Angela Goes to Hollywood

So, let me backtrack and explain how a Jersey girl with big hair and a penchant for diner French Fries smothered in gravy ended up in L.A. at more than one raw-food dinner party where I was so desperate for something cooked that I snuck into the bathroom with a tiny pile of vegetables I’d never even heard of and held it under the blowdryer for 5 minutes.

Ever since I perfected the Wonder Woman spin while watching Linda Carter lasso the bad guys and deflect bullets with her bling, I knew I wanted to create characters and build stories around their lives. I also knew to do that in a visual medium, I should live where showbusiness lived: Los Angeles.

When the timing seemed right, I sold my house and headed west. I rented an apartment near a newsstand and a Coffee Bean and moved in with my 2 cats (1, if my landlord is reading this). I didn’t know anyone here.  All I had was some savings and an earnest desire to become a screenwriter. I had no idea how to make that happen. But, I figured geographic desirability was a plus in case a Busy and Important Industry Person heard about my extensive background in television and film writing watching and wanted to meet with me post-haste.

When I arrived, I broke a sweat praying for some type of lucrative, non-specific, show biz deal involving a bidding war and a hometown parade whenever I deplaned at Newark Airport for a visit with the folks.  When, surprisingly, that didn’t happen within the first two weeks, I decided to seek employment.  A steady “just waiting for my big break” income would keep ink in my printer, allow me to take lots of writing classes, and give me hope that I’d be able to trade in my windshield-wiper, horn, and radio volume control – challenged vehicle for a ride that wouldn’t traumatize me with car shame whenever I valet parked in Beverly Hills.

The first stop in my quest for a paycheck was a swanky, celebrity – frequented eatery/drinkery. I hadn’t waited tables in more than 15 years, but I knew it was a critical chapter in the Hollywood success story.

For over an hour, I explained to ascending restaurant managers how my reporting skills, honed in Florida covering fireworks accidents and family gunplay injuries during holiday barbeques, would translate to the food service industry. After all , what is a server but an interviewer anyway? Instead of knocking on doors asking which Baby Daddy showed up drunk and set fire to his restraining order with a Bottle Rocket and pack of Camels, I’d be delicately questioning customers about their choice of side dish.  And, those off-the-cuff  live shots could come in handy if there was ever a catering crisis, i.e., “Ma’am, there’s breaking news from the kitchen. We’ve just run out of scallops.”

The restaurant uniform consisted of a shin-to-chin, stiff, shapeless, beige-on-beige ensemble that they could have saved money on by cutting head and hand holes out of a refrigerator box.  And, I’d have to wear flat shoes and minimal make-up!

Through mascara-ed false eyelashes and enough eyeliner to reproduce a Jackson Pollack exhibit, I self-consciously surveyed my leopard print peep-toe pumps and shiny, off-the-shoulder sweater that I reverently chose as homage to the Patron Saint of New Jersey Mall (“Mawl” in Jersey-speak) Fashion: Carmela Soprano.

I was further informed that many movie-star clients didn’t want to be bothered and that communication between the glitterati and the bitterati was not on the menu. Apparently, a certain blockbuster action hero would sit solemnly at the bar and not glance at the help. (Who could blame him? His corneas could survive two hours of explosions, but looking at those uniforms could cause serious ocular trauma.)

When the interview concluded, I was directed to the employee exit where I carefully navigated the chipped floor tile leading to a dank, decrepit staircase that hadn’t seen a workman’s trowel since 1949. I tentatively teetered up the slanty, moldy steps convinced that I would emerge, not onto the pristine sidewalk of Burton Way, but at the final resting place of the vampire Nosferatu.

Clutching my Confirmation Rosary Beads and a Vitamin Shoppe garlic tablet dug up from the bottom of my purse, I rethought my romantic notion of serving drinks to saturnine celebs by night and slaving over a hot lap top by day. Longing for a well-lit lobby that wasn’t off limits to the great unwashed and a job that didn’t mind lip gloss shiny enough for its reflection to guide in the Space Shuttle, I hoped that something else was in store for me.

Was it ever!