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My final NYT Prototype column: Wah-wah!

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

With a Flip of a Knob, He Heard the Future

The path to the invention of the wah-wah pedal — which lets an electric guitar take on aspects of the human voice — shows the twists and turns of the creative process.

By Amy Wallace

Originally appeared in the New York Times on August 7, 2011

DEL CASHER has done a lot of impressive things with his guitar over the last 50 years. He has performed with Gene Autry, Lawrence Welk, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. He’s appeared, strumming, in movies with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis. He’s been a featured player on dozens of film and TV soundtracks.

But there is one accomplishment that Mr. Casher, now 73, wishes more people knew about: his role in the invention of the wah-wah pedal.

The story of this device, which enables an electric guitar to take on aspects of the human voice — and which helped define the sounds of rock stars like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton — is complicated. But that very complexity drives home a point: While it is easier — and more romantic — to talk about innovation as the domain of lone inventors who hit pay dirt while tinkering in solitude, creativity is more often than not a collaborative, and messy, affair. As such, Mr. Casher’s story seems an apt one to tell in this, my last Prototype column.

“There’s a lot of players in this whole thing,” and a brilliant engineer named Brad Plunkett was one of them, says Mr. Casher, who is Click to continue »

Posted in New York Times | No Responses »
Tags: genius, LA Culture

Los Angeles, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Noah Baumbach, the writer-director most associated with Brooklyn, explains how he made an (almost) cliché-free movie about L.A.

Los Angeles magazine, March 2010

» The Filmmaker’s Back Story

Noah Baumbach’s first movie was shot in Los Angeles, and you weren’t supposed to know it. The writer-director had wanted to set Kicking and Screaming, his 1995 film about a group of friends struggling to get moving after college, at his alma mater, Vassar. He made do with Occidental College but worked to make Eagle Rock evoke an upstate New York vibe. Since then the 40-year-old New Yorker has depicted ’80s Brooklyn (in his 2005 film, The Squid and the Whale, which nabbed him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay) and present-day Long Island (in 2007’s Margot at the Wedding).

In collaboration with his friend Wes Anderson, he has also imagined whimsical worlds (he and Anderson cowrote the scripts for 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and last year’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is up for a Best Animated Feature Oscar this month). Now Baumbach has made his first film about Los Angeles. In theaters March 26, Greenberg stars Ben Stiller as a former musician who has returned home to L.A. to recover from a breakdown after living for years in New York. The city on display in Greenberg is less iconic than familiar. It is the L.A. that Baumbach has gotten to know thanks to his wife, the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, who grew up here.

Baumbach and Leigh, who are expecting their first child this month, split their time between New York and L.A. “I would say we live in New York and have a house here. Jennifer would say something else,” he explains. “I think of it as, like, our country house in Los Angeles.”

-Amy Wallace

» Baumbach talks about Greenberg (as told to Amy Wallace)

I don’t know which came first—wanting to set a movie in L.A. or wanting to do a movie about a fortysomething guy who can’t get out of his own way. I had an idea of this character, Roger Greenberg. I wanted to tell a story about a guy who in these very particular ways is trapped in a false sense of himself. Someone who is still hung up on being perceived a certain way and is under the impression that people still care how he’s perceived. And the older he gets, the more this becomes an issue. It makes his life very hard to live. Click to continue »

Posted in Los Angeles Magazine | No Responses »
Tags: Famous People, LA Culture

Whispering to Rottweilers, and to C.E.O.’s – New York Times

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” built a multimillion-dollar company on his skill with pets and their owners. “God was my lawyer,” he says.

Originally appeared in the New York Times on 10/11/2009

BY: Amy Wallace

IT’S a miracle. That’s what the humans believe, more often than not, after watching this compact, 40-year-old C.E.O. do his work. He enters a room purposefully, his chest thrust forward and a smile on his face. “How can I help?” is his standard introduction, and the way he says it — calmly, assertively — indicates that your problems are about to be solved. Click to continue »

Posted in New York Times | No Responses »
Tags: entrepreneurs, Famous People, LA Culture

Edra Blixseth – The New York Times

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club

Bankruptcies Jolt a Ski Haven for the Superrich

Jeff Minton

Originally appeared in the New York Times June 14, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Nine days after declaring personal bankruptcy — again — a barefoot Edra Blixseth pads excitedly around Porcupine Creek, her 30,000-square-foot estate here. Guests are coming, probably 125 in all. They’re due any minute. The zipper on her sternum-baring cocktail dress is jammed. Do you think it’s too tight? Can somebody help her?

Click to continue »

Posted in New York Times | 1 Response »
Tags: entrepreneurs, LA Culture, women

The Unlikely Return of Mickey Rourke – Men’s Journal

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Sure, he isn’t as pretty as he was, but he is having more sex and attracting attention for his acting, not his antics. And if Rourke doesn’t nab an Oscar this time, so what? He’s going for one next year, too.

Originally appeared in Men’s Journal February, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

Just a few months ago, Mickey Rourke was driving around Miami late one night, cruising the streets of his hometown, when his cell phone rang. “Hey, it’s Bruce,” a familiar voice said, but at first Rourke couldn’t place it. “Springsteen,” the voice said. Rourke tears up a little when he remembers.

Rourke, who is 52, has known Springsteen for more than two decades — a span of time that includes at least a few of Rourke’s glory days and all of what he calls “my lost years.” During that period the actor basically told Hollywood to go fuck itself, became a not entirely unsuccessful professional boxer, got the shit beat out of him, and lost all traces of prettiness in his once-pretty face. Long before his recent comeback, he had found a good psychotherapist in the hopes, he says, of finally becoming — and this is a word he uses a lot — “accountable.” Click to continue »

Posted in Men's Journal | No Responses »
Tags: Famous People, LA Culture

Nastier than a Speeding Bullet — Portfolio

Monday, October 1st, 2007

A battle for control of the Superman franchise pits Time Warner against the original Lois Lane.

Originally appeared in Portfolio, October 2007

BY: Amy Wallace

In May 2002, Richard Parsons, then co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, received a scathing letter from the widow of Jerome Siegel, the man who invented Superman.   “Dear Dick,” wrote Joanne Siegel. “Have you been aware that your representatives have gone too far?”

In the mid-1930s, when she was in her late teens, Siegel had been the sketch model for Lois Lane. Now she was accusing Parsons’ company of trying to fleece her and her daughter of their share of Superman revenues. She called AOL Time Warner “greedy” and alleged a “heartless attempt” to rewrite history. “Just like the Gestapo, your company wants to strip us naked of our legal rights…. Is that the reputation you want?”

In the five years since Parsons received that three-page screed, Siegel’s outrage has found a more formal outlet: two lawsuits, both championed by a controversial Malibu litigator named Marc Toberoff. The 52-year-old attorney has made a career of taking on big entertainment companies on behalf of creators and their heirs. He has been especially successful against what is now Time Warner.

Click to continue »

Posted in Portfolio | No Responses »
Tags: Hollywood Players, Infamous People, LA Culture, The Industry

Hollywood Dish – Vanity Fair

Monday, April 1st, 2002

The Greasy Spoons that Made L.A. Great

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 2002

BY: Amy Wallace

There are glitzy Los Angeles restaurants – Mortons, Ago, Mr. Chow – where Hollywood’s top stars and reigning moguls go to be seen. Then there are no-nonsense spots where the same A-list crowd goes to simply eat in peace: the Apple Pan in Westwood, Nate ‘n Al’s Deli in Beverly Hills, O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant in Santa Monica, and Pink’s in the heart of Hollywood. Click to continue »

Posted in Vanity Fair | No Responses »
Tags: LA Culture

Stacked Like Me – Los Angeles Magazine

Tuesday, January 1st, 2002

Los Angeles Magazine

January 1, 2002

By: Amy Wallace

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The lid on my cup wasn’t tight, so when I went to take a sip, milk foam poured and then puddled on my sweater. Stooping to wipe up what I presumed would be a mess on the floor, I found that little coffee had gotten past me. For the first time ever, my breasts were too grande for my latte. * Later, I took my breasts out to lunch at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, where they promptly attracted the attention of, well, everybody. Outside the Broadway Deli, two men approached. They were well dressed, respectable-looking, and as they veered toward me, the one in the black designer suit leaned in, his eyes fixed like spotlights. “We love them,” he announced, smiling wickedly. * I’ve had breasts for years. But now I have the biggest, firmest breasts in sight–a plump, jiggling set that obscure my downward vision and get in the way when I drive. My new breasts are D cup. They weigh 23.2 ounces–about the same as a couple of average grapefruits. They sit high on my chest in a bra that makes the most of my cleavage. Click to continue »

Posted in Los Angeles Magazine | No Responses »
Tags: LA Culture, women

The Sushi Nazi – Vanity Fair

Thursday, May 1st, 1997

Uni Bomber

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair May, 1997

BY: Amy Wallace

TODAY’S SPECIAL: TRUST ME! reads the hand-lettered sign on the wall of Sushi Nozawa. And chef Kazunori Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’ most temperamental restaurateurs, isn’t kidding around.

To occupy one of the nine seats at his counter, a waitress explains to newcomers, is to relinquish control. No ordering, please. You eat what he serves – or you’re out the door.

One hapless entertainment executive refused Nozawa’s tuna on the grounds that dolphins might have perished in the catch. ‘‘Out!’’ yelled the irate chef, who is known to ignore diners’ trendy requests (NO CALIFORNIA ROLL! reads another sign) and to bark instructions (‘‘One bite only!’’) at those whose sushi skills don’t measure up.

‘‘Grumpy doesn’t even begin to describe it,’’ says Robert Ward, a writer and TV producer (Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice), who is such a Nozawa devotee that he immortalized the chef in one of his novels. ‘‘He’s an artist. Asking him to make a California roll is like asking Van Gogh to paint a velvet Elvis.’’

Most nights, customers wait in line to be mistreated at the closet-sized restaurant, right next to a nail salon in a San Fernando Valley mini-mall. Nozawa regulars have spotted Jeffrey Katzenberg, not to mention actors Rebecca De Mornay and James Caan, sampling the albacore and risking the chef’s wrath.

But Nozawa – who once refused to serve singer-songwriter Carole King a second order of uni – doesn’t care who you are, as long as you adhere to his program for sushi Zen.

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Tags: LA Culture

School for Sandals – Vanity Fair

Saturday, April 1st, 1995

Karma and culture draw Hollywood to the free-spirited Crossroads School

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 1995

BY: Amy Wallace

Down an alley, next to a sheet-metal factory just off the Santa Monica Freeway, is a place so exclusive that some of Hollywood’s most powerful players are turned away at the door. It’s not a nightclub, but a prep school: the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, a 23-year-old experiment in nontraditional learning that – despite its grungy locale – draws celebrities like moths to a spotlight. Click to continue »

Posted in Vanity Fair | No Responses »
Tags: Famous People, LA Culture, schools, Westside