Bob Oberman is very sweet and though I rue not having put on real make up, and of course, like many things I’m in, will refuse to watch until my critical response has softened, believe it all came off well.
I got to blab on about , our film on the John Lennon phenomenon and accept praise from Ms. Merrill for all sorts of things I didn’t realize I was.
The co-interviewee, a very successful writer and show runner, Ira Steven Behr, was actually very interesting…a lot of peeps in LA like reciting their track record, but Ira is a smart Bronx boy with a real philosophy behind his story telling and very, very funny. Plus, he sports a BLUE bear…LET’S PRAY FOR HIS WIFE!!
Reba gave me a copy of her book, Nearly Famous: Tales from the Hollywood Trenches, which I will devour as soon as I finish the Joan Rivers’ Diaries.
notjustaboutsex 