Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / A Walk On The Wild Side: Adventures With Andy Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn [Episode 256]

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A Walk On The Wild Side: Adventures With Andy Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn [Episode 256] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We're totally boomed rock and roll. I think I'll leave you.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: You're reading little hands this, It's time to rock and roll,
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Roll Up. I totally booked. This is Booked on Rock
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: the podcast for those about to read and rock Americ Senach.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Find the podcast online at booked on rock dot com
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: and all the major podcasting platforms YouTube, Spotify, Speaker, Apple, Amazon, iHeart,
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: and more. Be sure to subscribe and give a five
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: star review if you like the podcast. Jeff Copeland is
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: the author of the new book Love You Madly Hollywoodlawn,
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  Speaker 2: A Walk on the wild Side with Andy Warhol's most
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  Speaker 2: fabulous superstar by the mid nineteen eighties. Hollywoodlawn once lauded
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  Speaker 2: by George Kukor for her performance in the nineteen seventy
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  Speaker 2: Warhol production, and Paul Morrissey directed Trash and the inspiration
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  Speaker 2: to the opening verse of the nineteen seventy three Lou
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  Speaker 2: Reed song Walk on the wild Side was washed up,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: But a chance meeting with Copeland, who moved to Hollywood
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: with dreams of making it as a television writer, changed
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the course of both of their lives forever. This is
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: the story of how an unlikely friendship with a young
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  Speaker 2: gay writer and a mature transgender actress and performer, created
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: the best selling autobiography of nineteen ninety one, A Low
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Life in High Heels. Here is Jeff Copeland. Jeff, welcome
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: to the podcast.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Eric, I'm grown to be here.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Congratulations on the book, Jeff.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm curious to know what did you like
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: about it? Did it resonate with you at all?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean just the honesty of it getting into
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Holly's life. I was fascinated with the whole process of
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: writing the book with her, the ups and downs, the challenges,
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: and then when it became something of a personal relationship
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: with hers, a friendship that you had with her, the
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: struggles that she went through. And you used to clean
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  Speaker 2: her floors, right, I was the thing.
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  Speaker 1: You've cleaned her floor once once, you know. But you
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: know if I wasn't cleaning the floor, that I was
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: cleaning the countertop.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: You just did everything for her.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I just you know, I would go over
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: there and it bothered me that Holly live like a pig.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the sadness of that here was this big
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: star and when you met her, things weren't going so
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: well for her and the decisions that she had to
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: make to make ends meet. You know, this is the
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: side of fame that we don't get to read about often,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: So it just offered and well, yeah, and plus your
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: story coming from forty miles west of Saint Louis and
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: then deciding I'm gonna go to Hollywood. That's where the
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: book starts. There's a photo in the book with you
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: and Dodie Goodman in nineteen eighty one, and it reads,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: if you can't hang with the popular kids in school,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: then go hang with the Hollywood stars. They're more interesting.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: And that's just what you did. The opening chat takes
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: us back to your childhood days. You grew up in
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: a small town, like I said, about forty miles west
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: of Saint Louis, and this was a time when you
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: were discovering who you were, your sexuality, and your place
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: in the world. Talk about that, and there's a great
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: story about your mom. She had a strong intuition that
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Hollywood was where you belonged, right right.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I should establish the reason why
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I wanted to set up who I was is because
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I felt it was important to establish the reason why
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: where I came from what my career. You know, I
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer and what that meant to
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: me and why I would be so drawn to Hollywood
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Lawn in the first place. So the one thing I
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: had in common with Holly is, you know, we were
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: both gay, misfit kids, okay, and I grew up in
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a redneck community and I didn't fit in. My father
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: was the all American, good looking jock and I was
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the acne ridden, ugly troll child. And what I wanted
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you to be a ballplayer, absolutely, and I just I
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: was lousy at it. And I basically grew up feeling
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: like I was his biggest disappointment. And so what happened was,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: you know, by the time I got into the seventh grade,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: life got really hard because I was picked on daily.
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  Speaker 1: I was the runt of the litter. Girls made fun
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  Speaker 1: of me, boys made fun of me, and I gravitated
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: toward old movies. I just discovered, you know, back in
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  Speaker 1: those days, in the nineteen seventies, we only had a
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: handful of TV channels, and old movies aired a lot
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  Speaker 1: on television, and so I discovered these rags to riches stories,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: you know, on the Late Show, like Mildred Pierce with
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  Speaker 1: Joan Crawford. You know, I just fell in love with
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Betty Davis and Barbara Stanwick Crawford. This idea that Hollywood
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: was a place that I could escape to. I also,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: when I was about fourteen years old, I discovered this.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: This is Rona Barrett's biography that's called Miss Rona, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: my mother had brought this home from the library. I
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: actually just got this on eBay the other day.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: But anyway, Rona Barrett was this bullied little girl living
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: in New York City. She was born with some sort
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of she had to wear a brace on one of
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: her legs. I can't remember why, but the kids were
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: very mean to her and she writes about it. And
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I remember reading this when I was in eighth grade.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: What she did was she somehow she got involved with
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: working for I think it was Eddie Fisher's fan club,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and that led her to becoming a journalist. And long
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  Speaker 1: story short, Rona Barrett went from being an ugly troll
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: child right who was made fun of and beaten up,
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  Speaker 1: to being the Queen of Hollywood who was on TV
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  Speaker 1: daily and she was gorgeous. And what she had done
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: is she basically got herself a lucrative career. She had
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: plastic surgery, she changed her body and she corrected all
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: all the wrongs and made them right. And I thought, fuck,
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing the same thing. If she do it, I'm
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: doing it. And I went to my mother and I said,
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  Speaker 1: you know, mom, I read this book when I was
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: in eighth grade. I think it was probably about ninth grade,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: tenth grade when I said I wanted to be an
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: entertainment reporter. And my mother said, well, why don't you
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: just you know, why wait, why don't you just do
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  Speaker 1: it now? And I was like, what are you talking about?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: She said, well, you know, Carol Channing's coming to town.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Carol Channing was a huge Broadway star and she was
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: always on television when I was a kid. And she said,
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  Speaker 1: Carol Channing is coming to town. She's going to stay
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  Speaker 1: at the Chase Park Platt, so that's where all the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: movie stars stay. Just go down there and interview her.
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  Speaker 1: Like I could do that, yes, you know, And I thought,
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  Speaker 1: what is she talking about? And my mother was very
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  Speaker 1: creative and very clever. And the thing about my mom
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  Speaker 1: is while everyone else thought I was this horrible little
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: train wreck, she thought I was a little star, a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: little diamond in the rough. And so she was a
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: floral designer, and I remember her thinking, you know, there's
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: got to be a way we can get to Carol Channing.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: And her idea was, we were going to take a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: little soda bottle and put some flowers in it. And
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: she said, you're gonna give Carol Channing flowers in a
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  Speaker 1: soda bottle. We're gonna have it delivered to the Chase
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  Speaker 1: Park plaza, and she's gonna think this is so cute.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: She's going to want to talk to you. And it worked.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It paved the way to Carol Channing. Unfortunately, Carol Channing
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: had a good friend named Gaert Champion. He died and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: so I didn't get my inn with her because she
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: had to leave town. But what happened was I got
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: interviews with you know, Pearl Bailey and Cloris Leachman, Bob Hope,
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  Speaker 1: all these you know, incredible people who a lot of
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: them were, you know, I mean Cloris Leachman, she was
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  Speaker 1: an Academy Award winning actress. Joshua Logan, he was a
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  Speaker 1: huge Broadway playwright and director and did huge movies with
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  Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe Phylis Diller.
