Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 6

391 GIRL ON FILM

GIRL ON FILM

The next day Jonathan went to his meeting, and Remo and I spent all afternoon in his home studio with him teaching me these parts and me overdubbing a bunch of soundtrack stuff. I had completely forgotten he'd told me months ago about a soundtrack he had been working on and I thought it was funny he didn't bring it up sooner. Maybe he just didn't want to pressure me, or maybe he'd known I was going to show up on his doorstep at some point. That led to an engineer coming over for dinner and us spending the evening working on it some more, while Jonathan dove into reading two books he had brought home about how to write screenplays.

The concept that he could learn to do it from a book was fascinating to me. You can't learn to play an instrument from a book. But he wasn't learning to play an instrument, he was learning to do something similar to what he already knew, which was using words, and so yeah, learning about words from a book makes perfect sense.

The next two days we fell into a routine where Jonathan would read his books and work on his stuff in the afternoon while Remo and I worked in the studio. But then it was time for Remo to leave town. He hit the hay early after dinner and Jonathan and I stayed up watching movies from the laserdisc collection. (Well, that is to say we got through one before we conked out.)

The fact that I called having two days in a row that were the same a "routine" probably tells you something. Whether it says how unusual it was for me to have two days the same or how quickly I fall into ruts, I'm not sure. Both, okay? Both. Why do we always try to split things into two options when in reality both are valid?

The first morning we woke up alone in the house we didn't get out of bed until noon and not because we were asleep. I guess I felt I had a few days of not having sex to make up for. After getting used to it every day in Mexico it's like it built up while we were holding back. We hadn't actually talked about not doing it while Remo was around, but I guess we both felt self-conscious about it enough that we were hands off until he left.

That weekend I took J. to a Hollywood function of some sort that Digger got us invited to. It was at some swanky restaurant that had been taken over for the night, and was more movie industry people than music industry. This forced me to deal with the fact I had a suitcase full of beach clothes and not much appropriate for going out in public. J's mother had mailed him his clothes, so he was basically set, and he took me out shopping. We ended up with something that looked basically like my usual "rock star" stuff only more expensive. New jeans, new shirt, new low boots. I wore the BNC leather jacket I had stashed in my bag for the over-air-conditioned plane flights, the one that Ziggy had added just a few little studs and rhinestones to. The goal was to look "respectably disreputable," at least in the words of the woman we ran into while shopping who handed J. a business card that labeled her a "fashion consultant." I think she assumed J. was my manager or handler. J. told her he was fairly sure that was the look I'd in fact already established but thanked her and put the card in his pocket.

I'm pretty sure everyone in Hollywood, whether they realize it or not, is putting everyone into a big list of casting credits rolling through their minds. The part of the rock star in today's episode is played by Daron Marks.

At the party I got to play the part of "rock auteur" possibly. The producer who had come over to Remo's the other day was there and he introduced me to some other people and at one point I ended up in a conversation in a corner booth after having drunk too much of a purple champagne cocktail — the purple had something to do with the movie but I don't remember what, since I don't remember what movie the party was connected to. Pretend it was a Grapes of Wrath movie and the drink was a clever pun. It was probably a lot stupider than that. But anyway, the conversation was about guitar sounds and emotional response to music, and I basically talked out my ass but the guy I was talking to kept nodding and encouraging me to go on. I forgot his name but later I would find out it was Michael Chernwick. I'll tell you more about him later when he becomes important. At the time, in my mind, he was Mr. Cap and Mustache, because he was wearing one of those beanies like you see on paper boys in old films and had a black mustache so tiny it almost looked drawn on with eyeliner.