Pilot Season

Spent all morning at the French Market helping actor friends practice for auditions. I now know how to do a northern Irish accent, and what happens in Season 2 of Boardwalk Empire.

Best Dog in the World

Malibu

Saying goodbye to LA sucks. It's like breaking up with someone for the dumbest of reasons: like, moving 6k miles away. We drove up the PCH to Malibu today, ate fresh fish and hummus at Taverna Tony's, wandered through Malibu Country Mart, came home to sit in the jacuzzi.

Even when you're working LA feels like a holiday: for 2.5 years I'd feel so guilty about it I'd work right through the sunshine hours until midnight, because otherwise it felt like I was being lazy. Coffee at Groundworks, bagel at Abbots, lunch at The French Market, walk around the canals... Then I'd run out of money and starve for a few weeks but the sun would still shine, and some kind soul would find me and feed me until I got paid again.

I want to come back, I want to come back.

I realized today, driving along the PCH in someone else's Prius, that I live in permanent nostalgia for things I haven't lost yet.

On the plus side, no rent and no car repayments for two months has meant a hell of a lot of debt has been paid off.

Shutters

Shutters for lunch. First time I ever went to Shutters I was trailing some paparazzi photographers I'd met on a Hello magazine shoot, when I'd been interviewing Sean Brosnan and Brawley Nolte. I thought it'd make a great story to follow the paps for a week and write about it - it was a great story, but sadly none that the mags wanted. However, I did get the privilege of lurking outside Shutters for four hours waiting for Noel Gallagher and his wife.

So I'm in Shutters for lunch, look up, and see two old actor friends of mine who I haven't seen in a while, turn around and bump into director friend who I knew was in town from London, but had completely failed to catch up with. Then I get home, and have an email from old journalist acquaintance asking me to write for her - just as I thought I was quitting journalism for good.

Strange how things turn out.

I'm such a great believer in signs, and signs, and signs. When I first stopped drinking, I was waiting for The Promises. I was holding out desperately for those fucking Promises. If things got better, I was meant to be doing this - the not drinking thing. If they didn't, screw it. I was drinking.

Well, things didn't get better. They got worse, improved a little, stayed level for a while, then went tits up. But I couldn't jump off the edge again - hell, I drank a couple times, but I couldn't jump off the edge. And then suddenly after two years those damn Promises keep showing up. Work in London. Work in LA. Slowly, not so well paid, but opportunities, and suddenly I think I'm kind of meant to be doing it this way.

Besty and I are driving along Stinkin Lincoln, after picking up a bunch of DVD's from Vidiots (which incidentally, needs your support Angelenos, else it's going out of business, so quit netflix) - so we're driving, and we're laughing about bumping into English actors and Brit director in Shutters.

"They're always so fresh faced and nice aren't they? R, N and D." says Besty wistfully, and something that my friend Tristan the gay STD doctor said to me came back.

"There are people in this world who never have a shitty thing happen to them, you know. Not many, but there are."

"I'm not one of them."

"Me neither."

"But it's quite comforting to know that, isn't it?" says Besty. "Maybe they got good karma in a past life."

It never really occurred to me that life's pointless daily pain, life's big daily bullshit, is doled out as unequally as wealth, as privilege, as luck, as opportunity. It never really occurred to me that some people never have a bad thing happen to them. And by bad, I don't mean lose your job. Have a loved one pass away. We all have that stuff. I mean - bad. The kind of bad you glimpse at here on this blog, or in Besty's face, or in the stories of Venice Beach and its people. I mean some people never have a bad thing happen to them, and Tristan pointed this out to me. I find it comforting, for some reason. I find it comforting that staring at R, N and D, wondering how they manage to quiet the crazy - it's probably because they don't have it, not on the same level. Nothing ever happened, real or imagined, to push them there.

"You realize of course," says Besty grandly. "That that cock R will probably sell a screenplay to Scott Rudin now."

And then we laugh, and drive on, and it's a beautiful, bright, cold sunny day in Venice Beach, and for this day only, nothing shitty happens to either of us, and we can smile, knowing it's not forever, but as long as days like this exist, we'll be OK.

Even The Rain

Went to The Landmark to watch Even the Rain last night. As we bought our tickets the cashier asked us how we found out about the movie, as "it's had, like no press". It only came out on Thursday so I hope this amazing movie does get the acclaim it deserves. Here's a blurb I stole about it:

Even the Rain (Spanish: También la lluvia) is a 2010 Spanish drama film directed by Icíar Bollaín about Filmmaker Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal) who travels to Bolivia to shoot a film about the Spanish conquest of America. He and his crew arrive during the tense time of the Cochabamba water crisis, 2000 Cochabamba protests. The lines between past and present, fiction and film, become increasingly blurred in Iciar Bollain's latest feature.

Go and see this film. It's moving - I wept about five times - clever, completely unique, beautifully shot, politically relevant and incredibly interesting, particularly in its sharp comment about the hypocrisy and self-obsession of the movie industry and its place in society. This is the kind of movie I can imagine lies in people's drawers in Hollywood for years and never get read because it's far too uncomfortable, and besides, they have this great script in development about an invincible tank that goes back in time to the era of the dinosaurs... Anyway, Even The Rain. Check it out.

