A Bakersfield Blog on Hollywood Boulevard

Getting you caught up on the story...

2005-10-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

Now I will get you caught up... I am going to leave out a large section of the story and post this final entry from 2004. The I am just going to tell you recent happenings:

Acting Class
This morning I was in acting class helping out the younger kids—you know the idealistic ones, the kids with the dreams of Hollywood stardom—they always make me talk about my youth. I like to start with a fanciful Tinseltown dream—make them think I was all starry-eyed as a milk-drinking youth with bucked teeth. Forget the fact that I was in the city, at a famous high school, and I never owned a damn tricycle. It was all about electrifying moments—an electric car, an electric bike, a motorized skateboard, Cadillac rides to the clubs of clubs—all the things normal youth did not have when I was youth. Of course I finish that up by informing them that it was my mother and her excessive partying that truly got me the networks. All the foreigners with the big bucks, their connections to Hollywood, and opening doors and doors and then more doors. They got me in front of who I needed to know. You see—it’s networking in Hollywood that gets you anywhere. You can have raw talent, raw opportunities, and a raw ass for sitting a long time at a reading waiting for your turn—wanting to ‘wow’ the casting director into thinking that you’re the next Matt Damon, because not only can you act, but your every girl’s dream—a bourne identity, a bourne supremacy in Hollywood loverboyisms and straight–up erotic machismo. But that might not be enough. You mass market Josh Hartnett’s machismo and you get what? Any group of young actors who could fit that bill, yes. But then, those of us in the inner echelons know his circle and why he has stardom. Not everyone is a Matt Damon, out there, waiting to be bourne. Some are the Hartnetts and the Aerosmith daughters who, because they've spawned from a rock star, could have their own movie island ring trilogy.

So, yes, I am back in LA—that endless springtime city lapping up the waves of Venice West dreams of rusted old cities, carnivals gone mad, clubs and bars of the endless Santa Monica and Hollywood towns and boulevards. Oh the town of stories. It beckons me—beckons you if you’re reading this. Driving through the endless streetlights—going mad with the infinite urban skyline; and then stare in your endless driving moments of people-watching just as you’re people-watched. Yes, they look at me from the streets, the cars, in the restaurants, up from the dumpsters. This is my town. Forget my lost milky youth. That was another era, a time when I could have just been an anybody, an average John Doe—with no identity other than a corporate wheel, turning and turning.

Back from filming...

2005-08-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

I am done with another film and about to write again. I was off overseas filming, lost, isolated, feeling far too into a character that was as disastrous as anyone could be. He was sinister. But I am back to reality. There is so much I left out of the story. I think I will go back into my archives and find all I have written about what is so terrible between Hollywood and Bakersfield...

Gass and Third Street Parts 1-3. This is where things go wrong... look:

2005-05-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

Here's more from my diary dated from June 22, 2004... you might want to read this, everything starts to get rather creepy...

12:01am
Post Haste Before She Arrives
She’s late. The cell rang. An excuse. “I’ll be there if I can make it.” Now that was a circle of thought if I ever heard one. I can see out the window as cars pass up the street over the hump of the road. Another car winds its way upward. It’s not her. It disappears over a small rise. My room is semi-dark. In my bedroom there are lit candles and my sheets are clean. I have to stop thinking about Fusion Suit for a minute so I can undress her with my eyes before she’s even here. If she shows up. I have to plan this. I probably have ten minutes. That’s just enough time to write and post this, and wonder why I would share such thoughts with strangers in this weird Blog world. Everyone’s going to know what I’m exposing soon enough. It starts in Vegas, but there’s a trail, a connection to the underside of everything. That’s why you’re reading aren’t you? To see it exposed. And you thought poor Mr. L*** had it bad. Wait til you realize whose head Hollywood has been cutting off for the past year.

09:20 am
Through the Palm Desert
There is a movie quality about speeding into the Palm Desert. Speed comes easy. You tear up the mountainsides, race across endless horizon lines, dart between the slow cars, race the fast cars—and you watch out for cops. You have to know all of their hiding areas—their zones of influence and power and when they might come creeping up behind you, or shoot you with radar from the opposite direction. Desert driving is an art and etiquette that the many desert dead and ticketed do not know. Yes it is adventurous. Yes, I could die. But then, I could die trying to catch a butterfly.

Barstow is midway along what I call the Desert Triangle: a chaotic triangle where anything can happen; where billions of dollars are spent and made; where wars are fought and then discarded right before your eyes; and murders, yes murders, are committed and forgotten. That Erin Brochovich town that pretends it’s on a Mediterranean sandy beach with no sea, just a historic Route 66 line to nowhere is a polyp in the artery of the Desert Triangle.

I’m at a Burger King. And I’m just here long enough to let you know there’s more to come. There’s so much explaining that’s about to begin.

12:14 pm
Mojave Desert Secrets
There’s a cactus called cholla. You see them all over the desert. They’re spaced from one another—not in bunches. You notice them just there, alone. I’m not talking about the stumpy barrel kind, either. Cholla are thin, spindly and a sort of yellow-green in color. They’re not tall but their needles are long. I once saw a Gila monster standing by a cholla. Actually it was sort of curled up around the base. The girl I was with was terrified. I was amazed at the thing. Wasn’t as big as I thought it would be at all. Didn’t seem dangerous. Just ominous, like a black volcanic rock sitting out in the red clay desert.

