High life
Status quo
Taki
Los Angeles Los Angeles The last time I was in the city of angels was in 1972. I had just finished a three- Month stint in Vietnam, and thought a
week's rest and relaxation in the city that tf!lakes every cliche come true might be good Failedine. That was the year that a trained seal Warren Beatty decided he should become the sexual symbol behind the White Muse, become the sexual symbol behind the White Muse, and was fund-raising for
Govern. Now, 12 years later, the trained "Cas at it again. This time he's campag frnr arY Heartpenny. But I'm getting away .(''111 my story, which is about Los Angeles, not about a radical-chic trained seal who thinks he understands politics. s; new out here in order to tape a televi- ibn show in conjunction with my nuclear 3)11Ysies book. The publishers had me thilleted in the Beverly Hills Hotel, a place w,at,even a sybarite like Farouk of Egypt Anthony-1-11€1 fiposh. It is also the place where epitome Haden-Guest is thought of as the Charles of England's aristocrats, and akarles Benson as a multi-millionaire. "eY even think that Sebastian Taylor Pent t° an English public school.) Well, arn.not
surprised. I'd believe that Benson is
aced are too if I lived in a city that calls iocars iexperienced' and garbage collet
sanitary engineers'. belki 'though I had been to El Lay twice city I had forgotten that walking in the
Colour is akin to streaking during Trooping the ac`inur. -imply not done. People drive ,4°1 ss the street, and Beverly Hills has
Derr Parking everywhere. (This service is
rnad°r.in.ed by people who have not as yet e it in the flicks, and who park your car Statheiti. Pull up. For a price, of course.) "s is What Hollywood is all about, and
everywhere one looks there are status sym- bols to remind one that the rat-race is on. I saw kids driving to school in their BMWs and Mercedes, and heard a major movie mogul castigate a newly arrived hack for saying he 'had lunch', rather than the ac- cepted 'did lunch'. Needless to say, the greatest status symbol is the home, as they call a house out here. One simply never buys just a home. One buys somebody's former home. The same applies to dentists. One doesn't go to any dentist. One goes to Jack's, Burt's, or Liza's. Ditto where ton- sorial parlours are concerned. Even stock brokerage firms. The most important people in Hollywood and its environs are the head waiters of the few chic restaurants that do not serve macrobiotic food. The head waiters wield more power than any movie biggie by hav- ing the final word on the ultimate status symbol, the luncheon table. A good table means more in Hollywood than talent, money, looks, or — God forbid — in- telligence. In the inferno of unrelenting egos that is lotus-land, a bad table is com- mensurate with a social death sentence. There is Morton's, Ma Maison, Chasen's, and The Bistro. My first night I went to Morton's, where the Greek head waiter greeted me like a long-lost brother. 'I need to talk to you,' he whispered to me in our native language. 'Nobody here speaks because they're afraid they might get wrinkles around the mouth.'
When I rang Jon Bradshaw, a writer friend of mine, I was told he was hard at work. Bradshaw has been working on a book about a blues singer for seven years now. A film is about to be released of the blues singer's life. After the titles there is a notice, 'Soon to be a major book'. Talk about lotus-eaters, there are none. Lotuses, that is. The writers who come out here to 'Try as I will, I can find no room for self- improvemen t.' work have eaten them all.
Writers who are too incompetent to make a living in London or New York are re- duced to earning £150,000 a year in Holly- wood writing 'treatments'. Screen-writers watch TV movies and then sit down and write variations on the theme of what they have seen. Once upon a time writers in Hollywood actually got their inspiration from reading books. A friend of mine told me that writers in New York turn into cockroaches, which at least survive — in Los Angeles they turn into avocados and rot.
Still, without the people it would be a hell of a place. A very clean place, I may add. Throw a paper hankie out of your Rolls, and you can get $1,000 fine. I worked out that the sprinkling system of Los Angeles is worth more than the oil deposits off its coast. Much more, in fact. And if it weren't for the tall hedges that keep pools apart, I could have swum from one end of Beverly Hills to the other. And that is what the peo- ple do all day. Swim in their pools. When Bradshaw showed me the 7,000 words he had written in seven years, while lazing around his pool, I rushed to the airport. Three days in Beverly Hills could make a sybarite of me too.
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