Life in the Hollywood Lane

Chapter 1

Act 1, Scene 1—Intro

Ever have one of those lifetimes? Yeah, me, too. This has definitely been one of ’em.

Ohhhhhhhh! (Add to that a shaking of the head and, oh, sure, even a stomping of the feet for good measure.) Wasn’t there supposed to be something in particular I was supposed to be doing this particular day, this particular week, this particular month, this particular year, this particular life? Whatever it was, I’d lost track of it.

I’d lost track of it, kind of…that is, until she died. Then everything stopped swirling and settled at the bottom of the snowglobe that was my life. Slowly, over a year or so, it all became crystal clear.

~

Hi. Can we talk? Actually, can I just babble to you? That’s kind of what I do, babble and ramble—but it’s a good kind of babbling and rambling, I promise. Thanks.

My name is Trish. I’m lucky enough to call myself an actor and actually be able to name some big movies when new introductions inevitably ask, “Would I have seen you in anything?” My BFF—the bestest of bestest friends in the history of bestest, practically my sister—killed herself. I didn’t write this as a downer, though…in fact, quite the opposite. Hollywood is one of the toughest towns to be successful in. It’s crazy here. But, then, so am I. This wild place and I are a great match, then.

In addition to telling you a story, I want to share what life is like here—the good, the bad, the fun, the not-so-pretty. It’s more of a dramedy, a look at how lovably wacky we humans are.

When I was thinking about what to call my little tale here, I thought of The Valley of the Happy People—Not! But I didn’t want to have a big, fat negative on the cover that literally represents my life. 

A screenwriting professor once told the class I attended, “You can’t have a story called The Valley of the Happy People. No one would watch a movie where all the characters get along and are oh-so-happy-and-perfect. A story is drama, and drama needs conflict to show contrast. Characters need to grow—they have to start out one way, go through the hero’s journey, and come out transformed.”

In other words, screenplays are just like this life we have here. Well, hopefully….as in hopefully we come out transformed. Unless we die first. But then that’s transformation, too.

I guess we can’t get it wrong, really. (I’m not talking to murderers and rapists, etc. here—they get it wrong.)

Backstory

Every movie has a backstory, as they call it in “the industry”—as if there’s only one industry. They call LA “the coast,” too, as if there’s only one coast. Interesting. Anyway, here’s the backstory for my particular movie, my life.

You know the first line from A Tale of Two Cities? “They were the best of times, they were the worst of times.” Maybe that was most people’s childhoods, because that’s what life is, a juxtaposition of tragedy and greatness, heartbreak and heartsongs. Funny—that’s what movies are….a juxtaposition of scenes that tell a story, full of tragedy and greatness, heartbreak and heartsongs. Wow…can you imagine how much more dramatic our lives would be if we could slow down the action and add dramatic music and the odd long, meaningful glance or two?

Oh, sorry. Back to my childhood. Okay, while it was nowhere near as awful as the French Revolution must’ve been, it was the best and the worst of times on a less dramatic level. No one on my quiet street was sent to a guillotine, but my early years did involve sickness and death and then more sickness. I have two brothers, and my younger brother was born with a neurological condition. Instead of watching him grow up, we had to watch him grow sicker and sicker, disintegrating before our eyes. I still say I have two brothers because he’s still my brother, at least in my heart if not in the world.

I was young when he died, so for most of my life I figured I was too young to really get it. Yeah….nice try. We get it—whatever “it” is that’s happening around us—from conception. But life is also made up of everything in between the great moments and the tragedies, too. My childhood also had a lot of ish: strange-ish, tough-ish, okay-ish. Maybe a little this, maybe a little that.

I grew up in the middle of the Midwest, the middle child in a middle-class family. All right, Wisconsin is in the upper Midwest, but still—the middle. We’re near the middle of the North American continent, so that’s pretty middle. That was me: right smack dab in the middle of the middle. Even my grades were in the middle, at least they were through middle school. I was the middle one picked for teams in gym class. I suppose if I’d put a little oomph into anything, I would’ve been higher than the middle. But I didn’t….I didn’t discover the power of oomph until I got so ugly that oomph was the only thing that would save me.

My family was Catholic in a land of Lutherans—at least in my little corner of the world. Catholics make up a pretty high percentage of Wisconsinites who consider themselves religious, along with Lutherans, but we were surrounded just by Lutherans for some reason…Large Lutherans, at that. I don’t mean fat, necessarily—they were tall, too. Wisconsin is one of the most German-American states in the country. But we had the messy Irish home in the midst of these tidy Germans. Ugh.

