It was a nightmare, but I was in serious need of cash and desperate times call for desperate measures. So I decided to go for it. I didn’t sleep at all the night before the interview. It was awful. When I woke up in the morning, I put on a bathing suit and some jean shorts, which was the skimpiest outfit I could find, gave myself a pep talk, and drove down there. The interview was degrading on every fucking level. But I knew I had to act the part to get the job, and by “act the part” I mean show off my sweater puppies. Basically, I got the job right when I walked into the office. No shocker, seeing as my momma’s spongecakes were bigger than EVERYONE ELSE’S in the whole place! I barely had to open my mouth before the dude was like, “Sure! We’ll give you a job!”
He then took out a Hooters uniform to talk to me about sizes. Sensing that I had a little bit of leverage in the situation (and by leverage I mean more than two handfuls of leverage), I played a little hard-to-get. “Here’s the thing—I’m not comfortable wearing that,” I said bluntly. You know, the minuscule white tank and orange shorts. The guy looked at me like I was out of my fucking mind, as I sat there in front of him with my funbags in his face. You would have thought that I’d just told him we lived on Mars and his penis was actually a coin purse (which is ridiculous because everyone knows that’s what your balls are).
“This is the uniform that all of our girls wear,” he said.
“I get that. What jobs do you have available where the girls don’t wear that?” I asked.
Still stunned, he said, “Ummm … Okayyyy? How about we make you our hostess? They wear white tennis shorts and a polo shirt.”
“I’ll take it!” I replied.
Did I look like Blair O’Neal’s awkward little sister? Yes! But it was better than the alternative and I was officially employed.
So there I was: a hostess at Hooters. It was my first successful negotiation. I thanked my lucky stars every day that I was not a waitress working at that place. It was horrifying watching the way people treat the waitresses! For me, working there turned out to be an incredible societal experiment on the power of paw patties. I noticed that people judged you immediately on the size of your milk cans and how tight your shirt was. What I wasn’t prepared for was that the MOST judgmental people were the women. I couldn’t believe it. They would come in and just act disgusted toward all of us, like we had made them come into the restaurant and made them stare at our cha-chas. They made snide remarks under their breath about “getting a real job” and “having some respect for yourself” and “How the fuck can you even work here?” but still those same women came in every day to eat lunch. I couldn’t quite figure it out. The female employees of Hooters are a tough bunch of women just trying to make an honest buck. The way I see it, if you can deal with that place every day, you can deal with fucking anything life throws at you!
The male customers weren’t much better, either, and the managers were scumbags. It was as if we were at a Caligulan grab-ass tournament run by a group of hormonal teenagers on a power trip. I heard rumors about girls who would get cornered by the bosses in the back room and end up sleeping with them, thinking that’s how to get a leg up at the restaurant. (Word to the wise: a leg up gets you further, two legs up gets you fucked!) Luckily, none of that happened to me. By then I had developed a higher tolerance for that sort of harassment, having dealt with my décolletage constantly from such an early age. So when anyone made cruder than normal comments about my Gerber-servers, I’d say, “Thank you!” with a smile, and then seat them at the table closest to the shitter. Why do I call it the shitter? Because on any average day, those toilets were the victims of T.S.R. (Toilet Shit Rape.) What people were doing in there after gobbling up twenty-five Original Hooters Style hot wings and a pitcher of beer was nothing short of a fecal sexual assault. You could file charges. It was fucking gross. Trust me when I tell you, you’d rather rub your naked body against a peep show booth’s wall on “all you can pud” night than use those bathrooms.
“It’s a motherfucker!”
—Ridley Scott
But, overall, men were easier to figure out: Boobs = Good.
It was the same expression you would see on a dog’s face if you held a treat just out of reach in front of its nose. Tongue out and everything, Snapchat-style! That’s when I started to figure out the give-and-take that came with my chesticles. I had been objectified by men for years, and one day it just clicked. If you are going to objectify me, I am going to manipulate you. Not in a horrible way where you leave your family and sell your house, but in the exact way that the people who had opened Hooters had envisioned. You get to stare and make stupid comments that you think are funny, and I get to make a few extra bucks.
