Profile of James Ellroy in LA Magazine

Written by amywallace on September 20th, 2010

The Ladies’ Man

Can true love tame James Ellroy, the Demon Dog of L.A. fiction?

By Amy Wallace

Los Angeles magazine, September 2010

James Ellroy is sitting in a corner booth at the Pacific Dining Car, the 6th Street steak joint, brooding about women. It’s the perfect place for it. The last time L.A. fiction’s Demon Dog, as Ellroy likes to be called, recited wedding vows, he was right here in this windowless cave of a room. On October 4, 1991, he married his second wife, the writer and critic Helen Knode. The bride wore a peach pink ’40s vintage dress and “looked stunningly cougarlike and hip/feral,” Ellroy recalls in his new memoir, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women. The groom wore a kilt, and his eyes darted around too much. There were steaks off the menu and a custom wedding cake.

When it came time to toast, Ellroy “threw out a mock-impromptu rock song, replete with lurid lyrics,” he writes. “Helen whooped and busted me to the guests. ‘That’s a retread, Big Dog! You wrote that for one of your ex-bitches!’ ” Knode pirouetted, prompting whistles from the male guests, and then quoted Doris Lessing: “Marriage is sex and courage.”

“Helen said it in this room: ‘Sex and courage.’ And it’s entirely true,” Ellroy tells me now. At 62 he is tall, even when seated, and almost gaunt from daily devotion to his elliptical machine. He has a clean-shaven skull and a manic glare that burns through his wire-rim glasses. His voice is reverent, if only for a beat. Pushing aside his Caesar salad (he’s eaten only the filet mignon off the top), he lets loose a tirade that somehow manages to sound both fond and furious: “The food here sucks Chihuahua dicks! Shih tzu dicks! Yorkie dicks!”

What led Ellroy’s second marriage to disintegrate—the overwork, the competition, the neglect, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” open relationship—occupies a large chunk of The Hilliker Curse, which is due out this month from Knopf. Has Knode vetted it? The answer is no. None of the women in the book have, but for one. Click to continue »

 

Posted in Los Angeles Magazine | No Responses »
Tags:

Dustin Hoffman on “Rain Man”/autism in LA Mag

Written by amywallace on September 18th, 2010

D-U-S-T-I-N

The actor won an Academy Award for playing Raymond Babbitt, an autistic savant, in Rain Man. Twenty-one years later, Dustin Hoffman reflects

By Amy Wallace

Appeared in Los Angeles magazine, September 2010

On the research he did to prepare:

Oliver Sacks had this long blackboard in his office, and when he was talking about savants, he made a chalk mark on the blackboard. He said, “You know that’s one. You don’t have to count that.” I said, “Right.” He made another stroke and said, “You know that’s two.” Then he went the length of the blackboard, chalking, chalking, chalking. And he said, “What you see at one, two, three, or four or five—these people see at this number,” which was 78 chalk marks or something. I said, “They’re like calculators.” He said, “No, they’re faster than calculators. A calculator has to calculate. They see it.” The toothpick scene in Rain Man is based on that.

On the dialogue:

We had prototypes that we relied on: Peter and Kevin Guthrie. They’re brothers. Kevin Guthrie was a football star at Princeton University. Peter was autistic and high functioning. We had lunch one day and were going bowling afterward because Peter loved bowling. So he was very impatient, tapping Kevin on the thigh with his finger. He said, “K-E-V-I-N, I want to go bowling.” He would spell the name when he wanted something or when he was very anxious or both. Tom Cruise and I both decided we would find a place to use that. During the lunch, I whispered to Kevin, “Does your brother know that he’s autistic?” He said, “Gee, I’ve never asked him.” And he asked his brother, and Peter’s answer is in the movie: “No. I don’t think so. Definitely not.” There’s nothing in my performance that’s invented. It was given to me. We compensated the Guthrie brothers because they were cowriters.

On feedback he’s received from parents:

I guess the most special moment was a couple of years after the film came out, I bumped into some parents who said they had a nine- or ten-year-old autistic son they took to see Rain Man, and their son had never made physical contact with them. Anyway, they were on their way home, and one of the parents said, “Did you like the movie?” And suddenly their son came forward from the backseat and embraced one of the parents.

