THE PHANTOM OF PARAMOUNT STUDIOS

With all that is going on in the world, I'm almost too numb to continue telling my #MeToo experiences.

I'll begin, get some words on paper and fill in the blanks later.

I found the smallest apartment for rent in Burbank in the early 1980's. My books took up most of the tiny place. It was a two story triangular building on a triangular lot with a pool in the center.

My neighbor across the pool found an excuse to knock on my door. He said he was associated with Dick Clark Productions and asked to borrow a dictionary. He must have seen me carrying in my boxes of books. He bragged that he was a writer who did not own any books. "I don't read books, I write 'em". To make a long story short, I didn't get involved with him. He tried to make me jealous by telling me he was going to go after another woman. He did get a woman into his apartment and they cackled for hours. In the morning most of us got quite a sight as we left our apartments to go to work. This man was passed out on the diving board. He was wearing only a bathrobe and it was wide open. His privates where hanging out for all of us to see. He was disgusting.

I was working at PARAMOUNT STUDIOS in the warehouse at this time. As I went to clock in my time card everyday, men would sing: "Fall Into The GAP", a play on a popular GAP jeans commercial and the fact that I had worn GAP jeans one day. It didn't matter what I wore after that, I had to listen to "Fall into the GAP" every morning and afternoon.

After work I would often walk from my apartment across the freeway bridge to watch THE TONIGHT SHOW with JOHNNY CARSON being filmed. I began writing my first screenplay, "BREAKFAST AT TBS", named after THE BURBANK STUDIOS tower that I could see from my apartment which was across the street from the studios. The apartment eventually collapsed and was condemned by the city and an office building stands on the triangular lot today.

One day after work I found something exciting in my mail. Someone had sent me things I wanted, things I liked, things I thought I needed. At first glance it was like Christmas or my birthday. As a writer I scrimped so I could buy paper at the PARAMOUNT store. Someone had sent me a ream of paper and postage stamps and money.

On second thought, it hit me that someone knew too much about me. How did they know I wanted these things? How did they know me at all? Who sent this?

I began getting phone calls. My secret admirer said he saw me everyday as I walked by his office at PARAMOUNT STUDIOS. I stopped eating my peanut butter sandwich alone on the loading dock after that. I used to enjoy the privacy and time to read but suddenly I was afraid to be alone. I started eating at the commissary. I was nervous because I was bringing my own lunch. I didn't want everybody to know I couldn't afford to buy lunch. I could barely afford gasoline to get to and from work. I sat next to Ron Howard and never said a word to him. I wish I had now.  I wish I had blurted like a fool, "Hey there! Nice to see you! My dream is to be a writer! Hope I get to write for you one day!" I was too shy back then. They say when you get older you regret the things you didn't do more than the silly things you did do. It's true.

I was getting more and more scared of my secret admirer. The last straw was when I started seeing drug dealers on the lot. I went to the office to talk about what was troubling me, that I was getting cat calls EVERY time I clocked in and out, that the place was crawling with drug dealers, that someone bragged about getting into my PARAMOUNT STUDIOS employee files and was sending me gifts. This "Mystery Man" actually bragged to me that he got my information from my files and that he saw me walking by everyday at work.

To my horror, the man employees report to when they have a problem at PARAMOUNT STUDIOS was a total nut cake. He was so distracted by great thoughts that he could hardly utter a complete sentence. He must have been on some very serious hallucinogenic drugs because when I told him what was happening and what I saw, he drew me a scribbley picture of what he said was the universe and began talking about Native American lore. I half expected Jim Morrison's ghost to appear and dance around the desk singing RUN WITH ME. At the end of his very bizarre speech, the man uttered the only sentence that made sense to me, "If you report the drug dealers you could end up dead in a ditch."

I decided to confront my "Mystery Man" without any help from my superiors. I decided I would tell him off the next time he called.

He called. I told him never to call me again and not to send me anymore mail. He told me that I had not heard him out. He told me that I didn't have to work at the warehouse anymore, that I could live in a condo in Marina del Rey and write full time. He told me that I could not wear perfume or lipstick.... (....So his wife and or other mistresses wouldn't detect the new girl?)

