*Own set of pool cues
Undercroft is an artfully tumbledown place with books from floor to ceiling (3126 El Rincon, at Perdida Pl.), and a patio shaded by jacarandas, and a giant plane tree growing out of the middle of its recycled plastic deck. You need to ask the names of anything in the pastry case, because they make them fresh and don’t have time to create labels. It is the echt-writers coffeehouse. Surge protectors of various sizes drape the rafters ready to be used for the next script-writing, podcast or live-blog session. Singles at small tables are reading, presenting a whispered facial ballet of moving lips creating or learning soon-to-be memorable plots. Here I met Oklahoma-native and reality TV star Ripper Cleburne, who achieved national fame through four seasons of I Live in a Mall.
The rumors were true—he was still living outside in the big city: “…and will continue to do so until everyone in the world has a home. That’s a fact,” said Ripper, while eating a vegan gelato. “Awesome,” he said, pulling a potato-starch spoon out of his mouth, "Yam is really the best flavor, no lie.”
I asked about Trellis Chung, his longtime girlfriend, and the sassy star of Real Physician’s Assistants of Phoenix. I, like everyone, had heard they'd bought a hill-top perch in Los Pajaros, reportedly owned by Cher’s accountant, then Jake Gyllenhaal’s real estate agent, then the agent’s lawyer and, finally, the lawyer’s bankruptcy attorney. But, sadly, Ripper told me the relationship lasted all of a month. He pointed out his new girlfriend, across the room—she had moved from West Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, to be nearer him, and to her church, the Little Precious Church of the Foothills (2012 Philippians Way) a non-denominational congregation for the adult film industry.
"We're basically praying on whether personal sex-cams are going to destroy the business, or not," she told me. "Give us some direction, Lord."
Is it any wonder the glitterati of Hollywood have fled the over-exposed confines of Silver Lake and Los Feliz to hide out here, redolent with Dodecanese cooking smells and Balearic-style dining? I wasn’t even sure how Dodecanese cooking tasted, much less smelled. No matter, as details like that are less important in L.A; nobody fact-checks, and most just make it up as they go along. Try it, youself—it's cheap fun.
And while it's sunny here, it's not sunny for everyone.
“There ain’t no birds, never were,” announced Celia Gutierrez, who’s run Celia’s Diner (5677 El Rincon, at Madero Ave.), since 1963. “A developer made that name up during the Great Depression hopin’ folks’d buy up here.”
Some people just hate on good times. Like Celia, her coffee is strong and packs a punch. After it went through me I visited her 1940s bathroom, complete with toilet tank mounted high up on the wall with a pull chain, a charming touch that Celia said she had kept along with the graffiti from the rockers who had visited her over the years when she ran it as a 24-hours shop. So iconic are the wall-scribblings, they were described in the famous New Journalism piece of 1973, Tales of the Toilet: What They’re Telling Us Now (I found it had faded, but full of epochal inspiration evocative of ‘60s revolutionary: “Rita’s shish kebabs made me high —Ronnie” and “Screw Ronnie! —Shish Kebab” were typical).
Next door, the Academy of Independent Directors (5679 El Rincon), was having their “Director’s Revenge-Cut Film Festival” and I found the description of their latest screening online:
"Gelato Girl (2006). Originally called Flavor of the Month before it was artistically violated by Warner Bros., director Brace Fuller (Direction: Petershausen, Where is Rafael?, Tokyo, Mon Amour and Do Drop Inn) shows us what really happened to Claire Danes, after she fell in love with the head of a Balkan, not Russian, crime syndicate. Danes’ character is revealed to be the love child of a Middle Eastern royal, not a poor Indiana couple, now struggling to keep warring religious factions from destroying his country—not her town; and she leaves her comfortable life in London, not Ft. Wayne, to bring peace to her father’s country, by cultivating a rare flower, not her grandmother’s old recipe, that flavors her gelato in a unique way. Supporting roles, with Sir Ian McKellan, as the piano teacher at the eunuch’s school, not Danes’ kindly grandfather, and Salma Hayek as a Dubai escort, not her high school German teacher, are restored."
Then, as if by chance, but actually through bribery and threats, I finally find one of the hidden sages of The Business: Joe.
Yes, Joe is one of the finest acting coaches in the world – he’s paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. But he works out of a barber shop. The school doesn’t have a name, but its putative one—Joe the Barber Acting School—is actually where many of the top actors have gotten their tips and tricks. Little known by average people, and even less well known in the entertainment community, Joe is the unacknowledged secret behind so many careers; occasionally a "thanks, Joe" slips out at during the Academy Awards, but he frowns on any mentions.
I met Joe at his studio; in front is a normal barber shop. Behind the barber shop is a multi-million dollar warren of rooms built into a hillside, where the famous and not-so-famous come to train in secret with one of the great masters of dramaturgy. He shows very few people this state-of-the-art facility. And he doesn’t stint on candor. “No, I’m not trained. But, when I’m done with you, you’ll be asking the director which nostril your funeral sniffles should fly out of.”
But, Joe said he takes very few clients. “Don’t come to me from Lake Forest with a condo as a graduation gift in your pocket, OK? I can’t do anything with that. Bring me a drug problem, hippie parents or a life as a child pick-pocket – that I can work with. Leo, Liev, Joaquin, Shia,– yeah, strange kiddie-hoods, - sleeping in hammocks, running around Central America, knives daddy drug-dealers, Snickers for breakfasts. That’s all fodder for our work.” Joe paused and looked around as birds took wing outside and the sun rose ever higher, brighter than bright.
“Reese? I don’t what drives a kid like that. Now, Brits, LiLo, Mark-Paul – yeah, there’s something there. When you battle family as a kid for your own dough, that’s acting gold.”
I asked about his methods.
“They’re mostly secret, but basically it depends on what you’re coming here with. I need to challenge you, break you down, pummel you, turn you inside out, rock your world, pull the rug out from under you and give you a clue.”
“Sometimes—after you’ve signed a waiver—I’ll take you to Griffith Park Observatory, and then throw you over the side of the cliff – if you survive, and can make it back to my place with no money, a broken leg and torn clothing, I might have something. Obviously, if you get picked up by the police for loitering, vagrancy or shop-lifting, all the better.
“Sometimes, I’ll just make you cut hair in here for weeks and weeks. Tedious, boring, and yucky.
"But,transcendent. And not good hair neither: a picky old guy with, like, three strands left. A crazy tweaker with bed-head. The tough cases. You’ll listen to their sad-ass tales, and then listen some more, and you’ll love it, and you’ll offer them advice, and become like a third mommy to them and a second half-brother and a fifth kid, too. And most of them are narcissists, or depressives, or both, and you’ll get drawn into their drama and it will ruin your life. And, you might go broke working here, and lose your apartment and sleep on the street – which, by the way, is easy here on account of the weather. And you’ll grow and become stronger."
Joe paused, and then said, "And then, you’re ready to act.”
He stopped talking, motioned to a customer sitting along the wall to sit in one of his barber chairs, and begun to cut hair, wordlessly, silently. He never looked at me again. I crept out of the barber shop.
From above, a flock of birds, maybe the descendants of that inspiration for the first settlers in this smoggy urban hillside idyll, perched—yes, dammit, one more Mediterranean citation must present itself—like a group of Honey Buzzards above a Puglian mountain hamlet in Italy's boot-heel, came flooding down on the trees in front of the shop, and their cawing and chatter grew loud
er and louder as I watched them settle in among the jacarandas, until I had to move away, so I could hear myself think about my visit to hip Los Pajaros.
Back to top
****