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Unknown Stories of Hollywood

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This is a 100 percent open thread and I invite anyone and everyone who has ever worked in or even around the film/TV/radio/record or music business to contribute their secret and unknown stories.
It can be stuff that you witnessed, or that happened to you personally, or that come from people who you know or knew who were in these industries.

They can be salacious, horrifying, bizarre, weird, terrible or amusing or even downright hilarious.
 
Maybe if there are a few other folks who witnessed their own Caligula-style epoch, at least then I wouldn't feel all alone and come off as if I'm spewing for the sake of spewing.

There may be a few other peeps here who have had a peek into how the other half lives when no one is looking.
The funny thing is, some of this started even before I got into the film/TV thing full time.

When I first moved to L.A. I needed any kind of job I could get and my first one, which lasted a few months, was cleaning restaurant kitchens and dining rooms so that the cook staff and other help didn't have to. We were sort of like a contractor that took the load off the kitchen staff and we had several very upscale restaurants. We showed up to work after hours, just after they closed for the night.

One of them was The Chronicle, now known as The Victorian, located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica.
Lately it was the film location for "Mr. Mom" but back in the early 80's it was an extremely expensive 5-star hangout for the likes of Fleetwood Mac, who would rent an entire room for their own private soirees late into the night. We would sometimes see them leaving just as we arrived.
And when we went into those curtained off private rooms with our dustpans and vacuum cleaners, sometimes the tables would be littered with rolled up twenties and fifties, and here and there some half emptied little brown glass screw top vials of coke would be on the table or on the floor, and half finished bottles of wine that cost between five hundred and a thousand bucks a bottle.

I guarantee you we had our own little after hours parties while we cleaned. :lamo

That was my first hint that maybe there's a whole other world in L.A. that I never even imagined.
 
"The Deep Freeze Story"

This is a story, my own back story, which I still need to finish, because so much has happened in the last couple of years that the story continues to grow. I suppose I'll throw some sort of coda on it in the next couple of months. Some big things are about to happen with it some time around this coming April, which is why I am still open ended.
 
Maybe if there are a few other folks who witnessed their own Caligula-style epoch, at least then I wouldn't feel all alone and come off as if I'm spewing for the sake of spewing.

There may be a few other peeps here who have had a peek into how the other half lives when no one is looking.
The funny thing is, some of this started even before I got into the film/TV thing full time.

When I first moved to L.A. I needed any kind of job I could get and my first one, which lasted a few months, was cleaning restaurant kitchens and dining rooms so that the cook staff and other help didn't have to. We were sort of like a contractor that took the load off the kitchen staff and we had several very upscale restaurants. We showed up to work after hours, just after they closed for the night.

One of them was The Chronicle, now known as The Victorian, located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica.
Lately it was the film location for "Mr. Mom" but back in the early 80's it was an extremely expensive 5-star hangout for the likes of Fleetwood Mac, who would rent an entire room for their own private soirees late into the night. We would sometimes see them leaving just as we arrived.
And when we went into those curtained off private rooms with our dustpans and vacuum cleaners, sometimes the tables would be littered with rolled up twenties and fifties, and here and there some half emptied little brown glass screw top vials of coke would be on the table or on the floor, and half finished bottles of wine that cost between five hundred and a thousand bucks a bottle.

I guarantee you we had our own little after hours parties while we cleaned. :lamo

That was my first hint that maybe there's a whole other world in L.A. that I never even imagined.

Had to read that to Hubs. He has been a fan of Stevie Nicks for probably 40 years.
 
Had to read that to Hubs. He has been a fan of Stevie Nicks for probably 40 years.

I think she's been clean for something like ten or fifteen years now. It is incredible how resilient she is.
I didn't share that I actually DID meet Mick Fleetwood several years later.

I was shooting live performance videos of a guy named Mike Nile, who later joined a group called "Spirit" (Nature's Way, etc) and Mick was a fan of Spirit, and everyone got invited up to Mick's place which is North of Malibu. (near Zuma Beach)

Mike Nile on YouTube
Sorry about the quality of some of the videos. I used to have the masters but they were some of the ones destroyed in the 1994 Northridge Quake and all Mike still had was a VHS dub recorded at 6-HR EP speed, really awful.
I did all of the videos shot at the Trancas Club.

Suddenly one night Mick casually mentions something about how the whole band used to love going to "this fancy spot in Santa Monica, a stuffy old French restaurant with a lot of good wine and plenty of privacy".
I damn near fell out of my chair.

Someone else post a weird or funny Hollywood story!
 
Unfortunately, I have no stories. I just like reading them. :lol:

I took Hubs to see Stevie Nicks year before last in Tampa. Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders opened. Amazing show. They are both at or near 70, and they had the energy of a 5 year old.
 
Unfortunately, I have no stories. I just like reading them. :lol:

I took Hubs to see Stevie Nicks year before last in Tampa. Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders opened. Amazing show. They are both at or near 70, and they had the energy of a 5 year old.

It's absolutely true, both Stevie and Chrissie seem to have dipped into the Fountain of Youth somehow.
 
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