Melanie: A love song
April 2015. We’d been on the West coast for a couple of weeks, but only a few days in LA. The jet lag had passed, but the vapor-trail of exhaustion from work had not. We drove around, pointing out houses, in a semi-dreamlike state. One evening we turned into Justin Timberlake’s driveway and made eye-contact with his security guard. We gave careful consideration to the granola selection at WholeFoods. We streamed YouTube videos on the TV.
A lunch booking at The Chateau Marmont was a cornerstone of our trip, and we’d dressed up in our most low-key looks. Ushered out to the garden, an artificially cool terrace was dotted with old Hollywood, with emphasis on the ‘old’. And on the ‘artificial’. Women who had once been described as ‘starlets’ — who could tell a tale or two about sitting next to Clark Gable or reading for Elia Kazan. Women who had settled on a hairstyle in the spring of 1978 and not wavered since. We ordered Arnold Palmers and surveyed things from behind our sunglasses.
To a visitor, The Chateau is like a lot of things in Hollywood — an entity that’s strange to see up close, in real life. It acts as the backdrop to so many pictures of stars walking in, and then, much later, leaving in various stages of disorder, dishevelment, or — in some cases — decease. In black and white, or in glorious technicolour, The Chateau has come to represent the real reality of celebrity. One troubled star once spent $500 on cigarettes alone during a prolonged stay which culminated in an unpaid $36,000 bill and her eviction. Another guest reportedly defecated in the bushes next to a restaurant table. Owner Andre Balazs’ philosophy is if it doesn’t disturb anyone else, who cares?
And so, we were still adjusting to the 3D-ness of it all when Melanie Griffith arrived with her three grown-up children and took a corner table.
Like the Chateau, here was the 2D, the photographed, the filmed made real. A star born of a star, Tippi Hedren, and creator of a star, Dakota Johnson. Melanie Griffith, mauled by her pet lions in Roar. Melanie Griffith, a head for business and a bod for sin in Working Girl. Melanie Griffith, who not a month earlier had a very public spat with Dakota at the Academy Awards. A star in the old-fashioned sense, who could not know that a 2 minute conversation on the red carpet would become her second most watched clip on YouTube. We ordered and ate silently, watching her. She was truly beautiful, with that magical allure so often attributed to the famous. Her very being seemed to soak up all the light, throw the aging starlets further into shadow, and make her glow.
So far from home, at odds with the different timezone and climate, and submerged into the dizzy surreality of Hollyweird, Melanie Griffith’s face became an anchor — something deeply familiar and known. “Do you want one of my chips?”. “Shh,” I said, “I’m looking”.
It wasn’t the last time we saw her. Another year, another trip, another evening. This time, slouched closer towards the strange core of L.A, we were taken out for dinner by a family friend, now the head of a major broadcasting network. He was a real storyteller, larger than life, and ordering everything that was and wasn’t on the menu. Cocktails, wine, more cocktails. “The chief economist at Goldman Sachs said I should only invest in 2012 Napa wine” — I wrote in my Notes app, inebriated in the Uber home that night — “They keep giving me things. Now I have The Ellen Show”. On the way back from a trip to bathroom, as I staggered to the table, there she was. Melanie. This time ensconced in a booth, chatting with friends.
Familiar in the unfamiliar. 2D become 3D. Standing for so much history, legacy, glamour, fantasy. So completely known and yet a total stranger. The room around me, already swirling from the booze, suffused with the dream again. I let my fingers drag across the top of her leather booth as I passed, and caught the faint wisp of her perfume. Her laugh, the glint of light across her hair.
“What did I miss?”, I said, returning to the table and blinking, confusedly at the upturned faces of my party. “Oysters”, the network head said, “and we ordered you another drink”.
This is the second in a slow burn series and personal writing project I’m working on inspired by Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I’m reflecting each of her essays with one of my own — exploring similar themes and ideas. This one pairs to John Wayne: A Love Song. Read the first piece, which pairs to Where the kissing never stops, here.
