Just wanted to give you a quick update about some stories that I’ve recently written for other magazines and newspapers.
Now is a good time to watch a movie. At least it is if you’re in the greater Los Angeles area, where repertory and arthouse cinemas are experiencing a revival. I wrote about the resurgence of in-person movie screenings, focusing mainly on Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz and The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana for Premium, which is the magazine Southern California News Group newspaper subscribers. Click here for a gift link to read the story.
Reading Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn on the L.A. Metro (Pic: Liz O.)
In 1991, Holly Woodlawn released her autobiography, A Low Life in High Heels, written with Jeff Copeland. I haven’t read the book, but it’s high at the top of my list now that I have read Copeland’s recently-released Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn. The writer’s own memoir is a funny, sweet and engaging story about an unexpected, and sometimes tumultuous, L.A. friendship at the turn of the 1990s. What I loved about this memoir is how Copeland deftly intertwines a story about HOLLYWOOD, as in the movie world, with Hollywood, as in the place.
Woodlawn, who died a decade ago, was best known as the Holly in Lou Reed’s hit, “Walk on the Wild Side.” She was an Andy Warhol superstar who appeared in films like Trash and Women in Revolt. By the late ‘80s, she was living on the West Coast and not exactly in the best place in her life. Copeland was a young writer from Missouri who had moved to L.A. with hopes of breaking into the film industry. Their friendship resulted in A Low Life in High Heels and would be strained, in part, as a result of attempts to turn Woodlawn’s autobiography into a film, which never happened. That’s the HOLLYWOOD part of the story.
