naked beverly hills
Beverly Hills is a hologram, a glamorous myth which is created every day. Dozens of colorful buses disgorge tourists from around the world to enact their fantasies through the warm gaze of their iPhone lenses. The city beguiles them: it lures them in to lend itself life, preying on them for nourishment.
They wander the glittering windows of Rodeo Drive, beckoned by the siren song of bedazzled mannequins who whisper promises of attainable beauty. Meanwhile in the back rooms and alleyways, the hourly laborers -- the sales persons, stock boys and service people--toil to keep the facades shiny and inflated; the window dressing chic, the cash registers humming.
As a former film & tv director who was intimately entwined in the creation and recycling of mass-consumed fables, I'm fascinated by these visitors, who photograph themselves in this imaginary bubble of glamour and memory, conjuring the movies they've seen and stories they've heard, not realizing that they themselves are the co-creators of their shared fantasies, which are renewed daily.
- princess
- destiny
- american idol
- temp agency
- best in show
- home movies
- gosh!
- facade
- breakroom
- invisible man
- golden hour
- the real men
- the good life
- jonah and the whale