Los Angeles Read online

  A group of men stands holding plastic placards with people’s names written in black grease pen. These are the drivers. If you’re having an egomaniacal departure from reality, you might think these are your fans. Many people seem to approach them that way, as though they will be asked to shake hands and sign autographs.

  I see my name on one of the placards and nod to the man. We meet at the space where the rope opens.

  “Do you have any luggage?” he asks.

  Waiting at the baggage carousel, I make the same kind of small talk you’d have with an orderly about to wheel you down the hall for a “procedure”—distracted, distant but friendly, not wanting to be either intrusive or noncommunicative.

  “Nice flight?” he asks.

  I nod. I notice the little old lady who was next to me looking for her luggage. I begin noticing how people tie things onto their suitcases, ribbons, pieces of yarn, how they sometimes paint a big white dot on the side, identifiers, tribal marks.

  “What color are your bags?” the driver asks.

  “Black,” I say—it is a little like going to a coat check without your number and saying your coat is wool.

  I see the woman from the plane struggling to pull her bag off the belt. I grab it for her. It is an old, mustard-colored, vinyl suitcase shaped just right to hold a couple of bowling balls.

  “Steady,” she says. “There’s a frozen turkey in there.”

  I hand the big bird over and she’s on her way.

  Two bags come crashing down the luggage chute, competing to land and bounce off the conveyer belt. Weirdly, as soon as I see the bags, I know one is mine.

  “That’s mine,” I say as I see them slam down onto the conveyer belt. I see someone else’s hand touch the bag, turn it over, looking. “Mine,” I shout, frightening him away.

  I wait with my winter coat draped over my arm while the driver goes to get the car. Everything appears to be climate-controlled—the plane, the airport, the atmosphere itself. I am not hot, I am not cold. I am not sweating. In fact, I am barely breathing.

  As a New Yorker, as a former child of suburbia, it amazes me that I stand at the curb waiting while a man I don’t know goes to get the car and that when he pulls up, I willingly climb in. Does it make sense to let a stranger pick you up in a long black car? And equally, does it make sense that most often, they do take you where you want to go?

  I move from one vacuum-sealed environment to another—my feet have not touched earth since I left New York this morning. I’m traveling as though I am an object, a painting, some precious breakable thing, plastic-wrapped, heavily protected, deeply American.

  Acceleration: the car peels away from the curb and once again I feel the pull of gravity; I feel some piece of me has been left behind.

  The back seat is plush—thick leather seats, a basket of goodies, water, candy, an apple, Wash ‘n Dries, all the things you’d find in a good hotel mini-bar.

  From the moment you arrive in Los Angeles, it is about the car. From the back seat I call Enterprise and arrange for them to deliver my rental car to the hotel. This is a place where you don’t want to be without a means of transportation, you don’t want to be without a way out, not even for a moment.

  Just as London, Paris, and New York stood as symbols for past centuries, Los Angeles is the city for the twenty-first century. Hovering at the farthest edge of the Wild West, Los Angeles is the home of the American Dream machine—Hollywood—it is where hopes and desires are manufactured and delivered back as though they were our own, where lucky men and women are elevated, as if elected, to become our stars, our heroes—at least until someone better comes along.

  For hundreds of years, explorers and pioneers, beginning with Franciscan monk Junípero Serra, on through Jedediah Smith, the ill-fated members of the Donner party, missionaries, gold rushers, early motion-picture makers, dust-bowl immigrants, aircraft engineers, entrepreneurs, adventurers, rebels and radicals, gurus and groupies, have all come to California in search of something. They come looking for something other, something more. They come rushing from what is to what might be, each one carrying their own vision of a utopian idyll. They come to lose themselves, to find themselves; they come in pursuit of fame and fortune. Los Angeles, California—the state itself named after a fictional island of great wealth—is perhaps the closest thing America has to a Promised Land.

