Hollywood

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON (1959)

March 7, 2024

Okay. Kenneth Anger.

Brilliant experimental, extremely queer filmmaker. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen LUCIFER RISING, or SCORPIO RISING, or a double-feature of both.)

Yes, he had a problematic history with Hollywood.

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, while supremely entertaining to read and so, so fucking lurid — as you can tell by Jayne Mansfield’s tits all on display on the cover and is fodder for Anger, peppering her death in the work — is full of so many half-truths and fabrications. Oh, and a lot of sex. Also? A lot of queer misattributions? (I think that’s mostly well-wishing on his behalf.)

However! There’s nothing more Hollywood than false narratives!

Oh, did I mention that Anger first used a pen name for the initial edition of the book? It was initially published in Paris? Also, it was fucking banned!

I still don’t exactly know what possessed him to write this, apart from a cultural infatuation with the material. He also wrote two more in the series! (Good luck finding the third!) It feels like a career killer, hence the pen name and Paris publishing, but I do not care! It’s a fun lark that is emblematic of how fucking ruthless and hedonistic Hollywood and the film industry is, and even if half of HOLLYWOOD BABYLON are lies? Well, history is penned by the winners.

There’s a lot of sadness conveyed here. Suicides. Drugs. Bad sex. Trauma. The whole gamut of success biting you in the ass.

These stories are close enough to the truth. It’s insider tabloid journalism, plain and simple.

This is a work that should be read, but honestly? I can’t justify recommending it to everyone apart from gazing at the treasure-trove of archival images of Hollywood stars and sets and history. If you haven’t read it and none of the above sounds appealing? Just stop right here. It is cruel navel-gazing. No one here deserves this brutal treatment, because that’s what it is.

I know that we culturally love to cut down those who have managed to make it to the top, those who are exemplary at entertaining and giving the world some fucking joy because they’re magnanimous, attractive, smart, savvy, witty, smirky, stylish.

One thing we forget about film, solely because the people involved are simply visages on a screen, is that they are fucking human and deserve the rights and consideration any of us want.

Does HOLLYWOOD BABYLON — especially the latter two works? — provide that? No. Not at all.

Is it a remarkable work? Yes, yes it is. It made a significant cultural impact. It is worth reading simply to experience how fucking dirty and tawdry the film industry is. You can simply read the words above instead of enduring how dirty reading the full work will make you feel.

THE CIGARETTE GIRL (1999)

May 30, 2023

Goddamn, I love 90s chick-lit, even though I fucking hate the term chick-lit, but really: there is no better way of describing works like THE CIGARETTE GIRL. Carol Wolper’s novel is something singular, something special; it’s all about a woman trying to make her way as a action screenwriter in L.A. and she’s super horny.

Seriously. She can barely go five pages without mentioning a blowjob.

This is quintessential 90s feminism. The cover is a woman, smoke-stained, enveloped in bras from head-to-toe. It’s meant to be lethal, but is it? Really?

Nonetheless, it is a hell of a novel, one that doesn’t pull its punches. While it’s horny, it has a purpose and that is to be taken seriously and I love every bit of it.

ANGELYNE (2022)

August 1, 2022

(peacock) When I first heard that there was a TV mini-series about ‘Angelyne’, a singular blonde Los Angeles personality known almost solely for featuring herself on an array of billboards around Hollywood, featuring SHAMELESS’ Emmy Rossum as the titular character who doesn’t remotely resemble her, I couldn’t help but murmur a lackluster ‘huh.’

If you’re of a certain age, and a specific type of film nerd, you’re vaguely familiar with the image of Angelyne. Neon pink modern sweater L.A. woman. That’s all you saw on the billboards, that’s all you were sold, and that’s all she apparently wanted you to know. It was quintessential L.A.; she even became used as a sort of shorthand: all surface, no substance.

Angelyne, during the show, repeats to herself: “I am not a woman. I am an icon.”

Obviously, Angelyne is cribbing from the perceived career path of Marilyn Monroe — often learning the wrong lessons — but finding herself in a different era, and adapting herself to fit it. Similarly, ANGELYNE does the same.

ANGELYNE is a bit of a mess, by intent, which is what makes it interesting, and the only way you could tell this story. It’s littered with unreliable narrators and collisional character tales.

There’s an extended conversation in the first episode that sets the stage for what will become ANGELYNE, a literal combination of Joan Didion and Barbie, where she muses to this band leader who is infatuated with her about her need for a car to be able to escape situations:

“A car is supposed to be an extension of you; your being. I want something fast! So I can get away if I have to. […] I have to know I can escape.”

She then dovetails into a discussion about her idolatry regarding the Barbie doll:

“I’d love to be like Barbie!”