I’m going to stay in an unnamed casino—way up in a tower where there’s a secret art studio, secret rooms, secret guests, secret happenings; secrets upon secrets—don’t forget the desert triangle I will soon explain. I was going to stay at the Golden Nugget—the room with the spiraling staircases and TV that shoots up out of the floor; the big metal machinery of the Fremont Street Experience right outside: that dirty promenade of desert people and tourists all craning their necks to watch the night glow. I’ll be on the big Strip. But that’s later. Right now I have to drive downtown, to an old artist’s house I know. It’s a good locale for the movie. Right in the dark heart of materialism run rampant in society. That’s Vegas.

There’s something underground here. And while I’m scouting those locations. I’m going to find out and tell everybody.

By the way, M**** is flying in at ten p.m. I'll pick her up at McCarran myself. We'll cause a scene. People love a good show.

Las Vegas Underworld: Gas and Third Street Part 1
There’s a little house near Gas and Third Street in downtown Las Vegas. Old Octavio Gas—he was one of those old leftovers from the Mormon Fort—where the meadows of Las Vegas—that old traveler’s stream that brought clear water and a breath of fresh air to the dry desert heat in the 1880s. The stream is long gone except for a lonely replica hidden downtown, and as for Gas, he’s but a street name anymore. In this little house lived an artist, now a Bakersfield news reporter, once tied to the strange dealings of the Las Vegas artist underworld. Oh you think Fusion Suit is so unreal? So much fiction heaped upon fiction? Let’s just say that where the story misses the mark, the screenwriter who wrote it wasn’t far off from the disheveled Mr. Fusion himself. I met the screenwriter. I know the true version. Maybe you should just stop to think that the reason I am part of this story is as much the real aspect as the fictitious nightmare it creates. But I am escaping myself. Let’s get back to this Bakersfield TV reporter. Her name is C****. She lived in this house, frighteningly in love with a Vegas TV reporter who had little to do with her but sex and drugs, which left her, pale, afraid, ghost-like, and hiding out with artists and dreaming about him. A very strange lady indeed, she, along with her insane roommate, a puppeteer, they kept jars filled with formaldehyde and, dare I say it, entire fetus, which sat on the shelf like strange trophies of mad experiments. Oh, this is Las Vegas ground zero for the artist district, right down the street from the Contemporary Arts Collective. You all know them, right? They’re the ones who had a picnic on Fremont Street, beneath the metal canopy. They wanted to call it ‘Art on the BigTop’. And they take regular drives along the extra-Terrestrial Highway, to see what else but what they think are freaks falling from the sky? How, in God’s name could such a person join the ranks of Bakersfield’s TV reporters? Well, you know my views of KTLA. Shouldn’t be so hard to figure out. But then, before she went to Bakersfield, why was she in the underground tunnels that cross the entire Las Vegas grid? Why was she searching for the expansive groundwater caves under the Nevadan Desert? And, why was Mr. Fusion Suit one of her regular friends? Not so far off from the movie version I’m telling you. And she’s half the reason that he’s dead.

04:04 pm
Las Vegas Underworld: Gas and Third Street Part II
When I was in Bakersfield I didn’t mention that I turned on my news and saw C****. The screenwriter had told me about her, but until I saw for myself I just could not believe everything he had told me. Besides, his screenplay was far-fetched as it was—though a good story to make into a movie. But here she was, a talking head with a fake pale smile, feigning sincerity. He told me she would, “She’ll fake a smile. It’s about as sincere as it was for those dead babies sitting on her living room shelf. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew the person who ended those babies’ lives. Could have been stillborn. Could have died not long after birth. You’ll know when you see her. Take one look into her eyes and you’ll be able to tell if she’s crazy or not. Just don’t get to know her, ever, or she’ll latch onto you like a suckling witch and never let go.”

Earlier I stood outside the door and knocked. K*** was home. He let me in and the first thing I noticed, other than the smell of cat urine, was the jars sitting on the shelves. I was expecting four, maybe five jars. But now I could see the collection had grown to more than twenty. K*** took one look at me. “Those are the faces of immortality,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Take me to the caves.”

“You? A rich Hollywood actor?”

“Yes.”

“Never. I would never do that. Why do you need to go, anyway?”

“Why does anyone need to go?”

“To find answers.”

04:16 pm
Las Vegas Underworld: Gas and Third Street part III“I want to go there to find something.”

“What do you have, some kind of treasure map?”

“I might.”

“Shit man. You don’t know what’s down there. Hell, I don’t know what’s down there. That tunnel crosses the entire city. Cops don’t even go down there. Don’t you know that place is terrifying, even in the daytime?”

“I don’t want to go in the daytime.”

“You’re crazy. Look, the only reason I ever met anyone like you is because I believed in J*** too. His work needs to be realized. It needs to come to life. To hell with the mafia. To hell with power and corruption. To hell with C***. She’s a demon and she’s gone to work for the Devil.”

“I know. I saw her newscast.”

“So it’s true. I hadn’t spoken to her in… What’s in the tunnel?”

“A book.”

