One New Years Eve, me and my friend Jo found ourselves at Bar Marmont on Sunset Blvd. Don’t know what it is about the strip, but this area of Hollywood always fascinated me. Maybe because it is one of the last few places left where you still can get a feel and taste of what it was like back in the day, when movie stars and mobsters shared drinks, stories and all sorts of upto no good shananigans.
The theme of the night….”Gatsby”. Burlesque dancers, a buffet to die for and a music selection that had the crowd shaking it up, what else could a old school kinda fun gal ask for? Daydreaming Anna drifts from time to time into the “if I only could have lived as an artist in the 1920’s” phase. Boundaries were pushed and opened up new perspectives, the free spirit of expression, the innovations….and then I remember what happened at the end of that decade. Romanticising an idea of the past is an easy game, but I know daily life was a struggle and not a movie. Guess I am just an old soul, forever searching for my place.
As the night turned from one eventful year into a beacon of hope and new beginnings, a very happy gentleman approaches us with an invitation to join his table. He and a handfull of his friends were all celebrating a breakup or divorce of some sort, ringing in the new year, making eveyone around them aware of their new availability.
Drunken small talk finally turns to the ever so classic and sometimes dreaded “So what do you do?” My friend Jo is mainly a journalist and blogger, the later getting us an invite to this gig to begin with. Happy gentleman responses with a sarcastic “Good luck with that!” Wow, in a town where no one is really what they seem, it is a very dangerous and possibly career destroying move to play the judging card. One friend of hers once gotten the response, after disclosing that his chosen profession is the one of movie director, “You are a director….So you work at Burger King.” Little did his opponent know that he has directed, written or produced, several oscar winning pieces. And I am not talking small, artsy and independent either. Lets just say, the boy is very good at what he does.
Even if someone isn’t quite there yet, you just never know in this town. They could be the person making the decission on your next application to further your artistic visions.
People are too blinded by shiny tinseltown, not realising that it is just that….tinsel, decoration and cover up. They buy into the product, the image, the illusion. And if someone does not match their idea of success, they write them already off. Good stories usually come from books that have been read over and over. So they might look a bit beat up…but the lesson still stands up.
Happy New Year
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