I was staying at the Highland Gardens on Franklin, a block up the hill from Grauman's Chinese. At that time the Highland was still a slightly seedy and affordable address for H'wood bottom-feeders like me. There were fading B&W publicity shots of D-list movie stars with their benzedrine smiles in reception, and free donuts and coffee in the morning. Aspiring actors read their sides by the cracked and surprisingly cold pool. Ageing Brit thesp Roy Dotrice lived there permanently. It was cool and relaxed, and had walls I could bounce off without disturbing the neighbors.
This was the Golden Era of English public schoolboy producers, with their baggy white shirts and floppy fringes. I lucked out - three of them were kicking my book around. My first meeting was with Lionel Wigwam (as I couldn't help but call him) at Warners or Sony or whoever they were that week. He said, Tim, we love everything about the book, except the plot, and the characters. It took a moment for me to realize he wasn't being ironic. I had to stifle a laugh. So I labored long and hard through three drafts and their revisions, excising everything I loved from the book, driven to frothing internal fury by notes from nitwit interns and random passers-by, all of whom were given more consideration than the fucking writer. Months later, Lionel said you've done everything we asked for, but it's not what we want.
So I quit Hollywood while I was behind, and became a pool guy in the South of France. And I still haven't managed to stay awake through The Big Lebowski.
I like the Lebowski flick, but never got the cult status it attained. So, you still a pool boy, hoss?
ReplyDeleteNice read, btw.
If the Mekong River needs an ageing pool boy, I'm its man.
DeleteSounds like a line from a Leonard Cohen song.
DeleteSuffering as only the professional artiste can! This is why you get paid (sometimes) to write
ReplyDeleteTwo things:
ReplyDelete1. Very cool story.
2. I've had a rough night, and I hate the fucking Eagles, man!
Don't hate on the dude, dude!
ReplyDeleteSaw "The Big Lebowski" during its original cinematic return, not like all those 'cult mobvie' doofus johnny come latelies. OG! Loved it, and started quoting shit from it before everyone did it a couple of years later. I still regularly use the "Fee arr nihilists. Fee ton't belief in anysing" and "Where's the money, Lebowski?" bits. Movie also reignited my love for CCR with its use of "Looking Out My Back Door". And it really has quite some amusing bits. But then again, lots of folks swear by "Arizona Junior" and that's a Coen cult classic that I don't get at all. Different folks and all that.
"My first meeting was with Lionel Wigwam (as I couldn't help but call him) at Warners or Sony or whoever they were that week. He said, Tim, we love everything about the book, except the plot, and the characters. It took a moment for me to realize he wasn't being ironic. I had to stifle a laugh."
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of a moderately amusing (maybe) bit I wrote about a film pitch gone horribly wrong. If you're interested in having a look, Farg, I can drop it in the aspiring writers section one of these days…
I would really like to read that, One Buck Guy.
DeleteOh, just to be clear: I'm not one of them Hollywood types like some of you folks, so this is stuff I entirely made up, fiction, stranger than...uh...fiction...or maybe fact, considering the above...
DeleteGo for it!
DeleteI don't want to discourage any tyro scribage here, but as I say in the sidebar, non-fiction seems to be the way it's going, and if there's a "rule" here - which there ain't - that would seem to be it.
Delete...and you know, that's fine. A blog can not be all things, especially it it ain't your own. This would have been a nice way to find some use for a piece I wrote a while ago, but I'll be the first to say it's not a 100 % fit for this here music blog.
DeleteSeeing my lack of globetrotting adventures, time spent in jail or wheelin' and dealin' and drinkin' and snortin' with Hollywood types, I fear my literary career over here at the House of Foam will come to a swift end.
Which is fine, seein how I can still chat about the music and other things that this house...I mean island...was surel built for.
Oh, tsk.
DeletePut it in the comments.
Come on, OBG ... don't make me beg for it ....
DeleteThese micro-memoirs that have suddenly sprung up in FMFI are perfectly calibrated to their time. In this post-literate era, now compounded by ADD and more recently, COVID-19, they're wonderfully digestible nuggets of mirth. For even the Four or Five Guys who've got literature out the ass, these morsels of memory help temper the isolation.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken, Lionel Wigwam joined forces with Guy Bitchie to form Bitchie/Wigwam Productions.
ReplyDeleteBitchie also got into Madonna's pants for a while there.
Lived in LA from 1975-1997, mostly in Los Feliz and then Atwater, during which time the Beasties were hanging out there 'cause it was cheap. I lived in a two-bedroom duplex for $500 a month, made less a good deal by the fact that my landlord (who lived behind me) dealt crack and his clientele often mistook my residence for his. Visited Atwater a while ago after not having been back for 20 years and discovered it is now a hipster haven.
ReplyDeleteDude. Does living in the L.A.-L.A.-Land 'burb of Sandy Eggo count...?
ReplyDeleteThere certainly are MUCH better fil-yums by el dos Coens. Who knows why TBL has attained "Cult" status... Zzz...
