Courtyard of Villa Carlotta
I'm house-sitting this week in the dear old Villa Carlotta at 5959 Franklin Ave in Hollywood, where I perched in the hunky-dory decade of Clinton/Gore, and before me Edward G. Robinson, Kurt Weill, Louella Parsons, David O. Selznick, Marion Davies. Five bookstores and four funky coffee-shops within a block, all of them now teeming with the next generation of New Hollywood writers, producers, directors, scene-painters, drummers, best boys, key grips, gaffers, and actors, and when I lean down to look at a scrap of paper on the sidewalk, it's a page of a script with an agent's notes scrawled all over it: "I don't feel this character! Flesh her out!"
Around midnight my friend calls from Barcelona. Did I feed the cat? Did I mist the orchid? Yes, I misted the orchid! I hope it blooms forever!
