Lola Loves Richard: Just Off Melrose

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Just Off Melrose

“Where can I take you folks?” Richard cheerfully asked.

“Oh we don’t want to be any trouble, just drop us off wherever it's convenient for you,” Jackie responded. “We’ll find our way home.”

“I don’t have to return to the studio for another two hours. I can take you home, if it’s not too far out of the way…just as long as you don’t live in San Diego or somewhere like that,” Richard grinned into the rear view mirror.

Jackie’s smiled graciously, “Oh you’re really very kind, we live in Hollywood, just off Melrose. It’s not much to look at, but we like to think of it as 'home.'”

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Meet the Characters

Richard is a 33 year-old chauffeur for a Hollywood movie studio. He’s a former chicken rancher, stand-up comedian, and amateur poet. He’s madly in love with Lola. He’s a former philosophy major in college (as is Lola). Richard meets Lola through his on-line ad, in which he says his ideal mate would be a blonde bombshell, who likes Martinis without olives, and who is familiar with pre-Socratic philosophy. When Lola responds to his ad, Richard wears a rented Rooster costume to his first date with Lola. Little does Richard know, that he is in for the adventure of a lifetime with Lola

Lola, a 32-year old aspiring actress, is quirky, troubled and beautiful. She knows how to handle a hand-gun, thanks to her father who sent her off to Hollywood, packing a Smith and Wesson. Lola moves to Santa Monica from her hometown of Boston. We meet Lola as she is attempting to become a successful actress in a decidedly unfriendly Hollywood. Lola hates being in love with Richard, but she is in love with him, anyway, despite her reservations. When Lola suspects that Richard is sleeping with a psychotherapist, named Jackie Weston, Lola becomes a client of Jackie’s in order to check out the “competition.” Lola doesn’t realize that Richard isn’t, in fact, involved with Jackie.

Jackie Weston is a 38 year-old psychotherapist. She is Buck’s girlfriend. She meets Buck while drinking one morning in a downtown LA bar. She’s diagnosed with an unspecified genetic disease that suggests that she could die precipitously. She’s an independent soul. She is a very attractive Brunette who is given to wearing delicate jewelry including a wristwatch on each wrist. She Steals a Mercedes and takes a joyride with Buck on their “first date.” Jackie is reckless and impulsive, especially for a professional woman. She is also kind an empathetic.

Buck, Jackie’s boyfriend, is a Harvard grad, who is in his mid-30s. He grew up in LA and his father teaches at UCLA in the History Dept. (His father was an ex-radical, and both the father and mother are English.) Buck is a journalist—travel magazines, but occasionally more “serious” journalism, too. He has traveled quite a bit, and we learn he’s been to a few dangerous countries on assignment. Buck meets Jackie through a friend when he, his friend, and Jackie all meet in a downtown LA bar for morning drinks. Jackie picks-up Buck when she and Buck leave the bar, and Jackie asks Buck to ride along with her in "her" car. As it turns out, the car is not Jackie’s—she steals a Mercedes from the parking lot of the bar. She and Buck drive and ultimately ditch the car along Mulholland Dr. and being to hitchhike away from the scene of the abandoned car.

Richard Meets Jackie and Buck. On his return trip from chauffeuring a Hollywood mogul home, Richard, always a kind-hearted soul, picks up Jackie and Buck, who are hitchhiking along Mulholland Drive. When Richard drops Jackie and Buck off at Jackie’s home, just off Melrose, in LA, Jackie gives Richard her business card. Buck later writes a note to Lola on the back of Jackie’s business card, and leaves it at Lola’s house, when Lola isn’t home. When Lola finds the card with the note she notices it’s got the name of female therapist on the reverse side. Although Lola is ambivalent about Richard, she can’t stand the thought that Richard may be seeing another woman. Hence Lola’s suspicion that Richard may be “seeing” Jackie as a therapist and may be romantically involved with her too. Lola soon becomes a client of Jackie, so she can keep an eye on the imagined "competition."

News and Look-E-Here

Written in brisk, six-sentence chapters, Lola Loves Richard, is a serial, tragicomedy, about love and irony in contemporary Hollywood. Lola, a quirky, handgun-toting, Harvard-educated, aspiring actress, just can’t stand the fact that she loves Richard, her big-studio-chauffeur boyfriend. But when Lola learns that Richard, the man who wore a rented rooster costume on their first date, may be having an affair with her therapist, Lola discovers that true love is more than skin deep.

One Holywood poobah said “Lola Loves Richard is a colorful, graphic novel, without the pictures."Another Hollywood insider said, “Lola Loves Richard is just like real Hollywood, only more so."

Lola Loves Richard

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Just Off Melrose

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