My angels I’ve been clacking those needles so much since Wednesday that I’ve strained the muscle that runs along my collar bone. Seriously, I started with a sweater and as the news rolled in I was on track to complete a three piece suit. Apologies for not posting today’s chapter.…
Category: fashion
There were heaps — accumulated reminders of a life — all around. Everything that served as an archival asset, or a teaching aid for future filmmakers, I boxed and hauled over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Clothes, I donated. Books, I culled down to the essentials…
I’m not going to enter into the year that was conversation. I think it’s too early. I will say one thing that kept me going this year was being able to read to you in a podcast. In my isolation it was one way I could contribute, if only to…
All through life, instinctively or intellectually, we adapt to survive. Even insects have some boss strategies, for example, the formation of a chitinous exoskeleton, which is the somewhat see-through shell that encapsulates and protects a shrimp or a spider. I have a theory about directors who succeed in the movie…
Lethal stress can come at you no matter whether you’re onscreen or off. Actors in Hollywood have committed suicide by swallowing ant paste, Nembutal, or barbiturates. George Sanders (check out his performance in All About Eve) swallowed five bottles of pills in Barcelona and left two suicides notes. One in…
Gifted with a glib tongue he moved quickly from never-featured actor, to production assistant, to assistant director, and rapidly ascended the dating scale (as he saw it) from the cute craft service gal who brought cucumber sushi snacks to camera at four in the afternoon, to the daughter of a…
In the words of Dorothy Gale, there’s no place like home. The light here is what made filmmakers move to California. It shines here most of the time, and there are certain places, certain times of year that take your breath away with sheer wonder. It’s a crying shame that…
The streets of Beverly Hills, unlike the streets of the Hollywood Hills, were nearly empty. One morning I saw a woman of about seventy, with the poise and stance of a dancer, shining long silver hair side-parted like Veronica Lake — probably just as it had been when she was…
I loved recording this chapter, it’s got Hollywood history, everlasting friendship, and of course some very strange goings-on… There we sat, the mogul’s daughter turned academic, the copywriter turned designer, the semi-profane raconteur turned show runner, the pragmatist turned legal advocate, and me; the nanny turned studio executive. It was…