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  Speaker 2: The story in the book about Phyllis Diller Refused, page
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  Speaker 2: twenty three. Phillis Diller refused my request for an interview,
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  Speaker 2: so I ambushed her at a local book signing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. I was very fortunate because there was
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  Speaker 1: a publicist at this little theater called Westport Playhouse, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I had gotten hooked up with newspaper. It was called
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the Saint Louis County Start had a huge circulation, but
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: no one was reporting about entertainment, and so I tapped
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: into that niche and he started hooking me up with
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  Speaker 1: all these famous people. Phyllis Diller was coming to his playhouse.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: He asked her, say, hey, I got this kid who
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  Speaker 1: who wants to interview? And she just fled out and said, no,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not doing interviews. I'm here for two days. I'm
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: going to do my show and promote my book. That's it.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And I thought, well, she's going to promote a book
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and she's doing a book signing. I'm going to go
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: to that bookstore. I'm going to stake her out and
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask her at least one question. Because
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the deal was when you got to the book signing.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: You wait in line. You were given a piece of paper,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and on that piece of paper you were going, you're
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: supposed to write what you wanted her to write in
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: your book. So I wrote a question. I wrote a question,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: and I said, listen, just give me the answer to
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the question. That way I can get at least one
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: quote for my story. I thought it was a very
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: clever one, very smart. Yeah, yeah right. And she was
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: so impressed with that. She told me to just hang out,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: wait till the crowd died down, and she would give
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: me time to interviewer. So I did. But I wasn't
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: prepared to interviewer. I didn't have my tape recorder. I
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: didn't have a notebook, I didn't have anything. I was
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: just there to get a book signed. But I did, interestingly,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: have the good sense to bring a photographer.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Oh is that Terry Smith?
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, Terry Smith was another high school kid, and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: he came and he shot all these pictures of me,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: of Philla's diller. Well I was I think I was
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: eighteen years old. I was such a novice. I didn't
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: really know how to phrase questions. And I asked her.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I prefaced the question with, at your aid, whoops, he
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: had a fit. She had such a meltdown. I thought,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: this is the most It was the most horrible thing
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I'd ever experienced, because by this time during my interview,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: there was a huge crowd of people all around to.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Why everybody hears this and sees this?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean there was like people standing outside
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the bookstore looking in the window. There were people gathered
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: around in the bookstore. It seemed like there were like
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: seventy five people all just gathered around listening. And she
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: read me, I mean, she just read me to filth.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: And I just thought, oh, this is so humiliating.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: This is the last ever interview I'm ever gonna do.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Awful And I thought, you know what, I remember thinking this,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: You're just gonna let her blow off her steam. You're
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: gonna let that old wind bag go on her rant,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna just sit here and wait her out.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: And I did, and so she, I mean, she went
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: on her tirade, and I wouldn't move. I apologized, of course,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: but I just waited so until I could ask the
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: next question.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: See all the things you're saying, they're all the qualities
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: of a great reporter, being creative, finding some way, somehow
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to get a question in somehow to get into a
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: venue where that famous person is gonna be. And then
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: in that instance, I don't know. I think I might
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: have just took off, but you had that president's mind
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: is just just stay here, just wait.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I just remember thinking this will be over soon enough.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Just just just letter blow it off. Yeah, and what
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the next question and act like it never happened.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Did you ever run into her again after that?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: No?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, I wondered if, hey, I remember you.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I never did. I never wanted to.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, I kind of sidetracked you. But you were
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: talking about all these famous people coming through the area.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: You get to interview them, and interview all along. Your
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: mom knows at this point you want to go to Hollywood,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: and your dad too.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: My mother, they knew I wanted to be an entertainment reporter.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be I wanted to, you know, work
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: either on television or magazines. I was trying to figure
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: it out. Well, what happened was I interviewed Joshuba Logan
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: and you know, we're having lunch. This is amazing. I still,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: you know, having lunch with this Broadway legend and he's
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: yapping on about all the fun he'd had with Marilyn
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Monroe making bus stop and how wonderful it was to
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: meet Greta Garbo and all this, you know, and I
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: was just it was that moment during that lunch when
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: I thought, fuck, I don't want to just report on
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: these people. I want to be in there. I want
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: to be part of this world. So that I was
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: always interested in writing, and so I thought, well, just
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: be a playwright. And so basically I was inspired to
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: go to Webster University and study television television production. I
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: was trying to figure everything out. I didn't know. I mean,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I thought I wanted to be a playwright, and I
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: thought I want to be a TV producer, and I thought, well,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: write sitcoms. You know. I was just trying to figure
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: it out because I didn't know what any of this
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: really was like, because I had no point of reference.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I just saw what I saw. I knew what I
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: saw on television. It all looked like fun booked.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: On rock podcast will be back after this.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I had league down.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Somewhere around nineteen eighty four. Eighty five is when your
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: mom has this intuition like you belong in Hollywood. Like
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: you gotta go.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, right. I think you're talking about
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the time I was. She had this crazy epiphany right
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: night while watching the Johnny Carson Show. Yes, the Night
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: show that was in the seventies.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was in the seventies.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, that was like probably nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: around there, and she said, you're going to go to Hollywood.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Pretty wild. I got to give your dad credit to
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: because he was old school. Like he said, he wanted
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: you to grow up and be an athlete, and he
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: had this idea of what the typical son is going
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: to grow up to be. But you know, he finds
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: out you're into boys not girls, and most instances maybe
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: your dad would say I want you out here.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: My father became very distant, like when I was I
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: think when I was like thirteen fourteen, I was really
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: going through that hard time. He didn't know how to
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: deal with it. He was very mellow and he was
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: very accepting. The thing about my father is his best friend,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: who was also his cousin when he was a kid
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: growing up, turned out to be gay. So he I mean,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: he had a really good gay friend that he never
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: talked about I mean we knew, we knew him, but
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: we never talked about the fact that he was gay
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: and that he had a male partner. Yeah, we knew
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: about it. It was just there.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I was just think that a lot of situations, these
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: four kids growing up, they find out that they're gay
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: and they get thrown out of the house.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what happened to Holly. Basically he had this.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't have that. So, yeah, my father was pretty
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: easy going. Holly father exploded and Holly was sent to
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a place called Youth Hall for troubled kids. Yeah, but
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: thankfully I didn't experience that. My father was a very compassionate,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: good guy.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: And let's get now to when you meet Holly. You
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: head off for Hollywood, and this would be nineteen eighty five.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: When you go to right right, I went to Hollywood.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: You're about two hundred and seventy miles away from Los Angeles.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: The hot engine light goes off on your plymouth valare.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: It's a handsome kid in high school who you only
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: knew briefly, who would help you avoid being stranded.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Explain, Yes, yeah, that's this is kind of interesting. How
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: that there I am in the desert, pretty fucked because
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the cars overheating. But when I was a junior in
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: high school, there was this really good looking kid named
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: His name was Bruce, and Bruce was about a year
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: older than I was, and we met. Because we didn't
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: meet in school, we never became friends in school, but
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: we wound up working at the same hardware store together.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And that hardware store was about twenty miles away from
