My parents looked at each other, then looked at me. When Babbo finally spoke, we both had to fight back tears.
“You proved yourself, Giuliana. Honestly, I can’t believe you had it in you. You’ve achieved so much. There’s nothing you can’t do.”
The conversation with Richard was not so heartwarming. There were no protestations of once-in-a-lifetime love. No vows to follow me to the ends of the earth. He was more dismissive than despairing. Why in the hell was I pulling such a ridiculous stunt?
“Your parents will never let you go,” he said petulantly. He was twenty-five, but sounded twelve.
“Guess again, I already told them and they’re thrilled,” I said.
“Okay, let me call you back,” he replied. I didn’t have to wait long before he rang again.
“I’ve discussed it with some people,” he began.
“What people?” I asked. (He ignored me, but I later found out his “people” were his employees at the dealership.)
“They told me if you go to L.A., you’re a prostitute.”
“What? What do you mean?” I may not have had a job lined up, but the leap from master’s degree straight to streetwalker seemed unlikely and not a little insulting.
“You’re going to become a whore,” he concluded. The only way I could possibly succeed, he and his “people” had determined, would be if I slept my way through Hollywood. That’s how it worked. Ask any auto dealer.
“Okay, well then, I’m going to go become a prostitute, so see you later!” I slammed down the phone. Richard D. could rust in hell. We were over.
I spent the next day packing everything I could into two cheap suitcases and called random hotels in L.A. until I found one I could afford for a few nights. Mama and Babbo had given me a couple hundred dollars, and I had a student Visa card with a five-hundred-dollar limit. I was almost twenty-three years old, and I wanted to do this on my own.
On the flight west, my cheap seat turned out to be in the back of the plane, next to the toilets. I made friends with a fellow passenger, an Angeleno who asked where I would be staying.
“Downtown at the Hotel Figueroa,” I said.
“That’s skid row,” he told me. “Downtown is a horrible area. You need to find someplace else. Seriously, you’re checking into some crack hotel!”
As soon as we landed, I found a pay phone in the airport and called my sister collect. Monica frequently traveled for her job, and she would surely know the name of a decent hotel where I could stay in Los Angeles. It was four a.m. in New York. The phone jolted her out of a dead sleep.
“Jules, what’s wrong?” she said as soon as she heard my voice. I explained the situation, and asked her if she’d heard of the Hotel Figueroa.
“You can’t go downtown!” she confirmed. “Tell the cab driver to take you to the Mondrian on Sunset in West Hollywood.”
By the time I got to the Mondrian, it was two a.m., and the bar was closing. The lobby was filled with chic, gorgeous people. The Sky Bar, I soon learned, was the white-hot hottest spot in L.A. I stood dumbstruck as Jason Priestley from Beverly Hills 90210 drifted past. A pretty African American woman approached me.
“How can I help you?” she asked in that polite icy way that lets you know right away that you are a lowly mortal who does not belong in so magnificent a place.
“Um, I need a room, please?” I ventured.
“I’m sorry, we’re oversold,” she promptly answered.
“Well, could you just please look to see if there’s anything at all? I don’t care where it is, if it’s next to the elevator or whatever, I just need a room because I was booked at this hotel downtown but I didn’t know downtown was dangerous and now I don’t have any place else, could you just check again?”
“Nope, no rooms,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll just stay one night and I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I just landed from Bethesda, Maryland, and I don’t have the energy to walk three thousand miles home tonight,” I half joked. I was desperate, jet-lagged, and beyond exhausted. She heaved an annoyed sigh, consulted the computer again, and came back.
“Okay, one room, one night,” she relented, adding, “it’s two hundred fifty-nine dollars a night.”
“Thank you so much, thank you,” I said. I handed her my student Visa card. She came back a few minutes later. A line of good-looking but impatient pissed off people had formed behind me and my suitcases.
“I’m so sorry, but your card’s been declined.”
It turned out that the Mondrian charged $259 a night, but put a hold on another $500 for security. My student Visa couldn’t manage it.
“Look, I just need a place to sleep, I promise not to trash the room and I’ll be out first thing in the morning,” I pleaded. “I won’t even use the shower!”
