Confessions of a Hollywood Star

by Dyan Sheldon

  I know I wasn’t born to be a loser – to live an unsung, mediocre existence and then die in some nursing home with drool down the corner of my mouth – but sometimes even I start to wonder. The only positive response I got was at the last hotel in the book, but that wasn’t because the film crew was staying there. It was because the desk clerk came from Manchester. He was so excited you’d think I was his long-lost sister. “Where are you from?” he demanded. I couldn’t very well say from a production of Emma so I hung up.

  Paula came into the kitchen as I put down the receiver.

  “Who are you calling?” Her eyes were on the phone book.

  “No one you know.”

  Paula’s spirit is not artistic, but she is observant and her eyesight’s perfect. “Why were you calling hotels? Are you and Sam going to have sex?”

  I slammed the phone book shut. “No, Sam and I are not going to have sex. But you’ll be the first to know if we do.”

  She opened the fridge and took out the jug of iced tea. “So why were you calling hotels? Were you trying to find the movie people?”

  And although not blessed with any signs of brilliance, Paula does have a logical mind.

  “And why would I want to do that?” I stuffed the book back into its home in the old school desk Karen Kapok uses as a phone table. “You know I have no interest in the tawdry glitter and tinsel that is Hollywood. My heart and soul belong to the theatre where the pain and joy of human life are given substance and flesh – not to the shadow puppet show of the celluloid world.”

  “Oh.” She started filling three glasses with the tea. “Because Oona May says they’re starting to film on Friday and she knows where.”

  I stared at the back of my sister’s head. “Oona May?”

  Paula finished pouring iced tea all over the counter and returned the jug to the fridge. “Yeah, you know, because she’s in charge of the day camp so she knows stuff like that. You know, because we’re going to be in the movie.”

  I ask you: how ironic is life? Oona May Paduski was in radio communication with planet Hollywood while I was lost in space.

  “Really?” I went over to help her put the glasses on a tray. “So where are they shooting?”

  “Why?” Paula slid the tray from the counter. “I thought you didn’t care.”

  “I don’t care. But Ella would like to know.” The twins really like Ella. They think she’s normal.

  “She would?” Paula eyed me silently for a few seconds. She looked just like Karen Kapok, only much shorter and there wasn’t any clay in her hair. “What’s it worth?”

  The first day of shooting was taking place outside of town, at this dilapidated old house on Bluff Road. Because it was imperative that I be there, I called Mrs Magnolia as soon as my alarm went off that morning.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs Magnolia,” I fairly sobbed into the phone, “but I can’t come in today. I’ve got the most awful headache.”

  “Lola?” Mrs Magnolia is obviously a slow riser like Ella.

  “I wanted to be sure I got you before you left for the store.”

  “Lola, do you know what time it is?”

  It was seven. I needed at least an hour to get dressed for what I hoped was the first day of my Hollywood career. Of course I had to bend the truth just a little for Mrs Magnolia. “Not really…” My voice was soft and tight with pain. “I can hardly see. I think I must have a migraine, Mrs Magnolia. It feels like someone’s turning screws in my brain.”

  As my mother pointed out, I don’t actually get migraines, but Mrs Magnolia does so I knew she’d be sympathetic.

  “Oh, you poor thing…” Her voice sounded as if it was wincing in empathy. “Of course you can’t come in if you feel like that. Have you thrown up yet? You should feel better once you throw up.”

  I thanked her for being so understanding.

  It took me nearly the hour I’d allotted just to decide what I was wearing. I needed both to stand out from the good but hopelessly ordinary people of Dellwood – and look just like them at the same time. Fortunately, great actors enjoy a challenge, and I am no exception. In the end I chose a short, cotton, floral skirt that subtly evoked the exotic island of Hawaii, four-inch wedge sandals to subtly suggest I stood above the rest, and the Creek’s Auto Repairs promotional T-shirt Sam gave me for Christmas (he hates shopping) to subtly suggest that though tall and exotic I was very much a part of the town. Then I fastened my hair all over my head with brightly coloured butterfly clips for the final touch of funky sophistication that would let them know I wasn’t a hick.