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: where we lived. So we would carpool and he drove
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: this old, loppy station wagon that didn't have hubcaps and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: it was just a wreck, and it was always overheating,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: and he, I remember him, were driving down the freeway
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the car stores to overheat, and he turned the heater on,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, what are you doing that for? And
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: he said because it was summer. And he said, well,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: because if you turn the heater on, it keeps the
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: engine cool. And I really didn't understand how that, you know,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the dynamics there that made that work, you know, but
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I never forgot that trick. And so flash forward, what
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: like six years later, I'm on my way to Hollywood
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and I remember him, and I turned the heater on
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and I drove through the Mojave Desert with the heater blasting,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and it was horrible.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: But you made it. You made it. I made it.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I remember having sweat just pouring down my face, my eyes,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: my underwear was wet. I mean everything was wet because
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I was sweating profusely.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: But you made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get there.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: This is the year ninete eighty five, and you grew
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: up watching the black and white films, as you said,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: in the image of Hollywood, you know, the glitz, the glamour,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: the place where dreams come true. But that wasn't the
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Hollywood you experienced when you arrived. Author Simon Donan wrote
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: the forward to this book and he said, quote our Hollywood,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: mine and Jeff's was not a hooray for Hollywood. Hollywood.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: It sounds more like a like a horror film than
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: a dream come true film. Can you describe what Hollywood
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: was like when you arrived at that time?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I don't know what the hell I
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: was thinking. My idea of Hollywood was a buzzby Berkeley musical, okay,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And then I get there and it was just trashy, tawdry, cheap,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: you know, its heyday was long gone. And in place
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of starlets, you had rent, hookers prowling the boulevard, you
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: had gang members. It was just one shitty low rise
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: motail after another. It was just awful and desperate.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: And considering where you come from, small quiet town, that
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: must have your mind.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Well, it scared the hell out of me. Sure, you know,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: because I was afraid. I you know, I didn't know
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: where to go. I'd spent all this energy trying to
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: get to Hollywood, but I'd never figured. I didn't put
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: any energy as to where I would go. And this
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: is before the internet, you know, I just figured why
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I'd find it all work out. I'd get to Hollywood,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I had twelve hundred dollars on me, I'd rent an
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: apartment and then I'd get a job. Simple. What I
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't prepared for is no one would rent an apartment
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: to me because I didn't have I didn't have a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: credit rating, I didn't have a bank account, I didn't
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: have a California I d. It was so I couldn't
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: find a place to live, and then I couldn't find
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: a job. It was just it was just horrible.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: You could have very easy just call home to mom,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: coming home, this isn't working out. But what kept you there.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I think what kept me there was I wanted that
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: dream so bad, even though I was surrounded by ugh,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I just believed that it would all work out. And honestly,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: what did I have to go back to?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: That always fascinates me too, is what keeps somebody pursuing
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: a career in Hollywood or music. Most people will just say,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I give up. I'm going to get a nine to
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: five job. I can't do this anymore.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Surrendering wasn't an option. I had to figure it out.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: And also, you see, my parents had given me twelve
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars. They didn't give it to me, they lent
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: it to me. I did pay it back. But the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: fact that they believe enough in me to give me
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: this chance. Not a lot of parents do that. A
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: lot of parents say, you need to get that stable
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: nine to five job. You need to get security. Go
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to the grocery store. It's a good union job, you
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: can get a pension. You know, does bullshit of going
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: to Hollywood, and you know, that's like a you're on
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the high wire. It's very precarious. You don't know where
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: your next paycheck is coming from. To think I did
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it for thirty five years blows me away.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: There was that point where there was nothing else for
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: you except the pressure to write. Can you talk about
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: how bad things had gotten? And again, what led you
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: to hold on to your dream really defiantly at that point.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Well, Norman Leir told me, here's the irony. In Saint Louis,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I could get to Norman Lear. In Los Angeles, I
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: couldn't get to anybody. Okay, it was so fit. Yeah, yeah,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And Norman Lear told me, right, right right, you've got
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: to write, just right, because I told him I wanted
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: to be a writer. I needed what was his advice?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: And he said, you just got to write.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: And we're talking script writing, you right, that was script writing.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think my first year in Los
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Angeles was the hardest because I couldn't get my footing
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and I wound up living sleeping on a carpeted floor
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: and a squalor and a roach infested nightmare of an
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: apartment with roaches crawling all over me. And I get this,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And I remember laying there and thinking, this is not
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: as bad as Junior High. You're gonna be okay, seriously,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and I just I just felt like I was being
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: put to the test and if I just hung in there.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: My mother always said, if you throw enough shit on
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the wall, something's going to stick. So just keep throwing.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So even though they were ups and there were downs,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and every now and then I would have to take
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: a job, nine to five job, you know, for about
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: six months during that first year, I worked at a
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: department store sellingman's sportswear. But everybody I met in that store,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I hustled for contacts in the entertainment business. I always ask,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: so what do you do? I was just a nosy
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: what do you do? And I was always finding someone
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: who was a producer. Oh, I produced this, And I
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, I want to. You know, I was
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: always jonesing for a connection. I tried to do it
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: in a polite way, but what happened was I would
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: either get attitude. There was one person, this one middle
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: aged guy who gave me his business card. I had
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a big water Brother's logo on it, and I was
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: so excited, and he said, you know, we should talk
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: about you being a writer. I've got a film project
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: that it's a development. You might be good for it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: So I was thrilled, right, and we went out to
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: lunch and here. I think I've made a great connection.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: We go out to have lunch. I'm in the middle
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: of telling him about, you know, the script I'm working on,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and his next question is, so, how big is your dick?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Oh my god. Welcome to Hollywood, right.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Hollywood. And it was awful, And you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I was constantly fighting, you know, I was always being objectified.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I could never I could never figure out how to
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: get a mentor.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Things have I would say improved in that sense, because
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: that's the way it was. That is that dark side
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: of Hollywood. The stories that you hear, you know, you
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: know the Weinstein Harvey Weinstein's you know, that's a very
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: sad thing.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I remember working with a casting director who would call
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: in beautiful, beautiful men and the only reason, right was
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: just to check them out. There wasn't an art.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Judy Garland. You hear stories about what she went through.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It's just horrible. But you know what was really what's
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: really weird. As you know, when I was a seventeen
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: year old kid and I had this guy's name at
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the Westport Playhouse, Ned Boder, and he was the publicist.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: He was a good guy. He was just a real
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: great guy, and never I mean, he was a straight guy,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: but he never ever made me feel like a piece
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: of shit, like a piece of meat. So when I
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: was in the Midwest and I had access to all
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: these people, then I go to Hollywood and it's just,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: oh my god, I just I got in that trench
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and I just groveled for years trying to and worked
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: and worked and worked, and I worked so hard and
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: could never make it. Anything happened.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Booked on rock podcast. We'll be back after this.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Can we go now? Please? People? A good plan today
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: is better than perfect plan tomorrow.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Hollywoodlawn enters the story. I'm sure by this point you
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: knew the lou Reed song? Did you know? She was
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: a subject of the lyric and the opening verse of that.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I should be embarrassed to say that, But I didn't
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: even know who Lou Reed was.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Wow?
