Today's Blind Items - They Could Make A Movie About This - Part Two

Drinks had arrived and as they were being placed on the table, RG came back from the bathroom and sat down in an empty chair next to JG. Up until that minute I had never met RG. I knew who she was of course. I knew she partied, but didn’t realize she was up to the point where she was grabbing vials of coke from fellow actors to snort in a restaurant bathroom. I hadn’t seen what JG had handed her when she went in, but when RG set the empty one down on the table, I got a good look. So did the tables next to us. Even though she was A- list at the time, her latest movie had bombed and was the first theatre released movie she had done in about a year. Looking at her up close, I could see she was doing a lot more than a little partying. From a distance she looked decent but when you got a good look at her you saw her hair had not been washed in a while and her fingers were stained, probably from crack. She was bone thin and her skin was so pale that it made the bright red lipstick on her lips look even more stark.

Her hair was a variety of blonde shades that probably changed with each mood shift. I remember she was wearing a white dress covered with large flowers and a v neck opening. More white is not what she needed. Every few seconds she would lean over to JG and invariably her bare breast would fall out and a little over half the time she would place it back inside her dress when she sat back up.

She was falling apart. It was probably two years earlier that she could have booked a bunch of nice 100M movies. Instead, she was more interested in having fun and her career spiraled. Down.

It occurred to me at some point in the first ten minutes of her joining us that this table where I was seated included a lot of could have beens and should have beens. I’m not leaving myself out of that conversation, but at the table were three people who all at one point had been tipped as the next big thing. They each had a shot at fame and at that point of time, by their own actions, whether it be being difficult or being too involved in partying, they had sent their careers in a tailspin.

JG and DD were both living off the fame from a movie, while good, had not made a ton of money when it was released three years earlier. JG’s last movie had been two years earlier and sucked.  I say that despite the fact I had a half dozen friends who were in it. JG was living off fame he achieved as a kid. ON his own, as an adult actor, he was not making it. If he didn’t change something in his life, he was going to keep landing independent movies with budgets that progressively got smaller until he finally ended up doing a regular job and would probably tell stories at work about what a big shot he used to be and how he once hooked up with LT.

1. What to say about her. Unlike most people who came into contact with her, I actually liked her. As I said before we shared a love of Hollywood history. She was smart and sarcastic and was good at talking smack. Her last movie had been released a month or so earlier and it did manage to crack the $1M barrier. Barely. So, yeah, a big bomb. That was her first movie in three years. She too was living off that movie from three years earlier which is talked about a lot even to this day, but didn’t make much money. When she was a kid she was involved in some good, money making movies. All the way through her tween and late teen years it was a nice and steady career. Then, out of nowhere came the movie that made her career. Suddenly everyone knew her. She didn’t enjoy that. It did allow her to pick what movies she wanted to do and she made a few bad choices in a row. To her credit, one of the movies she made was supposed to be huge and flopped. A three movie losing streak for someone in her position combined with a perception of being difficult iced her out. Because I actually liked her, I felt sorry for her. She is a good actress. Over the years though, that perception has ruled the day to the point where she is probably C+ list and is only that high because of her history. Her history also is her curse. I think if she could go back in time she would not have been in the movie that made her a household name. Even just a few years removed from it at that table, I think she would have made that choice.

Her choice that night was to drink. A lot. We were 20 minutes in and she was on drink 3 and had brought one from the bar to the table. I was actually interested to see if she was going to be a sweet drunk or angry drunk and what she was thinking. DD and I were seated next to each other. She was on my left and I was turned towards her talking when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Just a flash.

That flash turned into a chair hitting the floor and JG yelling out, “What the f**k is your problem?”

“You shoving your tongue down my girlfriend’s throat is my problem a**hole.” Those words were spoken by a guy all of you know. He is actually the one who is really an a-hole, but in that situation at that time, I will admit that JG was being the a-hole. I hadn’t even noticed JG groping and making out with RG. Honestly, even though the blind is long, from the time that RG grabbed the coke from JG’s hand to the chair on the floor was maybe 20 minutes. It could have been a touch longer but I doubt it because the appetizers we had ordered hadn’t arrived.

Side note. To this day, I’m not sure if RG had been in the bar when we arrived and saw JG on the way to the bathroom or if she had been seated at a table, gone to the restroom and been gone 20 minutes which is why the boyfriend came looking for her.

In any event, what was in front of me now was JG on the floor looking up at a guy we shall call LB. Finally, someone not an actor. As he is standing over JG and RG is yelling at him for embarrassing her, LB looks over at the table and seems to kind of recognize DD and sees me and asks me what the f**k I’m doing there. He was in a band. A popular band. We knew each other in a say hi kind of way. Before I could answer he kicked JG and grabbed RG by the arm and told her they were leaving. RG then began telling him that she wasn’t his girlfriend and that tonight was about finalizing that. She also said she wasn’t going anywhere. LB looked down at JG and then at RG and told JG that he and the crack wh**e deserved each other. He then walked out.

While it was all happening, you don’t really notice anything else. After LB left, you could feel the eyes of every single person in that restaurant on us. Just burning a hole in you. You also realized that the noise hum that had been surrounding us all night was replaced by dead silence. As JG got up and placed his chair upright, RG grabbed him by the arm and said she was sorry it happened and maybe they should go to the bathroom to take the edge off. Yeah, good thinking. Off they went though.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about getting kicked out, having an A lister puke right next to you and then ask you for a smoke and watching someone get their head smashed in by a baseball bat and left for dead. Good times.