The venom that was spit at us by other women was actually harder for me to come to grips with. But as I looked at the waitresses, they walked around that place with confidence that I could only wish I had. One of the girls said to me:
“If you had a giant belly would they hate you?”
No.
“If you had big, buck teeth would they hate you?”
No.
“If you had a lazy eye would they hate you?”
No.
“Then what do you think the problem really is?”
Whatever hate they were spewing had nothing to do with me and my coconuts; it was all them. It was a great lesson to learn from someone named “Cinnamon,” who had a winking-cheetah tramp-stamp tattoo. Sages come in all shapes and sizes, I guess.
I was finally feeling free from the burden of my Danny DeVitos and was excited to start inviting them to be a part of my life. The more I used them to my “advantage,” the less ashamed of them I became. All of the shame I used to feel about people looking at them, I started to turn into power and confidence. I was starting to make peace with my Chumbawumbas and it felt good.
I didn’t know it then, but there would come a day when me and my Brad Pitts would bounce rampant all over Hollywood, breaking all of its rules and leaving a trail of happy celebrities in our wake. I could never have imagined little ol’ me, face-to-face with Will Smith, getting into some ridiculous situation involving my Pointer Sisters!
Years later I would be invited to interview Will at the junket for his movie I Am Legend, and things quickly veered off track. Will’s great in interview situations. He totally gets it. The man knows how to play along while giving you exactly what you need to put together a hilarious piece of footage. I’ve interviewed him several times, but none were ever quite as raucous as this one. My buddies in the room had given him a heads-up that I was coming. So when I walked in, the scene was already set for some craziness. Will knew the seat belts were off on this anything goes ride!
Me: I actually heard a rumor, they’re installing plastic seat covers on the theater seats …
Will: The theater seats … yeah, yeah, yeah. (Nodding.)
Me: Because people are actually shitting themselves.
Will: Yeah … it’s not shit. It’s … you know … it’s not … people’s asses are leaking.
Me: Oh … we got the cross. (I try to get comfortable in this awkwardly low chair by crossing my legs and in the process lean forward just enough to accidentally set him up for the Cleavage Challenge.)
Will: Wooooooh! (Will catches a glimpse and that’s all she wrote. He was going to take full advantage of this opportunity to have some fun messing with me and I was happy to play along.) That’s really sexy to me right now! (He’s got a huge smile on his face and is trying to keep it together. He yells:) You have no idea. What you just did to me.
(The whole room comes alive: cameramen, publicists, studio reps, everyone just gets louder and louder with laughter.)
Me: Woah … Woah. (Turning around in amazement of all the commotion.)
Will: All right, guys, all right, all right, okay … all right. (Trying to calm the room and himself down.) … So I’m … I’m gonna …
Me: It’s the leaning thing, isn’t it? (So I start fucking with him back as I lean
over again, revealing a little more of the snuggle pups and playing into the whole craziness.) I apologize … (Laughing sarcastically.)
Will: Yeah … you’re doin’ … you’re doin’ it a lot … you’re doin’ it a lot.
Me: Wooooh … (I laugh and then it happens as I lean over again for another sampling of the dueling banjos.) And I’m sorry.
Will: I’m keepin’ my legs crossed, keepin’ my legs crossed. (Jokingly implying that there might be some tightness in his pants.)
Me: (Laughing. All expectations of an actual Q&A interview are gone, but I know that this exchange is nothing short of hysterical.)
Will: She’ll be here all week, folks, don’t forget to try the veal. Ha-ha. (Laughing.)
You see, when I finally embraced Fred and Ethel, the whole world opened up. By not running from what was obviously a big part of me, I became comfortable in my own skin and, in turn, a lot more of my personality was able to shine. It was incredibly liberating in every aspect of my life. It would have been unfathomable to me, in my early twenties, to be in a room where my double whammies were the subject of a fun game and yet, here I was, years later, actually the one instigating it. Will was playing with me, and I was playing with him right back. How much better could it get?!!