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, I didn't know what a Naddy Warhol superstar was. Wow, No,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: lou Reed. I was just ignorant about that genre of music,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: you know, because I grew up I was in the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you know, nineteen seventy eight when I came out, when
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I was coming of age, right, that was disco. I
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: knew Donna Summer. I knew the Beg's I knew, and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I got sucked into that because of Studio fifty four.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I never went to Studio fifty four, but I fantasized
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: about being part of that very glamorous scene. And lou
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Reid wasn't that. No Anna Summer was that? So I
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: gear I was like total disco.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, lou Reid was avant garde New York City rock.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I love. I totally love lou Reid. Now, yep, you know,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: but as a when he first came out, I wasn't
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: aware of him.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: And so when so when you met then, when you
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: met her, then you didn't even know about the Andy
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Warhol connection.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: At that point, I didn't know Andy movies.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you just you just saw this person. We
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: get to this part of the book where yeah, you
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: you eventually meet her, but actually kind of back up
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: a little bit, right because the story begins with a
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: phone call from your friend Beverly known as the Lovely Carol,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that's you know, I think that's
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: where all this starts.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Beverly was this beloved West Hollywood comedian. This
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: is during the time when Aids is starting to kick
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: up a lot of darkness, and Beverly was hilarious and
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: she brought a lot of light to that community in
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a very hard dark time. And I was working. We
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: were in the middle of a writer strike, Hollywood had
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: closed down. I had gone over to a major PR
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: firm to work as a secretary because I could type,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and I had hoped that perhaps it would lead to
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a publicist position, because I'd been toiling in the production
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: assistant trenches for three years that was going nowhere, and
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe I'll be an entertainment publicist. So
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Beverly calls me up. She's working an event that night
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and she needs someone to run a camera for her
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and could I come out to Santa Monica and do it?
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, sure, I'll do that. So I
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: run out to the swanky party with all these entertainment folks.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: While I'm there, I get distracted by this strange enigma.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out if this person was a man
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: or a woman. It was just a very unusual person.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Androgynous.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Very androgynous, you see, because Holly had plucked or eyebro
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: so much. They were very pencil thin. Men don't have
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: pencil thin eyebrows usually, you know, So I was like,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: was this but it was just very strange, and I
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: was fixated on it. Okay, I was like, Wow, what
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: is going on here? Beverly and I had a mutual friend.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: His name was Tom Bate. I turned. He was standing
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: next to me, and I turned him and I said, Tom,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: who is that person over there? And he said, Oh,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: that's Hollywoodlawn. She's an Andy Warhol superstar. And he kind
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of scoffed, you know, and I'm like, Hollywoodlawn. We never
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: met that night, but she stayed in my brain.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: She saw you looking at her.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: At one point, Yes, our eyes met and she smiled
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: at me, and it kind of freaked me out and
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I turned away. You know how your eyes just dart
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: away because they caught you spring. I'm not sure how
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the evening ended, but I never met Holly, but unusually strangely,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Hollywoodlawn stayed on my mind. And then the next night
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I went to West Hollywood to the video store and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: there was this little gossip rag that came out weekly.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: It was called The Hollywood Kids, and Hollywoodlawn was on
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the cover. Now, Hollywoodlawn on the cover was so beautiful
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: and so different from the Hollywood Lawn I saw at
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: the party, and so I cracked open this little gossip
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: rag and I read this interview with Holly and it
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: talked all about her history with Andy Warhol and lou
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Reid and how she was almost nominated for an Academy Award.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And I was fascinated because I, by this time, was
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: looking to make my own little independent film. I'd been
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: working at the PR firm for a year. I realized
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to get a publicist opportunity. They didn't
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: think I could write. The boss just flat out set it,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: you can't write it, can't be a publicist. But the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: point is I wanted to write. And a friend of
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: mine who was a filmmaker, had gotten some success off
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: a script that I had written and he made, but
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: all the glory was going to him because he was
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the director. I wasn't getting anything. So I thought, Okay,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: you got to be a filmmaker. That's the only way
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: you can make anything of yourself in this city. So
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I was looking for a star, and I wanted someone
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: who would get me a lot of publicity. That's when
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I thought Hollywood Lawn you could write a movie for
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Lawn and reignite her career and launched yours at
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: the same time. So that was that's how the ball
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: got rolled.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Full, kind of lit the fire inside you.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I got excited, Yeah.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Right right, the dark sided morning, that's what.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wrote this script. Now, basically what I did
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: was I looked Holly Up. Well, I didn't have a
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: phone book. In those days. You called information I think
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the number was four one one, and the operator would
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: come on the line and you'd say, you know, hey,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: do you have a number for Hollywood Lawn? And the
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: operator would dig around, and surprisingly she said yeah, and
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: she gave me Holly's number. So I called Holly Up.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I asked her out to dinner, and all I had
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: was a title basically that was a recycled title from
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: a previous drama I had written. And so I took
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: her out to dinner and I said, listen, I got
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: this great movie I'm working on. I'm a producer and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: a writer, and I'm gonna you're gonna have a starring role.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: And I basically coursed her into agreeing to be in
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: this movie.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and at that time, she's in her early forties
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: forty two, forty two? Did she know lou Reid? Did
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: she ever talk to you about that? Did she ever say, yeah,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: here's how I wound up in the song?
