You have to know when to say no. That’s one of the first things they tell you about journalism, when you’re young and hungry and everything feels like the last step before your big break. You have to know when to let a story go, or a hunch, or a dream. This business is dying and being reborn into a form nobody understands, or so they tell you, and when the stakes feel so high it’s hard not to cling to everything. This is doubly true when you write about Hollywood.
I said yes. From the first day I arrived in Los Angeles from London, chasing a dream I didn’t yet understand, I started saying yes and never stopped. Every yes feels like one step closer to the inside, to being embraced by the untouchable.
People talk about star-fuckers and hangers-on and fangirls with derision, as though it’s shameful to crave proximity to the famous, and not the most natural thing in the world. Celebrities are less like gods than drug dealers, delivering us into a more narratively perfect world in which everyone is beautiful and nothing is irreparable. This is a city built upon an industry built upon our collective need for escape, and the sheer force of all the stories that have been told here gives the city a glow, some nights, when you’re paying attention.
I have never been able to say no to the glow.