“How do you know?”

“You said it yourself. I have the treasure map.”

05:58 pm
A Talk About Bakersfield
K*** sat on a very old couch that had scuffed wooden legs. The hardwood floor creaked as he sat back. He wanted to see the script. I told him I didn’t bring it. He asked if it named names. I told him it didn’t. He said he knew ‘the book’ did. And that’s what I wanted to see, to find. That’s what C*** was after, for sure. That’s where the tunnel would take me. M**** is interested in going too because she loves adventure. I was stupid to have told her. So there she was, firing back at me: “I love being in foreign films because I always choose the ones where I’m out in nature. I’m doing something. I’m in a habitat of sorts. I’m not sitting in a damn nuisance of a sound studio. I’m where man-made structures of early man meet great rivers, jungles and mountains. I’m a leading lady for these kinds of things. I’m going.” She was probably thinking about ghosts again when she called. Who knows. “You are not going in those tunnels without me. I don’t care what you’re looking for. I’m going there to see the underworld of Vegas.”

So, K*** decides to talk about Bakersfield. He says there are strange powers there that still mingle with the Hollywood moviemakers. It gets me nervous because I was just in that valley a few days ago. Seemed harmless enough. But then, I’ve read Mean Justice. A lot of us have. Makes you squirm when you come down into the valley and you’re thinking that such farmland is as harmless as the squirrels that run across the freeway, and then realize: no it isn’t. That book is not just a book for journalistic circles of society members who want to poke fun at the inaccuracies of the corruptive powers that be. But then, that’s about all there is to read about Bakersfield. What else can I read? The Onion Field? My agent handed it to me. He said while I scouted another movie a few years ago, “Get to know that goddam town a little if you’re going to be hiding out there, scouting.”

I'm coming back there's so much to post

2005-04-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while but thought about it after NL sent me a message that he was on bakersfield.com. That's a start. Well I will be posting later today or tomorrow more from that story I have been enlightening you all about...

Understanding Hollywood Streets and Blog People

2005-03-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

I have decided to follow on the heels of N.L. Belardes and discontinue comments. Please, continue to enjoy the mystery I am unfolding to you. I have been busy around Hollywood this week, and have spent way too much time just driving. I came back to town and realized I had so much to get in order: agents, bookings with TV shows, promo event set-up, dinners with anyone and everyone. My agent recieved a call from the U.S. Embassy. Seems they found my passport in Jerusalem after all. The one I lost last year after everything came to a head. Doesn't matter. I already made a new one. I have to go read scripts. This is just getting too hectic and I have to find my place, you know, where I am comfortable consistently learning and striving to be an actor who takes roles to the next level. I will add more excerpts from Fusion Suit and everything later tonight after I see M*****.

New Contracts!! and some notes from 2004...

2005-03-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while but I'm happy to say I have signed all contracts to follow through with the rest of 2005. I will be in four movies and I'm glad this business is taken care of. My publicist and agent can only do so much,a nd I have done all I can and I am out of here. I am on a jet to New York to see T***** where tomorrow he is canning three of his Broadway actors. I don't blame him. When actors go flat you have to get rid of the old and put in the new, the fresh, the lively actors. Glad it isn't me for once. I am tired of singing and needed a break three years ago. Or was it four? I don't remember now.

June 20th, 2004:

06:27 pm
The Pink Starbucks
Ok, where have I been? Well just now I was at Starbucks in Pacific Palisades. You all know the place. Kobe wants coffee for free. Anthony Hopkins is as polite as ever. There’s the North African gal behind the counter and her crazy compadre—that China Beach lady who’s always looking for a date. Yeah, she flirts with me too. And I can’t understand a word she says. Clint Eastwood goes there. So does Tom Hanks; Bosom Buddy now global actor supreme. Where’s the world gone to? I got my mocha frap with extra mocha and I’m done with it—out the door. Forget this pink frilly Starbucks. Look at the Hollywood folk all milling about, saying hello to each other at a pink Starbucks for God sakes. Yes, they say hello to me too. But can’t I pretend I’m not a part of all this nonsense for just a few moments during the day? I doubt if old L*** ever went here. He would have rather boiled cabbage in his shoes and ate it with the ghosts of Abbot and Costello at his side. His ghost is going to hang around the streets for a few years after what happened to him. Isn’t that what Marilyn does? Lon Chaney? They hang around the crypts and slink to the hotels late at night and scare the bejeezuz out of people like M***** who gets a room near the top floor of the Roosevelt, just so she can dream ghost dreams. You think it’s just tourists who do this crap? No—she would give head to the ghost of Rudolph Valentino if it would let her. She’s that nuts about the subject.

