BEAUTYSHAMBLES by Cat Marnell

BEAUTYSHAMBLES by Cat Marnell

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BEAUTYSHAMBLES by Cat Marnell
BEAUTYSHAMBLES by Cat Marnell
#114 : AN L.A. STORY

#114 : AN L.A. STORY

The last time I visited LA, I hiked in the Pacific Palisades.

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CAT MARNELL
Jan 13, 2025
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BEAUTYSHAMBLES by Cat Marnell
BEAUTYSHAMBLES by Cat Marnell
#114 : AN L.A. STORY
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The last time I visited Los Angeles, I hiked in the Pacific Palisades. It was February 2023, and I was in town for the Frieze Art Fair with my mom. We had decided to turn it into a girls trip. The fair had moved from Beverly Hills and was being held at the Santa Monica Airport for the first time. We would stay with our close family friend, Maria, at her condo in Santa Monica.

I love Maria, who is a Los Angeles native. I have known her since the Nineties, when I was in elementary school, and she was living in the DC area. Back then, she was my mom’s tennis partner, and her son Scott was my little brother’s close friend, and like a second little brother to me. We took ski vacations and beach trips together; Scotty and Maria would even come to Thanksgiving at our house. So when Maria eventually moved back to Southern California, my mom and I would go out there to visit her.

I'll never forget that first trip to LA when I was 15 years old. First of all, we'd barely stepped out of the car in Hollywood before we bumped into Ian Zering, a.k.a. "Steve Sanders". He was filming a scene from Beverly Hills, 90210 right there on the street, which I assure you was a bit more exciting in 1998 than it sounds in 2025. We went to shopping on Melrose, and I still remember the tight grey shirt my mom bought me.

And then. Maria had gotten us tickets to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno! We drove out to NBC Studios in Burbank for the 4 PM taping. We filed in and took our seats. Kevin Eubanks and the Tonight Show band were doing a soundcheck. The show was going to start in fifteen minutes, but before it did, a producer came out to make an announcement. Today was a special day for The Tonight Show, the producer said, because after the show, a scene from a movie was being filmed right there in Studio 11. They would need audience members for the scene, so anyone who wanted to stay and be extras were welcome.

"Gosh!" A murmur went through the crowd. We all wondered who was in the movie.

Then the show began. Jay Leno came out and did his thing. His first guest was Mel Gibson, ostensibly promoting Lethal Weapon 4—except he could barely speak!

He'd lost his voice, and had to whisper his whole interview into a special microphone (years later, when the Jacuzzi Tapes came out, I thought about this, and wondered how long he'd been screaming at people). We all sat there straining to hear him.

The next guest, in the B spot, was the rising star actress Cameron Diaz, who was there promoting There's Something About Mary. Then the musical guest took the stage: Smashmouth, performing their big hit, "Walkin' On The Sun"!

Then, the big moment arrived. Like most of the audience, we stayed for the movie filming. First, the director stepped out. It was the legendary Ron Howard!

"WOOOO!" We all wooed. "Woooo-OOOO!"

And then he introduced us to the star of the movie...

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY! Filiming "EDtv", about a guy named Ed whose entire life is filmed by cameras. In this scene, newly famous Ed is a guest on The Tonight Show, where he performs his viral "chicken dance" for Jay. Our job as extras? To stand up and chant encouragement as he did this...over and over.

I can still see Matthew up on stage in his tight jeans, flapping his arms like a chicken. And I can still hear my voice, and my mom's and Maria's, all shouting: "ED! ED! ED! ED! ED! ED!"

*****

The second time my mom and I visited Maria, a bit had changed. It was 2002, one of the craziest years of my life, and I was officially the wildest 19 year old on the entire planet. I was living in downtown Manhattan, going to raging clubs in insane post-9/11 nightclubs five or six nights a week, participating in wet t-shirt contests at Suite 16 and going to tanning beds in Greenwich Village. I'd JUST met—all in one night at some party in Little Italy—my future boyfriend, Alex (now the owner of Gigis Hollywood, where the below photo was taken in 2021)...

...Sebastian (producer of Uncut Gems), the Fat Jew, SAME, my fave Alden, and about a dozen other guys, all in one night—that whole New York City native friend group that I have been tight with for decades. Alex and I liked each other right away, and as we were talking all night, I kept telling him, "I'm going to LA tomorrow!"

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