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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Julia Phillips was illegal, but she wasn't such a bad influence, I think. She was a fighting pop-culture priestess who could talk to the young. Compare her with John Lennon in his Harry Nilsson-led L.A. "lost weekend" phase: Those guys were trying to feed off a youth scene in a negative way. There was still, in the '90s, a sign up at a Sunset club: "Hollywood Vampires Club," with Lennon, Nilsson, Ringo and Alice Cooper as president, V.P., secretary, etc. When they got plowed with McCartney and recorded some oldies, they were so uncreative they couldn't play "Chain Gang" in time or in tune. They invited Stevie Wonder to sit in -- he was recording his masterpieces down the hall -- and he politely excused himself as soon as he could, then yelled at the producer, "Those guys were terrible! Embarrassing! Get me out of this!" When Nilsson urged McCartney to try PCP, McCartney asked, "Is it fun?" Nilsson thought and said, "No." Phillips would never try to convince anyone to do anything she didn't find fun, and she cherished the ideal of artistic excellence.
And she wasn't a nihilist like Nilsson. She optioned "Interview With a Vampire" (a job her indiscreet book kiboshed), but she wasn't a Hollywood vampire. She genuinely, and far less self-interestedly than most, wanted to help propel young talent to the empyrean. She nurtured people (and by insider accounts, once free of addiction, she was a devoted mother). The energy most entertainment types pour into sexual predation she poured into hepcat cafi society. (When she ushered me into her '70s room, off her bedroom, she informed me, "I'm not gonna fuck you.") She wanted to get the cool kids to brew risky new ideas -- and not just about Ecstasy soaked into a joint.
She yearned to be surrounded at all times by a cozy countercultural salon, a party that served as a comfort zone. That's why she conducted meetings in her old drug room -- it wasn't a place of bad memories, even though it nearly killed her. It was a place of bonding, exploring, achieving -- where everybody could get creative and fulfill their dreams, no matter how outrageous, with Phillips helping out by threatening to cut some craven suit's MBA balls off and sew them into his throat if he tried to interfere with the "genius work" her pals were putting down.
Only some of Phillips' work was genius, however. It was not all to the good that she was the anti-Spielberg -- surfing the edge of control instead of being cautiously methodical, given to the intuitive leap rather than the encyclopedic cinematic erudition and calculated moves of a past master. She pissed away much brilliance in the performance art of aleatoric storytelling, like a less cruel Courtney Love. (Not that Phillips was always nice or fair: She notoriously accused Goldie Hawn of odoriferous poor personal hygiene, and I can testify that when Hawn unexpectedly kissed my cheek during an interview, she smelled like a daisy. Besides, was Phillips' nose, caked with $120,000 worth of coke, really the ideal instrument to trigger Proustian feats of accurate olfactory reminiscence?)
Even her best work, the mordant, merciless "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again," which outdid Capote in shrieking truth to decadent power, failed to be what it could have been if she had only had more focus and developed the sketchy, skeletal reminiscences into shaped narratives, and made the kind of connections that make Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" a lasting work of literature.
Her second book was an aimless, navel-gazing suckathon. She didn't have enough leftover dish, and she evidently wouldn't let her ego get out of the way enough to let her friends advise her to rewrite it from top to bottom. She should've trusted her brain trust -- or maybe she did, but nobody else in Hollywood dares to risk a friendship by telling harsh truths. The place lives by and for beautiful lies. She was scared as well as daring, and movie people can smell fear better than piranhas. Even though she conquered hard drugs, and appeared clearheaded even while mildly stoned, to some extent the party had to get the better of the art, and did. It happens all the time: Critic John Lahr claims chronic pot is the reason Paul McCartney's post-Beatles music is "spun from rotten satin." Like George Harrison and Linda McCartney, Phillips ducked the scary drugs and died from the Reaper's stealth weapon, cigarettes.
But while she lived, few lived with more gusto or less reverence. I remember the message she left for me at the Chateau Marmont: "Come on, let's go dancing, everybody will be there. It'll be fun!" No doubt it was fun, and Julia Phillips made it more so.