06:50 pm
A Hollywood Star
So you people want to know a few things about me. Probably think I’m just going to ignore all the comments. I should. I probably will for the most part. The forum is where you all are supposed to argue about me; have at it. I mean, I can’t waste time defending myself or you will never get the Hollywood stream of thoughts meant for you to digest. I don’t have to interact. Or do I? Or am I right now? Someone wants to know who I am. I will reveal that let’s say, when I reach 35,000 words. How does that sound? Fair enough? Somebody better count the words for me because I’m not very good at counting. Someone also asked if I wrote Fusion Suit. We should get back to that, shouldn’t we? That pulp novel, 'Boiling Hippos', that Mr. Fusion writes that is the crux of the movie. The crime boss doesn’t like how he’s portrayed after all. Mr. Fusion had followed him into his seedy world for months so he could write that ragged, tattered, beaten prose. Geez, it’s just fiction. You can change reality in fiction, right? Poor Mr. Fusion. The Crime boss takes him for a ride and throughout the movie forces him—yes, forces him to write another book—even darker than the first. That’s all part of the conflict in the movie. And of course it’s all tied to that damn Wolfean boy’s murder. Shit, wait til you find out who murdered the sap. And quit guessing. Because you don’t know. No, I didn’t write it. I have it sitting here, though. I could throw lines in now and then to liven things up if it would make you all feel better. I shouldn’t—then I would get in trouble. I’m supposed to act in it, yes. This is a big part of my life, and will consume me. It’s what every movie does—consumes. Before the camera work even starts a movie consumes those in its path who breathe and piss the very essence of the story as if they were not actors but demons with fiery wings, possessed.

11:14 pm
Two nights with M****
I should mention that M**** is coming over tonight. We talked on the phone and she said, “Ghosts are everywhere. We’re only afraid of them when they move our socks in the middle of the night. You never notice when they’re staring you in the face, or they’re dripping water into the sink and in your bathtub.”

“You’re right. I never notice. I turn the handle tighter to make the dripping stop.”

“And it doesn’t, does it? It just gets worse, doesn’t it?”

“What are you, a plumber?”

“I’m the ghost of a plumber, you idiot. You don’t believe in anything do you?”

“I believe in myself.”

“No kidding.”

“Should I apologize?”

“No. That’s actually why I like you.”

I should add that when she left this morning, she turned to me and said, “You’re not so loveable. You’re just attractive, likeable. And you look the same as you do on the screen; which most men don’t. I would think you would be fatter. But you’re not. And I like that. I want to see you again tonight. I want to be here. We can wait for the ghost of L*** together.”

“He’s going to show up?”

“One never knows.”

11:39 pm
Santa Monica
I often wonder why I even talk about food. A big plate of shrimp and pasta—what else could one need? Some rice and green vegetables like asparagus. Maybe. A glass of lemon slices, ice, and water from a crystal pitcher; an infinitesimally small slice of chocolate truffle sprinkled with chocolate dust and a drop or two of syrup.

Here I go. I walk on the promenade with the cell phone to my ear. A Ferris wheel turns in the ocean night sky. The surf pounds the pier behind it. There’s no neon there. Only the midnight bottom feeders. The rollercoaster moves into the night and I hear the screams of the riders. Earlier it was S*** telling me she wanted to come over. I said I can’t because M**** is coming over, which makes her jealous, even though she probably knew before I did. She knows not to get jealous, but she does. She is a young actress and looks for big roles, no matter how she can get them. I don’t think knowing me gets her into movies, but she tries to use it to her advantage. Maybe she will make it big. In the meantime she can’t come over. I have to go to Vegas in the morning. The drive kills me. Let’s see if M**** can get my motor running.

A difficult script, and more from the 2004 stories

2005-03-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

The director is still angry. I had lunch with him today. He said, "They have strikes against me. I told the truth. They told a story full of holes. I could start laying them out, face-up and you would see that the only million dollar baby was the people of America who were spoon fed by the academy." I couldn't agree with him more. But then, it takes years to become one of the hidden elite. It would be so dangerous just to list names on here. You never know who's reading... and it's so easy to figure out it's me. We'll see how fast this gets back around.

My script has kept me awake all weekend. Just deciding how to portray a killer is always the most difficult. You have to reach into the darkest corners of your soul. I still may put this piece down and do something a little less ethereal. WIll keep you all posted. Here's more excerpts from last year's blog that you all want to know about:

June 18th, 2004:

06:21 am
No Dancing. Just Us.
How could we go dancing when such a tragedy had occured? I didn't call anyone. I just sat and watched the movie while she mumbled some far off names that she knows in the film; people whose names I could never pronounce. I asked her how she knew such people. But she's world traveled; she's been in 18 films, several of them European. What else could she do but shrug her shoulders as if I were dumb? "Ha ha!" She grinned, "They look beautiful up there. Oh!" She seemed to forget that she had just told me that the murderer had scaled a wall, carrying Mr L***s head. Murdered with his own knives. What kind of shit is that? He was the nicest man. Blacklisted because of supposed Communist ties, he never let that stop him. He came back and kicked Hollywood's ass. A classic movie man for the ages. Where is his Ronald Reagan sunset? I'm going to go back upstairs and run my hands along M*****s skin.

07:58 am
A Gruesome KTLA Anchorwoman Meets the LA Times
Did you watch KTLA? Did you read the LA Times? L*** would have laughed for sure—why? Because he would have turned it all into a comedy in one way or another. Why do you think he lived so long? You flip on KTLA, and the pumped up anchor-folk , live in the studio, put you out to the skinny, sickly reporter standing dumbly in the field. You know the guy; he’s the apologetic nerd who tells us about the murder; we feel sorry for him as a field reporter because he looks so apologetic—the common crying man of the masses. It all starts in the newsroom where the anchorwoman, with freshly brushed teeth and bulbous lips throws out the hook and says, “There’s been a gruesome murder. Let’s go live to blah-blah to hear more about it.” A man has had his head cut off and just two minutes before the word ‘gruesome’ smacks our screens, the anchors all talk about the weather man doing his laundry. What a trooper. Our trick of association for the day—we all have dirty laundry. And though I am sick about the LA times and KTLA’s ramshacking of this nice man, I can’t help but think L*** is up there, giggling to himself at the insanity of his violent end.