On why the movie was such a success:

While we were making Rain Man, we used to joke we should call it Two Schmucks in a Car. We were living by our wits from day to day. Then it came out. Suddenly it caught on, even internationally. I remember thinking, Why? What I came up with was, We’re all autistic to different degrees. For most people it’s hard to receive compliments. When someone tells us “You’re really handsome” or “You’re really beautiful,” we stop making eye contact. It’s too powerful. I think that must be one of the aspects of autism. Eye contact is just too powerful for autistic people, because they’re dealing all the time on that level. It’s just much more intense for them. Their volume is up higher. And that in itself will alter you.

 

Posted in Los Angeles Magazine | 2 Responses »
Tags: ,

NYT Prototype: Online Giving Meets Social Networking

Written by amywallace on September 4th, 2010

By AMY WALLACE

Originally appeared in the New York Times 9/05/10

LATE last month, tens of thousands of runners who are registered for this year’s New York City Marathon got an e-mail from Mary Wittenberg, the president and chief executive of New York Road Runners.

Ms. Wittenberg wanted to introduce them to a person whom many had already heard of: the actor Edward Norton. But the words “Hollywood movie star” didn’t appear once in her message. Instead, she implored the runners to join a social networking Web site that Mr. Norton and three partners started in May that she says has the potential to revolutionize charitable giving. It’s called Crowdrise.com. Click to continue »

 

Posted in New York Times | 2 Responses »
Tags: ,

Two interviews of mine in a recent book from Esquire

Written by amywallace on August 31st, 2010

A messenger just dropped off a copy of The Meaning of Life: Wisdom, Humor, and Damn Good Advice from 64 Extraordinary Lives. It’s a compilation of Esquire’s great “What I’ve Learned” interviews, and included are two I had the pleasure of doing: with Jerry Lewis and Billy Bob Thornton. Check it out!

 

Posted in Esquire | No Responses »

Reporting on Health: Covering Vaccines

Written by amywallace on August 31st, 2010

Science, politics and policy in the minefield

By Amy Wallace

Originally appeared on ReportingOnHealth.org on August 30, 2010

Around 8 p.m. on the evening of Dec. 23, 2009, my 12-year-old son and I were puttering around the house when there was a sudden, loud banging at the front door.

“I have legal papers for Amy Wallace,” a brusque woman’s voice said from the other side of the door when I asked who was there. I was startled. The voice sounded unpleasant. It was dark out. It was the night before Christmas Eve. I didn’t feel like welcoming the voice in. Can you leave the papers outside, I asked? “Are you Amy Wallace?” barked the voice. “Uh,” I said, hesitating, my head muddy. Who was sending me legal papers?

“I’m going to take that as a yes!” the voice said, and not in a friendly way. “I saw you through the window. Consider yourself served!”

A little more than two months before, the November issue of Wired magazine had hit newsstands. The cover story was “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-vaccine Movement,” and I had written it. In part, the story was a profile of Dr. Paul Offit, the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and a leading proponent of vaccines for children. But the story also painted a portrait of a passionate movement led by people who believe vaccines injure and kill children. And on Dec. 23, one of those people sued me, Dr. Offit and Conde Nast, the company that publishes Wired, for one million dollars. Click to continue »

 

Posted in Blog Posts | 7 Responses »
Tags:

Details: A Conversation with Oliver Stone

Written by amywallace on August 29th, 2010

The controversial director quit drugs and gave up on the Academy Awards — but he couldn’t resist taking another shot at Wall Street greed.

By Amy Wallace

Originally appeared in Details August 2010

Details: When Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps hits theaters, there will be those who—on seeing Gordon Gekko complete a lengthy prison sentence—will ask, “Wait a minute: Greed is bad?” Why do you think so many people misunderstood the message of the original Wall Street? Oliver Stone: I was somewhat amazed by the whole continuing cult thing around Gekko. I mean, I was being facetious. Greed is not good. Greed is an awful thing. In the eighties we entered into a period of perversity which I had never seen before. I thought the world would right itself. And every day it’s just become more absurd.