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah she did. Holly didn't know lou Reid. Their path
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: was probably crossed at Max's Kansas City. But because Holly
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: was so drunk all the time, she did a lot
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: of drinking, she did a lot of drugs, okay, and
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: there were a lot of things she didn't remember. So
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: my understanding is that lou Reed knew about Holly because
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: they traveled in the same circles, and he probably saw
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: her at Max's Kansas City and someone probably told him
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: that's Hollywoodlawn and gave him the backstory of you know
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: how she hitch hiked from Miami to New York and
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: shaved her legs and her eyebrows along the way.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Holly came from Miami, fla hitchhiked her way across the USA,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: plucked her eyebrows along the way, which you noticed, shaved
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: her legs, and then he was a She she says, hey, babe,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: take a walk on the wildside. She had to have
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: loved that.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, are you kidding? She famous. Yeah, made
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: her famous. It kind of firmly submitted her place in
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: pop culture. You know, made her an I mean underground star,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: you know, the Andy Warhol superstar business. That was enough
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: to get her into the underground scene. And you know, right,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: but lou Reid brought her the world.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: And it's said because at forty two, she's struggling to
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: make ends meet, and you asked her, how are you
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: making a living? And her response wasn't what you had expected.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, I was a real first of all,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I was a real Midwestern square, all right, Holly. I
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: discovered that Holly was a prostitute. She was a transgender prostitute.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: She hustled herself out as this persona named Kim. She
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: took out an ad in a Los Angeles sex rag.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I think it was called the La Express, I can't remember.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: She had been prostituting for years. She actually earned a
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: living in New York as a prostitute when she couldn't
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: get film work. And I really wrestled with that because
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: it just seemed so sad to me and desperate. I
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: was like, oh God, but my grandmother, both of my
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: grandmothers were Christian. My mother's mother. My parents weren't religious
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: because they'd gotten enough of that in their childhoods. So
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: they kind of like, every now and then we go
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: to church. They believed in God, but it wasn't There
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: was no Bible thumping, okay. And my mother's my maternal
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: grandmother was the beloved old maid Sunday school teacher who
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: at the age of thirty in nineteen thirty four, got
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: knocked up out of wedlock by my grandfather, who was
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: a twenty three year old drifter. Well kind of rolled
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: into town, went to the revival and fell head over
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: heels in love with my grandmother. Well, she gets knocked up,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: that's a huge scandal. I know. My grandmother went through hell.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: I never talked to her about this. This was the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: big dark family secret. But she had to leave town, okay,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and she went through a lot of hell. And what
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: I learned through her was you have to accept people.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: You're not the one to judge. You don't judge. That's
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: that's not your place. And so when I was wrestling
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: with this dilemma of Holly being a prostitute, I thought
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: about my grandmother and all the people who cast stones
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: on her from her own church, right, all the hypocrisy,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: and I thought, well, what would what would Jesus do
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: if he was sitting here wondering about Hollywood lawn? And
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, he just love her the way she is.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: That kind of resolved it. I thought, who are you to,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: little Midwestern prude? You know? And so basically I thought, well,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: maybe me and Holly will make this movie and I'll
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: do some good for her and she won't have to prostitute.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: But then she took off when back to Florida, and
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: you didn't even know you tried calling her, You called
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: her at her she was living at a place in Hollywood,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: wasn't paying the rent? I think, right, Oh God.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: I had no idea that Holly was just going through
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible time. She was in financial straits, and yeah.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: She wasn't fond of a nine to five job.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: No, well, she couldn't assimilate into that kind of culture.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And you know what I learned from Holly is like,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: not a lot of people can. I could, and I
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: would go into that role when I had to pay
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the bills.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: That's why I worked in public relations for a while.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I worked in advertising. But if I listen if I
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: if I could, I'd stay home and write, you know,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: plays all day or screenplays or whatever.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Podcast. We'll be back after this short pause.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Hold your breath for the dynamic duo.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Well, you track her down night, this is the year
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. You tell her, Look, I got this
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: great idea. I want to write a book about your life.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Let's do this. And at some point there's this suggestion
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: that maybe she should go to therapy. If you could
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: talk about that, because this was the book wasn't going
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: to get into some pretty deep territory with her personal life,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: and that was something that she kind of scoffed at that.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: And then you eventually find out there's a moment when
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: she loses her apartment key and that triggered something deep
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: from her past, and she really lost it. Talk about
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: some of the difficulties she went through as a child
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: and as a teenager.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Well, when we first came together and we're having our
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: very first meeting in the literary agent's office, I wasn't
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: even I wasn't even associated with this project yet as
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: a writer. I was just a person who was bringing
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Holly in. I mean, I wanted to write it, but
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I hadn't been officially brought on or hired anyway. The
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: junior agent suggested that Holly go into therapy. He said,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: you know, you might want to go into therapy because
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: you know, writing your life story can drum up some
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: bad shit. I remember when I was driving Holly home
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: that night after the meeting, she just said, Ah, I
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: don't want this book to be woe was me dragged.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: I don't want to go to therapy. You know, this
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: is this is not supposed to be some deep you know.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: She didn't want to make it like this big cycle analytical.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: Because she used humor to diffuse that too, right, she would.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Holly had a great sense of humor.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: That was her way of dealing with that, dealing.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: With all the pain, right, and she wanted this book
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: to be hilarious. She loved the movie Annie Mame. She
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: loved the movie. The book Anti Mame was written by
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Patrick Dennis. He also wrote a very funny book called
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Little Me. That's the tone she wanted. She wanted something
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: mad cap, crazy, outrageous and just fun because in Holly's
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: own story there's some real dark shit. You know, she
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: runs away from home, like around the age of fifteen,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: hits the street of Times Square and has to prostitute
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: herself as a child prostitute to live. That's every parent's nightmare.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: That's horrible.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: What was the connection to when she lost the key
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: that triggered something?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I'd come home for lunch and I found Holly standing
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: outside her apartment door. We lived next door to each
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: other by this time, and she was just like despondent,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: and I remember I just went up to her. I said,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: what's going on? And she said, I can't get into
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: my apartment I've lost my key. And I'm like what,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: And she had an emotional meltdown and started crying, and
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I mean sobbing to the I couldn't really understand what
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: she was saying. And the neighbor who lived across the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: hall came out to see what was going on, and
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: I remember her trying to comfort Holly, and Holly saying,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: you don't understand yelling at me. You don't understand how much,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: how how many times this happened to me in New York.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, I'm in shock because I've never seen
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: this before. And I'm thinking, well, why don't we just
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: go downstairs to Bob the apartment building manager and have
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: him let you in. But she couldn't figure that. I mean,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know what was going on there. So I
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: went down, got Bob. We got the apartment door open.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Her key had fallen down the elevator shaft, and you know,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: we called Bob, called the elevator company and had a retrieved.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: But I think it was you know, Holly never had
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: a place of her own. Well, she did later, but
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: for the most part when she was living in New York,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Holly was you know, surfing on couches. She lived with people,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and she also stole from people. You can ask Michael
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Musto about that. Really, yeah, he uh remembers Holly staying
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: with him and then helping herself to some of his cash. Holly,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Holly was desperate and she had to do what she
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: had to do to survive and to eat. Now this
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: is when me in hollywoodlawn differ because I would just
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: go out and hustle up a job. But I think Holly,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: because of her situation, because of the way she looked,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: because of the drugs she was doing, no one was
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: going to hire her. You know what I mean. I
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: mean for talking in the early seventies, when she was
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: her late sixties early seventies, when she she looked pretty haggard.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I mean her teeth were kind of riding on one side, and.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she sneezed in the oh lord, her teeth, her
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: top front teeth just flew out.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: When Holly and I first met, I always marveled at
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: her smile. Holly had the most beautiful smile, and I'm
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: a sucker for smiles. I love smiles. And I remember
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: just complimenting her on that beautiful smile. And when she
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: got dressed up as Hollywoodlawn superstar and she was in
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: her wig and her heels and all her makeup, she
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: was a knockout. That was an amazing transformation. But one
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: night we'd come back from a party and she we
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: were in the hall. She was getting her keys, trying
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: to get into the apartment door, and she sneezed and
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: her teeth flew out of her mouth and hit the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: wall the uppers, and I was flowing on like what
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the hell just happened? And I said what, what? Just
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: what's going on here? And she said, well, I did
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: be Honey, what do you think my teeth fell out?