11:31 am
Lunch on Sunset
I’ve had two meetings today. Both left me with the conviction that not only do I have to work harder to make more money, but that Hollywood itself is in a momentous shift of direction. It’s a big cloud and it takes a lot of wind to move it—but it does, and can. If you don’t know what I mean, you will by the time movies hit the big screen in the next three years. That includes how they’re promoted, why they’re promoted, and what kind of big movies are going to hit the market—and saturate it. Beware of the war propaganda machine.

I promised I would do one more tour of scouting. I will head over to Vegas in the morning to look at a few locations—just the same I think I will go alone on this one.

I saw T****** a few minutes ago. We drove onto the strip, popped into a restaurant, sat outside—both noticed wrinkles on the tablecloth, and ordered tuna salad. He was in an uproar about God knows what: his tailor; his lover; his house; his housekeeper; his cars; his ideas of ‘The Great Inkling’. He says, “Movies begin with the great inkling. I have now had 137 great inklings, only a few of which have transpired into great anythings.”

We were together all of twenty-eight minutes. He took off to scream at his housekeeper, and I was left to wonder if I should get a coffee and plan the next day’s trip to Vegas. Someone remind me to tell you what M***** said before she left.

Very busy days...

2005-03-05T03:49:00.000-08:00

Almost done reading a new script. Will let you know very soon what kind of character I will portray. In the meantime, very busy. Barely time to add these old posts from last year... I welcome comments, but likely won't reply to personal questions.

From June 17th, 2004

2005-03-05T02:44:00.000-08:00

Murder in Hollywood
I can't sleep. M***** is upstairs, cuddled into my blankets as if she's been there for an eternity for the common man to bestow goddess-like worship upon her. It is a movie moment--her right thigh is exposed--her arms are thrown back with the blankets barely covering the tops of her breasts. Although I picked her up at her apartment, she didn't say a word. No one had. But then at the Rialto she tells me, "Did you hear about the murder?"

"What murder?"

"Mr L***."

"What the hell are you talking about? Why would anyone want to kill Mr L***?"

"Oh god it was horrible. The son of a bitch cut off his head and killed a retired doctor down the street."

Why hadn't anybody told me sooner? I was so angry just then. One, I don't like being left out when there's a tragedy, and two, he was an old friend of mine. Fifteen years ago, I can distinctly remember Mr L***, his face twisted into a grimace because I had attempted a screenplay that he read for me. We were taking a walk--he didn't move very fast at all. But he could make his way around without assistance; just as he did up to the very end. "You've got to have a story made of pure fire in this town if you want to make it with the writing," he said. "Your story has some kindling; there's some drizzle raining down but you only have one match. Now, why don't you either stick to acting, or write something built on propane. It will be explosive." And now here he was, murdered; in a Hollywood murder at that; explosive yes, and tragic.

From June 16th, 2004

2005-03-04T04:42:00.000-08:00

08:06 pm
Toward L. A.

We took the 14 all the way to Lancaster which wound further through the mountains, all the way back to the Grapevine: the freeway that marches over the Los Padres and down into the LA steppes. You still don’t know who I’m with, do you? Or who I am? Or what car? You don’t care. I have no traffic with this blog, so no one asks. There’s been a few inquiries; gentle probes really. When the big questions come, then maybe we’ll talk. I’m getting impatient: too much driving; too much time away from my metropolis of the Southland. The people were too slow back in the conservatism wasteland of Bakersfield. The streets were too wide. The farmland too close to infinity; the desert the infinite expanse. But we scoped the land, we mapped out a few details, we had meetings, we discussed, we drank tea and peered at storyboards laid out on the floor of a big empty room like they’d just fallen off an autumn tree. And if the desert drive scenes never make the movie cut? Ah, you know what I’d say to that. End of story.

08:15 pm
A night at the Rialto

I’m going to see M***** soon. I have to keep this short. I’m in Santa Monica. You know the place—if you’re in Southern California—you’ve walked the promenade. I have an apartment here. I like my big house too, but we can talk about that later: all the homes, all the decadence, all the snares of entrapment. I just got out of the shower. Here’s a thought: we’ll have our theatre night, then I’ll bring her back here and at the moment of eternal chaos I will tell her I wrote about her lips in a blog. She will think I am insane for sure. Ok, forget about that—we’ll talk of Fusion Suit and addictions and when we come back here we’ll act out the love scenes.