  The new century began with enormous expectations, almost a sense of entitlement, for continued success, growth, the upsizing of the American Dream. But beneath all of this lurks the threat that the dream has become inflated as if to compensate for all that is otherwise not happening, as if to distract us from an underlying depression—emotional and economic; as though we are consuming, stuffing, and spoiling ourselves to avoid our fear of failing, of falling, of having nothing at all.

  Los Angeles exists in this disconnect, in this fissure, like a geological fault in the collective soul. In Los Angeles there is always an inescapable tension just beneath the surface, the sense that something, no one knows exactly what, is about to happen, that it could go one way or the other, that at any moment you could win big or lose it all, that the very foundation of the city, that the bottom could come out from under, that the good life, as good as it gets, could be gone in a minute.

  Life in Los Angeles is steeped in twelve-step culture—everything is just for today. You are obliged to take one day at a time; absolutely no one wants to commit to more—not the illegal immigrant housekeeper who knows that at any moment she could be busted and sent back across the border, not the movie executive whose sixty-million-dollar romantic comedy turns out to be a sixty-million-dollar disaster. It is a town that specializes in the suspension of disbelief, the suspension of time, reality, history, memory.

  Everyone is a new arrival and there is no welcome wagon—why help the competition? Even the architecture is transient, like stage sets; things can be built in a day and destroyed just as easily. This constant state of flux is in part the result of a radical/rebel willingness to experiment, to tolerate all styles and sensibilities at once—after all, California is in many ways the American outback.

  It is a place of enormous anonymity—people pass each other blindly on their way in and out of their homes, on and off the freeways. And yet people are desperate for recognition. They want to be seen, noticed—they are constantly hawking their product, pitching their services, their souls. They want to be recognized, rewarded, congratulated. One can’t help but wonder if the notoriously profound narcissism of Angelenos is exacerbated by the disconnect.

  “The story you’re about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” This is the city where Jack Webb played Sergeant Joe Friday, a cop working the late shift on Dragnet; where Jack Klugman played Quincy, Deputy Chief L.A. Medical Examiner; where Charlie’s Angels played the sexiest of private eyes; where the attorneys on L.A. Law work overtime to settle the score.

  This is a city with an infamous dark side, shadowy figures, hard-boiled noir, the Black Dahlia, the helter-skelter of the Manson family killings. This is the city where fact turns to fiction, twists and turns, and then fiction turns to fact. This is where “Reality TV” was born. This is where O. J. Simpson’s car chase was broadcast live from a helicopter tracking the Ford Bronco as it made its way over the city’s infamous freeways. And it is the place where a former President “removed from public view” is holed up in a Bel Air mansion, evaporating, slowly pulling back from reality as we know it.

  It is simultaneously a city of the future and a city of the past, with all the attendant complications—racial, economic, social, and cultural—of any major American city. And yet at a time when other cities are shrinking back, Los Angeles is coming into its own, expanding, thriving.

  I am drawn to Los Angeles as though it were a character I am compelled to crawl inside of, exploring its evolution, the people who populate it, the land itself, as though to inhabit it, however briefly, will allow me to make sense of
it. I am drawn to it for all the wrong reasons, just like those who have visited before me, intrigued, horrified by the glitter, the shine, the strangeness.

  The first time I came to Los Angeles, I hated it. It was Christmas vacation—I was still in school. I flew west to visit my best friend from childhood. I remember being stunned by the cold, the damp, the rawness of the city without winter. No one talks about it, but instead of winter, L.A. has what can only be described as a rainy season, which arrives sometime in January and leaves by the middle of February. By the end of it, everything starts to smell.

  I also remember the houses built into the sides of hills, looking at them half in awe, half horrified, not knowing if their placement was terrifically stupid, smart, naïve, or boldly optimistic. In a place where the land is so unstable, it seems incredibly presumptuous to pin houses to the sides of hills, as though they will not slip, will not lose their footing, will not slide onto the house just below—many seemed to be hanging by a thread.

