I wish you could be in my shoes. I am sitting in from of my laptop, in my little house in the coffee fields, stoned on coffee and Dulce (natural brown sugar) on an empty stomach, watching the Sunset Boulevard DVD that I got from Netflix. My next-door neighbors have quieted down after a raucous weekend and it is quiet for a change.
I can relate to this movie. I too knew an old movie star in Los Angeles. At the time Beth and I owned a donkey called Marshmallow, and we found this little trailer park where you had to have an unusual pet to get in. The owner was this strange old movie star. She had a station wagon that was as old as the hills and a Japanese chauffeur to drive it. A TV station crew came over to make a short special for the news, and Marshmallow stole the show (he was an ornery character). He and I used to go hiking in the surrounding hills, and we were absent for the big LA earthquake. This was about 1970, the year Beth finally left me.
When we lived in Santa Barbara, in another trailer park, we got to know another tenant, an old-time taxi driver, who knew another old-time movie star that lived in her own mansion, like the one in Sunset Boulevard. She was always soliciting men in the worst bars - using the same outrageous propositions, that never varied, like a movie script: "I will make you famous, you will have your own wonderful house and car, etc." This to a drunk that was only barely conscious. Once she got mad at one, had the taxi driver take her to his house in the middle of the night, asked for the tire iron, and proceeding to bash up his car, making a horrible racket.
The world was different back then, and we were different people. If I could turn back the clock, I would.
Good story, Hal. I'm sure you've got more.
Posted by: John Wester | 11/16/2009 at 01:30 PM