SWIMMING POOLS, MOVIE STARS

The problem with having a very rich fantasy life is that reality so often pales in comparison. Last night I had dinner with a movie star, which wasn’t nearly as fascinating as the many movie star dinners I’ve been having in my head all these years.

First off, the restaurant was nothing special. I go there all the time, as a matter of fact, with my sister and my friends, none of whom are the least bit famous. On this particular occasion I got there early so I wouldn’t be nervous about being late. I chose just the right table and whipped out a script to establish right off that I am every inch the Hollywood type, but nobody seemed to notice. Not the clueless waitress focusing on the minimum basic requirements of her own job, not the male schoolteacher tossing graded papers onto a growing stack with a successively longer sigh. A couple of writers wiling away the afternoon alone got up to leave, the last of the dwindling lunch crowd, minutes before my companion arrived for dinner. Why were we having dinner at a place that closes at seven, anyway? How would the paparazzi find us?

At that point it occurred to me that what interested me most was not merely having dinner with a star, nor even about our working together, but instead by the notion of being seen doing all that. What’s that about a tree falling in a forest and not making a sound? “You guys should order now if you want soup,” the oblivious waitress said once my companion arrived. “It tastes like glue once they turn off the burners and have to re-heat it.”

Have you never seen a movie?” I wanted to shout. “Ask this woman for an autograph, you dolt!” I mean, my God, J. has been in pretty much all of them over the last twenty years, with and without her equally famous brother all girls my age have a crush on. Then again, J. wasn’t even wearing dark sunglasses, just jeans and sneakers like another unassuming Midwest housewife—despite her being one of the most popular comedic actresses of our time, with two Oscar nominations to show for it.

She’s recently started her own production company in partnership with her former agent, whose first big project is a biopic of a famous chef and WWII spy. In hopes of attaching me to write it, my manager had sent my semi-autobiographical sample script about three disinherited siblings who pull off a heist. (No we did not pull off a heist together in real life). J. casually informed me that she’d be ordering the artichoke and goat cheese salad and that she was interested in making my movie, as if these two thoughts deserved equal weight in a single sentence. “I even told my brother about it,” she added, squeezing a lemon wedge over her iced tea. “Do you see any Splenda around?”

“I’m sorry, can we go back?” I said, not about to let artificial sweetener come between me and this juicy tidbit. “What did your brother say about my script?”

“He said he’d do it.”

Star-struck rube that I am, I’ve been around Hollywood long enough to know that about a hundred things would have to happen before the two J's star together in my movie. But the mere idea of it all was enough to release any lingering disappointments I may have had about being in the moment. There I sat, just me and the movie star tossing around a few additional casting ideas. Although real sugar doesn't work as well in iced tea as the substitute, the thing about Hollywood is that every once in awhile, real life does turn out better than the movie version.

LIFE IMITATES HBO

After missing her at Sundance and during an earlier L.A. trip, I finally had lunch with the producing partner of the popular New York actress SJP. As is the general rule of thumb, she’s just as pretty as her celebrity collaborator, though maybe not as thin—but then, who is?

As she picked the chicken and cheese from a salad and left a crusty roll untouched, I resisted the urge to reach over and eat it myself while offhandedly informing her that bread is back. The generally accepted rule is New York gets to tell us which hemline is in this season and we get to say what diet trend must be followed after Labor Day. I sipped an ice blended mocha drink that both sides have agreed bears no relation whatsoever to the bi-coastally forbidden chocolate milkshake.

I did a lot of yammering about my current assignment writing a picture for EN, another Manhattan celebrity, forgetting how much smaller New York is than L.A., and that they all refuse to leave the island except for a few months in the summer when they re-group on the same beach just down the road. When she looked at me knowingly and asked if “the boys” were treating me right, I was pretty sure we'd stepped out of an episode of Sex and The City back on her home turf and entered an episode of Entourage here on mine. Part of me wanted to confess that sometimes I feel like the only girl in their Malibu Colony tree house whose hand-scribbled sign made it perfectly clear I wasn’t allowed to begin with. Unless of course I were Mandy Moore , Mrs. Ari Gold or a high-priced hooker, in which case all bets are off.

Though I realized that you haven't arrived in Hollywood until life begins to imitate HBO, mine would most closely approximate Curb Your Enthusiasm, what with its requisite level of personal humiliation I can't seem to sidestep despite my recent successes. Fortunately, it also occurred to me that nowhere in the real world show business manual is an allowance made for unbridled true confessions, even among women. “The guys are great,” I told her. “I’ve never felt so inspired.”

All I had to do now was avoid hitting her with my car, as Larry David surely would, once we backed out of our adjacent parking spaces. As we crossed Beverly Boulevard on foot, a breeze threatened to blow open my black linen wrap-around dress, and I shared my relief at having worn pretty panties. All her good stuff was dirty, she said, so she had thankfully opted for jeans.

On any other day, in any other town, on any other network, we might have become fast friends. We’d have gone back to her suite at the Four Seasons, raided the mini-bar and found something smutty on Lifetime starring Nancy McKeon and David Hasselhoff. We'd have charged up obscene amounts of late night room service and asked the delivery guy and his buddy from the boiler room to stay for a couple of hands of Texas Hold 'Em. Instead we shook hands, got into our cars and drove off in opposite directions.