My parents could’ve posed for American Gothic—you know, that painting of the farmer with the pitchfork and a woman who looks to be his wife? Actually, it turns out she might be his daughter. Regardless, my mother had an uncanny resemblance to her, but airbrushed with a slight semblance of refinement. My father, who started the marriage-and-family thing late in his life, was even more dour than that farmer…now that’s dour! My older brother was a younger rendition of the two of them combined. My younger brother was a cutie pie. I often wonder what he would’ve looked like, and sometimes when I’d spot a teenager or young man at the age he would’ve been with the looks he might’ve had, I impulsively wanted to hug the stranger.

My best friend was Jenni—complete with the circle over the i. We couldn’t stand each other. I hear you, and yes, you’re right, I probably shouldn’t have been friends with her. It was a small town, though. There weren’t too many friends to be had. What was even worse was she was BFFs with Cheryl, too, and they would make endless fun of me. I didn’t realize then that that was the only thing they had in common. If they didn’t have me to make fun of, they would’ve had nothing else to talk about—or so they might’ve thought. Oh, sure, everyone needs a hobby. 

To be fair, I gave them some great ammunition. I had this crazy red hair that was... So. Curly. Remember Frieda from Charlie Brown, the one with the naturally curly hair? Mine was Frieda’s on steroids and then put into a light socket. We didn’t know where it came from—the curly part, anyway.

Throughout my childhood, especially when I was with the rest of my brown-haired family, people would ask, “Where did you get your red hair?” What a crazy question!

“From both of her grandmothers,” my mother would answer.

“From my head,” I started to answer when my mother was out of earshot.

And we haven’t even mentioned freckles yet. I had so many that one night at a sleepover, when my buddies tried to count how many I had in one square inch, they gave up after a hundred. They played connect the dots instead. I traveled through Viet Nam once, and people would rub my arm—to see if those freaky freckles were lumpy, I guess. I asked a Vietnamese friend how I could call freckles “kisses from the sun.” He told me that unfortunately the poetry would be lost in the translation. Oh, well.

How do Emma Stone and Jessica Chastain have my coloring and not have any freckles? I beat them in the thick, wavy hair department, though. Yeah, and they’re crying all the way to the bank. Bitches.

I’m sorry. They are so not. I’ve met people who’ve worked with them, and rumor has it they’re very kind. I’m just jealous. Okay—I hear you: maybe if I stop being that way I’ll get ahead faster.

This was before spray tans came in to being. Now it’s a non-issue. If I have to show skin and be tan(ish), I can be. And because I’ve stayed out of the sun, every boyfriend and massage therapist raves, “You have the best skin!” 

Speaking of massage therapists, one time a friend sent me to see an energy worker. As I climbed on to her healing table, she said, “This goddess has alabaster skin, like the goddesses of the northern-European island countries.” I burst into tears. First of all, I was brand new to people talking like that. Second, thinking of my alabaster skin as something beautiful or myself as anything remotely goddess-like, no matter how many people told me how beautiful I was, was lightyears away from my psyche. At least it was lightyears away then. That’s when I started growing into myself.

But not back in Wisconsin in my early-to-middle teen years. I was fugly. This is something I wasn’t in the middle of—I was at the far end of the spectrum. I would’ve won the frat-house dog party if I was a little older. The upside was that’s when and why I got funny and smart. I frumbled (that’s frumpy bumbling, my invention) through life as best I could, but I also read every book I could get my hands on and watched every movie I could find.

And then......seventeen happened. I learned how to tame my curls with a flatiron. I grew into my teeth and feet. My figure figured itself out. I learned how to use makeup to transform myself into…pretty. By the time I was nineteen, I was so crazy beautiful (thank you, makeup) that even my mother was ready to buy me a ticket to Hollywood. And she did.

When I left for California, I left all my memories and mementos behind, wanting a fresh start. But Fugly definitely came along for the ride. She’s never far from me…actually, I’m thankful for that.

~

I want to translate a few things here and there, BTW—not for you supercool cats reading this now, but for the peeps reading this thirty years from now who might say, “What the flock is she talking about?”

I don’t know if Americans will still be doing the “So” thing in thirty years, but we’re definitely doing it now. We start every answer, whether spoken or by email, with “So....” Even articulate, trained radio announcers and interviewees do it. I’m talking about well-polished professorial types—the younger ones, anyway. It came out of nowhere and was suddenly everywhere.

Another thing that’s really popular now is writing in incomplete sentences. I think it should be pepper, not salt, but no one’s asking me, so they’re out there as massive amounts of salt. As in, massive. (Oops…there I go myself after dissing it—hehe.)

Scene 2—An Airplane Lands at LAX

That famous airport scene at the end of Casablanca is none other than LAX, back in the quieter day, with an outline of a minaret-y-looking structure over the shot. Didn’t you think it really was in Morocco? Okay, maybe that was just me.