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I was horrified.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Podcasts we'll be back after this, Hey, I won't be long.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Jeff Copeland is the author of the new book Love
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: You Madly, Hollywood Lawn, I'll Walk on the wild Side
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: with Andy Warhol's most fabulous Superstar. You cared about her
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: a lot. This was a friend. You wanted to help her,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: and you say, look, you're gonna get a job. Let's go,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: We're getting you a job. And you found her a
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: job which was like the perfect place for her to work.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: The reason why I had to get her a job
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: is because Holly started drinking. I didn't realize Holly had
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: an alcohol problem. Well, when that challenge presented itself, I
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: realized she needed some stability and she needed routine. And
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I thought, she's got to get a job. And there
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: was a place on Melrose called Wacko, And that was
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: this quirky little gift shop where a lot of fun,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: cool people worked, like rockers, you know, kids who were
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: studying at the rock and roll school in Hollywood on Rockers.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: All the people who couldn't fit in with the mainstream
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: were working at Wacko. And I thought, this is where
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Holly's gonna fit in. They're not going to freak out
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: that she doesn't look like a regular guy. She's androgynist.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: They're gonna dig it because she's Holly from Lou Reed's classic. Yeah,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: they're gonna na business, right, And so I just hustled
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: her down to Wacko and I introduced her to the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: store manager and he hired her on the spot. Now,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: the interesting thing is his name was Gorilla Rose. That
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: was his stage name. His real name was Michael Ferris,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: but everyone called him Gorilla. And Gorilla was a former
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: coquette in San Francisco and he had moved to New
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: York City and he was part of that underground scene,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: so he knew who Hollywood Lawn was.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: What is a cockcat? Explain?
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Okay? So a cockct it ah. It was a drag
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: troupe in San Francisco back I think it was in
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the late sixties early seventies. Sylvester the disco artist performed
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: with them and Gorilla. Before he joined up with that group,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: he was part of another group in Seattle called I
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: believe they were the whiz Kids, which was formed by
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Tomato do plenty. Gorilla was part of that that culture.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: The Cockettes had their own little commune and they would
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: put on these crazy drug infused shows, shows basically.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: And you had some great times while working on the book.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: There's a photo caption that reads, pouring money, but rich
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: in laughter and good times. We were also hopeful and
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: optimistic that we'd hit the big time memories that will
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: last a lifetime. What stands out to you most about
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: those days working on the book and waiting and hoping
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: it's a hit.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: The best time was after we got the book contract
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: with Saint Martin's Press, Because by you know, you have
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: a book contract, you know that in a year this
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: book is coming out. I mean, I had the pressure
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: to write it. I had never written a book before,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: and we were contracted to turn into you know, four
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: hundred pages, so that was a huge responsibility. But having
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that that was security. I still had to work, Holly
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: still had to work, you know, but we had so
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: much fun. We would we would. Our favorite place to
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: eat was there was Rafalo's Pizza Parlor and Hall would.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: We were always going there, hanging out. We were always
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: hanging out at the French Quarter restaurant. And then when
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: word got out that hollywoods in town working on her book,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: we started getting these wonderful party invitations and Some of
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: the best were thrown by Ali Willis, who was a
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: major songwriter composer. She did Boogie Wonderland was one of hers.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: She did a songs for the Beverly Hills cop soundtrack,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: turn It Up, Patti LaBelle. Oh yeah. Alie Willis was
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a major force in the music world, and so we
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: would go to her house over in North Hollywood. She'd
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: be having these parties and all these incredible celebrities would
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: be there, like just huge, you know.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how many famous rockers were there?
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: I know they were. They had to be rock stars
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: there because she was in the muse sick industry. I
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: know Mark Mother's law from Devo would have been there, yeah,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: because she worked with him. But you know, I look
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: back at it and it's such a blur because there
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: were so many people and it was overwhelming. You know.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: I was here. I was with Hollywood Lawn, riding on
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: her coattails as a superstar. Yet I'm working a day
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: job at an advertising company and riding a low life
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: and high heels at night.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: Two different worlds, two different worlds.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: I was burning the candle at both ends, and it
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: was a lot for me to you know, we didn't
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: have iPhones then where I could just start snapping selfies
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: with people. But there are videos of Ali's parties on YouTube,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: so that's pretty cool.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Oh really, I didn't know that. There's a photo in
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: the book April nineteen ninety you write, quote, the most
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: fun I've ever had in an airplane, drunk and carrying
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: on and posing for photos of the crew. The other
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: passengers must have thought we were nuts. What happened on
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: that flight?
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was fantastic. We had to go to New
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: York because one we wanted to meet with our editor,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Michael Dennini at Saint Martin's Press, but also we needed
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to do it was a research trip because we needed
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: to write four hundred pages and I needed more memories.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: And Holly couldn't remember a lot from Max's Kansas City
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: because you know, she was pie eyed. So what we
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: did was I interviewed her friends and oh my god,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the memories they shared were fantastic, and so that helped
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: fill out certain chapters in the book. But when we
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: got on that airplane, Holly was not in a good mood.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: You know, we had to get up extra early in
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the morning. She was just kind of pissed off. And
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: grumpy and you know, stupid me. We don't have a
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: lot of money. I'm trying to conserve my cash. So
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: I smuggled a little tiny bottle of vodka on the
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: plane that I was going to pour my orange juice
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: because I I had flying anxiety, you know, I was
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: a nervous wreck. So the stewardess saw me spiking my
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: my orange juice and she she got real stern and
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: she said, you know, you can get arrested for that,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: and so she confiscated it. I felt terrible, and I
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: was so embarrassed, and Holly got a little pissed off
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: when she had come back the stewardess, I just said, hey,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I'm really sorry about that. You know, we're so we're
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: really excited because we're going to New York to meet
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: our our publisher and editor. And this is my friend
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Hollywood lawnch she's an Andy Warhol superstar and she was
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: in you know lou Reids say about.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: To sneak that in.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: Well, you know that just paved the.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Way instant, yeah.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Right, and so these suddenly the stewardess is once word
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: got out that Holly was this underground celebrity from New
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: York associated with Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, and well they
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: just started bringing bottles of chardon A.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Loved the attention that lost.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Loved it. And I had my camera with me, little
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: portable and stomatic thing, and the stewardess has invited us,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: invited us up into their galley and we were taking pictures. Now,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: me and Holly were so fucking drunk. I mean it
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: was I looked back, I look at that now, and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I think that's embarrassing, you know, noneier than fruitcakes, running
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: up and down the aisles, just laughing and carrying on,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you know, drinking our wine.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: And then the book finally comes out, A Low Life
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: in High Heels, the Hollywood Long Story. It's published October
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, too much fanfare or critical success. I
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: was that experience, finally getting the book out and then
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: seeing it received so well.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Well, that was fantastic because it was very validating, you know,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: for me personally. I mean I had been told for
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: years that I couldn't write. You're not going to write
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: for this show. You're just going to get coffee. You
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: can't be a publicist. You're not a good enough writer,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: you know. And my my thing was I don't give
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: two fucks if I'm a good writer or not. The
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: point is, I want to write, and I'm going to write,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: you know, And I knew that I was good with dialogue.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: I had a knack for it. So to have that
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: book come out and to have it be received so
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: well and to get we get fan letters, we got
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: some good reviews. We got one horrible review from a
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: reviewer who actually singled me out, just ripped me to shreds.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Dealing with criticism is just one of those gonna have
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: to deal with it eventually, right.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: You know. I actually kept that review, and I think
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: you have to really grow from it, and you have to.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I took it very seriously. It was very
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: hurt because it was personal. But A Low Life in
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: High Heels was written so quickly there wasn't really time
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: for a lot of rewriting. I did the best I could, right.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: The point is it was a hilarious book. It made
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of people laugh during a very grim time,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: and it made Holly happy and it put her back
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: in the limelight. Sure, so I achieved what I wanted
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: to achieve, you know. And then when I'll tell you
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: what really got attention was. I don't want to talk
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: too much about this, but when Liz Smith wrote that
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Madonna was going to attach yourself to the fright right,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: that's when it went around the world.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Booked on rock podcasts will be back after this. It's
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: infimation time. So you waited for something to happen. Then
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: you waited and you waited. What happened? Because you work
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: so hard on the book, you're there by Holly side
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: through it all. Like I said, you scrubbed your kitchen
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: floor for God's sake. What happened?