  For once I hadn’t had to use all my considerable powers of persuasion to get Ella to agree to go with me.

  “Sure,” said Ella. “It’ll be more fun than lying around the pool all day.” How some of us have to suffer.

  From half a mile away we saw the cars parked along the road up ahead and a really large crowd of people just standing around. If we didn’t know they were filming a movie we would’ve thought something awful had happened.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” said Ella. “I’ve never seen this many people together even on the last night of the Fireman’s Fair.”

  “Well this is more interesting than a ferris wheel that’s always breaking down and corn on the cob.” But I was surprised too. All these people couldn’t be from Dellwood, or even be friends of Carla’s. There were hundreds of them. Where on earth had they come from? Didn’t any of them have jobs or families to look after?

  We decided to leave the car where it was so it wouldn’t take hours to get back out again, and walked the rest of the way until we reached the rear of the teeming throng.

  Ella, daughter of a woman who believes dirt and germs to be her personal enemies, held herself stiffly and awkwardly, trying to avoid having her face pressed into some stranger’s sweaty back. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea. We can’t move and we can’t see what’s going on.”

  This was true. The only movement was a restless, side-to-side shuffle, and even on four-inch heels I couldn’t see anything but baseball caps.

  “Don’t worry. Something will happen soon,” I assured her.

  This proved to be optimistic. Minutes passed, and then tens of minutes, but the only thing that happened was that we started sweating pretty markedly. So much for the glamour and excitement of Hollywood.

  “I’d rather be stuck in a traffic jam. At least you can listen to the radio,” whispered Ella. “And anyway, it’s pointless. There must be a thousand people ahead of us. We don’t have a chance of getting a walk-on.”

  It was time to take some action. I tapped the man in front of me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir, but do you know what’s going on up there?”

  He didn’t know.

  I tried the woman next to him. “Is anything happening?” I asked.

  She wanted to know how she should know.

  I sidled past a few people, dragging Ella with me and getting some really dirty looks. Like warrior kings, no one was prepared to give up any ground.

  “Are they taking on extras?” I asked the backs of heads. “Is this the line?”

  A woman (who if you ask me was really much too old to be standing around in the heat like that, especially without a hat) suggested that I find out for myself.

  Did I look like I was from Starship Enterprise and could be beamed around at will? Because that was the only way we could’ve gone more than an inch or two without inciting a riot. We might as well have been standing behind a brick wall.

  “Well,” sighed Ella, “I guess we’ll just have to wait with everybody else and hope for the best.”

  But I’m not everybody else. I have to admit that I was disappointed in Ella. After all we’d been through together she’d forgotten one of Life’s greatest lessons.

  Ella caught my look. “What?”

  “The mouse waits,” I reminded her. “But the eagle acts.”

  “The eagle can fly,” snapped Ella. “It makes it easier to get thro
ugh crowds.”

  “We don’t have to go through.” I started moving towards the side of the road. “We can go around.”

  “Around?” Ella looked at the hilly woods that run along the beach road on either side. “You mean go through there? In skirts and sandals?”

  “Of course not. I don’t want to end up with poison ivy and leaves in my hair. I mean go back to the car and take the other road to the beach. Then we can walk along the shore and get to the shoot from the other end.”

  Instead of greeting this plan with the enthusiasm it deserved, Ella squinched her face up in the way she does when she thinks I’m about to go too far, and said, “Oh, Lola… I don’t know…”

  “What do you mean you ‘don’t know’? I thought you were tired of sunning yourself by the pool. I thought you wanted to have some fun.” I touched her arm, gently but pleadingly. “Come on, let’s get the car.”