The Road through Bakersfield

2005-03-02T03:30:00.000-08:00

From June 15th, 2004:

08:04 am Downtown Bakersfield Breakfast
I should mention that earlier we ate at another diner. A bowl of oatmeal, some mixed fruit: delicious grapes, strawberries, and melon; and a side of bacon. You can’t help it. You walk into these places and smell the morning coffee and bacon and you have to have some of the decadence that people around here have daily. The old timers talked about their business ventures. I didn’t care to listen except for the conversation I heard about cattle and dairy herds from a denim-wearing gentleman who ate biscuits and gravy. I only caught wisps of it, but chuckled when I heard them talk of walking a pig like a wheelbarrow: “They’ll go anywhar you want em to go, when you got em by thar hind legs.” The waitress had a distinct twang too—you could tell she had been talking to guys like these for years. And LA is only 110 miles away.

10:23 am Hollywood’s Backyard
This valley—the Southern San Joaquin—really is filled with a cross section of fertile land and Texas-style hospitality. I noticed a lot of trucks on the freeway and highway that parallels it; and those migrants in the grape vineyards on the edge of Bakersfield. This is their home. The home of UFW headquarters and all that. Somebody in town yesterday said Cesar Chavez was buried up in the mountains we ascended earlier. The mountains are golden grass covered at first. You notice this when you make the climb. That’s the climb the Joads descended, old Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath. See—a movie just for a novel, and filmed here. This place is rich—it’s Hollywood’s backyard. So many people over the mountain don’t care about origins of film. They just want to be in something cutting edge—fast-moving high tech effects. Where’s my overalls and bare feet? That’s what I need. A Japanese beetle hit the windshield as we passed some groves. Metallic green and golden, its legs twitched before the wind finally whipped it into the valley, end over steely end.

12:11 pm Highway 14 Desert Movies
Highway 14 is one of those desert highways where RVs and tanker trucks drive slowly along the Sierra’s Mojave edge. As they move across a shrub-covered horizon, cars bunch up behind them, which is just enough annoyance to cause the occasional driver to bravely pass into oncoming traffic. That’s us. But we don’t realize we’re close to death, do we? We skip heading straight into California City and decide to make a ten-mile journey out of our way to Red Rock Canyon. It’s a quick tour into one of the sacred beating hearts of the film industry. Here, still in the same county as Bakersfield, but just outside of the valley, giant bugs attacked starship troopers, Natives fought battle after battle in the Hollywood rugged West against lonesome Homesteaders, and cavalry charged up desert hills; cowboys with parched lips got lost in the desert, Capricorn One astronauts hid out and ate snakes; and not to forget, Boris Karloff as a mummy made such a desert canyon an Egyptian land of mystery. I'm looking forward to tonight already. Can you tell?

03:33 pm Touching the Lips of M****
M**** has the best lips of anyone I know. They’re full, but not fake; kissable, deliciously so. You look into her chocolate brown eyes and find your senses pulled to those lips, so lipsticky, so moist, with intelligent words dripping out, always looking for the mysterious, always memorizing, tantalizing. She works her movie-made magic like no other. Of course there is this eternal problem. When she does a reading in front of a director, she clams, those full lips straighten; she loses her grip on her senses she had just mastered moments before for days on end. To lose it so fast; she said recently, “I do it time and again. It’s why the great movies aren’t mine. Sure I’m a leading lady type—if the Hollywood moguls would look at me that way. But once you reach a certain age without that one great film under your belt, it all slips away.” It does, like the eroded canyons I saw earlier. The red rocks like rosy cheeks. But then, they’re in great films; just a backdrop anymore.California City is a whirlwind to pass through, a dust devil of a town. But Hollywood’s here. You can see the fingerprints on every corner, in the settled desert dust, the hamburger joint windows full of grease, and the sound studio. The people here all talk of the last movie as if it were filmed yesterday, and expect more to come. It’s an endless cycle. They do come. We’re here aren’t we? I’m going to a meeting. We’re going to do some planning.

No, Spielberg does not live here.

2005-02-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

So yes, the academy award. So yes, yes and yes. I fell asleep in her arms... Finally saw who she was there with... I stole her away from her little group of elites. Who needs them anyway. They just make you feel like shit for not being in a Spielberg film. Here's more:

June 15th, 2004 POST:

07:17 am In the Valley: Day 2
Did I mention I am only doing this scouting as a favor? It's isolating, it's deceptive, and yet G****** knows I have a director's eye. I have for years. "Storyboard. You have the art talent, the experience, and a loyal following," he says over the phone again. I ignore him as usual. Like I said, I'm just doing this as a favor. We're already on the road, headed up 58--to the East. This is the Great Central Valley: it extends for hundreds of miles--fifty miles at its widest. And it is perfectly suitable for film. But not just the valleys. There are the small towns, the mountain views, the mountain prairies and forests and Montana-esque rivers, pristine and secluded in canyons. And as I alluded to yesterday, this place has a strange tie-in to film. Psycho, North by Northwest...a million westerns. Fearless was shot in corn fields off old highway 99, which is reminiscent of Iowan vistas and ideals. I'll admit that Weir did great with that one.