“You’re already blonde and beautiful,” the band leader — who would become greatly entangled in her life — interjects.

“Oh, she’s so much more than that! She lives a painless existence. You can stick her with things and she won’t cry; she doesn’t hurt! Wouldn’t that be nice, to never hurt?”

Obviously, there’s a lot of backstory to Angelyne, which is the tease of the show — an L.A. journalist named Jeff investigates her and writes a safe expose about her — but that’s really not the point of the show. This is about a woman trying to create her own narrative in the way that she’s seen men pen their narratives about women. She’s the one in control.

It’s a fascinating mini-series that I’m still flabbergasted was greenlit, but well-worth your time.

KILLING PAPARAZZI (2003)

April 30, 2022

(This was originally penned July 6th, 2021 for a platform other than this website.)

A writer friend recommended Robert M. Eversz’s KILLING PAPARAZZI to me, knowing I have a taste for noir and detective fiction, especially if it’s lurid and moves like a freight train, and KILLING PARAZZI does not disappoint. It’s my favorite neo-noir I’ve read since Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN — my favorite neo-noir novel ever — one that I found to be a revelation, but that’s a story for another time.

First things first: my friend did not note that this was the second novel in Eversz’s NINA ZERO series, so it took a bit before I could really get a bead on exactly what the protagonist had done to be incarcerated. The events of the first novel are doled out in a trickle, but you eventually get the whole picture (and the following paragraph will help you along without major spoilers, just in case).

KILLING PAPARAZZI features Nina Zero — née Mary Alice Baker — as she’s getting out of prison in the early aughts for killing several men and accidentally blowing up part of LAX. One of the first things she does upon parole? A green card wedding to an unknown Englishman named Gabe. They have a fun night in Vegas, but she realizes she could fall for him and also realizes he could fall for her, so she darts back to her home city, Los Angeles, buys a used Cadillac and a camera, and starts using her streetsmarts to work the paparazzi beat.

A week later, she happens upon the scene of her husband’s murder, floating in LA’s finest drinking water, and finds herself wanting revenge.

It’s pulpy; it’s penned with a clipped terseness that I can’t help but adore; it traffics in L.A. lore; Nina’s an angry misfit, smart, funny, resourceful, and down for more than you might initially expect. It’s absolute catnip for me, and an enthralling read.

Book details

GLAMOUR GHOUL – THE PASSIONS AND PAIN OF THE REAL VAMPIRA, MAILA NURMI (2021)

March 29, 2021

I don’t read many biographies, but this one interested me because, come on, it’s Vampira. If you aren’t familiar with Vampira, well, here. She was literally the proto-Elvira (more on that in a bit). However, Maila was also the nexus of a certain part of late 40s/50s Hollywood, something I didn’t know at all.

  • She was involved with Orson Welles shortly before he married Rita Hayworth and, allegedly had his child and gave him up for adoption. (I’ll note that there’s really no proof here regarding the kid.)
  • Disney hired her to be the visual ‘source material’ for Maleficent in SLEEPING BEAUTY
  • She had a very long, very complicated relationship with Marlon Brando
  • She was thick-as-thieves with James Dean
  • She struck up a friendship with — and maybe fucked — Elvis when he was in Vegas
  • She and Anthony Perkins had an intense hot-and-cold friendship
  • She wanted Patricia Morrison (SISTERS OF MERCY) to take up the role of Vampira when talk of restarting the Vampira show began
  • Elvira is the direct result of Maila spurning the Vampira reboot. Maila was supposed to hand-pick the next Vampira and they chose Cassandra Peterson without consulting her, and Maila then refused to sign the contract allowing them to use the name, so she became Elvira instead.

I knew this was a bio from a blood relative, from Maila’s niece Sandra Niemi, so I was skeptical as to some of these stories which, admittedly come from Maila’s own pen, but uh, there are plenty of photos and pre-existing proof. Maila knew misfit talent when she saw it — herself being similarly minded. While the bio is a bit clunky, it’s stuffed full of stories that entertain and enthrall, and paint the picture of a very complex woman, a woman with a brilliantly creative, often hilariously filthy, mind. Sadly, she was often mercurial, and her luck was rotten and, despite everything she gave to the world and her friends, she often lived in poverty, because it’s fucking Hollywood.

I do want to underscore that, despite all of the stars that pop up, it’s very much a story about deviants and misfits trying to get by in Hollywood. It’s a classic Hollywood tale, but not the classic Hollywood tale most want to hear. But hey, if you’re a goth and you want to know where your media roots stem from, you should read it.

https://bookshop.org/books/glamour-ghoul-the-passions-and-pain-of-the-real-vampira-maila-nurmi/9781627311007