Literature In Los Angeles

Archive for the ‘HOLLYWOOD’ Category

NORMA JEANE

In HOLLYWOOD, POETRY on October 12, 2020 at 3:01 pm

Poem by Kiana Madani.

I have done something

To make you despise me,

I am both at your mercy and at your discretion,

A template for the life you have not lived.

All I ever wanted was to have your hearts,

And to share mine with you,

In the end – it’s all we ever have.

To have these desires,

Is it’s own form of cruel punishment

When the people you love,

Often don’t love you back

Poem by Kiana Madani.

Photo by Kelly Klein.

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HOLLYWOODLAND

In HOLLYWOOD, POETRY on May 8, 2020 at 6:31 am

Poem by Kiana Madani.

Elvis and Priscilla

I am cracking open

And I am stronger than you know

I have been on that open road

With nothing to grasp

With nothing to see

But the mountains holding hands with the horizon

And the infinity of the stars in my eyes

Poem by Kiana Madani.

Photo: Elvis & Priscilla, April 1966.

ACTRESS

In HOLLYWOOD on December 20, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Liliana Isella about playing in “Happily Whatever After” at The Next Stage Theater in Hollywood.
LillyIsellaKiira

Being a dreamer is a weird, tough, stellar and tragic place to be. Hollywood, is where that place becomes real. And the dreamer becomes true.

I don’t think that these years in LA, the silly job as hostess, the why do I do this?!? dance classes, the writing (why do I do this?!? n.2), the multiple obsessions, the yes and the nos, the angels and the monsters would feel the hot and the deep they feel right now if I didn’t start acting class, get into this play right away and spend some real, quality time in Hollywood. The Hollywood streets, not the hills.
The only regret I have is that I didn’t pick up acting before; I was ashamed of being “another actress” in Hollywood. Yes, it is definitely something to be ashamed of. And, I’m so proud of it!
Let’s just talk about last night, for example. My two friends who came to see me, Hillary and Katie, confessed me that, under a series of hilarious-beyond-believable coincidences, at first thought that the theater where I play, The Next Stage Theater, was a shady cover for “porn movies” and I had been “coerced” and I was “getting fucked backstage”. OMG, 3 am in the middle of the night, after a huge pizza—me, who would never eat and sleep that late unless dirty Hollywood is involved—I went to bed still laughing at this and I did the same this morning, first thing when I opened my eyes.
Two hours earlier, 1 am, let’s watch this: the homeless guys who live right around the corner from the theater, the ones that when I walk by during the day sleep and smoke and then sleep again and pee in their pants and I have to jump over their pee to make it to the theater, were serenading us with a guitar and a Christmas song. It was the first time I was seeing them alive and smiling and didn’t feel my heart cramping while looking at them wondering if they are ODing right there, on that dirty sidewalk, under my “pee leaps”.
One hour and a half earlier, 11.30 pm: the cool (“cool” for that Sunset-La Brea block standards) bar my friends took me to after the show, The Woods, has nothing but the same name of the place where the Cinderella’s Stepmother I play in the theater upstairs lives. But, looking around the bar, I’ve decided that I’d rather live in my character’s woods, than in that bar. Supposedly, in her woods there is a Nobleman to seduce and marry at any cost; in that bar, instead….
And, what about the handsome, harmless, hopeless young man wearing a “Fatal” t-shirt getting arrested for stealing a kid bike?!? That happened right in front of me while walking to the theater before the show, six hours earlier, 9 pm. For a second I thought that the sirens and the cops suddenly cutting my way were after me! But then I noticed the “fatal” figure and… I got it. I mean, how can you even hope to not get busted if you are a 5′ 10″ man walking down La Brea holding a tiny kid bike you just stole?!? Oh boy… fatal, he was and, indeed, fated. So beautiful, so vulnerable, so trapped. God bless him.
And then, this morning, back to “normal”. The clean and neat streets of Santa Monica, the English grace, wit and impeccability of Ballet Mistress Margaret Hill’s ballet class at Westside Academy, the Christmas shopping under a VIP sun on the Third Street Promenade… and last night feels like it never happened. But, it did. Because, since then, an obsessive thought has been following me up to here: this town belongs to no one—no one!—no one but the lost, the lonely, the hungry, the dreamer.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Photo: Liliana Isella by Angela Marklew.

