I am in the process of re-publishing the pieces that vanished when I deleted my old blog, Leaving Los Angeles. The following was originally posted on October 28, 2003. Previous post here.
While I read scripts for three years, it is not something one can do for much
longer without applying the metaphorical ball-peen hammer to one’s ego. Yes, I
know people who have done it for longer, but this is because it subsidizes a
larger goal, whereas I’d given up on the acting. My final audition took place
when I still lived with Tim;
it was a commercial for Coke. I was told to show up dressed like a
businesswoman, and to stand in front of the camera and ad lib.
“Cut,” said the
director, looking at me rather intently. “I don’t know if you’re right for
the part,” he said, “but do you want to write the copy?”
I’d already been doing some writing, short fiction and a play, video treatments
with my friend Modi (for which I received zero $$; she went on to direct them,
though the only one I remember is L7’s "Pretend That We’re Dead"),
and a nihilistic short film for a video director named Paul Rachman, called
“Drive, Baby, Drive,” which won first place at the first Slam Dance festival.
This might sound impressive now; then, it meant exactly what it was: Paul and a
few other hungry guys papered Park City, threw down $37 each for a motel room,
and screened a handful of films.
I was also writing for a new magazine called bikini, which paid ten cents a
word but I did not care. I was enormously excited to get into print. I had
written three pieces for them when Modi, who looks like a pretty Fran
Leibowitz, with one blue eye and one brown, phoned.
“Rommelmann," she growled, "you remember that guy Rick’s whose party
we went to? He’s got a story he wants to talk with you about.”
Rick Gaez lived in a hidden grotto high up in Echo Park, one of the locations,
he told me, where the Hillside Stranger had done his work. Rick looked like a
cross between Dave Navarro and Johnny Depp, played in a band (and still does,
Motochrist, though now he goes by Ricky Vodka), and promoted clubs. The story
he had was regarding the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, whom Rick had been
corresponding with for several years; Gacy’s execution date had been set for
two months ahead, and Rick had gotten permission to visit him, and wanted a
story written about it. Was I interested?
Yes, I was, though I had no idea how to go about placing it. I called a girl
I’d gone to high school with, who was something like Beauty Editor for Glamour,
and she told me to call her friend Joe Dolce, who was at the time the
Editor-in-Chief of Details (and now holds the same position at Star Weekly). I called Joe; he told me to write a pitch. I’d never
written one but somehow figured it out, faxed it, and got an immediate yes:
Details would pay the travel expenses for Rick and me to get to Illinois, and
also give me $1 a word for a 5,000-word story. I was dumbfounded--and called
the rental car company.
My brother’s former girlfriend offered to stay with Tafv, who was four at the
time and upset that I was leaving her for ten days. [When I got home, she told
me a dream she’d had: I got in a big car without her, and she ran after me
trying to grab the bumper and crying “Mama!” while I looked at her impassively
through the back windshield. It just makes you want to stick a knife in your
throat to have your four-year-old tell you this.]
Rick and I started driving east in late April, first stop: Vegas. He said he
knew the trip was going to be okay when I put on a Johnny Cash tape.
“I’d
brought a big bag of mushrooms," he later told me, "and if you’d
turned out to be a loser, I planned to stay high the whole time."
As it turned out, Rick and I were well suited, at least, for the two weeks we
needed to be. The first night, we stayed at the drab cheap Pioneer Hotel, with
its lobby full of geriatrics playing the nickel slots; got drunk at the Girls
of Glitter Gulch, and, after four hours sleep and no showers, drove out of Sin
City in a dust storm. I'll get to the meat of the story in the next installment, but will say
that the following night, Rick and I started to screw in the bed of my former
boyfriend, in the cold, dirty off-campus UNM house he shared with three other
yahoos. [Was I hot? Well, sure, but I'd wager Ricj put the moves on me not so much because I was attractive, but in order to piss on the tracks, so to
speak, of a guy asleep in the next room.] As if two people who did not know
each other at all driving across the country together to meet a serial killer did not
possess enough inherent dynamism.
Next: John Wayne Gacy [Part 2]
Great stuff. We'll be linking to this tomorrow in our Daily Bloggerback/Best of Blogs section.
Posted by: Candide's Notebooks | January 19, 2006 at 10:08 AM
Cool. Thanks!
Posted by: nancy | January 19, 2006 at 10:24 PM