CrossDressing for CowsHands

The week had begun with what was supposed to be a short trip to the hairdressers, which had been renamed Tweezers after another shop called Scissors had threatened action. It was run by a bunch of queens (and kings) from Paris. Then just as my new bangs were about to be perfected, my hairdresser Larry felt so provoked by his colleague Misty, who claimed his abs were sagging, that he ripped of his shirt and started doing press-ups in his undies. Then he got so excited that he snipped out a huge portion of my fringe. And I ended up looking just like I did when my mother cut my hair when I was five.

Still, the guru said that he liked it very much and so did Alexi, a surfer and skateboarder from the neighborhood. Each week, Alexi would come and collect me at 9 a.m. sharp on Wednesdays on his fold-up bike and escort me past the tourists along the boardwalk to go to the farmer’s market. It was like promenading in the olden days, except instead of wearing a suit and tie, Alexi would be wearing his surf shoes, long shorts and different T-shirts which he liked to refer to as being “rad.” I thought that he probably meant red and was likely color blind, as the shirts were usually more like pink.

On this particular week, Alexi had an announcement. He was going to Australia for a month. In his absence I was to shop online, instead of at the farmer’s market, so that I wasn’t attacked by any wayward tourists. He proceeded to reel off a list of names of his favourite online stores. Alexi was a surfer in the biggest sense of the word. If he wasn’t out at sea, he was on his I-pod. Boundless New York was his favorite, and then there was something about Moose Shirts and then another one called EastWest. Alexi was an insider and only brought online from Brooklyn, he said. I went to see what the price of broccoli was but could only find cool-looking shoes. Still, I thought If I shopped here for a month then it might be good for the waistline. Then he asked me if he thought his surf wear would work in Paris on his next trip? I said sure and explained my theory about cross-dressing, or wearing what one wears in one’s home city everywhere and not just to the farmer’s market. (I had a grand plan to wear my sweat pants to Paris Fashion Week next month.)

That night in the Jacuzzi, Alexi worried if he should pack five pairs of surfer shoes or six and whether or not he would be able to fit in three kites as well as his surf board into his suitcase. Such, dear reader, are the concerns of folks in L.A. I sat listening to him in my favorite red polka dot underwear, as I had forgotten my swim suit. I practiced a belly-button massage thing that the guru had taught me. Then inspired by a yoga class from our Swiss teacher Agha who had declared earlier that evening this was the month to figure out what we were good at and what we should do with our lives, Alexi suddenly declared that what we were good at was being gofers, going to get things for people. Like information for newspapers. He explained that massage and dance were not gofer activities. Hmmm, I thought about it. I was a gofer and good at finding things. He was right.

Then I told Alexi how earlier in the week, the guru had introduced me as his assistant to the new class. “Who is that?” they had asked, starring at my new hair-do with the funny bangs. “I gave a big smile and showed how all of my teeth had grown perfectly, to prove that I was far from being five, despite the look. Still, I didn’t really mind as I wasn’t going to see them for a while. My ticket had arrived, and I was off to Timbuktu to chase that Giraffe. (See The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe.)

Wonder Woman and the Gold-Sequined Sneakers

The guru had invited me to his house to celebrate our new collaboration. (See the Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe). I needed to dress right. I went through the clothing laying beneath my tent in the closet and came across my Diane von Furstenburg Wonder Woman dress. It was a long silk gown which swished around the body with swirls of muted colors, printed on a bed of mauve.