Armani vs. Versace

2005-02-28T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm awake now. I drank too much gin. Georgio Armani is such a bore. But I put him on anyways. I showed up and looked for M***** but she was nowhere to be seen. She’s off the map, off the deep end, but you would still expect her to be seen consoling JD for another year down the tubes. I told him last week that it’s all a construct manipulated by the academy’s warping of Edward Scissorhands. They think the monster is alive and well in his acting, and no matter how Scottish and kind-hearted he looked in Finding Neverland, he was still that cry-eyed lost boy with razors for fingers ballooned up by Tim Burton’s insane machinations. Big deal—JD looked good last night and we toasted each other for personal reasons, but then you have to do that, you have to never give up and salud to the family. God, Armani is so stiff, why did I put that on when Versace was hanging in my closet just waiting to wrap silk arms around me for a trip down the red carpet. I walked it, but I wasn't thinking about Oscars.

Here is the last post from June 14th, 2004:11:24 pm

The Sunset Strip Phone Call
I called her. She was on Sunset. Sometimes I think that’s the only sunset I’m scripted to have, to ever know. I knew she was there. I know exactly which room. And I know who she was with. People just know. She had only a moment to talk. “I’m a philosopher,” she said. “I think I will be one for the next month at least. I believe the world has intended to unearth itself. And tonight it’s my turn. I’m inside-out and I will drink until I flip back around. I’ll see you at the movies tomorrow. Gotta go.” To hell with her mysteries. These women all talk in mysteries. They drink. They do drugs. Not all of them, But a lot. And they’re all meta-physical about life, where they’ve been and where they’re going. So they talk in circles because they learned to breathe from watching the Actor’s Studio on TV. This was long before they got their precious degrees that landed them on soap operas that only housewives and people on factory lunch breaks watch. I just want to know if I’m going to have a chance to get laid tomorrow with someone who intrigues me. Imagine that. People in Hollywood think the way I do.

I was in a club last night but who cares?

2005-02-27T00:42:00.000-08:00

No one cares when there are 20 of me all pressed up against bar counters, all wondering why each other are in the scene. In between scripts I sometimes can't sleep. I toss around on my bed, and get up and read a shitty script and still can't sleep. I feel like I have to immerse myself in a character to feel whole. I know other actors like that. They get obsessed with it. Their regular selves don't even seem normal unless there is a hint of their latest character, or latest read, burgeoning. I can read a dismal script and still immerse myself into thinking, ' What if I were him?' Even if it was some dumb cocktail hour story.

The day it started I had so many posts: Here's more posts from June 14th, 2004:

10:27 pm Urban Wage Slaves
I’m memorizing lines. This helps me, even so early in the game. If I want to help scout an area I need to feel the pain of such a transition, such a transcendence from idealism to pessimism and self-decay; the debauchery of a pulp novelist character on the edge of insanity—the actor can believe in it if he chooses. I do. I could be him in Vegas. I have. It’s Hollywood for the stars, the stars to be, and the common glitter bug on the streets. Vegas is the perfect metaphor, though some might say New York would be as well. You build tall buildings and cram people in from all walks of life, into endless cubicles by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands. How can you not have decay? In one sense, NY is a society of caged urban wage-slaves.

10:59 pm Abu-Hollywood Prison
T****** said, “Old vampires never die, they continue to suck.” He had also taken one look at Nancy bent and crying over the casket, then called me on the phone. “Now that’s great acting,” he said. “They even got the whole family involved.” Of course I argued with him on this point.“It was sunset. She was sad,” I said. He didn’t let up. He figured someone had pried open the man’s eyes, made him look at his family, that they agreed on the sunset moment and last gasp of breath, that no one needed to know the real end had been so inconsequential, just like the final casket moment of the whole family in tears. T****** was furious as he yelled, “Gorbachev and Thatcher were both paid huge retirement sums years ago so they would make such noble speeches!”“It was their history. They could be so noble,” I said.“You will be history one day too, and I will scream just as loud at your demise.”I never know when he is just trying to make me mad. But I’m lying on this bed and thinking about it and it sure does make me want that swordfish and vinaigrette he had been eating the other day. Maybe this is just the character coming out in me, realizing what a Fusion Suit is: to hate the crime boss, to hate to go back to Vegas, to hate the need for the tormenting moment that sucks you into its slimy grasp. Why couldn’t the world have just let the old lady cry, scripted or not? Why does Mr. Fusion go meet the crime boss; why does he feel that he needs to interview the crime boss for a more realistic Wal-Mart shelf pulp novel? It sucks him in. He wants to interview him because he needs that dark underworld as badly as the crime boss. Am I like that without having to reach too far? I hate to say it but I know a lot of Abu-Hollywood people. They torment and stack the supposed criminals like corpses and make millions.

KTLA, Detroit memories from June, 2004

2005-02-26T23:13:00.000-08:00

There are things I need to understand too. I think we are scratching the surface of it all by studing the posts from last year. Here in 2005, life seems brighter.

More posts from June 14th, 2004:

09:54 pm m**** on KTLA news
I asked a few people if they saw M**** on the KTLA news spot. She wasn't even interviewed. She was just there, in the background, waiting for her slated moment that never happened. "They never get to me. It amazes me time and again that I can't be like you. You get one grey hair, or one shade off in your sea-green eyes and you're too old fashioned even for the Hollywood news." I told her to get a boob job, she could work a news chopper fast-rotor blade dialogue. She can talk that fast. And she could memorize the news lines. Besides, all those news chopper gals get bit parts on the silver screen. Those lips filled with Play-doh.The chicken salad wilted. I should have wandered downstairs. I'm planning out the morning and hoping for wireless connectivity that follows me wherever I go. Even down into the despair of the Fusion moment.