Info about the play Happily Whatever After:

The Next Stage Theater
1523 N. La Brea Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90028
(theater upstairs, valet parking $3)

Dates:
12/12/2013 @ 9.30 pm
12/19/2013 @ 9.30 pm
01/02/2014 @ 9.30 pm
01/09/2014 @ 9.30 pm
01/16/2014 @ 8 pm
01/23/2014 @ 8 pm
01/30/2014 @ 8pm
02/06/2014 @ 8 pm

GEENA

In HOLLYWOOD, LA LADIES, LITERARY FICTION, LOS ANGELES, ROCK'N'ROLL on May 12, 2010 at 4:22 pm

Story by Liliana Isella.

Woman you’re a mess
gonna die in your sleep…*

There was something, about this girl.

This Afro-American girl, Geena, was totally into the party scene and totally into the rock ’n’ roll scene. She was a groupie; a while ago, she had traveled on the tour bus with a pretty famous local band a few times. The first time was when she was dating the bass player; the second, when she was dating the singer. The third time, I guess she was dating the lighting technician, but I am not sure—maybe it was the sounding technician, instead.

She was also totally into the drug scene, but totally healthy enough to hike every morning up to the Hollywood Hills. She used to make this daily effort ‘cause hiking is totally a Hollywood thing and she was totally a Hollywood girl.

And, above all, she was an actress. Totally.

Excuse me if I am using all these “totally” but, for a little while, I was totally sucked into the memory of her quick way of speaking that was full of all these “totally.”

The vision of the black and fuchsia highlights all through her long, bleach-blonde hair was confusing, especially because of the contrast with her dark skin. And there was something weird also about her disarticulated thin limbs, about her big, black eyes, about her too linear eyebrows and about her red, full, juicy lips.