A man I never met was telling me he wanted to keep me in pumpkin shell and that I must not wear anything his wife could see or smell.

I told him, "Shame on you, how do you think this would make your wife feel?!"

He told me he was "Sorry" and would never attempt to cheat on his wife again.

I doubt that was true.

I was not sexually abused by this man, but it did a number on my head and made me afraid to keep working at PARAMOUNT STUDIOS. I never found out who the Phantom of Paramount Studios was. I'm sure I was not the only woman he propositioned in this creepy, invasive way that year. Some of the women may have found out who he was. With the #MeToo stories coming to light now, maybe the man who invaded my privacy will float to the surface as a serial stalker. It happened to me in the spring of 1982 at Paramount Studios. The man had access to employee files and he had money to burn.

On the day that I was going to work early so I could knock on John Belushi's office door and ask him to look at my script, "BREAKFAST AT TBS", I was so nervous I took the wrong freeway off ramp in spite of the fact that I drove there every day. I was terrified that he would bark at me to get lost. When I got to work, I found out that he had died the night before.

One of the last things I did at PARAMOUNT STUDIOS was go to the TAXI wrap party. Everyone pretty much looked like clubbed seals, some from drugs, some from sorrow and fear. Marilu Henner danced. I danced a lot in spite of feeling lost and sad and afraid. A reporter I danced with chatted with me about a strange new, terrifying disease that a friend of his had. It turned out to be AIDS. I left PARAMOUNT STUDIOS. It wasn't safe for me to work there. There was no real "HUMAN RESOURCES" at PARAMOUNT STUDIOS. I just knew something bad would happen if I stayed and the guy in the office would just draw an abstract map of the universe and conjure up images of Jim Morrison's ghost. 

Marina del Rey, where Mr. Mystery, The Phantom of Paramount Studios wanted to keep me in a pumpkin shell. I took this photo at the El Torito Mexican Restaurant  when I took my autistic son there for fajitas. 

I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME not ROAR

To my surprise, I made it through the first interview for the job of being producer Noel Marshall's "right hand man".

My former boss from the Ledger-Gazette newspaper, Les Steinburg, drove back to the Antelope Valley with me.  It wasn't the happy, elated drive home that it should have been. Something was off. The feeling was heavy and sad and I didn't know why.

The second meeting was at a wildlife habitat that is now called THE SHAMBALA PRESERVE. I'm not sure what it was called then. I can tell you that my support system grew to include my mother, who was not well and really not in a position to be able to provide support, but she was in the small group that waited for me on the road at the top of the canyon as I descended to the bottom of the canyon for my second interview. Mom was telling anyone who would listen that she feared I was going to be fed to the big cats they kept there, that it was probably a snuff film. (Maybe that was how I grew up to be such a timid person. Mom was always telling me things like that. If you research the making of the film ROAR, you will see my mom's intuition was not exactly wrong.)

With hindsight I would say that Noel Marshall would have made a better movie than ROAR if he made a movie about what he tried to do to me and how it broke my heart to walk away from a job I wanted so much to accept. ROAR, as in, "I am woman hear me not really roar." So many of us don't "ROAR". We don't want to be permanently bonded in society's memory to a sexual predator. I didn't want to be known as the girl who accused Noel Marshall of linking his sexual needs to a job. Most of us emit a low warning GROWL and walk away. It hurts to hold that wounded roar inside. A lot of women are beginning to unload that weight.

That day at the bottom of the canyon, Noel Marshall made clear what I suspected he wanted. I looked at a film clip. We talked about the film. We talked about his needs. We walked among the cages of big cats. At one point I was close to making my mother's irrational fears come true. I reached out to pet one of the cats on the head. I wasn't thinking. I was just completely sad. It was like I was reaching for a kitty cat or a teddy bear.

Mr Noel Marshall and I were on "cool terms" by that time. He understood that I was not going to leap into his arms and I understood that it cost me the job. We settled that. We were walking towards the house where Tippi Hedren was standing.