“There are a bunch of cheaper hotels if you just go down Sunset,” the clerk suggested.
“Okay, thank you so much,” I said. As I started to gather my things, tears began streaming down my face. I should never have come, I thought. Maybe Richard was right; I am going to become a whore. I was too embarrassed to turn around and walk back out through the throng of beautiful people. The pretty clerk sighed again.
“Okay, I’ll give you the room and give you my rate and not take the $500. It’ll come to $179.” I thanked her and booked two nights; it seemed stupid not to make maximum use of the great discount she was offering.
The next morning, I went out and commandeered the pool phone to make free calls, dialing everyone I could think of to see if anyone knew anyone who needed a roommate in Los Angeles. A friend of a friend of a friend had a Canadian friend named Justine who hailed from a wealthy family and was trying to become an actress or model or something and might help. I dialed Justine. Justine was incredibly bitchy.
“Who?” she said.
I explained our eighteen degrees of separation and my dire situation.
“I don’t know anyone who wants a roommate,” Justine said impatiently.
“Well, if you happen to hear of anything, could you call me, please? I’m at the Mondrian,” I said.
“Wait, you’re staying at the Mondrian?”
“Yeah,” I said, hopefully. This bit of information seemed to warm Justine up noticeably.
“So you can get into the Sky Bar,” she mused aloud. “Okay, I’ll come by to get you at ten and we’ll go to dinner and then the Sky Bar.”
I spent the day by the pool in my bikini, napping off my jet lag. I finally roused myself long enough to go to the poolside bar for some water. I heard a man’s low whistle behind me as I waited.
“Wow, that’s unbelievable. How’d you get that?”
Some stranger was examining my scar. I wheeled around. Not technically a stranger after all. I recognized him immediately.
Johnny Depp.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “It’s fucking cool. There must be some story behind that.”
Johnny Depp wanted to hear how I got my scar. This was the kind of “how we met story” that Letterman would eat up when Johnny Depp and I became a power couple. This was a moment that was destined to change my whole life. It was why fate had made sure I got that one night at the Mondrian. And I knew that fate would not want me to screw it all up by telling Johnny Depp that I had scoliosis. Johnny Depp wanted a fucking cool story to go with the fucking cool scar.
“Oh, yeah. I was bungee jumping off a bridge and the bungee snapped,” I said nonchalantly.
“What, are you fucking kidding me?” Johnny Depp was hooked. “Where?”
“The Potomac River,” I said.
“You must’ve gotten huge money off that lawsuit,” Johnny Depp surmised.
“No, it was illegal,” I said. “It was at night.”
“Whoa!” Now Johnny Depp was really impressed. Hell, I was impressed with my improvisational skills. I was a fugitive bungee jumper with incredibly bad luck and a fucking cool scar, and I wasn’t done yet.
“Yeah, wit
h a bunch of Australians.” (When in doubt, blame the Australians. Hey, it made as much sense as the rest of the story, and Australia just adds three cups of crazy to any lie.)
I got my water. I willed myself to walk away from Johnny Depp. Who does that? Who just exits a most amazing conversation with a movie star? The cool chick with the fucking cool scar, I told myself. The one Johnny Depp will be so intrigued with, he will beg to see again. The one who will become Mrs. Johnny Depp and live a fabulous life and bear his fabulous children. I kept walking knowing he would yell after me. Slower, slower. Give him a second.
Johnny Depp did not come running—or even urgently sauntering—after me, but Justine picked me up that night in her cherry-red Mercedes Benz. We ended up having the best time, and Justine ended up letting me crash on her couch, after all.
Three days in, I had to say things were going pretty well in L.A.: I was technically homeless but no longer entirely friendless, Johnny Depp had admired my body, sort of, and I was not yet a prostitute.