10:11 pm T****** not in the Detroit Crowd
I watched part of the game. Those tinseltown rejects never make the out-of-state games. How can I not sound bitter? We love our team. We hate our team. I was at a luncheon and T****** said over his swordfish and strawberry vinaigrette that he would be there, on the front lines, that he had tickets; he'd pulled them right out of someone special's ass. I got up from the bed and practically put a permanent dent in my nose trying to see if that was him I saw by the bench. It could have been him in a frantic angry-at-Kobe moment. If it was him, he was probably yelling "This is the 'World Championship' not some B-Ball park game!" That's the way T****** gets and everyone around here knows it. Doesn't make you love him less. Should I call M****?

How long will it take to understand?

2005-02-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

I've been so busy lately. And I do appreciate the comments. I will try to post more for you all. But you still need to get caught up. It will take some time. I have a new script in my hands. It's something less me, and more contemporary. I'm going to read some of it tonight...

More posts from June 14, 2004:

06:51 pm Rural Stream Connectivity
The room needs to be colder. I just spoke with M*** on the phone. She said that she would meet me at the Rialto tomorrow night, that we could go dancing afterward. "No, I don't mind hanging with you," she said. "And I want to see The Story of the Weeping Camel. I need to see what some of the people I know look like up there." I told her that I need to sit in the big chairs and not have to smell cotton fields and Almond trees. "Movie's at 9ish," she said.
I noticed the homeless in Bakersfield--they wander along the river on a path and camp under overpasses to the trill of frogs and crickets. Cyclists ride it. I've jogged it. I hear that 300 movies were filmed at this river. Here and up in the Tehachapis. They would camp all night--the John Waynes, Tex Ritters and Hop Along Cassidys and sing to their own merriment. Then when their backs hurt they would sleep in a nice hotel room bed and get room service.

07:07 pm The Fusion Suit Character
Here's the character I have to get into. He's a pulp writer; he's got one lousy book that nobody cares about--Fusion Suit. He's a gambling addict. He's a nightlife addict. He has sex with the creepiest women who hang out in the fire room at the Peppermill across from the Stardust. His mother lives in the mad city of lights and sits in the 7-11 around the corner at 3am and gambles her dead husband's pension and social security. She's Italian and wears too-large glasses like she's in an Elton John fan club. He's seen a murder in his youth and it haunts him because his old buddy was some Wolfean, Kerouac, lit lover who wanted to romance young loins. He had promise too. But he threw it away in a decade long depressive state. He goes back to Vegas and slinks into the darkest of underworld Vegas tales--just to write a book. I can be this guy. No problem. That's why they hired me, right? I have to go downstairs and order a chicken salad. Maybe I will hang out at the bar or just go to bed.

07:30 pm Wolfean Kid Goes to Hell
Did I mention the Wolfean kid is dead? Yeah. He gets off'd and nobody knows why. Not even Mr. Fusion Suit knows. See, when they were kids, they were in the woods with some girl they both loved and they all went running after they saw some bug-eyed informant get his head blown off by some shadowy somebody. What the hell--they get traumatized--we all get traumatized. Only the killer sees the kids and hunts down Mr. Wolfean of the three. I can't give away too much. But the other two get spared. Forget going downstairs. I don't want to be around people. I'll order the chicken salad. I'll see M*** tomorrow night anyway so she can see how stupid her friends look after all on the big screen.

The resurrection of a Bakersfield-Hollywood blog

2005-02-18T13:08:00.000-08:00

I gave up. I had a blog on another site, but it was one of those pay-to-use fiascos. I never liked using it, and I was way too busy driving back and forth from Bakersfield to Hollywood and LA and the big fat desert; and no one believed who I was. Didn't matter. I was doing it for me. But then recently I was contacted by N.L. Belardes. He found my site and asked me to start posting again because the content, he said, was important. Well, I realized that maybe I let everyone down by not telling the whole story... In the end I had just ignored everyone and secluded myself on my Hollywood island. I was so busy when I was posting before, acting, scouting, driving...but I have some time now. I'm searching for a new script. Something that fits me and how I feel.

I suppose I should start back at the beginning...

Posts from June 14th, 2004:

06:12 pm In the Valley: day 1
Today I set foot in that valley, far south of the Hollywood skyline; where popular culture meets sentimental conservatism. That's scrub oak scratching the belly of a palm tree. This is the scouting trip I promised I would take. The script is in hand: Fusion Suit is what the director calls it. Today I ate in a diner and thought about where the main character would launch into a monologue. "Take me to Vegas" he would say at the end of it and stuff a fat bite of pancakes into his mouth. That would lead over the Mojave, toward destruction.

06:32 pm A Bakersfield Hotel
The hotel lobby had country music. The McDonald's nearby had country music. The fine dining had country music. Earlier we had come over the grapevine and headed toward a small town up in the Taft hills, but turned around when told about diners along the North edge of the Kern River. I have to go for a jog. People say this is the dirtiest air in America. Even the lower Kern River is dark here. The people here basque in the heat of the nearby sand and dunk their heads in the murky water.