Watching her was a totally capturing experience. There was something disturbing about her figure, but still, you just couldn’t stop looking at her when she was talking about the fake ID she got to get into the clubs because she’s under age, or when she was talking about the twenty empty bottles of vodka her landlord took out of her trash and set in front of her door in the attempt “to show me what? That I am an alcoholic? Of course, I am not, motherfucker!” or,  when she was talking about her ex-model boyfriend that “…left for London to shoot this commercial, and after that we were supposed to move in together in a luxury 1940s condo just off Hollywood Boulevard, the same condo Veronica Lake had lived in for a certain time—he had promised it—but over there, some fucking where in Europe, he met this girl, this Burberry’s heiress, and I do not know how—but I think because of her money, what else would it be? I mean, he loved me, he still loves me. Totally—they got engaged, and… and I just can’t believe it. Really.
A common friend, another model that was there shooting the same commercial with him, said that the week before that my boyfriend got engaged to that bitch, one evening they had gone out all together for a few beers in a pub and my boyfriend was showing her pictures of me and… and, after that, I don’t know what the fuck that bitch put in his mind. I don’t know, but I know that he did not come back anymore, not to me at least, maybe to L.A.; but who knows where, in L.A. He just didn’t answer the phone anymore, not even the million times I tried to call him with the blocked number—maybe he knew it was me.
Fuck…. He was gone, totally gone, and he stayed so for a long while.
Until, the other day.
The other day, the sun was hot and it was just a shining afternoon and I was going to the Chateau Marmont to have drinks by the pool with this guy, Randy, this thirty-something producer from the East Coast that was in town for the Oscars.
I was in my car on Sunset Boulevard. I was almost there, almost at the hotel, and just one block before, the light turned red. I stopped my car and… and… and, under that blinding sun, I turned my eyes up, and… and he was there! I mean, my boyfriend was there! I saw him!
I saw my boyfriend for the first time after he had left for London to shoot that fucking commercial! He was standing there, under the blinding sun, looking at me. Can you believe this?
He was staring at me! He was staring at me from the big Armani’s advertisement on the Sunset Strip, the one next to the hotel. Fuck, I couldn’t believe that. I just couldn’t. I broke down, totally.
I mean, I was almost there, so I didn’t give up on my drinks with the producer, because I am an actress and hanging out with the right people in the right places is my job, even when I am totally broken inside.
Once I met with the producer I tried to forget I had seen my boyfriend on that poster just a few minutes earlier and I tried to make an impression on him, no matter what.
And, I think I did, but… I mean, the sex was totally great, especially the blow job I gave him in the Jacuzzi—“the best blow job ever, baby”, he said. He liked also my new boobies. You wanna see them? He wanted to fuck them. I liked it. I grabbed his dick and I started sucking and licking it like I hadn’t drunk or eaten for days. Then with my hand I grabbed his neck—with the other one I was still holding his cock—to make him look at me while I was sucking and I looked into his eyes like I never had something so tasty in my mouth in my whole life and… and he came in my mouth.
He loved it. I learned how to please any cock from a movie my ex boyfriend, the one I was with before my boyfriend, showed me.
My ex-boyfriend was performing in it with a hole he had just hired to shoot this educational video for all the chicks he was dating. He wanted to make sure that any slut who craved his cock was able to suck it properly, he said.
But, the perfect blowjob I gave the producer in the Jacuzzi comes with another secret: for the all the time, I imagined the producer was my boyfriend. I had the vision of his stunning body in front of me, like in the picture of the big Armani ad on the Sunset Strip.
Not even the three Martini Vodkas in a row the producer bought me before the blowjob, or the two Sex On The Beach I had right after, saved me from thinking about my boyfriend: it kept coming to my mind that maybe he took her to Paris, the city we were dreaming of getting married in.
I mean, it was too much to think about. So, after the blowjob, I totally broke down and cried in front of the producer and he got kind of mad like, “…what’s wrong with you? I thought we were having some fun….”
I tried to be like, “We are, honey, totally….”
But, right after I broke down again, he asked me to leave; he said he had forgotten about a meeting he had to join in a little while.
Though, before he left, I came out of the Jacuzzi and, while I was wrapping myself in one of the hotel’s towel, I asked him, “Am I still ok for that part in that movie?” and he said, “I’ll call you, baby, ok?”
So, at least, I will be in something soon—as soon as he calls me.
My boyfriend will see me somewhere as I saw him on the big Armani advertisement on the Sunset Strip and he will remember what I look like and he will regret that he left me and he will feel the urge to call me and…. And I’m sorry, but it will be too late because, by that time, I will be someone, and I won’t be there thinking of him, drinking for him and crying for him; not anymore… totally not.”

Yes, there was something disturbing about her figure, but still, you just couldn’t stop looking at her when she was talking about this new drug called “speed” all of her friends—and herself—are into. When she was talking about how she would like to take a break from alcohol to make it big as an actress, but she said it is just the acting thing, all those auditions that seem to lead her nowhere, that makes her drink. When she was talking about how she would let the cocaine out of the picture, but she said the coke is just what she needs to stay sober from drinking. When she was talking about how her mother, that is married to someone in Colorado, calls her “all the time, just to make sure I don’t go to sleep too late at night… but we always end up getting so mad to each other.”

There were so, so many other things she was talking about. And, even if they were making no sense at all, you couldn’t stop listening to her. You couldn’t stop watching her.

There was something, about this girl.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Photo: Model Chanel Iman.

____________________________________________________

* Once Bitten Twice Shy by Great White.

 

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