My new California Hair

Monsters

Watched Gareth Edwards' Monsters last night with Director friend D and Besty. The cinematography is amazing - apparently he attached an SLR lens onto a digital camera to get DV to have the same beautiful quality as film. It works superbly and the look of the movie is stunning. The only complaint I have is that the lack of script, and only one camera means that improvised scenes edited together sometimes lack life and become a bit flat. One of the joys of improvisation is capturing the other person's reaction to a new line, an offhand comment - and with one camera, you can't really do that, and lines spliced together often don't make sense, so it often came across as a bit meandering. But with a teeny budget and the SFX genius of Gareth Edwards, it's a phenomenal achievement. Director friend D is now obsessed with how to do his own movie on a similar budget with that kind of beautiful look about it.

I'm so deeply in love with California at the moment. Staying present is such a massively hard thing to do for me, it's really blissful to be walking around loving the weather, the rain, walking the pups, hanging with Besty, not mulling on my future fears or my past worries. I swear I'm built to be a housewife who writes. Nothing makes me happier than homemaking, pups and writing. I don't want to be a breadwinner at all (sorry feminism).

Back to work. It's cold and windy outside. The palm trees are dancing. Mr Chips is asleep on my lap. We have a log fire burning. I love it.

Yoga in Santa Monica

I think Santa Monica has the best yoga teachers in the world outside India - and the greatest philosophy. If you're heading west go to Jerome Mercier's Vinyasa class at Power Yoga. I've learned more from Jerome than any other teacher, and in a world of madness where idiots charge twenty bucks for 90 minutes of preaching spiritual bullshit, blasting out crappy wailing Om music and chanting bad sanskrit at you, Jerome's classes are donation based and a fantastic, amazing blend of traditional ashtanga, Iyengar-like precision, humor and quiet, unpretentious calm.

He also has a lovely dog called Oliver, a funky VW beetle van, and a habit of saying the most perceptive things when you least expect it. Love, love, love. Check his classes out.

Home

Home! Venice Beach, my little dog Mr Chips, and Besty Mate picked me up at LAX.

I was leafing through Grazia, a shitty British women's mag, in Heathrow departures when I came across an article about Sienna Miller ditching Jude Law for one of her co-stars... they were speculating about who had caused the break up and Besty/Ex was mentioned! I gave him the article just now and he looked at the co-stars, looked at Jude Law and snorted. "You can tell this is made up 'cause no one would leave Jude for any of us lot"

Venice Beach is home. I like that idea. I have to leave it for a little bit this year, but it's definitely home. Funny how a big thing like that can creep up on you... strangely it's where I feel the most comfortable in the world right now.

Fxck Feelings and Other Stuff

I've been a complete memoir and non-fiction junkie recently - as I've gotten older, I find myself more interested in the nitty-gritty, the true facts of life and people and experience than fairytales. Fiction - presently - doesn't answer certain questions floating around my head, or even make me ask those questions.

I'm currently reading 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot, a genius exploration into the life of the woman behind the immortal HeLa cells. It's been optioned by Oprah Winfrey (of course!) for HBO and I can't wait to see it onscreen.

Next up is Lyn Barber's 'An Education', which has, of course, already been made into a wonderful movie, produced by Finola Dwyer, a fantastic producer I'm working with in London.

I've just finished Emma Forrest's brilliant 'Your Voice In My Head'. Every time I have a meeting in London people ask me if I know Emma, because she's a kooky British brunette living in LA, working as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter, and she dates - or has dated - Hollywood actors beloved of the Twelve Step Program. Yes, I see the comparisons. Except Emma Forrest is far, far more successful and grounded than broke and flighty me. I expected to hate her memoir. When mine came out I was incredibly disappointed by the complete lack of press it received - the majority opinion was that I'd made most of it up, and no one wanted to review a 'fake' memoir (I kid you not). I also got slammed for being a horrible person, which is nothing new, although I do think if you read my book it goes a long way to explaining why I'm a prickly person and I find it hard to trust people. Emma's had fantastic press, and I first heard about her book through a Guardian extract. I read it begrudgingly, jealously, ready to despise it, and feed the nasty voices in my head whispering enviously about beautiful rich girls with useful contacts.

I was blown away by her honesty, her wit and her beautiful prose.

A few days later I had a meeting with Blueprint Pictures, who optioned Emma's first screenplay, 'Know Your Rights', and she came up in conversation again. Then I read a truly nasty, hate-filled review of her book in The Observer, which really quite shocked me. It was venomous, and needlessly so. I had a writer once ostensibly review my book, and instead end up reviewing my blog, and quoting completely irrelevant pieces out of context. It hurts when people don't read your words and instead apply their own agenda to whatever you say. Although it's certainly true that this happens all the goddamn time in all aspects of life.

Anyway, a few days ago I had another meeting with Ruby Films and the wonderful Alison Owen, and Emma came up in conversation again. I feel like she's always going to be one of those people I never, ever meet, but cross paths with a million times. If there's one book you buy this year, I recommend hers. I've been converted to fandom and for someone who religiously fails to worship other writers except Joan Didion and Nabokov, I am a googly-eyed fan of Miss Forrest.