Noel Marshall flipped out when I petted the cat.

"You are afraid of SEX but you're not afraid of getting torn apart!" Noel Marshall was beside himself, angry at me for turning down the job. I had zero experience with big cats. With hindsight, my worry wart mom was actually on to something. ROAR was not a snuff film, but a lot of people got hurt by the cats in the making of this film and some of the real footage of people being hurt was used in the film.

I didn't expect to see Tippi Hedren and when I did I was too sad to say much. I remember telling her she was beautiful. She was stunning. I don't know if she suspected her husband was hitting on the job applicants. Hitchcock put her through hell. I didn't want any part of what Noel Marshall had in mind. I walked away.

I walked back to the top of the canyon and announced that I didn't get the job. My mom was happy that I wasn't going to be eaten by lions in a snuff film and went back to Florida. I got a warehouse job at Paramount Studios and immediately found myself being stalked by an anonymous sexual predator who seemed to know everything about me but I never found out who he was. Mr. Mystery man.

~ to be continued ~

ROAR

In the 1970's and 1980's in Hollywood and, truth be told, everywhere else, a woman could hardly enter the work force without some horny bastard trying to game the system, abuse his power to hire to try to touch women he could never otherwise touch.

In the 1970's and early 1980's I hid in a tiny desert town like a coward. I'd had a short story published by a REDBOOK editor, Judy Bucher, but not in REDBOOK. Judy published it in THE COLORADO WOMAN'S DIGEST. It was called TEN POUNDS OF RAGE, a story about being ten pounds overweight and fretting about that instead of the elephant in the room. Judy said I had writing talent and that I should move to a big city but that she was worried a big city would eat me alive.

I wanted to be a writer. I was working at a newspaper called the Antelope Valley Ledger-Gazette. I set type and proof read. I dreamed of being a writer. My boss was Les Steinburg. 

I decided to create this blog today after reading tweets by Patricia Arquette on twitter this morning where she mentioned bringing her boyfriend with her when Oliver Stone invited her to a screening of NATURAL BORN KILLERS.

I didn't have a boyfriend to bring with me when I answered a newspaper want ad for a job in the movie business. 

I had given my notice at THE LEDGER-GAZETTE six months in advance.  Then I hitchhiked across the USA and back to 'find myself", get tough and become a "real writer". I am probably the only person who did that without getting into any significant trouble. I lost my purse in Gila Bend, Arizona. It had in it a letter from Anais Nin in it telling me to "Stay spontaneous and free." 

After my uneventful travels, I went back to see my former boss, Les Steinburg to ask him a favor. Even after my big adventure, I was still afraid of people. All I had done was prove it was possible to travel across the USA and back without getting noticed, to see without being seen.

REDBOOK MAGAZINE editor, Judy Bucher was right. As a writer I needed the stimulation of a big city like New York or Los Angeles, but as an emancipated minor with no family to look after me, I was afraid of the big cities. I didn't know how to do anything about trouble except run away from it. Judy Bucher was concerned that in a big city, especially New York, I would not be successful in running away from trouble.  I stayed away from New York. I saw the USA but didn't let it see me. I cut my hair short and dressed in baggy clothes. I marveled at the beauty of this country but managed to return to the Antelope Valley as naive as the day I left it.

Somehow I managed to convince my former employer to drive with me from Lancaster, California to Hollywood, California for emotional support so I could apply for what I believed would be the most important job interview of my life. Maybe it was. Maybe my response defined who I was in this life.

I was being considered for the job of being producer Noel Marshall's "right hand man" (woman actually, but he said: "right hand man"). Les Steinburg went with me to my first interview with producer Noel Marshall. He insisted on waiting outside in the car and promised to come inside to rescue me if I did not return within a reasonable time. I was terrified but marched inside alone, knowing Mr. Steinburg was parked outside, ready to rescue me.

Noel Marshall was making a movie called ROAR.

Noel Marshall was Tippi Hedren's husband. I did not know this at the time. I soon found out.