I slipped into my gold-sequined Converse-style ankle boots and put on my black pirate’s eye patch that I had gotten from a Christmas cracker at Little Red Riding Hood’s. Then I looked in the mirror and threw a fit. Thankfully, the man from the Japanese store had packed as a present the concubine dress with a good-luck note along with my karate trousers. (See The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe). So I tried it on for size. Five outfits later, I was back to my Wonder Woman dress and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway humming the TV series theme all the way. It turned out I had chosen wisely. “My litte concubine,” mused the guru, before sitting me down to read some books on becoming a Sense-I. After eating dinner, I did my best to get him drunk on Saki. Instead, I succeeded in getting him to make me a pet dog from a long white balloon, a new party trick he had learned the week before. I practiced twirls for him with my dress flying much higher than it did on the show. But he wasn’t to be moved. “My dear you must respect my discipline,” he said. ”What’s that?” I asked, the child of two flower children who had disappeared five years ago to Europe in a caravan. “It is my culture and you will learn all about it soon,” he said. And so he gave me a pat on the head, handed me my new pet dog, and escorted me outside where the neighbors had gathered around to inspect my purple electric car, which Beyonce had once used in a music video. It belonged to Little Red Riding Hood who had lent it to me for the week to drive around town with a big “For Sale” sign on it. And so I rode home a happy bunny and practiced driving through the puddles with my eye patch covering one eye. I tried to phone what I thought was Jim’s number. And this, dear reader, is where the weekend kicked into high gear. I had called an ex-boyfriend by mistake! “Oh, no,” I thought. “Oh yes,” thought he. And so at 9.37 p.m. the next night, a six foot six version of James Dean walked through my front porch, hair slicked back, a leather jacket hugging his muscled chest, and said, “Hello stranger.” “Hello,” I said sheepishly, as he admired my red angora sweater with gold stars on the chest and matching silver shoes. My hair was still standing on end from my dance class. Over a bottle of organic wine from Trader Joe’s he began sobbing, as he recalled how tragic his last five years had been selling stickers to place on snowboards. Before he left, he declared that I needed to find a real man, an everyday person who would love and appreciate my eccentricities. “What eccentricities?” I asked. A trip to the local lumbar yard was in store.

The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe: Or The Frustrations of a Former Reporter

After 700 practice dance turns along the shoreline (see previous column about becoming a dancer), I was about to get pneumonia when all of a sudden the guru called. The energy generated from twirling 700 times between the Venice Boardwalk and the Santa Monica Pier had triggered some sort of energy release, he explained. And he had had a brainwave: I was to become his assistant or a guru-ette! I was to report for duty the next morning. I called Jim instantly and could hear the screech of his car leaving the driveway. He wanted to become a guru-ette too. “No more Nickeloden scripts for me,” he yelled down the phone as he sped towards the beach. When he arrived, I showed him how to do a dance turn, just like I had learnt in my class the day before in preparation for my planned career as a dancer. Remember! Anyhow, that was now my old career, cos things happen fast in LaLaLand. And so I left Jim, a gangling figure with his knees and arms flying in the wrong direction, turning awkwardly along the beach. He was determined to be a Guru-ette too. I headed to Little Tokyo to get myself one of those Sensei kits. In the Japanese store, the man spent an hour trying to dress me as a concubine or something like that. But I wasn’t having it. I left wearing one of those cool-looking Karate kid jackets and practiced Kung-fu moves in my car all the way home. I had been saved. I got to the gym shortly before closing and so, as usual, had Bianca, an old-school dumpling of a fashionista who sported a Liza Minelli hair-cut, and bright red lips, which slopped down to one side and perfectly complemented her Addidas hoodie, which she would wear with nothing underneath! Between calling the security guard a “Fasceest,” for telling her the club was closing, she spotted me before it was too late to escape. I was cornered and her beady eyes and questions had me reveal my entire life story to her in the blink of an eye. Hmmm, I thought. She would have made the perfect journalism teacher. In order to annoy the security guard further, she then reeled off fact after fact about current affairs that made it obvious she must read the newspapers like a hawk. I was filled with a sense of hope. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be a guru-ette forever. (I was in fact beginning to miss journalism.) When I got home, it seems that the cosmic energy generated by my dance moves had generated a response to one of my far-flung pitch letters from the day before. If I could get from LAX to Timbuktu for $28.50 return, there was a story to be done on a runaway giraffe. I thought for a second and remembered a flight attendant on Egypt Air, who had let me stand in the cockpit with my laptop plugged into the kettle socket one time so I could file a story upon landing. He had just the ticket. But how would I tell the guru? I phoned Jim to see what he thought. But he was too excited to think straight. Upon completion of his 700 twirls, it seems that he had been approached by one of the Beach Lifeguards and offered a job doing a special twirling watch in which he would keep a 360 degree check on what was going on at the beach. We had survived another day.

