Lilly In Hiding

Having never stayed in one city before for longer than ten weeks, Lilly had decided that the best plan was to go into hiding. For several weeks at the crack of dawn, which happened to be around 10 a.m. each morning she would drive to her new office, which happened to be the guru's garden in the Palisades. Here she would sit amid the pretty pink flowers as the Mexian builders played Mariachi music and yelled at each other whilst constructing the guru's new mansion at the back of his garden and then she would pee in the corner near the mint leaf plants, like a cat who was sick and wanted to go to sleep. All along Lilly asked herself if she had gone mad as the routine continued and each day she went to hide in her new Jardin.
Working in the morning meant sitting on the paving stones and the doormat leading into the guru's treatment room. Then when the sun moved, she would move to the terrace table and then when the builders left, she would swim. She would get home at 10 p.m. like a real person with an office and she would light her candles and stare at the ocean and then go to sleep.
The routine continued for several weeks until the Volcano errupted in Iceland and she wondered if she might be trapped in LaLaLand for several weeks more. But the pilot wasn't having it and so she and another 200 passengers were allowed to escape the madness and fly to the Riviera where she instantly felt more at home. It was the annual Cannes Film Festival and the prospect of spending ten days asking film stars banal question and hot-footing it from one party to the other felt much more real than life in the suburbs a la the Pacific Palisades. And so it was that after two nights in a 2 Star Hotel, her sanity was restored. The lady at the new Farmer's Market yelled at her the next morning for wanting too small a slice of pate and so she knew too that she was safely back home in Europe.
And then the next night, she put on her best dress, which as avid readers will know, is her Diane von Furstenburg Wonder Woman dress, which she wore this time without her gold sequined Converse boots, as she knew fine well that the mean men at the bottom of the red carpet in Cannes would not let her up the stairs wearing sneakers. At the top of the stairs in her Prada shoes, she met Cate Blanchett who admired her gold sequined bag from the thrist store on Main Street and gave her a great big smile.
And then she went to dinner at the pizza place with some film agents and talked to a man who was making a film about the life of Budhha and some book agents who had taken the train from London. She told them about her novel Sergeant Pepper. And then she went to a party for Robin Hood with a man dressed as Robin Hood. And then she went home to sleep.

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.