That first night, Justine and I were on fire: we hit the Sky Bar and immediately met Dean Factor, the handsome great-grandson of the legendary Max Factor. Dean, who had just launched a cosmetics line called SmashBox, was a hot bachelor about town. The music executive he was with that night took an instant shine to Justine, and Dean became like a big brother to me. All four of us would frequently hang out at the Sky Bar. Justine and I made friends with the bartender and the doorman, a giant Aussie (yes, really) named Stewart, who slipped us past the velvet rope after that whenever we wanted, even when Dean wasn’t with us, sweetly ignoring the fact that we didn’t meet the criteria of being either VIPs or hotel guests.
The Sky Bar became our fantastically hip Cheers. I was forever trying to sidle my way up to the perimeter of the Beverly Hills 90210 circle and work my way into the center where Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty, and Tori Spelling reigned. I got close enough: I caught the eye of a guy who had a guest starring role on the show, and we went out a few times. One night, he invited me to go to an after, after, after-party at a place called the Mousetrap. It turned out to be this tiny, derelict house in a shady neighborhood off Pico Boulevard. A scary-looking guy let us in. The kitchen had been turned into a bar, and people were sitting around in circles in the little bedrooms off the hallway. I didn’t recognize anyone famous.
“Follow me,” my date said, pulling me by the hand into a room where seven people sat on chairs in a circle. As soon as we sat down, this totally beat-up looking woman with gold teeth and weird hair came in with a tray. “Sorry to keep y’all waiting,” the waitress apologized. “I have your order.” Oh good, I was starving and hoping they were serving something good like cheeseburgers or tacos.
I was the closest one to her, and the first served. She offered me a little bag full of white powder. I’d never been around cocaine before, but I knew instinctively that that had to be what it was. Omigod, what do I do? Pretend to take it?
“Go ahead, grab one,” my 9021-blow date urged me.
“Um, you know, I’m going to pass tonight!” I said uneasily. I got up to leave. He followed me.
“I’m sorry, I don’t do coke,” I told him.
“I thought you said you partied?” he said.
“Well, yeah. I do like dancing,” I explained. That was what I thought partying was—going to a club and dancing, just having fun.
“You know what? It’s cool,” he said. “Want me to drive you home?” I did, and after he dropped me off, we never saw each other again. I still have notoriously bad drug radar. One time, I came out of an E! interview all excited because the celeb had been so lively and seemed to just take to me. We had been like instant BFFs.
“That was the best interview ever!” I told my producer. The star and I were probably going to become lifelong friends. He looked at me and shook his head.
“Did you not see the residue of white powder in one of her nostrils?” he asked drolly. I hadn’t, nor had I seen it years before when 90210 boy was asking me to party, which I foolishly interpreted as dancing on tables. But who needs prime-time actors when I was about to come face to face with the hottest young movie star in the world?
chapter six
As a new arrival to Hollywood, I quickly fell into the familiar groove of most young hopefuls, patching together enough money from working in restaurants or retail to sublet a room. Mine was in a creepy old house in the Hollywood Hills that my sister’s college roommate held the lease on. I had my car put on a train from Maryland to L.A., only to have the steering wheel lock one day on the 405 freeway. I got over to the side safely, but the Lexus and I were through, and I gladly let go of my last tie to Richard D. I was able to trade in the Lexus for a cheap Jetta that didn’t even have power windows, a hugely embarrassing inconvenience when I pulled up next to any cute guys who wanted to flirt at a stoplight.
I landed my first job in “the industry” as assistant to a small talent manager who worked out of her living room in Venice and tried to get commercial auditions or little plays for clients hoping to break into acting. I spent my day stuffing envelopes for $250 a week. It was an hourlong commute each way, and by the time I paid for rent, gasoline, and the four-dollar coffees my boss made me fetch but never reimbursed me for, I was pretty much broke.
I used to spend all of my free time with Justine, sitting at the Coffee Bean on Sunset, waiting to be discovered, along with a similarly luckless assortment of hopeful actors and models yearning to be in front of the cameras. We would go through the trade papers, network with people we’d met at the Sky Bar (“Hi, did you say something about an independent film you heard was casting?”), and scour the ads for useful classes to take.
