The Dirt: A Woman In Hollywood Take Two

Yesterday I was a guest blogger on Fresh Fiction, I am reposting for all my readers that didn't make it over to Fresh Fiction yesterday. Enjoy!

Like most women, I need my friends to sustain me but unlike a lot of women outside Hollywood, I also rely on my friends professionally. Making a film or television show is a collaborative process, and in Hollywood, it is often my friends who support my work. We work and play together. Do the lines get blurry? Yes, of course. But entertainment is The Industry where I found both the friendships that nurture me and the dirt that inspires me. Because to write Hollywood Girls Club and Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club, I needed both the friendships and the dirt.

Friendship in Hollywood you say? Why that’s preposterous, unheard of, impossible. Those moviemaking madmen are a cutthroat bunch, an impossible lot. No friendship to be found there. But in Tinseltown, like anywhere, there are friends to be made and this undeniably Midwestern girl, did in fact collect a group of friends. On my first day of trudging through the long agency hallways, pushing my mail cart, dropping off letters (oh so glamorous the agency life in the beginning) I noticed two things. First, most agents were male and second, so were most their assistants. But I needed female friends. Sure guys are great, and don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of good lovin’ in Hollywood Girls Club and Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club but I needed women to gab with, shop with, kvetch with and just be a girl with. So, I searched and I found friends.

And these friends, the women I collected on my way up the agency ladder, now as I write my books and produce my films are still my friends. Some, as is the way in Los Angeles, left ‘the biz.’ We are a transitory bunch us moviemakers. But my close friends that remain in The Industry are no longer assistants, they are now producers, studio executives, agents, managers, directors, actresses, and writers. Having completed our time in the trenches as assistants, we now enjoy the fun of Hollywood together. The glamour, the red carpet, the premieres, the film festivals, the parties and the swag. Oh yeah, great swag.

And the dirt? The Secrets? Well like any good friend, I can never, ever name names…buuut, I can tell my insider tales, and keep my friends, as long as I change the names to protect the innocent…or not so innocent…I mean, this is Hollywood.