Details: You once said, “Money was the sex of the eighties.” What is money now? Oliver Stone: Money is still sex, but it’s steroid sex. I mean, a million dollars was a lot of money in ’87. Now you can’t even open a hedge fund, it seems, unless you’ve got a billion.

Details: Your last Oscar came over 20 years ago for Born on the Fourth of July. Do you feel pressure to win another? Oliver Stone: You can’t fall in love with Oscars. You have to look at it like a high-school presidency or something. You know: You were most popular at that time. When I won, thank God, it wasn’t a madhouse like it’s become. These independent producers started to come up and really campaign viciously. It was so ugly, after I got nominated for Nixon as cowriter in 1996, I never went back. Woody Allen did the smartest thing. And Kubrick. They didn’t give a fuck.

Details: You’ve said that a lot of your critics over the years have confused you with the characters you were depicting. Does that still happen? Oliver Stone: No, less so. I’m not so much of a firebrand. I would spout off when I was a younger man. Get angry. Pissed off. I realized late in life that I could have been like the Coen brothers: Shut up completely and just let the films speak for themselves.

Details: In a review of Platoon, one critic wondered aloud whether you were “using filmmaking as a substitute for drugs.” Have you ever found a suitable substitute for drugs? Oliver Stone: Oh, sure—money, sex, God, Buddha. There’re so many substitutes. Frankly, I don’t smoke grass anymore. I gave it up. I just wanted to see if I could function without it. But it did save my ass in Vietnam. I could have become a very bitter man. I also did a lot of psychedelics that I thought helped me. The worst drug I ever did, and I’ve admitted to it, was cocaine, from ’79 to ’81. That I regret, because I do think it hurt my brain cells, and I don’t think I was as creative as I should have been.

Details: Is it true you were in the process of kicking cocaine while writing the coke-drenched Scarface? Oliver Stone: No. I stopped before the writing—cold turkey. My attitude was “Farewell to coke.” I mean, it took so much money off me, I said, “I’m going to get something back.”

Details: At 63, is writing a movie harder or easier?
Oliver Stone: It’s always been a bitch.

 

Posted in Details | No Responses »
Tags:

GQ: The Comedian’s Comedian’s Comedian

Written by amywallace on August 15th, 2010

He’s a boxer, a Buddhist, a hoops junkie, and a kind of Yoda to every funny person born since 1965 (Sandler, Silverman, Apatow, Gervais, Baron Cohen…). Amy Wallace survives a rare sparring session with Garry Shandling, the reclusive master of American comedy

By AMY WALLACE

Originally appeared in GQ August 2010

Toward the end of February, in the first-class cabin of a United flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles, the only man on the planet who has hosted late-night talk shows, appeared on late-night talk shows, and created an iconic TV series that parodied a late-night talk show encountered the man who had just been famously ousted from a late-night talk show.

Garry Shandling was in 1A. Conan O’Brien and his family were three rows back. The two men are close friends, and their unexpected proximity made Shandling happy—so happy, he says, that he asked a flight attendant to deliver O’Brien a present. “Mr. Shandling can’t finish his cookie, and he thought you might want to have the rest,” the woman told O’Brien, presenting the crumb-littered plate. Minutes later, Shandling looked up—way up—to see the six-foot-four-inch redhead planted in front of him, an exaggerated scowl on his face.

“This is the way you treat me, with the broken cookies?” O’Brien asked Shandling, his voice slightly raised to make sure the comedy could be heard over the jet engines. “When I let you get in line with me and my wife and get your ticket ten minutes earlier? This is what you do?”

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Shandling responded, almost yelling. “I, out of the generosity of my heart, offer you food. And you have the nerve to walk up to my aisle and harass me and heckle me in front of this passenger”—Shandling nodded to the stranger in 1B—”who I don’t know?”