The Titanic and The Twirling Swimsuit: Or Life After Journalism

My mid-life crisis had extended to a second day. Massage, as an alternative to writing, was out I decided after Jim and I had been boxed up in a small room with real-life human beans demanding to be prodded through their bathing suits for an afternoon. And so it was back to plan A, which I had hatched out aged 5. I was to become a dancer! At the crack of dawn, I jumped in my car to go to a “professional” class. I told the resident jazz guru upon arrival that I was going to become a pro. aged 37 ½. Very good, she said. That will be $200 per week. I handed over the money and walked happily into the studio.

Having a flat chest finally made perfect sense, I thought. My theory was proven right when the house wives gathered all stared at my boyish figure in admiration. I was onto something. And so I twirled happily in the wrong direction for an hour before heading back to my local pool to marvel at my newfound plan. When I got there, the pool area had been barricaded off. Gale force winds had come to shore.

I managed to pass as a walking lettuce leaf by wearing my silver swim cap and green goggles, as I walked outside through the kitchen door and swam happily amid the giant armchairs and a deck table, which had sunk to the bottom in the wind. I imagined that I was deep at sea, salvaging booty from the Titanic. My job completed, I went to the farmer’s market, the annual highlight of the week in this retirement resort come holiday haunt. At the cabbage stand, I ran into Little Red Riding Hood, the doyenne of Hollywood reporters who had spent her week painting her guest house. The assignments, she said, had dried up. It was Gloria Swanson Act Two, I thought sadly, my silent movie star of the newspaper biz. I tried to convince her to become a dancer like me. But she wasn’t having it. She liked her G & Ts too much after yoga at 10 a.m. on the terrace. And so I went back to the beach to practice twirls along the shoreline all alone, hoping that I wouldn’t be blown out to sea.

The Guru and The Great Escape

Jim, a tall, handsome Irish-American scriptwriter from Boston, and myself had been plotting our escape from the film business for several weeks. For the last three months we had trotted down to the local Shiatsu school to learn the art of pressing one’s thumbs into people’s backs for a living. Anything has to be better than writing we had decided. And so giving our index fingers, the only one either of us could type with, a rest we practiced poking around on innocent bodies, taking breaks only to venture to Reena’s Raw Food Café next door, which was filled with hippie-types that may not have moved from the spot since 1962. We found sustenance in the form of the odd spinach leaf served up on a silver plate.

“I just blew off a major party in Hollywood to be sitting here with you tonight on this deserted street outside one of the most bizarre cafes I have ever been to,” I confessed last night. “Do you think I have gone mad?” “No,” said Jim. “You have finally got your priorities straight.”

Dear Reader, this is the plight facing journalists today: “To Write or Not To Write?” Or maybe both suggested our guru, a diminutive and wise man from Tokyo who perched like a delicate flower on the edge of a stool in his Sense –I get-up, consisting of one of those suave black warrior-jackets and cute white trousers, looking somehow more seductive than Prince could ever hope to writhing around on stage. So I spent the morning planning my reinvention as a writer of anything other than Hollywood stories, sending out wild pitches to far-flung corners of the globe. In-between I tried to convince the gardener, who had spotted us practicing on the terrace, that really I was not qualified to mess around with his back. Yikes. Give a massage, I thought? I was in a clear mid-life crisis mode. I headed next door to sit in the Jacuzzi of my neighborhood hotel where a buggy had flown into the water. Real weather, wind, rain, fog, had finally made it to Los Angeles. And its inhabitants were in a panic. The buggy had almost bopped a bald-headed man on the head. He hadn’t noticed. But I thought Tibetan Yoga in the studio sounded more promising. After pumping our hearts like soldiers with our fists, and making strange cycling movements with our arms, in a sequence that would have made Indiana Jones seem far scarier than his riffle, I realized that this effort to conjure forth some all-powerful Tibetan deity was in vain, when the teacher declared that she had to leave early to get home in case it rained.

Anyone Chasing The Newspaper Business Is Making Silent Movies

“Anyone chasing the newspaper business is making silent movies,” said the Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, Jr. in a recent conversation in which he encouraged the launch of this blog.

And he and his family should known. Goldwyn, Jr., the son of Samuel Goldwyn, is just about the best person to talk to in such a crisis as the one that newspapers are facing today, as he is able to look back at the old days and forward to the Internet-savvy future, “which is something that we are trying to figure out ourselves,” he says. “People have very short attention spans today.”

