When Hollywood was wonderland

There are books that gently accompany the reader to sleep. Others that help to reflect or that are good as a pastime. Then there are books that make you want to buy a 1960s convertible and whiz around, hair in the wind, exceeding the speed limits abundantly.

This is the effect produced by “ La mia Hollywood ” (Bompiani, 2023, pp. 336, also e-book), a tribute to the Mecca of cinema and stardom written by one of her most fascinating and fascinating daughters, Eve Babitz (1943 -2021).

Journalist, party animal, convinced and unrepentant hedonist, artist, muse, Eve Babitz was all this and much more. She loved to live shamelessly and shamelessly pursued pleasure, convinced that only beauty , enjoyment , the pursuit of all passions gave meaning to existence . She herself tells us at the beginning of the book: «What I wanted, even if at the time I didn't understand what it was because no one ever tells you anything until you already know, that was all. Or all that I could have achieved with the means I had. Above all I wanted a song of a certain type. Like perfumes, some songs just knock me down. And I wanted to end up lying in the moment of perfume where you no longer feel anything but the glow. It doesn't last long, but to have it all you have to have these moments of such unconnected importance that time flows rippling away like a shot on water. Without these moments, the heavenly party you have built for yourself can die of thirst.

Telling herself and her eternal search for that everything that fills the moment, which makes life lively, Eve Babitz has narrated the Hollywood of art and bohemia like no other . His portraits of rock stars like Jim Morrison and actors, legendary artists like Andy Warhol, idle musicians, surfers and prostitutes, his sketches of two-lire restaurants, luxury houses, legendary hotels are priceless. According to many of his admirers, they offer what the jazz musician Chet Baker gave us with his music: lightness, ecstasy, lyricism, but also rhythm and sensuality. Strong contradictions, in short, which were the identifying feature of Eve Babitz and her Hollywood, a city which, as Oriana Fallaci wrote, «like all places born of speculation, fueled by too much money and inhabited by people who yesterday had nothing and today have everything , is therefore the strangest of combinations of contrasts . Stupid and brilliant, corrupt and puritanical, funny and boring, it is the place where Jack Lemmon sends a telegram to his ex-wife Cinthia, who marries Clift Robertson, complimenting his good taste and where, however, a girl cannot go alone in a restaurant without causing great indignation."

Eve Babitz would put her signature on this definition before crashing yet another party or abandoning herself on the beach involved in a lysergic journey or in a love capable of filling the night, until dawn or little more.