  There was a small public beach about a mile away that Karen Kapok took us to once when we first moved to Deadwood so we could bask in some of the benefits of not living in New York City. (Paula got sunburnt, Pam wouldn’t go in the water because she was convinced it was toxic and someone else’s psychotic child smashed his ice pop on my head.)

  The public beach was even smaller than I remembered. (Which isn’t hard to understand since I had largely blocked the whole ugly afternoon from my mind.) It consisted of about three yards of boardwalk, several square yards of sand, a small brick building that contained toilets and a snack bar, and a lifeguard stand (but no lifeguard). There was a jetty of boulders separating the beach from the coast running north under the cliffs.

  Ella stared up the coast as if she was hoping to see some friendly Indians paddling towards us with help and advice. “It seems to go on for ever.” She sounded nervous.

  “It’s a shoreline, not the universe. And anyway the house can’t be that far along.”

  “I have a question,” said Ella.

  “Now what?”

  “How will we know when we’re there? It all looks the same.”

  “We’ll see the house, won’t we? I know what it looks like.” I had a vague memory. “We’ve driven by it lots of times.” That one time, when we got lost on our way to this beach.

  Ella turned her eyes to the cliffs. “And how do we get up there?”

  “There’ll be stairs of course.” It stood to reason; there had to be. “You don’t build a house by the beach if you can’t get down to it, do you?” I certainly hoped not.

  It wasn’t until we’d crossed the jetty that another reason why no one else had thought of coming at the film crew this way occurred to me.

  “What happened to the sand?” demanded Ella.

  I stared down. The sand had vanished beneath several inches of ocean that was carpeted with rocks. From what I could make out through the rippling water and clots of seaweed, these rocks had yet to be smoothed and rounded by erosion.

  “How would I know? I’m an actor not a geologist.” I kicked off my shoes.

  “We can’t walk on those stones in bare feet,” Ella protested. “If we don’t bleed to death, we’ll get some major infection.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” I stuck my shoes in my bag. “I can’t walk through that water in shoes.” Thank God my skirt was so short.

  “But it’s filthy.” Ella’s nose wrinkled in distaste. She’s definitely going to look like her mother when she gets older.

  “It could be worse,” I said. “It could be burning like the Cuyahoga River used to.”

  “Well lucky us,” muttered Ella.

  It was slow going. Beneath the murky surface the rocks were slick with primal slime and the sand was mined with objects even sharper than the stones. The tourist brochures urge you to enjoy a day of fun and sun at the Jersey shore, but, personally, I’d rather be watching debris drift by on the East River – and from the way Ella kept whimpering I guessed she’d agree. We made our way – tiny step by tiny step – slipping, splashing and bleeding from multiple wounds.

  I examined my left foot with a certain amount of concern. “I didn’t know God armed the ocean,” I muttered.

  “I don’t think God did.” Ella fished a piece of rusted can from the water and held it up. “I don’t think God drinks Bud.”

  We trudged on. A great actor has to trust herself unconditionally of course or she’d never have her first audition, but the further we went the more tiny doubts buzzed around me like sand flies. What if we were going in the wrong direction after all? What if there weren’t any stairs and we had to climb up the cliff face? I gazed at the craggy rocks. We weren’t really dressed for mountaineering. If I’d been alone I might have given up, but, for all her wonderful qualities, Ella does have a tendency to remind you that she told you not to do something when it turns out she was right, so there was no way I was giving in until I absolutely had to (like I was about to bleed to death). And then, as I was swatting away a few more flies, I finally saw part A of the goal of our quest, clinging to the cliffs like a vine.

  “There!” I cried jubiliantly, pointing skyward. “I see the stairs!”

  Ella was in her Cassandra mode. “That’s the famous staircase?” She sounded dubious. “But they don’t come all the way down.”

  This was true. Years of disuse had taken their toll and the last length of steps had fallen away and lay in a heap on the ground. I considered this a minor detail.

  “They come down most of the way. We just have to climb a little to reach them.”

