RUNNING FROM THE GRAND ENNUI
Confronting My Rye Toast with Howard Hughes & Michael Nesmith, Dazai Was A Goth, and the Tosh Berman Film Project
I was overland touring in my old BMW 635. In its previous life, it had rolled off a cargo ship into the States somewhere around 1987, slipping through customs with the correct streamlined European bumpers instead of the ones made for the North American market, which I had felt made the stance of this fine German made Autobahn shark feel more like stale reruns of Moonlighting and L.A. Law playing doubles country club tennis in Reebok high tops together, dated instead of timeless. The way my car was set up gave the appearance of Charlie Babbit alongside his older brother Raymond while waiting for the smog inspections to clear or, more likely, in their case, to be paid off to pass State of California emissions regulations. Now, thirty-five years on, this black shark was holding its own aside from some front-end work that needed rebuilding and recharge for the air-conditioning as I changed lanes down Sunset Blvd., accelerating west. The car is black on black and likes to conduct heat even on this 70-degree, slightly overcast, muggy day. I’d say it’s likely we’ll see some rain.
I was on my way home. An old home. A former home. No longer in the family.
“How about I just hang a right here and go over the canyon, and we hit Bob’s for that dependable steely diner coffee instead. ” I said. As we passed the border markers into the lands of swimming pools and movie stars, I had second thoughts about this breakfast destination.
Author Tosh Berman is seated shotgun. I’m writing a screenplay with him based on his memoir TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World. Easily, the Lawrence of Arabia of L.A. art stories. An epic to be shot in widescreen with me playing David Lean in our irrigated palm-lined concrete desert. Tosh politely declines my suggestion and changing the subject says “ You should read Osamu Dazai. He was a depressed guy, whose goal was to commit suicide with his girlfriend in the years following the Japanese surrender in World War 2. He’s kind of a Goth writer. I think you’d get a lot out of his work.”.
We carry on down Sunset headed for ground zero. I think about what was just said regarding this manic-depressive Japanese young man who offed himself with his woman in 1948. I create a mental picture of this based on the visual style of Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well and cast with the same actors. I consider myself a somewhat dark guy sure yes I have Bad Seeds records and spent some of the early years listening to Joy Division alone in bed while smoking with the shades drawn but I can’t be that far gone. Can I?
To give you a better idea about the passenger, Tosh is a dead ringer for Peter Sellers circa the nineteen seventies. He usually dresses like he’s about to walk casually to a cafe near the beach in Monaco (same decade) with Jeanne Moreau while she lights her cigarette with a Cartier lighter. Tosh is one of the last Beat-era L.A. art icons and orphaned, as I have been recently. This late morning, he invited me to breakfast to talk rewrites, provided I picked him up from his 1930s home built by a tennis champ with the two roaring lion’s heads at the top of the hill in Silverlake. He doesn’t drive—one of a handful over the age of 16 here in Los Angeles. The area is infamous for Manson and a long-flattened corrupt insane asylum. However, you wouldn’t know it these days with the price of real estate. Our destination was his idea, but I told him about it.
My Radio Birdman CD spun in the Bimmer’s upgraded stereo system.
There's an agent in the field
I want to have him tailed
He's been staying at the Hilton
Yeah should be staying in the jail
The Aussie proto-punk outfit’s homage to Hawaii Five-O seems to cue perfectly for our arrival. “I should be more upbeat about this.” I think as I hand the car over to one of the polished and overly attentive crack commandos/polo players who park cars at The Beverly Hills Hotel. After all, Hunter S. Thompson had been handed the famous phone call by the hotel’s resident midget bellhop for his Mint 400 assignment while sitting in the Polo Lounge; Warren Beatty got up to some good trouble here. Howard Hughes shut himself in while having secret ham sandwiches delivered in a tree, and maybe most importantly, Mike Nesmith led The Monkees’ revolt against their Gold Record-toting slave masters, putting his fist through the wall of one of the bungalows. Sending a crystal clear message that Neil Sedaka and all the other bubblegum combover cronies in suits would never be fucking with his music again.
As a kid, I had wanted to be a valet, dreaming of pocketing handfuls of ones and fives, until I parked cars for a living at a few high-end parties for tips in my late teens. It’s depressing work parking other people’s cars. I counted myself lucky as one of the survivors as we walked up the red carpet, up a couple of stairs, and through the front doors. I had lived here at two points in my life for extended periods between more traditional residences. Once during the early eighties and once during the early days of the Gulf War. The place had been remodeled since the last time I was here about a decade before. It was unusually quiet in the lobby.
As surreal and equally unstable as my upbringing was, the pink palace provided a roof during the higher and even lower times when my father tried to keep visual appearances up with champagne and caviar celebrations while on borrowed time. I spent many Easters and Christmas’ here and clocked countless hours of my life doing laps in the swimming pool. In the old days, you could swim here if they knew you. During the oil embargo in the seventies, my father gassed up in the private pump in the parking garage.
Our coffees are poured. I prefer the lunch counter downstairs to any other place in the hotel. There are maybe 12 seats, and if you know how to squint your eyes the right way, you’re in another time. It’s a no-nonsense way of handling breakfast without any of the show that goes on everywhere else here: rye toast, eggs, and bacon. And you’re left unbothered to do whatever you need to do, like Sterling Hayden would want to deal with life. The only time I ever heard anything louder than the plates being put down was when Clu Gulager got into it with a guy who wouldn't give up his seat. Everything cooled out when the waitress working the counter threatened to call the front desk for assistance.
Although Tosh grew up minutes from here on Beverly Glen, where his parents Wallace and Shirley held court for some of the most influential artists, actors, musicians, and Bohemians in their modest two-room cabin on stilts, he’s never set foot inside. Not their style. I think they’re more intelligent people. But Tosh is more connected to this place than any Crypto baron, Parisian supermodel, or Saudi arms dealer who’s just paying the price of admission for double occupancy and sliding the room service cart with a half-eaten club into the hallway. As a kid, Tosh co-starred with Taylor Meade, Naomi Levine, and Dennis Hopper in Andy Warhol’s film Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort Of…. The film famously employed the hotel swimming pool. Tosh’s first role in a movie. His second opportunity came a few years later during Easy Rider. While his parents were offered the nonspeaking bit parts and took them, Tosh turned down the page of dialogue handed to him by Hopper and, in a blaze of glory, decided to focus on other things in 1967. I’ve been convincing him to play a role in the film we’re putting together. We’ll see how it goes.
After we wrapped up the business, we talked some Melville, then well, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my tan wallet, expecting the worst. The plates were cleared, and we settled the bill. Surprisingly, it’s less expensive than eating in one of the soul-sucking trust fund vegan-friendly joints that litter the landscape in my hood of Silverlake. Confrontation over avoidance might be a good thing for Me.
We walked down the hallway, and as we passed Hughes, I said, “How was your ham sandwich?”
Excerpt from NO LONGER HUMAN by Osamu Dazai
P. 77
I felt afraid no matter where I was. I wondered if the best way to obtain some surcease from this relentless feeling might not be to lose myself in the world of some big cafe where I would be rubbed against by crowds of drunken guests, waitresses, and porters. With this thought in my mind, I went one day alone to a cafe on the Ginza. I had only ten yen on me. I said with a smile to the hostess who sat beside me, “All I've got is ten yen. Consider yourself warned.”
All photos by Nick Ebeling *except the Polaroid by My Father
Referenced Music - Michael Nesmith & The First National Band’s Grand Ennui, Radio Birdman’s Aloha Steve & Danno
Bitchin' car!
Those old 635s might be the best looking car BMW ever put on the road.