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: The big surprise for me was we had worked so
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: hard to get to a certain place, and it seemed
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: like once we got to the top of the mountain,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: our greatest, the greatest success we could have achieved, just
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: suddenly turned on a dime, spiraled out of control and
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: turned into a catastrophic disaster. I mean it was horrible.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: I was thrown under the bus and Holly just spiraled
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: out of control, and it was horrific and it was
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: just awful. My big frustration was I was the one
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: who was there cleaning up Holly shit, making sure she
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: was sober, you know, hauling her around, making sure that
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Holly needed a firm hand to keep her on the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: straight and narrow. She didn't need a drinking buddy, She
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: needed someone who would just anchor her. But I think
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: what really went wrong is the glory of success. Right
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: suddenly her face as an Andy Warhol superstar has been reignited,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: and you've got the most famous woman in the world
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: putting you in a music video. Well, let mee us clarify.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was Madonna's. Which song was which video?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Deeper and deeper, right, deeper and deeper. She's in that video.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Holly's in there, yep.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: But you know what, at the end of the day,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: is that going to pay the rent? Is that going
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to pay your health insurance? Is that going to put
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: food on the table? I mean, how long is that
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: going to last? That glimmer of fame? And I think
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: what was really upsetting was there were a lot of
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Teresa Conboy, who's a good friend of mine, and she
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: worked as Holly's publicist and then eventually Holly's manager. I
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: remember Teresa Conboy saying that one of the other Andy
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Warhol superstars said, you can't expect Holly to get a job.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: You can't expect Holly to work. My attitude is, why
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: the fuck not. What do you mean Holly can't work?
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: This is what keeps Holly sober, a job, responsibility, a
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: sense of purpose. Right, She's got to have a sense
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: of purpose. I think Waco was really good for her
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: because it gave her she was surrounded by these young kids,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: so full of hope, so full of excitement because they're
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: embarking on their careers and their dreams. Right. That was
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: very influential on Holly. But when that all went away
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: and she's surrounded by people who just want a party
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: and just want to be photographed for magazines. Right, that's
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: what let's call them the studio fifty four crowd. Okay,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: what is that going to lead to?
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: You were a real friend, like legitimate friend.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: I was exactly. I was the one who was there
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: with her. I was there for her. I had her back, and.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: She needed someone like you to protect her from some
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: of the sharks in the water that were surrounding her.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly right. But you see what happened was Holly,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you know what, she rejected me Suddenly. I was just
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: too much of a pain in the ass. I was
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: too regimented I was too square.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: I was you know, they got to her. I think, yes,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: it was kind of going back into the old lifestyle
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: and says, I don't I'm good, I'm good on my
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: own right.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: She fell back into her old routine of living with
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: other people, not living on her own. Some of the people, unfortunately,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: weren't good influences. They were bad influences. They were alcoholics
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: who should have been in treatment. It just got worse
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and worse and worse.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: The film project that had Madonna as part of it.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: She was going to profit greatly from it, and she
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: really didn't say, hey, look, Jeff's got to get his
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: part in this, because.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Well, that was the problem, because you know, I went
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: into this deal. I had a very specific deal. You know,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going into this project not being paid and no
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: guarantee it's going to get sold. It's all on spec.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to use that to my advantage. If
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I'm given this much upfront, then I want so much
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: in return. And basically, no one wanted to honor my
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: original deal.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: You wanted to write the script.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I was very upfront. You know the reason why I
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: was writing A low life in high heels is because
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I knew after writing the first chapter it was going
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: to be a fantastic independent film.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: So they wanted somebody else to write the script right.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: And basically what happened was I just bowed out. I said, Okay,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: I wasn't getting anywhere with this, and it was a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: good chunk of money coming from Columbia Pictures, so I
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: just let go with Holly.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: That created a divide between the two of you.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Actually that did well because I loved her. I loved
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Holly so much and I was hurt. But I missed Holly,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I probably had some codependent
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: bullshit going on. I still wanted her to be a friend.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: That's why I got coolerted doing that Gay Pride parade
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: with Michael Greer. That was a fiasco.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: But you know, people are probably curious to what became
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: of that project when Madonna.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Well, you know what, something terrible happened there was this
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: whole It wasn't just one disaster. It was a series
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: of disasters. Okay that just you know, kept happening. But
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: basically what happened was something happened internally, okay with the
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: production company and the deal blew up. It wasn't my fault.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: It wasn't Holly's fault. It really, I don't think it
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: was anybody's fault. Shit like that happens. Projects go into
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: what it's called turnaround and it just fell apart. But
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: by this time, because I think it took about a
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: year to even get the contracts just took forever. Holly
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: was frustrated. Holly needed money because Holly wasn't working a job.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: It went to another production company for a while. I mean,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: it was just like such a can of worms. There
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: was a deal with some really good producers. They had
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: done Natural Born Killers. They were really hot and they
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: wanted to do the project, and so we got involved
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: with a director named Rose Touche j had just made
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: a big hit at Sundance with a film called GoFish.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: So Rose came on board and we actually did do
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: a screenplay adaptation that just pissed Holly off. It missed
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: such a mess, it's like, you know, And then if
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: went into more drama and it was.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Just well, you were even willing to collaborate with another writer?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, But they I mean I wasn't you know,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: I wasn't an egomaniac. Here I didn't want to. I
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: just wanted to get in the writer's guild. I wanted
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: to launch my career, you know. And essentially what happened
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: was it didn't launch my career. And at the age
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: of thirty, after spending all this time and all this energy,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I was bullshit and trying to get this you know
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: book made turned into a movie.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: I was broke because even if you wrote, like you
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: say here, let me write the first draft, I can
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: at least get into the writer's guild.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: That's all I wanted. Yeah, I would have settled for that.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what was just heart wrenching for
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: me is to see everything we had worked to achieve,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: including her stability and her sobriety, all of it just
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: went to hell in a handbasket. And you know, to
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: hear that Holly was broke and struggling and scrounging for cigarettes,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: cigarette butts in the trash or you know, it was
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: just horrible. She wound up living with Teresa Conboy and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: she really Teresa did the best she could and Holly
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: just shit all over her. Holly went into a downward
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: spiral that put us all through the ringer. But I didn't.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I never stopped caring about her. It's funny we had
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: it was such a magical time when we were living
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: at Las Palmas and working on that book. I loved
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: that time we had. It was golden. And I wrote
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Love You Madley Hollywoodlawn, not because I mean I wanted
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: to celebrate Holly and pay tribute to her, but I
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: a record of all those wonderful memories because if I
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: go down the fucking Alzheimer's rabbit hole like my father,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: I can read this book over and over and over again,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: and I might not even know who these people are,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: but I can laugh because the book's pretty funny.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Book on Rock podcast will be back after this.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's like no way that we can just