But whatta I know, I've never been able to sit through the whole enchilada myownself. Now that we are Shut-Ins, mebbe now's the time to give it a whirlygig.
I can relate to a lot of that story: the recollections of a place close
ReplyDeleteenough to where I live, the experience of rewriting on behalf of people who are neither discerning nor sincere, and especially the notion of quitting while behind.
To me, TBL is just fine -- but not as quotable (in the manner of
scripture) as, say, "After Hours" or "This Is Spinal Tap." In any
case, my favorite Coen Brothers bit is from "A Serious Man,"
where Larry says that actions have consequences, and his
student replies, "Yes sir. Often."
Great story!
ReplyDeleteI spent part of 1979 working as a personal gofer for a then famous sitcom star and her husband. LA is a very odd place.
Got a riff on that?
DeleteThey had a big screen projection TV and a betamax to feed it. One day I was sent to a street of ranch houses somewhere with an envelope with some money in it. The guy answering the door had two snarling dogs on leashes who looked unhappy to meet me. "(Insert Name Here) sent me" I said whereupon he gave a grocery bag filled with current movie hits on dubbed Betamax cassettes. On another day I got sent down to Tiffanys in Beverly Hills to make up (another) paper bag filled with jewelry. They also seemed dubious to see some hippie show up asking for diamonds and kept me waiting while they checked. Every day another adventure. At least I got to see LA.
ReplyDeleteThis is already more interesting than TBL, TBH.
DeleteOh, c'mon, now you're just being mean.
DeleteThe best by the CBs, by far, is "Raising Arizona." And by my saying that, it might reveal more about ME than anything else. . .
ReplyDelete(Sick, sick, sick...?)
And not in a "their Magnum Opus" (so the flick crits and other assorted scribes say?) "FARGO" way...
(NO wood chipper scenes or violence in RA other that the Wile E. Coyote or Schadenfreudian type...?)
See, there's "The Big Lebowski" Coen types like me and "Raising Arizona" Coen types like you (I called that movie "Arizona Junior" further up, cause that's what it was called here). In the same way that you don't 'get' TBL, at least in terms of its crazy cult status, I don't necessarily 'get' "Raising Arizona". Then again, I saw it much later than the others, so that probably plays a role as well.
DeleteDoes anyone actually like "Fargo", in a "I have to rewatch this" way?
It's a deeply unpleasant movie at times and while there's some amusing and even tragic bits, I never got the whole "this is their undisputed masterpiece" deal…
And how about "Miller's Crossing", huh? Now that is an underrated Coen Brothers flick...
"Burn After Reading" is another in the "Fargo" mold. Big Time Movie Writers all loved it to death...
Deletehttps://www.sandiegoreader.com/movies/burn-after-reading/
Me not so much.
They also lost me with "Barton Fink."
Now, what about "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"???
Now there's one every Film Snob would detest, yet Everyman (who, moi?) digs it the most.
Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, The Man Who Wasn't There, and No Country For Old Men work for me, the rest is just a shallow, stylized blur. Check out their filmography at wiki - Hollywood is the only place in the world that'll give you work twenty years after you did anything that worked (hi, Neil!). Such a charitable, warmhearted town.
DeleteStill and all, not as flat-out awful as Tarantino.
DeleteOof. Well, I'm not gonna argue Tarantino, though I will say that his work is equally hit-and-miss, and I'm not a fan who sing hosianna for everything he throws out.
DeleteAs for the Coens, well, you really have to like shaggy dog stories those last years, so if "tHe Big Lebowski" wasn't for you…
And of course they're getting work 'cause critics love them, so some producer with a wish for prestige is gonna shell out some money…
Mentioning Quentin Tee in the same breath as the Coen Bros. is akin to farting in church. On a high holy day. At the Vatican.
DeleteOh, and...........
"May the Fourth be with you!"...
(Let's NOT go down THAT space worm hole...)
My wife and I used to keep a list of the celebrities/actors we'd see on the street or in a grocery store or mall. My favorite encounter was with Brett Spiner. We were at the Beverly Center and we kept seeing him from afar. At point he was just standing alone along a railing and I said to my wife, "We gotta do this ..." So we went up to him and said, "Hey Data!" Turns out, he was a truly nice guy and we talked with him for a good part of an hour. Chris and I were at that point getting married in few weeks, and so Brett wrote us a note that said: "To Chris and Eliot, the nicest couple in the universe."
ReplyDeleteI once met Will Wheaton at a Tupperware party and he punched me right in th' snoot.
DeleteI once had the will to eat Wheaties out of Tupperware. Small world!
Delete(O.K., yeah, so they can't all be Pulitzer-bait gems...)
Lulsies!
DeleteSo, where are all the lurid stories from your time as a pool boy in Southern France?
ReplyDeleteMy life only got really lurid when I moved to Bangkok. But hey - still waiting for your assignment here, OBG!
DeleteSomehow, Murray Head runs thru the noggin...
Delete