O’Brien turned to Shandling’s stunned neighbor, who will surely be dining out on this story for the rest of his life. “I’m sorry you have to sit next to him,” O’Brien said. “You know, if you call ahead and you find out Garry’s on the plane, they will allow you to switch seats.” Click to continue »

 

Posted in GQ | No Responses »
Tags: ,

Prototype column: Matching Innovators with Shoppers

Written by amywallace on August 7th, 2010

By AMY WALLACE

Originally appeared in the New York Times, August 8, 2010

ONE Sunday a month, this column seeks out creative thinkers and tells their stories. You might think that finding these folks would be easy, and we acknowledge that the Prototype in-box is often flooded by readers’ suggestions. But finding entrepreneurs whose sagas say something insightful about business culture — other than just “Buy my product!” — isn’t always a cinch.

That’s why Jules Pieri and Joanne Domeniconi inspire awe. What Prototype does 12 times a year, these women do five times a week at their e-commerce start-up, Daily Grommet. Their goal is to promote innovation by endorsing what they call “nice companies,” ones with well-made products and impeccable service. If those products preserve a craft or protect the environment, they say, all the better.

Here’s what distinguishes Daily Grommet from other Web marketplaces like eBay or Etsy: To be featured on Daily Grommet, you have to be chosen. In the tradition of the seal-of-approval judges at Good Housekeeping, the 15-person Daily Grommet team does its own research and features only products and companies it has battle-tested. Click to continue »

 

Posted in New York Times | 1 Response »
Tags: , ,

Sharon Stone: Why I’m Shameless

Written by amywallace on August 7th, 2010

That ballsy, larger-than-life star the public sees? It’s a persona she created, Stone reveals. The actress bares all about her body, her divorce and why she just says no to feelıng guilty.

By Amy Wallace

Originally published in More June 2010

SHARON STONE is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She thinks everyone should try it, though she cautions that if you’re female, shamelessness can cost you. Her refusal to feel guilty, she says, has gotten her labeled difficult, or worse.

“I’m like a Prohibition-era flapper. I’m like a juke-joint hussy,” Stone says over lunch at an Italian restaurant near Beverly Hills. But better to be called names than to be pressured into not being herself. Feeling ashamed, she says, “is not an organic state of being, so shamelessness is closer to godliness. You have to put shame down.”

Minutes later, as if to prove her point, she responds to a question about the watch on her wrist by yanking it off and flinging it onto the cement patio. “That’s the Dior Christal,” she says of the pricey timepiece, made with sapphire crystals, that she’s just tried to kill (Stone says she often does this stunt, which “shocks people but is the reason I am so proudly Dior’s spokeswoman”). She crouches to retrieve her bauble, emerging with a big smile on her makeup-free face. “How about that? It keeps on ticking.” Click to continue »

 

Posted in More Magazine | No Responses »
Tags: ,

Wise Guy: Seth MacFarlane in Details

Written by amywallace on August 5th, 2010

Seth MacFarlane Sounds Off

The outspoken Family Guy creator has amassed a legion of loyal fans and almost as many mortal enemies—and he has a hundred million reasons to keep the fart jokes coming.

By Amy Wallace

August 2010 Details magazine

Details: Thanks to a $100 million deal with FOX, you’re the highest-paid writer-producer on TV. How has life changed? Seth MacFarlane: I have the same job. I go to the same place every day and work with the same people. I bought a new house. I have a car that I like—an Aston Martin—for Sunday drives in the country. I bought a piece of a plane so I could avoid the airports. But look, I’ll still go through the Burger King drive-thru.

Details: Whopper? Seth MacFarlane: Well, Whopper Jr. these days, now that I’m in my thirties.

Details: Are women just crawling out of the woodwork? Seth MacFarlane: Believe it or not, I have about the same success rate as anyone else. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss. When you’re dealing with women of substance and quality, success in Hollywood can be something you’re actually fighting a perception of. Without naming names, there are certainly a lot of people who do what I do who have taken enough hedonistic advantage of their position as to put a negative stigma on the job. If you’re a producer, you’re somebody to check into.

Details: A player. Seth MacFarlane: Exactly. I tried that for a little while. It’s somewhat dissatisfying. With the sort of woman who’s worth spending a significant amount of your time with, you do oftentimes have to press a little bit to insist that they get to know you.

Details: To prove you’re not a cad? Seth MacFarlane: A douche. I don’t own one wool knit cap, though, so I think I’ve got that going for me. Click to continue »

 

Posted in Details | No Responses »
Tags: , ,

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes