Driving the Saudis Read online

  I performed in over twenty shows; worked with world-renowned directors, designers, and playwrights; and began to understand what it meant to be an artist. I learned about stagecraft, dialects, and sword fighting. I learned how to move, sound, and act like an actor. I played myriad roles: a scatterbrained 1940s film studio secretary costumed in a black velvet gown with a 6-foot train; Hippolyta, the warring queen of the Amazons; and a ninety-year-old Japanese crone transformed into a young woman by the power of love. I even contracted walking pneumonia from riding my bicycle to class in the dead of winter. My freshly washed morning hair would freeze into foot-long icicles—a highly dramatic and also stunning look that I can’t really recommend—which afforded me the real sense memories of a real-life Chekhovian heroine with a real cough, and dangerously low blood pressure that gave me a peaked and haunted pallor. I didn’t need to pretend that I was a sizzling piece of bacon having an orgasm in the shower. That was for lightweights.

  At the graduation ceremony, one of the commencement speakers shared some insight with us regarding our likely future: “I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here because it may be the last time you will be acting. From now on, most of you will be bartenders, carpenters, and telemarketers with an Ivy League degree.” I paid no attention, because I felt this didn’t apply to me. I figured I had a pretty good shot at success since I had paid for part of my graduate training by doing voice-overs in a “Three Musketeers” cartoon, which seemed like a very good omen. Voice-overs are a hoot to do, especially cartoons; you don’t have to fix your hair or wear any lipstick because nobody sees you and nobody cares what you look like. It’s irrelevant. Voice-over artists just show up at the studio session and have a talent hootenanny portraying characters they might never play if a camera were on them. In one half-day session, I typically recorded a handful of roles: a sexy temptress intent on revenge, a hysterical society matron searching for her stolen pearls, a conniving evil assassin bent on poisoning any and all who got in her way, and even a grieving orphan boy. I had a ball, and I did it all in sweats and my hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  I moved to New York City full of confidence to start my theatrical career. The first big gig I landed after graduate school confirmed for me that I had made the absolute right decision. It was a modern adaptation of a Greek tragedy performed outdoors on an abandoned pier in midtown Manhattan. It received great notices in all the papers and was a huge success. My costumes were superb, I performed a romantic dance number with my character’s very own Phrygian slave, and I had a love affair with the handsome lighting designer. I was flying high.

  Wow! I thought. I’m working every night in New York with immensely talented people in a hit play—outside under the starry sky, atop a 300-foot steel structure suspended over the Hudson River!

  Wow!

  And I’m getting paid to do what I would do for free.

  Wow!

  How perfect is this?

  And the years went by, with a little bit of work here, a little bit of work there, a nice write-up in the paper here, a little Shakespeare there, and then, fifteen years later and after a move to Los Angeles, I was in seriously bad financial straits. I hadn’t been on a television show in two years, I hadn’t booked a voice-over gig in months, and even then the days of the $20,000 commercial residual paydays were long over.

  I’d made a point of learning about the production end of the entertainment business mostly because I loved it, but also because I knew that a way to be part of projects was to create projects. That just made sense. But I had blown through the $25,000 production bonus I’d received for my work as a producer on an indie film because I had figured that it would last far longer than it did. In the preceding twelve months, every deal I touched, as a producer or as talent, fell through. Every project went south as soon as it looked as if it might be close to taking off. I have a golden-haired brother with the Midas touch—he can just look at something and it makes money. But I was beginning to feel like I had the Dubya touch—one glance from me and everything instantly turned to shit.

  In what seemed like overnight, I was $40,000 in debt. It had actually taken quite a while, but it felt that it happened all of a sudden. Bam! It’s not that I had lavish lifestyle tastes; in fact, I was agonizingly frugal most of the time, but expenses added up exponentially, especially when I was trying to ignore them. They’re sneaky that way: car payments, car registration, car insurance, car servicing, car washing, car parking, car coddling, even car treats. This may seem like overkill, but in LA, your car is vital to your existence because you practically live in it, so you are foolish if you skimp on your vehicle and its needs. Then there were other basics: yoga classes of course, they’re a crucial part of the Southern California experience (I went only to the donation-based power yoga—thank you, Bryan Kest—but even so, my downward dogs added up), cell phone bill, cable bill, gas bill, electric bill, and rent, rent, rent, rent!

  I’m a banker’s daughter, and I’ve inherited some skills, so I’d spend half the day juggling interest rates on credit cards, making deals with one creditor after another, monitoring the mounting balances with increasing alarm. I even started making deals with myself: Well, if I don’t have any Starbucks for a month, that’s at least . . . eighty dollars!!! Holy shit! Okay, I am definitely not buying any Starbucks unless I really, really, really have to have one. That was hard to live by; desperation deals like that never work.

  I became an expert at hiding how truly bad things were; I didn’t want people to know, and I was embarrassed that I was failing in my careers—all my careers. I hid from my friends and family. I stopped going out because I was sick of always being somebody’s guest, of never being able to pay. That gets tiresome no matter how much your friends like you and want to help you get through tough times.

  I needed a regular steady job, even if that meant having to swallow my pride and squelch my soul in work that had nothing to do with my dreams. And then as those dastardly desperation deals are wont to do, they suck you in until hopefully, eventually, you muster up the gumption to say: I’m not doing this anymore! The money isn’t worth it! But that decision is hard to make when you’re trying to figure out how to live or eat or make art.

  I knew I had to do something to change things up. I got the idea to work as a chauffeur one night when I was in a limo that my friend Harlow had hired for the evening. We’d been invited to another friend’s snazzy party at his penthouse in West Hollywood and didn’t want to do any drunk driving like all the Hollywood wannabes who seem to think that a drunk-driving charge and subsequent incarceration is a prerequisite to a movie deal. Harlow arranged a car for us; her friend owns a limo company, and he hooked her up.

  I was talking to the chauffeur, Tyrone. He was serene and soft spoken; he told me he loved his job, and he looked sharp in his black Armani suit. He drove us to the party and then read a book in his car while he waited for us. Hmmmm, I thought. Maybe I could do this . . . drive rich people around all day to fancy restaurants and swanky parties. It seems almost glamorous. This might be a perfect temporary solution. It’s not as perfect as acting, but maybe it’ll be okay for a while until I get things sorted out.

  I started to ask around about the ins and outs of the job. I had a few actor friends who moonlighted in the limo business, and they made it sound pretty tolerable. They said that I’d have a lot of free time to do my own work, that I could take meetings during the day and arrange for time off whenever I booked a job. I could even generate my own A-list clients who would request me and then tip me well for special services. I could be kind of like a concierge in a car. A concierge in a car . . . that sounded nice. I could definitely make that work, I thought. In fact, I have to make it work. I started to think creatively. Perhaps I would pick up some foreign language instruction CDs at the library and brush up on Italian and French on my downtime. Maybe I would even pretend that I was French! I’d treat it as an around-the-clock acting exercise that would also help me pay my rent at the same time. I
’d wear deep red lipstick and sheer black silk stockings with a lacy garter belt under my conservative black suit. Even though no one but me would know I was wearing them, my undergarments would imbue me with a secret allure, and no one but me would believe that I was really just a girl from Jersey trying to make ends meet as an artist. It would be me, but not me. Frankly, I had to talk myself into it with that kind of magical thinking because I felt I had few other options. No one from the intelligentsia was helping me get a job in my chosen career, or in any other career for that matter.

  When I told my friend Lorelei what I was considering doing to make a living, she was aghast. Lorelei is a gorgeous redhead who had gone to undergraduate school at Columbia and then to acting school with me. Her intelligence and good sense made her sure there had to be better potential revenue streams for me to pursue.

  “What the hell? What are you thinking? That’s a terrible job for you. Have you lost your mind?”

  I ignored her. I decided to force myself to buckle down and make some quick, steady money, and after a few months, I would sell a script I’d been developing or land a great part in a film, and it would all be over. I have a brother who’s such a terrific salesman that he can sell the glue off a shoe. It’s inspiring to watch and listen to, but more than that, it’s empowering. He can get behind anything, full force, if he believes in it, and I knew that that’s what I had to do. I was going to get behind it and make it work.

  Around this time, a film of mine was finally released in which I played the private nurse of a wealthy man nearing the end of his life. It was a small role, but I had the good fortune to work with Kirk Douglas, and he acted like a doting Jewish grandfather. He was patient, kind, and gracious, and held my arm when we walked to and from the set as if he were escorting me to a ball. My friends on the film said that he made it look as if I was the famous movie star and that he was an ardent older admirer keeping me company.

  Before the start of filming, we had a rehearsal with the director in Mr. Douglas’s home in Beverly Hills. A small sitting room had been set up with a large bed in which he was lying as if infirm, which he wasn’t in the least. In fact, quite the opposite was true. He was in splendid shape, outstanding even, with terrific concentration and focus. Almost ninety years old, he still had regular gym workouts and speech therapy every morning before shooting his scenes to counteract the effects of a recent stroke. We rehearsed with me tending to him as if I were administering medications, making him comfortable by adjusting his pillows, and so on, and he would occasionally wink at me to let me know that it was all a big act—that he could show me a good time the minute I gave him the go-ahead.

  At a break in our rehearsal, I looked up at the many beautiful small paintings that covered the walls of the room. I had noticed the art when I’d first come in, but now I really saw it, and recognized the artists one after another: Chagall, Miro, Brancusi, and other superb painters whose work I very much admired. The rest of the house was filled with larger pieces that were even more impressive, which he showed me later in the afternoon as if he were a docent at a national museum—strolling from room to room, talking about each painting with great detail. At the end of the day, I thanked him for working with me and for allowing me to see such beautiful art up close in such an intimate setting. He said that he wished he could have shown me his full collection, but that he had already sold most of it. “I wanted to share it,” he said, “because it isn’t just mine even though I have collected it. It belongs to everyone, and should be enjoyed by everyone.” The proceeds of the sales went to the building of hundreds of playgrounds throughout Los Angeles.

  On the film shoot, he liked to stay on set to be lit, when most actors would have insisted on a stand-in and retired to their trailers to rest while the camera department did its work. Even though it was very tiring for him, as it would be for any actor much less one his age, Mr. Douglas preferred to help the cinematographer do as good a job as possible by making himself, the star, available. I didn’t have a stand-in, so between lighting setups (holding our positions on set as if we were actually filming), we would talk about life and love. He told me that after fifty years of marriage, he was preparing to surprise his wife and ask her to marry him a second time, and he described the elaborate preparations he was undertaking to woo her again as if he were a teenager planning his first date with a major crush. When he discovered that I wasn’t married, he shook his head and moaned mournfully.

  Each afternoon before his nap, we went through the same routine: he would track through the men he knew, obsessing about which ones he could introduce me to, shaking his head with consternation when he couldn’t come up with a satisfactory match. Everyone he knew was married or dead. I had to reassure him over and over again that there was no need for him to worry about it and that everything would be okay. “I just need more time, Mr. Douglas,” I said. “I want to find someone special so that I can be as happy as you are with your wife.” He’d shake his head and moan a little more. I knew part of him was thinking, in a nice grandfatherly way, Don’t wait too long, bubeleh, because the meter’s running.

  My meter was running, and in more ways than one. Deep down, I harbored some last-minute Hail Mary hopes that the release of the movie would catapult me into another phase of financially lucrative work that might save me, but that didn’t happen. Movies are a crapshoot, and that one was all snake eyes, as far as box office numbers go.

  I had no choice but to continue on with my plan for the fabulous temporary fix. I would be a chauffeur.

  In Los Angeles you don’t need a special license to drive a limo; you do need a Commercial Class B license if you’re hired to drive one of the 30-foot Hummer monstrosities that crowd Sunset Strip on a Saturday night, but a regular eight- or ten-pack stretch limo can be navigated by anybody with a valid driver’s license, a small measure of patience, and a willingness to use side mirrors. It would be a long, ugly drive if you didn’t use your mirrors. Stretch limos are rarely on the street now; they show up only on prom nights and are usually filled with truculent teenagers wanting to pig out at Taco Bell at midnight. Most people today prefer to be driven in the Lincoln Executive Series Town Car, which has an extended cab and is slightly more luxurious than a regular Lincoln Town Car, and also has more legroom in the back, making it feel like a baby limo. Those are the handsome black sedans you see parked in long lines outside the offices of Wall Street muckety-mucks in all the movies. The car just screams money and power.

  I applied to and was immediately hired by an exclusive high-end limo company chauffeuring a lot of movie stars, rock bands, and oh-so-important studio executive types who always seemed to wear size 38 suits when they really needed at least a size 42. I was kept busy with the year-round award shows—the Emmys, Grammys, Golden Globe Awards, MTV Music Awards, People’s Choice Awards, BET Awards, Genesis, Nickelodeon—Hollywood bestows a lot of awards on itself to justify the tremendous egomaniacal behavior that runs rampant—and then I was asked to drive for the biggest, baddest night of them all.

  The Oscars is not the glamorfest that it appears to be on television. It’s a bitch, at least for the chauffeurs. They bring in thousands of town cars and limos from all over the West Coast. Some of the Vegas limos have hot tubs in the back and even a pole in the center for strippers. I’ve been in a twenty-passenger Hummer limo with a macho chrome exterior and a hot tub that cost a couple of thousand dollars a night to rent. It had a sticky carpet and an assaulting odor (a combination of vomit, sour milk, and chlorine) that no amount of air freshener could fully mask. If something of yours dropped on the floor in that limo, it’d be best to leave it.

  My very first Oscars I drove a well-known comedian whose work has an unabashedly political bent. He was unexpectedly well-spoken, but friendly and funny too, as well as tall, and surprisingly good-looking without his moustache. His date was even funnier and so gracious, and delicately pretty, especially up close. She was almost as tall as he was, with long and smooth platinum hair drap
ing over her shoulders in soft waves, and wore an iridescent sea blue and turquoise–colored gown with a sparkly belt and a tremendous train that swished behind her like a long elegant fish tail. She looked like a glittering mermaid with terrific cleavage. Because her gown was so fitted, she could barely sit in the back seat of the car and had to angle herself in a precariously perched position so that her dress wouldn’t wrinkle. I was careful not to make any sudden stops so that she didn’t slip off the seat and land on the car floor or fly out the window, and I let her borrow my mirrored powder compact when she realized she had forgotten her own.

  Our day together started when I staggered to their door in the Hollywood Hills at midday carrying two lavish SWAG bags that were sent along as gifts from the studio, which had also comped the ride. I’ve been told that SWAG stands for “stuff we all get,” but I’ve never gotten such stuff (I am, however, still hopeful that it’s in the offing). Theirs were mammoth baskets, each weighing at least 30 pounds, filled with high-end freebies such as $300 embroidered Italian jeans (size 0 only), caviar firming and bleaching face cream (Can fish eggs really firm and bleach at the same time?), scented soy cruelty-free candles (Who would want to hurt soy, and why?), and a sample selection of reserva tequilas. The hooch was a thoughtful gift because most nominees need a few shots at the beginning, middle, and end of the night.

  I dropped off the tall funny guy and the beautiful mermaid at the Kodak red carpet for his photo ops and interviews before I, along with thousands of other limo drivers and their vehicles, was herded a half-mile north into the Hollywood Bowl parking lot, where we were all held hostage for the next six hours as a “security measure.” Then the Hollywood parties started and lasted all night. I dropped them back at their house after the endless evening of festivities, but I didn’t get home until 5:00 A.M. and I had started at noon. That’s 17 hours. Real glamorous. He graciously tipped me a couple of hundred bucks, but the beautiful mermaid forgot to give back my compact. It was a Christmas gift from my chauffeur friend Sami, with an intricate turquoise enamel inlay, and even though some of the powder had dried out and fallen away in clumps, I loved it. I tried to ask for it at the end of the night, but she dashed out of the car in a flash while he was tipping me, and it seemed small of me to chase her down to try to get it back. I didn’t mind, truly, because it did match her dress, but I did miss it, and I wondered if she noticed later that she had forgotten to return it to me.