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: pause for a minute. You guys just go home and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: do your stuff, and then tomorrow we can just like continue.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: It would have been interesting, and I guess Madonna was
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: going to play Ali's role.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Well here's the thing, but Madonna was being courted to
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: play Candy Darling. But Madonna hadn't really, I don't think
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: Madonna had committed to being a producer. I don't think
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: she actually I'm not sure if she even committed to
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: being in the movie. She had been courted and maybe
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: she expressed interest. What happened was, I guess it was
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: many years later Madonna had gotten another one of my stories,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: a story about my childhood. It was called The Long
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Hair Depression, and she called me up on the phone
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: and she gave me a deal on it. Wow, I
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: see this was the big difference. Okay. When me and
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Holly were excited about the Madonna deal on Low Life,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: for some reason, there was all this red tape and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: we couldn't get the contract and we couldn't get the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: option fee, and it was just like a drug out forever.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: But flash forward all these years later when I'm working
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: with Madonna direct it's like, well, sure, here's a check.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: We don't have the contract yet, but it'll come, you know.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: And what happened with that project I went in to development. Hell.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens a lot.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: Huh Yeah.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: The movies that we see when we go to the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: movie theater, there's a long history behind from when it
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: starts to when we finally see it up on the
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: big screen. Huh right.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I wrote a lot of screenplays that
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: all fell in to development. Hell, and when I had
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: to come back and look after my parents. I decided
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to take all those screenplays and I
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: wanted to novelize them and turn them into books. But
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: the first thing I wanted to do before I did
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: that was I wanted to write the book about my
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: experience with Hollywoodlawn. For me, it was taking a really
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: shitty situation and turning it into something positive, because what
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: happened to me in Holly was just awful. I should
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: not have happened.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Her health started decline, she fell on the sidewalk that
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: caused nerve damage and impaired her ability to walk. Her drinking,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: many years of drinking, took its toll. But you did
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: have the chance to see her one last time. In
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. You heard she wasn't going to be around
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: much longer. So if you want to see you better
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: do it now. And you did talk about that.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: So Teresa Convoy and I went to see Holly in
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: her nursing home, which her friends had had gotten for her.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: She was happy to see us and she we walked
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: in and she said, darlings, I've got cancer, you know.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: And I mean she was hilarious, and it's because it
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: was a heartbreaking situation. We knew she was on her
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: way out, but because she had so much energy and
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: she was you know, I thought, well, shit, is she
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: really going to die? Is this really good? I mean,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: is this all a ruse? You know?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: Is this an Andy Kaufman moment? Here?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: She exactly And then I went and saw her again
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: the last time I saw her, and we spent some
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: time together. But it was very hard for me to
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: see Holly in a debilitated state because I felt that
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: it was so sad and that it didn't have to
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: be this way. See, some people just accepted Holly Holly's drinking.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I couldn't. That to me was unacceptable. If I was
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: with Holly, I would have made sure she got in
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: for treatment. I would have done something to curtail this.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have enabled it. And that was the difference.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: That's the big thing. There's so many enablers.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. You know, Holly ran away from
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: home when she was a kid, so I think what
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: was going on there was a sense of arrest and development.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Holly never grew up. How could Holly? Holly was a
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: fifteen year old kid sleeping in doorways and hustling, you know,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: turning tricks on the street to survive. God knows what
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: kind of horrible situation that was like. And I think
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: that did something to Holly. And I think that in
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: this day and age, when we have diversity an inclusion
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: being thrown out right and treated as if it doesn't matter.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I think if Holly, when I think about both of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: our childhoods, if we had grown up feeling that we
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: were valued and supported by the culture. You see, if
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: you're a gay kid and you're growing up in the fifties, sixties,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: seventies or whatever, you know, and people are telling you
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: you should be ashamed and what are you? And now
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't go through that with my parents. Had Holly
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: been encouraged and supported as a child to be who
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: he really was or she really was, because at that
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: time he was a boy, I think Holly would have
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: probably studied theater, maybe gone to college, maybe would have worked.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Holly did go into theater, but Holly want to prostitute.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: And I don't know. I wrestle what would have happened
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: to Holly if Holly had grown up in a supportive culture,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: a culture that valued people for their differences and didn't
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: condemn them.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: How do you think she should be remembered.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I think Holly should be remembered for her her
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: wonderful sense of humor and her endearing charm, because Holly,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, was lovely, just a wonderful when you it's
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: so funny, because Holly was a wonderful person, but a
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: challenged and troubled person, Okay. And I just think that
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: she should be remembered for her contributions to underground cinema.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: But I just loved that.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: I loved her sense of humor and the fact that
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: she wanted to make people laugh so much. And that's
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: why A Low Life and High Heels was written in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: the tone that it has.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: And till her dying day, she hoped that the book
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: would eventually be turned into a film. Do you see
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: a day that may happen?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Okay? So you know what to me, that is it
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: just pains my heart thinking that if that happens, Okay,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be part of it. And the
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: reason I don't want to be part of it is
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: because Holly is not here to enjoy it. And with
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Holly not here to enjoy it, there's no joy for me.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I wanted her to have
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: that and it didn't happen, and that's just crushing. It's
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: just terrible. So I would rather see Love You Madly
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: Hollywoodlawn wind up on the Broadway stage. That, to me
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: would be great. But the whole Hollywood thing development hell, ugh,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: that to me is just one more nightmare I don't
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: want to be part of.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: Hey, the book is there for people to read? Is
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: it still in publication?
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Oh? A low life in high Heels. Yeah, it's out
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: of print, but you can buy it on eBay for
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: about two hundred bucks.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Okay, what would it take to bring it
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: back just so people can buy it anywhere they will
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: get their books.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I got the rights back to it, Okay. Farrel House,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Christina Ward at Farrell House.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: Christina is great. She's set up so many great interviews.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: He's a love and she's a big champion of Hollywood Lawn,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: and I think she's interested in bringing that out so
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: people can access it at a reasonable price.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: That would be fantastic. Yeah, But in the meantime, Love
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: You Madly Hollywood Lawn A Walk on the wild Side
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: with Andy Warhol's most fabulous superstar So this is out
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: now right. People can get it whoever books are sold. Yeah,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: came out through Feral House. It's on Amazon. But also
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: visit your local bookstore because if it's there, grab a copy,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: and if it's not, tell them to get a copy.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: And you can.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: Support your indie your indie bookstores.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could search for your local bookstore. Booked on
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: rock dot com. And where can people find you online? Jeff?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: You know what, I've got my own love you Madly
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Lawn YouTube channel and my own love you Madly
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Lawn Facebook group page.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, you can send those links to me if you'd like.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: I'll put it in the show notes page.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: Well, that's great.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Thank you Jeff Copeland, Thank you Eric.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: This has been a huge pleasure. Thank you very much.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: That's it. It's in the books.