At the back of her book, Emma references a wonderful site - Fxck Feelings. I wanted to mention it here because I'm someone who definitely struggles with happiness and emotions on a regular basis, and even eleven years of every-day yoga, meditation, AA, dabbling in therapy, avoiding alcohol and drugs, regular sleep etc, is barely enough to 'normalize' me. I've been diagnosed with severe reactive depression many times, but of course, a diagnosis doesn't really help when you're living in a country which demands health insurance to get treated. Instead I just struggle with things the best I can, and rely heavily on AA and my infinitely patient and loving friends. This site is consequently a real find, and I found the following article particularly useful, given recent events and my - shall we say - mishandling of them because of a huge resentment I've nursed against a boy who didn't treat me with respect:

Life is an endless series of assaults on your respect. Your kids don’t respect you, your Starbucks cashier doesn’t respect you, the people who write ads for the Superbowl certainly don’t respect you. Alas.

So, no matter how much right you have to feel disrespected, and how hard it is to ignore the feeling, disrespect is not the issue you should be addressing, or really bother addressing, ever.

As the wise Carrie Fisher once said, “resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Focusing on this other guy and his perceived slights just distracts you from your own agenda.

If only the anonymous person behind fxck feelings was my life guru, my head would be a far safer place:)

24 hours left in Blighty! Spending Valentines Day with my wonderful, gay, married doctor friends watching a musical. It does make me giggle to be sitting in between my married gays on Valentines Day.

Welcome to the First Meeting of Tweetaholics Anonymous

Courtesy of Huffington Post

This is the Life

So apparently there's a new feature on google which keeps track of where you log in from - it stores all your IP's. I woke up this morning and had a security flash saying someone had logged into my google account from America. I changed the password and did all that blah, but now I'm wondering if that message was from google. Did I just fill out a form spamming myself? I have no idea as now I can't find a feature on google which stores all the IP addresses I've logged in from... if anyone can help, email me, I'm curious. I'm also curious as to who would log in from America to check my account. My Ex / Best Mate can barely figure out his blackberry so it's definitely not him. No weird emails were in my sent mail, so it's not a spammer / phisher. Bizarre.

I'm still in Wales with the fam. Drank a ton of coffee last night and stayed up writing a HuffPo piece as haven't written them for a while. Had a lovely email this morning from a director I'm working with: "You're bonkers, but all the best people are." Spoke to best mate in Venice, who pointed out that when I was in Venice I couldn't wait to leave. "Why are you so anxious to come back?" he asked. Because London is a decision of the head, and my heart's still split between NY and LA, I told him.

Just after Christmas, when all the shit went down with work, money, friends etc, we were sitting in front of a log fire, eating fresh pasta, Red Vines for dessert, watching The West Wing with Best Mate's little nephew. Best Mate poked him with his foot. "This is the life! This is the life! You'll look back on this in ten years time, nephew, and think this. is. the. life. It doesn't get much better than this." Nephew looked up from youtube and grunted disinterestedly, and I suddenly realized Best Mate was totally right. It was blissful that night, it was perfect, it was 'the life'. I guess part of me wants to run back to Venice to cram a few more nights in just like that, stock up, get as many memories as possible to keep me going through London and six months without my surrogate family, best mate, and little village by the sea.

It's funny how things work out, because back in November, just after working for BIFA, I was so sad to leave London. So exhausted by the prospect of more California. I guess Best Mate wasn't around then, which made it harder. Now I kind of know - recognize - that those teeny pockets of perfection which pop up unexpectedly now and then, that's the point. This is the life.

Very happy about seeing Venice Beach, Mr Chips and Best Mate again. Four more days.

Paul Carr

A year ago I'd just arrived back in Venice Beach after a thousand mile drive from Portland to San Francisco. I stopped in San Fran to catch up with the amazing Paul Carr. I met Paul in New York in 2005, and was very flattered when he wrote about me in his first book. We drank together in London, partied in SoHo, vomited all over Kentish Town and bonded over a shared drunken habit of offending everyone we knew. We eventually got sober in 2009, a couple hundred miles apart in California. I love Paul. The night I arrived in San Francisco there was heavy snow on the roads and I didn't get into town until 3am. Paul valiantly met me outside a swanky hotel, in which he'd managed to blag me a free room. I handed my keys to the valet, and we wandered down the street and sat in a coffee shop in the Tenderloin talking bollocks until sunrise. And then I walked back to the hotel, and my car had not been valeted, and had, instead been broken into - the GPS, my laptop, two screenplays I'd been working on, my new yoga mat, Chips' stuff - everything gone.

Fortunately I had insurance. God Bless America. I am not the kind of person who ever has insurance for anything, but my car people forced me to get it. I think they might regret that decision.

Anyway, I'm reminded of all this as I just had a phone call from the amazing Paul. His new book is out in the spring. This is all a circuitous way of saying 'buy it'. No one else makes me feel so very OK for being so very not OK and obviously quite mental, as the wonderful, funny, sober, kind Mr Paul Carr. I can't wait to read his new book.