After a frustrating morning planning my escape from the business altogether, Goldwyn, Jr.’s line seemed to sum up the situation in one: Journalists, the silent movie stars of today, must move into the Talkies’ equivalent of the Blogosphere, or else…

The bureaucracy involved in getting an interview from a studio hadn’t helped. “Hollywood has become too corporate,” I declared, run by “yes men in suits.” (A request to interview Helen Mirren had turned into a series of robotic emails, involving hurdles and referrals that would have topped getting the okay to get into East Berlin.)

“In the old days the studio wouldn’t speak to you without permission” says Goldwyn, Jr. “No one just picked up the phone to Louella Parsons,” he adds, referring to one of Hollywood’s fabled gossip columnists. “In the old days you couldn’t get a story. You had to deal with the publicity office. Things are much freer today.”

We got onto the very nature of the press today when indeed multiple sources abound for information which can often appear on little-known websites in nano-seconds. “Communication is so fast now,” he says. “Information is out there instantly and there is no time to correct it. People are just protecting themselves. Companies are often public and stock can go up and down on a story.”

Indeed. Goldwyn, Jr. reminded me what a tough business this is by referring to his past. “When people interview me they always ask me to tell them anecdotes about the stars of old,” he says. “I always tell them that my father was an independent producer and what I remember is the celebration in our house when he was able to pay back the money he had borrowed to make a film to the bank.”

Goldwyn, Jr.’s words reminded me of another truth uttered by Filippo Timi (Vincere), last year’s best actor winner at the Venice Film Festival, in a recent interview confirming that no one ever escapesthe film business.

“It is like the Coliseum when you wanted to be a slave just to be part of it,” says Timi. “Maybe we can think of the industry like that. All of the people who work in the industry are like slaves to the industry. We all say that we are going to leave but we like it too much.”

For the full Timi interview see: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100107/ART/701069970

About the Author:

Liza Foreman is a former staff reporter for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and now writes freelance from Los Angeles and Europe for the NYTimes.com, The International Herald Tribune, The Times, The National and Hollywoodwiretap.com

The Wonders of a $10 Kodak Camera at the Oscars

I mentioned in my last blog some images taken at one year's Oscar ceremony with a $10 Kodak camera. Here they are...

The Golden Globes or Raining Stars

And so we come to the day of the Golden Globes of which I have attended quite a few and of which I have fond memories. There was the year where I managed to sneak into the photographers’ pit and partake in the ritual of guessing who the star standing in front of you is. Think a form of Chinese whispers or desperate enquiries going ever further down the line asking if anyone had any idea of which B-list star it was preening on the carpet. This all took place as Cate Blanchett quivered like an exhausted race horse who couldn’t take another flash bulb and Minnie Driver found a few steps on the far side of the entrance over which she draped herself like some silent movie star. Then there was the 2007 version where, thanks to strike threats, the Golden Globes were paired down to a bare bones event and the atmosphere inside the Beverly Hilton Hotel was like being inside a war bunker where Renee Zellweger entertained the troops with her bright red lips and laughs. I have also attended the Oscars, I will have you know. I remember the time where we were told no cameras in the journalists’ pit at the side of the red carpet. Realizing that everyone else had one, myself and a Spanish reporter went into the attached Highland Hotel’s gift shop and bought two disposable cameras with the words Kodak plastered across them in bright yellow letters and stood taking pro photos of the stars in close up, until one Uma Thurman could be seen glaring at me through the other side of the lens in horror. (The shots turned out fabulously.) There was the year when I was sent, rather embarrassingly, to track down Martin Scorsese for The Hollywood Reporter upstairs at the Governers’ Ball and ask him how he felt about not winning again. And that was probably the year when I realized that being backstage, after sitting on the carpet for hours on end, was akin to sitting on a long-haul flight packed with 400 journalists sitting elbow to elbow with their laptops, all eating airline-style food. That may have been the year that I realized that awards ceremonies were best watched at home and left to see the end of it from my sofa. And so it was that I spent my Golden Globes this year letting everyone else get caught up in all of the fun and games and practicing dance twirls on the deserted beach in the pouring rain, not giving two hoots that stars were being rained on only twenty minutes away.