But in that moment, way back then, it was one important step in the evolution of me becoming friends with my bouncing Buddhas. I had managed to sustain a job at Hooters and not exploit myself. I learned that I can control how people see me by how much I reveal to them. Up to this point, I had been pretty oblivious to the power of my Picasso cubes. For the first time, I realized that I can actually get shit done with these things. I thought, We’re going to be stuck together for a while, so let’s make the best of it. And, free drinks. Did I mention free drinks?
Right before my next birthday, the foosball champ and I broke up for the last time. I had had enough and felt that the time was right to make my journey to Mecca—Los Angeles. I left his house crying, picked up the phone, called the airline, and bought a one-way ticket. I had seven hundred dollars saved and a buddy’s couch to crash on.
“I’m going to Los Angeles for a month,” I told my parents. “If I can find a job, I’m not coming home.”
I never came home.
4
GLORY, GLORY, HO-LE-LUYAH!
I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
—The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
If you ask me, I’d say the key to succeeding in show business can be narrowed down to two things: perseverance and integrity. More aptly put: the ability to persevere in the complete absence of integrity. Don’t get me wrong, show business is a lot of fun, and all of us who have had the privilege of taking a hit of its sweet kush will tell you it’s an intoxicating treat. But as with all things intoxicating, it brings out the best and the very worst in people. So be true to yourself, leave your inhibitions and insecurities at the door, and enjoy the ride. It’s a doozy!
An old industry pro once told me that if you were to rank the four key components of the entertainment industry in order of the least slimy to the most it would be:
Film.
TV.
Porn.
… then Music.
Well, it was safe to say I was starting at the bottom, and apparently, the forecast for the journey ahead was “creepy with a chance of the bizarre” that would challenge even a teratophiliac. What was not clear at the time was that in order to find success, I’d not only have to play many games of Dodge the Weasel but I’d also have to help launch a whole new category. No, not a new porn category: a new entertainment category. The only thing standing in the way was my total lack of ambition to be a star. I mean zero fucking interest. I liked getting my hands dirty behind the scenes, I had a potty mouth, I called bands by the wrong name, and I laughed too much. Not exactly broadcast material.
They never saw me coming. Hell, I never saw me coming. Basically, nobody saw anybody coming!
My dream was to have a business card that said, I’LL MAKE YA FAMOUS! stolen from my favorite line in the movie Young Guns. But it’s hard to make rent, let alone make anyone famous, when you’re just getting on your feet. That was me two weeks after landing in LA. This town has a way of sobering you up fast, like a coffee enema. To make matters worse, I lost what little I had when my purse was stolen at the Key Club on Sunset Boulevard. Ironically, it all went down when the same girl who got me the Hooters job back in Buffalo, and had since also moved out to Los Angeles, invited me out dancing with a bunch of her stripper friends.
Again, I should have known better.
“You guys can just leave your bags with the bartender!” she screamed over the music. So of course, like a fucktard, I handed my purse with my New York State driver’s license, credit cards, and the last of my cash to a complete stranger. I return ten minutes later … presto chango … “Doug Henning” behind the bar had disappeared along with my purse. I had literally lost everything. I was devastated. But just as things were getting bleak, a male friend of the strippers’ came to my rescue and helped me find my purse. He would later become a close friend of mine and eventually help me find my first job in LA and a place to stay. That’s the other interesting thing about this town: right after someone smacks you in the back of the head, someone else shows up with an ice pack and helps you get up. Anyway, later in the night, we found my bag downstairs, shoved in the corner of a pee-stained bathroom stall, completely emptied and covered in something only a black light would appreciate.
Needless to say, I had to find a job right away and a new ID. My mom had to snail mail me my birth certificate for a new driver’s license, and just like that, I became a California resident. A jobless, penniless, homeless California resident. I crashed on a friend’s couch and sent my résumé to every record label I could think of—the majors like Warner Bros., Capitol, Geffen when it was still Geffen, and a bunch of smaller ones. Eddie Kramer, my engineer friend from back home, hooked me up with a few meet-and-greets, and I busted my ass to meet as many people as I could. Here’s how these interviews went down: Either the guys I met with tried to talk me into having sex with them or they simply said, “Good luck, kid, wish I could help but I’ve got my own problems.”