  On that first trip, we did the classic California tourist things: Disneyland, whale-watching, the San Diego Zoo, shopping at stores owned by celebrities—as though they’d be there behind the counters saying, “And what can I do for you today?” We touched the ground at various famous intersections, as if that was history in the making. We strolled the Hollywood Walk of Fame, checking to see whose star was next to whose. At Mann’s Chinese Theatre, formerly Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the stars signed their names and set their feet in cement—Hedy Lamarr, Judy Garland—leaving their footprints like markers, proof. Outside the theater there were souvenir stands, merchants from all over the world hawking memorabilia as though it was a food stuff, an essential like chicken or rice. Everything was about buying the memories, mementos to bring back home, to prove that you were there. Much less glamorous than you’d imagine it to be, all of it was seedier and more downtrodden than depicted in the issues of Rona Barrett’s Hollywood and Tiger Beat that I’d grown up poring over. Old Hollywood—drunks, derelicts, depressing.

  We went on the Universal Studios tour, and sat on a tram that wound in a circle around the lot, clearly not really the lot, but a heavily narrated theme park. “On your left, the lake where Jaws lives, on your right ye old Bates Motel and just up the hill, the Gothic house from Psycho. Notice the Old West, our Mexico, and your small hometown street.” All of it deserted, showing no signs of ever having been used, the facade of a back lot. Entirely separated from the actual moviemaking process, there wasn’t a chance of seeing a star arriving for work, of being spotted, plucked out of the crowd and invited for lunch at the commissary. I posed in a machine that put my picture on the cover of Time magazine as Woman of the Year. I also posed for People and Us. I posed wondering—am I pretending this is real? Am I going to bring these images home? Would anyone believe me—Oh, yes, I was gone for a week and became a national hero? There is something distinctly American about our need to put our faces on everything from faux celebrity portraits to currency, T-shirts, etc. It is all about the fantasy of being famous, of being “somebody.”

  At Christmas, some people in Los Angeles paint their lawns white, like snow. In the winter, the rich go to the mountains where there is snow, to their outposts in Aspen, Sundance, and Switzerland, and the rest make do, spraying fake snowflakes on their windows, hanging wreaths on their doors.

  On that first visit, I went to a Christmas Eve midnight mass at an Episcopal church on Sunset Boulevard. On the way there, I mistook the boy hookers for hitchhikers and suggested that we give them a ride. The priest leading the service walked up the aisle swinging the incense hypnotically back and forth, as though he was luring me in. I remember looking at the people around me, an odd amalgam of humanity, gathered on a dank and drizzly midnight to celebrate the birth of Jesus. They were dipping up and down, threadbare knees pressing against the kneeler, singing and swaying along. I remember looking around, breathing deeply and chanting to myself—this is not for me, this is not for me.

  I come out of my fugue, of the past—where are we?

  All I see is a low flat expanse, a colorless sky and miles of asphalt unfolding. There is a lack of landscape, lack of an organizing idea, a focus. This absence of a center furthers the often referenced notion that there is no “there” here. Natives would argue, rightfully, that there is a “there” everywhere. Los Angeles is a city of a thousand cities, but until you know that, until you know how and where one enters, the surface all looks the same, one building after another, one mini-mall, one car wash. It all begins to look familiar, the repetition becomes a rhythm, pulling me closer. We pass the Flynt Publications building, a modern oval structure, home to Hustler magazine. I think of the movie The People vs. Larry Flint, where Larry Flynt was shot, paralyzed by a sniper’s bullet. Was it in front of this building or on the steps of a Georgia courthouse? In the movie, actor Woody Harrelson plays Flynt; he does a good job. I can no longer remember the true story, can no longer sort fact from fiction; I take that as a mark of the film’s success.

  “Business or pleasure,” the driver says when he sees I’m looking around.

  “A little of both,” I say. “What’s news,” I ask, catching his eye in the rearview mirror—have I had this driver before?

  “Academy Awards are coming soon,” he says. “Everyone is getting ready. It’s a bigger deal than Christmas. They’re already shopping, the hotels are booked, we bring in extra cars from Las Vegas to meet the demand.”

  “What else are you working on?” Whether or not I have had this driver before, a driver is always more than a driver. Everyone in Los Angeles is not what they first appear to be.

