Eve Babitz

And having grown up in Hollywood, I’ve known a lot of self-enchanted people. Not since the pharaohs thought they were gods have so many human beings believed that they themselves (and not their publicists or destiny or some larger force) were responsible for the fact that so many other human beings worshiped them.

Because self-enchantment has nothing to do with upkeep or tradition or loyalty or museums. That Hollywood is tawdry, that people who expect others to worship them are unsubtle and low class, that publicity seekers deserve to be ridiculed—these are not new ideas. They have always been Hollywood’s loose ends, even in the dream 1920s, when the place itself was still paradise. Perhaps Hollywood’s one hundredth anniversary should be a celebration of the art of publicity. But public relations has always been regarded as the world’s most revolting profession, causing many publicists to try and keep a low profile, so nobody’s going to think that’s a good idea. Publicists, after all, aren’t here to make themselves enchanted, and if they are seen by most people as lily-livered coyotes, that’s their Karmic predicament.

We live in a world where whoever sedates us with the most glamour and captures our imaginations with the greatest intensity becomes history. And if Julio Iglesias knows that paying a publicist millions of dollars is what it takes to span the bridge between being an unknown millionaire Latin hero and being Willie Nelson’s pal on TV, then the self-enchanted, at least, know whose anniversary this is.

Hollywood is a fiction that happened, a tornado of fabrication, a comedy of publicity. It’s as tenuous today as it’s always been, but it’s still standing. Whatever it is, it’s not over. Not yet

The idea of an “artistic community” evaporates into the slow days. Inspiration and words like that get hurried along with the fast company; it’s impossible to tell if one’s been inspired, or if it was the cocaine, or what. In an Italian café—where one day the incredibly beautiful young waitresses are going to poison (I hope) one by one all the vulgar and insulting men who’ve ever gotten away with murder and crude remarks—one night I saw on the wall, neatly, in black Magic Marker: “It ain’t Hollywood, my boy, it’s mescalito.” In Los Angeles it’s hard to tell if you’re dealing with the real true illusion or the false one.