A couple of contacts suggested that I start in the mailroom. That’s how so many media moguls, like David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Ron Meyer, started their careers. Simon Cowell started at the bottom in the EMI mailroom and became an A&R legend. Jim Toth cut his teeth in the legendary CAA mailroom, and now he’s the agent for Scarlett Johansson and Matthew McConaughey, and married to Reese Witherspoon.
“Cool, how do I do that?” I asked hopefully.
“You gotta fuck somebody in the mailroom, silly.”
Okay, nobody actually said that, and it’s unlikely Ron Meyer ever had to throw his legs in the air (like he just don’t care) to get ahead … Simon Cowell, perhaps … just kidding, but it was crystal clear that for me that was the path of least resistance. Maybe it’s different now, but I doubt it. That’s just how it kind of works. I’d say that half the people in the business have positions that they deserve and the other half have positions they’ve “earned” … the hard way. I’m not here to judge who did what to whom and where in order to get to where they are. I prefer to assume that regardless of how anyone got to where they’re at, it’s a safe bet that they paid a heavy price … one way or the other. And unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, what the fuck do you know?!
I know the casting couch seems very seventies-mustache porn, but don’t kid yourself into thinking it doesn’t exist anymore just because Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry have convened a girl-power summit at the top of the charts. It still comes up all the time, at every level. Not too long ago, I had a very prominent agent take me out to dinner and tell me, “You should probably just have sex with me. It won’t get complicated because I’m not going to rep you anyway.” As if somehow the pressure was now off of me, and the all-nig
ht game of Alabama Whac-a-Mole he’d be been imagining on the drive over to Cecconi’s was a go. There were many, many ways I could have reacted to this, but I’ve developed a sense of humor about this kind of nonsense and I rebuffed his self-felating moment with, “Wow. That’s a relief! I hate messy sex.” And then proceeded to order shaved white truffles on everything and let him pay the bill. I figured, tonight, it was this shizzbubble’s turn to get the prolapsed butthole. Ladies, remember, no matter what, you must keep your cool. As Patrick Swayze’s character Dalton said in Road House, “Be nice. Be nice until it’s time to not be nice.” Trust me, you’ll know when.
Truth be told, there is something strangely bizarre about the antiquated rites and rituals of the blatant misogyny that pervades the entertainment industry. It’s like a self-perpetuating, self-contained schlong-based ecosystem that exists outside of time and space. It’s nothing short of Kafkaesque. Now if you haven’t read your Franz Kafka like good little boys and girls, don’t take my word for it. In a December 1991 interview with The New York Times, celebrated literary biographer Frederick R. Karl defined “Kafkaesque” to be “when you enter a surreal world in which all of your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces, when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world.” Or as one of my agents once put it, “It’s counterintuitive, baby.” Eventually this archaic cum-bubble will burst, but until then, here’s my advice on how to best handle yourself. Cue Ice Cube … “You betta check yo’self, before you wreck yo’self!”
Think of the entertainment industry as a giant “glory hole convention.” It’s sold out, very crowded, and incredibly hard to get into. The members that organize and operate this event insist on a certain degree of anonymity and are very selective about who they allow in. Most people will do just about anything to get in and walk through this magical kingdom, while others might find a lucky ticket. Once you’re in, be prepared: There are dicks everywhere. There are peckers covering the floors, the walls, and the ceilings. A parade of dong as far as the eyes can see; all of them seeking attention, adulation, and respect. It’s competitive, too. Oh, yes. Everyone thinks their own cock is bigger and better; with every dodel being waved around like a magic wand casting a spell. Some attendees will be mesmerized and others repulsed. Some will partake of the dong buffet while others will run for the exit. This is where we as women must separate the wheat from the shaft. Don’t be distracted, don’t despair, and above all else, don’t run away. That’s what they want you to do. These pricks are only as powerful as you allow them to be. Believe it or not, you are still in control of your destiny.
Everybody Curses, I Swear! Page 7