  “Writing a script with an actor friend,” he says. “And I’ve got a feature that I’m producing. We start shooting in three weeks. I have the shooting script in the trunk—I’ll give you one. We got a great response. Julia Roberts may even give us a cameo. I drove her once.”

  Really, that’s all it takes? A ride from the airport and you’re signed?

  The long black car makes a left off Sunset Boulevard onto Marmont Lane and slips into the small driveway of the Chateau Marmont—practiced, he has made this run before.

  My door is opened, the trunk is popped, and I hope no one besides me is disappointed that my steamer trunks, my load of Louis Vuitton, turn out to be two Travel Pro suitcases on wheels—borrowed from a friend.

  “How are you?” the bellhop asks. I have been here before—multiple times. The garage is the portal to the hotel; everyone passes through it.

  “I had to fly,” I say. There is a part of me that thinks I should get extra credit for flying; the hotel should be so glad I arrived safely that they put me in the penthouse. “We thought you’d be more comfortable here,” the bellman might say.

  “Welcome back,” he says. “Do you want to check in and I’ll bring these to your room?”

  The Castle on the Hill—its tarnished patina is a kind of cultural comment. It ages more than gracefully, its earthquake-proof walls absorbing the stuff of scandal, turning its tainted past into a luscious history.

  Among my earliest images of the Chateau Marmont is March 5, 1982. John Belushi in a body bag. His enormous dead weight apparent as a white-sheeted gurney is rolled down Marmont Lane to a van from the Los Angeles Coroners office. The finality of the black bag, zipped, the circumstances of his death a defining mark, the end of an era.

  The Chateau Marmont was the place where rock stars didn’t sleep, staying up for hours, partying after the show, trashing the already trashy rooms. Led Zeppelin reportedly rode their motorcycles through the lobby; Jim Morrison jumped off a bungalow roof and into the pool—or off a terrace onto the ground, depending on who tells the story. In either version he was so high that he didn’t hurt himself—he just bounced. This was where James Dean first read the script for Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause with Natalie Wood. Instinctively, I always knew this is where I would stay. This was the place you went to lose your mind, to become yourself. The Chateau Marmont is still
the spot where they all come, a tourist attraction, a rite of passage, a home away from home.

  Checking into the hotel is like stepping into a living history. It is out of time, suspended from the constraints, the issues, the concerns of the real world. One immediately calms down here. The relaxation response is a phenomenon reported by numerous guests—as soon as they arrive, they feel better. It’s hard to know why that is—the laid-back, low-key staff, the noirish interiors, crushed velvet sofas that seem to seep stories—you can picture the girl and her gangster boyfriend, the rock star and his groupie, the junkie, the reclusive millionaire. Anything and everything can and does happen here.

  “I mean, it was built for, you know, peccadilloes,” says writer Eve Babitz, a longtime friend of the hotel. “So obviously the people who built it knew what they were doing. You know, if you want to commit suicide, if you want to commit adultery, go to the Chateau. It was the height of elegance. Elegant and swellegant. It’s international. And it’s not afraid. It doesn’t mind brilliant talent, or romance, or lunacy.”

  From its very beginnings the Chateau Marmont was a peculiar sort of folly. Commissioned by Fred Horowitz and designed by architect Arnold A. Weitzman, it was modeled after Château d’Amboise in France’s Loire Valley. An old and infamous royal residence, Château d’Amboise is believed to be the final resting place of Leonardo da Vinci. The Chateau Marmont, slightly more modest, was built in the late 1920s as Los Angeles’s first earthquake-proof apartment building and was converted to a hotel in the 1930s. The hotel’s reputation as the place to go to misbehave dates back to the days of the Motion Picture Code of the 1930s and the purity seal of 1934. The code specified not only what could and could not be shown on screen, but also its expectations of a star’s behavior off camera. Studios rented apartments and rooms for the express purpose of having someplace safe for their stars to engage in whatever nasty little habits they had. The famous example being Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, telling two of his randiest young stars, William Holden and Glenn Ford, “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.”