Jeff Copeland was, maybe, 12 drafts deep into Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn when he took a step back and reflected on one particularly awkward dinner scene. There is no shortage of awkward meals in Copeland’s memoir. After all, it’s Hollywood at the turn-of-the-‘90s and the writer is a broke twenty-something with big screen ambitions who befriends a middle-aged former Warhol star. On this particular night, though, Copeland and Woodlawn meet up with a neighbor, Maila Nurmi, you might know her better as Vampira, and her friends. An elderly theater director hijacks the conversation, steering it into dark, and, tbh, hysterical, terrain. Copeland’s younger self is mortified. His present self, though, has an altogether different take.
“Fame was fleeting! Money dwindled! And so what if their youth and beauty was gone forever. It was their ebullience that remained, and it was as bold and incandescent…and as bright and vivid as any theatre marquee on Hollywood Boulevard,” he writes.
When Copeland had that epiphany, it shed light on his own life too. “As I looked back on it, I had so much struggle during those years, but it was such a fun time. I had so much fun with Holly trying to make ends meet,” he says when we meet for a video call. “I never looked back on it and thought, eh, it was such a drag, we had to eat off an ironing board. I always thought that made it hilarious, the fact that we were so poor we had to eat off an ironing board.”
Indeed, at the dawn of the 1990s in Hollywood, Copeland had the kind of experiences that money can’t buy. He adds, “Those are priceless treasures. Those kinds of experiences.”
Copeland moved to Los Angeles with Hollywood dreams and, as he tried to work his way up in the entertainment industry, he befriended Woodlawn, best known for her appearance in the films Trash and Women in Revolt and inclusion in Lou Reed’s song “Walk on the Wild Side.” Their friendship resulted in the 1991 book, A Low Life in High Heels: The Holly Woodlawn Story. Copeland’s own memoir, chronicles that period of time in his life and the fraught friendship between the two, with tensions rising as they struggle to bring A Low Life in High Heels to the big screen. Much of this happens against the backdrop of Hollywood, the neighborhood, which is in the midst of its own set of changes.
Read: LOVE YOU MADLY, HOLLY WOODLAWN IS A TOUCHING MEMOIR SET IN EARLY ’90S HOLLYWOOD
After a lengthy career in television, Copeland moved on to real estate for a bit. “Real estate was a lot of fun for me, but it wasn’t creative,” he says. One night, he thought about his past and the many famous people he encountered. “Of course, in 25 -30 years, no one compared to Holly Woodlawn,” he says. “Holly Woodlawn stuck out as this wonderful, magical time. I didn’t want to forget about all that we went through and all the wonderful experiences that we shared.”
And he had a good reason to write down his recollections. “My father was knee-deep in Alzheimer’s. My mother has dementia,” Copeland adds. “I just wanted a record of those memories so that if I fell down that crazy Alzheimer’s rabbit hole, then someone could read me these stories and remind me of all that I accomplished.”
Copeland began taking notes of that period of time in his life. One hundred pages later, the idea that he thought might be a magazine article morphed into a book. He worked on the memoir between 2013 and 2016. In 2019, Copeland moved back to Missouri to care for his parents and, when the pandemic hit, he spent another year writing and rewriting. He had plenty of old photos and some notes to jar his memories, as well as the letters that he wrote to his great-aunt. “I would write her letters and those letters all came back to me after she died,” he explains.
Then there are the moments that he couldn’t simply forget. “Certain things were so indelibly planted in my brain because they were so outrageous, the shit that we went through,” he says. “For instance, the dinner with Vampira.”
And, in that one scene, Copeland digs into what’s truly important in life. It’s not material success or career achievements. It’s how you see the world and how that changes as you grow. For Copeland, much of that growth happened in a Hollywood that no longer exists, where the kind of attention-seekers you might find on social media today hung out on the streets. “You would see at the bus stops all the wacky characters,” Copeland recalls.
That’s the Hollywood Copeland captures in Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn, the one where characters roamed Melrose Ave. and Angelyne loomed overhead on billboards. “Back where I grew up, which is the Bible Belt, you have Jesus, all you can eat buffets, RVs. That’s what’s advertised on billboards,” he says. “You go to Hollywood and there are TV shows and movies advertised on billboards. I was blown away. I had never seen anything like that before in my life. And then, to see Angelyne, what the hell is that?”
This too is part of the reason Copeland wrote his memoir. “It was very magical. I just didn’t want to forget that,” he says of the time. “It was so rich and I also wanted to introduce new generations coming to Hollywood of that era.”
Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn is out now via Feral House.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram for more updates.
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Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn Is a Touching Memoir Set in Early ’90s Hollywood (review)