  “Are you nuts? By the time we get up there, the only movie we’ll get a part in is one where some creature crawls out of a swamp.” I opened my mouth to answer this argument, but Ella answered it for me. “I know, I know…” she sighed. “You haven’t come this far to give up now.”

  You can’t get away from it: chance plays a really big part in life. Think how different things would be if Columbus had taken the usual route to India. Or if the natives of the Americas had slaughtered the white men instead of helping them out. Or if nobody had been slaughtered. If the white men had said, “Hey, that’s cool. You live your way and we’ll go back to Europe and live our way.” If the South had won the Civil War. If Jesus had been a girl. None of those things happened, of course.

  And Ella and I didn’t reach the film crew at the very moment that they were desperately looking around for two teenage girls with bleeding feet, wet clothes and sand and beach grass in their hair, either.

  Gasping for air, we staggered around the side of the house at the exact and precise moment that Lucy Rio’s character was giving this big speech to her mother about how much she didn’t want to be there. Which meant that our arrival on the set didn’t have quite the effect I’d hoped for.

  Someone screamed, “Cut!”

  And Charley Hottle bellowed, “What the hell are those girls doing on the set?”

  Lucy Rio burst into tears and ran for her trailer.

  The actor who was playing her mother said, “Great. Here we go again!”

  That was the cue for everyone else to start yelling.

  Charley Hottle groaned and threw the script he was holding onto an empty chair. “I’m getting a coffee unless somebody’s got a bottle of hooch stashed away somewhere.”

  Someone yelled, “All right, everybody! Take five!”

  Holding myself with as much dignity as someone who looks like she’s been shipwrecked can, I grabbed hold of Ella and marched after Charley Hottle.

  “Mr Hottle!” I called. “If you’ll just give me a second to ex—”

  My words were cut short by the sudden arrival in my life of a very large man with very strong hands who took hold of me and Ella none too gently and started propelling us towards the road. “Off. No one but crew’s allowed on the set.”

  “If you could just wait one minute. I really have to talk to Charley Hottle. It’s very important. In fact, you could say it’s a matter of life and death, my mother’s—”

  Not only was he not listening, he was moving
so fast that we were almost at the security cordon.

  “You don’t understand!” I wailed. “I’m a friend of Carla Santini’s. She’s expecting me.”

  If you think about it logically, there has got to be a God. There’s just no way that all the truly incredible things that are constantly happening to me could possibly be caused by blind luck. There has to be someone at the controls. Someone who likes to give me a challenge.

  What happened on the movie set is an example of what I mean.

  As soon as I said “I’m a friend of Carla Santini’s”, Mr Muscle came to a dead stop.

  “Not another one,” he muttered. He looked at the crew that hadn’t abandoned the set. “Hey! Anybody know where the Santini kid is?”

  “You mean Dellwood’s answer to Fellini?” called someone.

  Everyone laughed.

  The cameraman shook his head. “The last time I saw her she was taking pictures of Lucy.”

  “I think she was going to shoot Bret eating his lunch,” said one of the sound guys.

  Mr Muscle sighed. “Can somebody please go and find her? Tell her two more of her best friends have shown up.”

  The perfect end to a truly awful day.

  I glanced over at Ella, who was staring back at me, her eyes so wide they looked like they were going to fall out and drop to the ground.

  “Oh, that’s OK.” I looked right at him. People trust you more when you make eye contact. “Really. We didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. And we definitely don’t want to waste any more of your time. I’m an actor myself, so I know how valuable it—”

  “Hey! Carla!” He waved over my head. “You’ve got visitors.”

  As though we were no more than crumbs of iron and there was a giant magnet behind us, Ella and I both turned around.

  Carla was just stepping out of one of the trailers parked on the side of the road. She was dry, clean and unbloodied of course. Bret Fork was standing in the doorway behind her, punching numbers into his cell phone.

  I figured there were several options open to us. We could dematerialize. Or Superman could suddenly swoop down and carry us off. Or we could just pass out on the spot – that kind of manoeuvre had worked for me before.