A Star for a Day

And so the week continued with a trip the next day to a so-called awards-season gift suite and an opportunity to live the life of a star vicariously. Inside the Peninsula Hotel, the scene was all abuzz with press and camera crews heading down to visit Nathalie Dubois’ DPA gift suite, which was filled with booty galore just waiting to be taken home by celebs.

Making sure that this wasn’t dished out to the press by mistake, we were given giant necklaces to were with the word PRESS written in luminous green. In previous years, even journalists would have had these companies throwing things at them to take home but here too the effects of the recession could be felt. This year, it seems we were to be satisfied instead by, in one case, a label from a cool Army-style shopping bag, which I gazed at longingly before the rep ripped off the packing and said here you can have this instead! Even the sweet Danish girl from goodluckhorseshoes.com, the latest thing in Bling – think an original Danish horseshow smothered in 24 carat gold, which is hung on a chain- like necklace fit for any rapper – held on tightly to her gear.

Still, the good luck clearly wore off on me. After discovering the vegetable-infused cocktails on the terrace at circa 11.30 a.m. and taking a few sips of the Cabana Cachacha rum mixed with St Germain liquor, I figured the best way forward was to ditch the pass.

And so I entered the pampering suite sans detection, wearing my finest black suit, and got to play at being a movie star for a rather enjoyable hour. I had my nails done and learnt all about the Minx organic nail polish from the manicurist Nettie Davis. Then it was on to the celebrity make-up artists Anastasia’s stand where someone just waiting to dish love on to a passer by kindly did my brows. The girl from MD Lash Factor handed over a black velvet pouch with a potion one could apply everyday to raise the length of one’s eyelashes and then the ever-so-sweet rep from the skincare label Kerstin Florian went to far as to hand me some Kaviar to smear under my eyes! was on a roll. Outside, the beautiful tea blends from Bird Pick were presented by another friendly face and I was even invited to their grand opening this Saturday in their Culver City mall store. Then I fell gratefully into the arms of two young masseurs from the innovative company Massage Express, which will come to your home, office, or set with their table and chair, and had all of my worries smoothed out through my suit. Back inside, the girl from Brazilian Blowout spotted my pass and declared that she had already spoken to me, then handed over a tube of their signature hair smoothing cream before declaring wistfully that she too needed a massage. Back on the terrace, the reporters from Turner Television glared at my seven bulging bags of “research items” (they only had one), and I wolfed down a tuna sandwich and sauntered out. When I got home, I realized that I had risked my reputation as a stand-up reporter for less than $150 worth of gear and consoled myself with the thought that it was all done, as I am telling you now, strictly in the name of the story.

+ Please note that all items were dropped off at a charity store on the way home.

Plastic Surgeons and the Hall of Mirrors

A Los Angeles blog can only rightfully begin from inside a plastic surgeon’s office in Beverly Hills. And so it was one recent Thursday that I trotted up to that part of town to take advantage of a gift certificate, which came courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter’s Power 100 Women In Entertainment Breakfast, for a so-called Shiatsu facial at the office of one well-known Beverly Hills doctor who had thought to offer his bloody-nosed patients a soothing facial service on site.

Nose to nose with the beautician, I posed the million-dollar questions: “Have you ever seen a nose job where you couldn’t tell it was one?” I enquired “Can you tell mine is?” she asked, pressing her Miss Piggy-like snout within inches of mine, as I lay helpless on the table. “The only problem is that I can’t breathe,” she sighed. Indeed. She couldn’t, it seems, breath long enough to complete the offer of a one-hour facial, valued at a whopping $400, and I remembered that there was no such thing as a free lunch in this town.

And so sooner than expected I was back in the waiting room, a pristine white space filled with large princess chairs, and in a haze handed over a tip, which I later regretted. I spotted a plastic surgeon in a green outfit heading towards me and sped out on to the street determined to be the last person in town with a large nose.

On my way out, I saw lifts and corridors full of perfectly plastic faces, reflected in the building’s large mirrors, as if from a scene from a surreal horror film. Finally I appreciated the wisdom of a fellow yoga student who years ago had asked a teacher what I thought then to be a ridiculous question: “Why oh why was the energy in Beverly Hills so different to Santa Monica?” he asked that day. Finally I understood his question and couldn’t wait to get back home.