Learning to be a Hollywood phony in the 1980s

I learned how to be a phony in Hollywood, a town that's famous for phonies. I had done a bit of it, back in Minneapolis where I grew up, trying to blend in with the cool kids who had big houses, but when I got to LA I was suddenly aware how much of a "hayseed" I seemed to be.

Now calm down there if you're familiar with Minneapolis - it's a brilliant urban area, filled with culture and refinement, including the arts and theaters, but in Hollywood I was simply a midwestern boy on my own, stumbling around. And I didn't like that. So one of the first things I learned to do was to rub shoulders with celebrities, and name drop. If I had even a passing acquaintance with someone who was someone, I would imply that we were great personal friends. Sound like Hollywood to you?

It was there that I learned to put on a brave, and confident face. Standing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, gawking like a rube at the bright lights and strange-looking people going by wasn't the way I wanted to be. Yes, of course it all overwhelmed me, the traffic, the people. I had never, ever seen anything like that, not in Minneapolis, and not in Arizona where I had just gotten my college degree.

I threw myself into the concept of being a wanna-be. At the time there were billboards for a modeling agency that said, "Be a model, or just look like one." I developed that kind of poise, I learned how to dress myself, I had my hair cut at salons. I never had enough money to own an expensive car, but I cheated it a bit by owing sports cars. And this increased my anxiety, as I was never sure when those unreliable things would break down, leaving me to do the one thing that's never done in LA: walking. Nobody walks in LA! Well, only a nobody walks in LA. And while I was a nobody, I didn't want anyone to know that.

A piece of advice that I heard long ago was to "never worry about what other people are thinking." And for the genuine people out there, that meant that they would never try to impress strangers, never put on airs, never be a phony. But I turned that advice around, and decided to see how many complete strangers I could impress. I developed a lot of confidence doing it, and to this day I act as if I know what I'm doing, smiling and reassuring people. I'm sure that these people are impressed, and to me it seems to be the worst performance of my life, and they never doubted it for a minute (to quote Ferris Bueller, who was a role model to me).

As a phony myself, I can easily recognize phonies. They're the ones on social media with only their best side showing, living a life that seems too good to be true (because it isn't). Many times these are young people who are dressed to impress, and sometimes they're elderly people who are showing that "they still got it". And some of the phonies are disabled people, like I am now, who never want anyone to see them limp. Only my closest friends see me limp. That's who I really am now.

But when I moved to Hollywood I didn't know who I was. I was young, with a big world out there in front of me, and I wanted to join in. I still feel that way, and I'm still a phony.

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