You know how when Dorothy lands in Oz, the movie goes from black and white to full color? That’s how it was for me—even though I landed at LAX with literally a hundred bucks in my pocket. Those more awful moments of life sound so romantic in retrospect, sometimes.

Life suddenly…..bloomed—in full technicolor. Hollywood! Palm trees thrill me. The air sparkles here; I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else, and by now I’ve been a lot of places. Those Art Deco buildings on Wilshire Boulevard hearkening back to the Golden Age of Hollywood make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The ’fifties-style diners with the waitresses, seemingly still from that era, feel like home. The Hollywood sign lifts my spirits even on the downest of days.

The whole town is even more beautiful at night. The streetlights have a golden glow that lights up those palm trees, and of course when you’re up in the hills, the vista of the Hollywood lights is pure exhilarating enchantment.

We’d taken a family trip to Disneyland when I was eight and my older brother was ten. Six-year-old Brian was in a wheelchair already. That was the first time we kids saw the ocean; the smell, the sparkling air, and waves lapping around my feet was practically a mystical experience for me. Years later, Kevin just remembered massive amounts of traffic and hating that Goofy laughed at him. I remembered palm trees and that mighty ocean as well as Minnie Mouse and Sleeping Beauty loving on my “oh-so beautiful hair.” They fussed and fussed and fussed over it.

That might’ve been the last time we were happy as a family, because Brian suddenly became even sicker and died not long after that. But for just a while, we were so very happy together, experiencing the captivating charm of Disneyland and Southern California.

The magic of that trip has stayed with me. Still, to this day, when I stick my feet in the sand, they tingle for a week. That didn’t happen in my backyard.

~

Speaking of traffic, most people’s first question might be, “What about the traffic?” What traffic? I don’t do traffic. I never have to be out in the morning rush hour, and I arrive where I need to be before the evening rush hour, even if I have to hang out in a café for a while.

We talk about traffic like it’s a living, breathing thing. And it is. It’s like a person we get to blame—“Oh, I can’t make it because of the traffic.” “Oh, I would’ve been here earlier but the traffic.” That Saturday Night Live comedy skit about the Californians had just about every conversation involve how we drive here. “Oh, I took the 405 to the 10 to La Brea….” It’s true! We do talk like that here.

But even when I drove around shedding tears while playing the love-song channel, feeling a tug on my heart as I listened to dedications from people who’d been married for thirty years, every day was a thrill. (This was before I knew to be happy for them, not resentful. Actually, I wasn’t resentful, just wistful. But wistful is not a powerful rocket booster for creating, either.) My heart expanded at every palm tree. That’s a lot of expanding! There was no place on Earth I’d rather have been. Sometimes I was miserable. Sometimes I was ecstatic. Sometimes I was both in the very same moment. 

~

When I moved to Hollywood, I had to take informal elocution lessons to turn my long Wisconsin vowels into the shorter vowels of the transcontinental accent. Sooooo had to become so. Wiscaaaaaaaaaaansin had to become Wisconsin. We’re not quite as long as what you heard in Fargo or New in Town (that great flick with Renée Zellweger), doonchoou knooow, but we’re close. Noootice I said “long” instead of “bad.” Accents aren’t bad—they make things more interesting. Imagine if the whole country spoke the same way. For one thing, Fargo wouldn’t have been nearly so funny. But you can get more acting gigs when you can do an accent, not have an accent.

A lot of folks around here talk in a happy whine. And even if it’s happy, it’s still a whine. And it has a lot of h’s. “Hihhhhhh. Howhh hhaarrrre hyohhhhhuh? Hohhhhh, whhhhat a ghorgheous neckhhhhhlace.”

Being from solid, no-nonsense Midwestern stock, I found it hard to whine. When I really had the urge, I had Cyn to whine to….but ours was high-level, existential whining. Of course.

My Costar

Cyn. Oh, Cyn. We met just a month or so after I arrived here—we were both auditioning for the same commercial. Cyndi was my age, my height, my temperament, my tempo. She had red hair, too, but hers was long, luxurious, and straight. Plus, she was relieved of those pesky freckles. (Speaking of that commercial audition, it was my first; Cyn wasn’t the only one in the room who was my age and size with red hair; it was the oddest feeling to be in a room of women who could’ve been near clones.)

We became instaBFFs and eventually roomies. A native Los Angeleno (there are a few), she showed me around town—all the hip nightclubs, where the cutest guys hung out, the cool thrift stores, the private beach spots…everything. 