I’d been in California for eighteen months when I heard that an upstart talent agency was hiring. Mike Ovitz, once described by the media as the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood, had left his job running Disney to launch a one-stop talent agency called Artist Management Group. AMG proceeded to lure marquis clients like Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, and Samuel L. Jackson from established powerhouse agencies. When I dropped off my résumé, the AMG recruiter asked me what position I thought I might fill. I suggested I could be a junior manager.
“You gotta be an assistant first,” I was told.
“Okay,” I agreed. “I’m happy to do that first.”
“No, before you can be an assistant, you have to work in the mailroom.”
“I have a master’s degree!”
My objection was met with a smirk and a shrug.
“You’ll be in good company. Some people down there have their PhDs.”
I was hired to work twelve-hour shifts, five days a week, for minimum wage with no overtime. There were nine of us in the pool, and our job was to deliver scripts all over town. The worst were the Valley runs. It was always boiling hot, and the Jetta’s air-conditioning snuffled and wheezed and drooled like some asthmatic bulldog. Plus, no superstars lived in the Valley. Those were usually studio runs.
I quickly established myself as AMG’s best runner: I was fast and reliable, and had a great sense of direction, which, in L.A., is like having a second brain. I showed up for work in hand-me-down Ann Taylor suits from my sister and demure flats, but in my car, I always kept heels and a backup outfit for the Naughty Librarian in a Van Halen video, because you just never knew, right? When I got tapped to become the personal mail runner for Mike Ovitz himself, I was excited by the near guarantee of face time with some major players in Hollywood. Martin Scorsese. Matthew McConaughey. Maybe a reunion with Johnny Depp.
Right off the bat, I was handed an envelope to deliver for Mr. Ovitz with very strict instructions to handle it with care and be extremely discreet. I glanced at the name: Morty Weinstein. This blows, I thought. Who the hell was Morty Weinstein? Probably some paunchy bald accountant auditing the junior managers’ expense accounts. And of course, Morty had to be somewhere in the friggin’ Hollywood Hills on a smoggy, sweltering day where the temperature was already in the triple di
gits before noon. To make matters even worse, I couldn’t find his address for the life of me. Keep in mind, this was long before the luxury of iPhones and GPS. I relied on a Thomas Bros. map book hundreds of pages thick to get me from point A to point B. Searching for Morty Weinstein, I kept looping through a canyon, up and down the same winding roads, until I finally decided to ask for help. I was starving to death, so I went back down the hill and pulled into a 7-Eleven to get a snack and a better map. I was looking at the candy bars when I noticed the greasy hot dogs riding that weird little hot-dog Ferris wheel that only 7-Elevens have, and I thought, implausibly, Those hot dogs look really good. I got one with relish, sauerkraut, mustard—everything. I hit the road again. After eating a few bites of my hot dog, I felt infinitely better by the time I found Morty Freakin’ Weinstein’s address and buzzed the gate. I wolfed down the last of the hot dog in the driveway. The house looked really nice. Really, really nice. Maybe I should take off my blazer and put on the Van Halen heels, I thought. Nah, who cares what Morty Weinstein thinks, anyway? I rang the doorbell and smiled perkily into the camera I knew would be watching me. The door swung open.
Leonardo DiCaprio answered.
“Hi,” I said. Act cool.
We stood there, just looking at each other like goofy lovesick seventh-graders at the school dance. He’s going to invite me in, and we’re going to go out on the balcony and have champagne.
I stared at him expectantly. Flashed a big pageant smile.
Leonardo started to laugh, then checked himself. The kismet was throwing him off balance, too. He reached for the envelope.
“Thank you,” he said. Another awkward pause. “See you later.”
He shut the door.
On me.
On us.
I get it, I told myself, climbing back into the hot Jetta, which now smelled like boiled sauerkraut, he’s trying to play it cool. He’s going to call the agency demanding to get my number.
Driving back, I worked myself into a prenuptial delirium. Omigod, I’m going to start dating Leonardo DiCaprio. I wonder if I was blushing? Did he see me blushing? I pulled the visor down to check the mirror and see how badly I was blushing, but it wasn’t my pink cheeks that were noticeable. It was my green front tooth, where a giant piece of hot-dog relish was lodged! No wonder Leo was stifling a laugh.
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