Cyndi had always been beautiful. She didn’t have to become funny and smart (although she was both in spades) to compensate for any lack whatsoever. She lacked nothing, absolutely nothing, at least as far as the eyes could see. At times she could’ve been the instigation for the term hot mess. Most of the time she kind of... drooped. I don’t mean in a bad posture kind of way—she drooped in that she was so warm, so loving, so oozy. Maybe I mean dripped, not drooped. She just kind of melted alllllll over the place. She dripped so much that people would run after her with dustpans and saucepots to catch this particular saucepot’s spillage, lap her up, try to dive in to the puddles she left behind to perhaps have some of her magic rub off on them. Picture a modern-day Marilyn Monroe but less ditzy, with more substance and just as much glamour and ooh la la.

As an aside, I’m sure Norma Jean wasn’t ditzy at all and had a ton of substance. She’d have to have had (wow, is that a clunky sentence or what?) a lot of substance to carry the persona of Marilyn.

Men and women young and old, kids, pets, even garden gnomes, I bet, found Cyn irresistible. I swear our houseplants brightened when she walked by, and they would’ve followed her around the house if they could’ve. Same with the garden gnomes—those rascals!

Lots and lots of folks asked if we were sisters. Not only did we look alike, we also moved alike, dressed alike, talked alike (after those elocution lessons sunk in). We went to the same hairstylist and shopped in the same stores. But no one was running after me with saucepans.

She was soooooo easygoing, too. She rarely got ruffled—a drama queen with a penchant for the macabre at times, yes, but that was more for fun and show, or so I thought. I wished she’d become more ruffled and stuck around more. I get ruffled, unfortunately. I…..worry. What, me worry? Yes, all the time. As in…ALL the time. It gives me something to do so maybe I won’t HAVE to worry so much. It’s as though I might forestall the need for worrying if I outworry the worry. If I worry a lot, I might have less to worry about, the less I’d need to worry…kind of like I’m pre-empting it. Does that make any sense at all? Probably not—but it did to me.

One time a couple of friends were discussing something that might not go well. One said, “Don’t worry. Trish will worry about it for you.” Meanwhile, I was on the other side of town, nowhere near this conversation! Ack.

~

I’ll fill you in more on Cyn as we go along. For right now, hmmmmm…what else can I tell you? We loved it there. But, like most everyone else there, we were slightly, well, malcontent. You never fully arrive at your destination here. It’s never a job well done—at least not for more than five minutes. 

My dad was a dreamer guitar and piano player—meaning he dreamed about it more than he played them, and never actually put together a band or searched out gigs. But he did have a subscription to Rolling Stone. When I was way too young to grok that magazine but read it anyway, ridiculously precocious kid that I was, I read an article in which Carrie Fisher interviewed Madonna. Now there were two women near the top of their games. I think Carrie asked Madonna something along the lines of, “Do you ever feel like you’ve made it?”

“Not in this town,” or something very close to that, was Madonna’s response.

~

We’d been working this gig for twenty years. Still nothing—nothing major, anyway. Cyn and I got a little lucky, I guess. By the time we were in our mid-thirties, we’d both had enough low-level success to at least pay the basics—food, rent, gym membership, weekly massage. (Hey, you try to make it in this town! I chose that luxury over almost everything else.) I’d been cast as the lead’s sister in some zombie flick that became a cult classic that played over and over and over again. If you’re ever up late and you see early-twenty-something zombies from a couple of decades ago, you’ll see me. Cyn had been in enough commercials to keep her fed, well-coiffed, and beautifully dressed. She was also in a number of print ads, which she loved because she didn’t have to wake up before the birds to get to set; print photographers want those models looking well-rested, since it’s a still shot. Those early mornings don’t show on the face as much in moving pictures.

But it wasn’t enough….maybe for the checkbook somewhat…but not for the soul. Nothing was really wrong; it was just some mucky malaise that felt like every day was something to slog through. I’ve heard it said that having dreams to pursue makes life interesting. But having them not come true, year after year, can make life a slogfest…emphasis on slog and none on fest.

Relative to some people in some places, it could be viewed as close to perfect. Except it wasn’t. I could live the charade, even have many, many moments of bliss. I had my palm trees, the Hollywood sign, and near-perfect weather all year, plus I had Cyndi and the cats.

Someone once suggested to me not to put any part of life on hold while I was waiting for career and marriage and family and all that to happen. Cyn and I did not have our lives on hold. But they were so not on hold that they didn’t let anyone else fit in, really.

And so the years passed…suddenly forty was on the near horizon. How’d that happen? Cyndi’s malcontent turned into misery. She was a few months younger, and she warned me she wouldn’t take kindly to forty. She was always being dramatic. How could I have known that this was the time to pay more attention?

Forty came and went for me, but not for her. She killed herself the night before her fortieth birthday.