Got a nice email from one of the producers of the upcoming documentary about Studio One, who wants to make sure they are telling the full story about the famed Los Angeles disco.
He writes:
Did you attend Studio One and/or The Backlot between 1974-1993?
We need your stories for a new feature documentary in production called STUDIO ONE FOREVER.
We are looking for self-tape testimonials to be considered for inclusion in the closing credits sequence.
Several submissions may be invited to film an interview in Los Angeles to tell your story for the film.
Here's how to submit:
Make a brief 1-3 minute video telling your story. It can include virtually any anecdote (funny or serious) that makes your Studio One/Backlot experience forever etched in your memory. If you attended during the 80's/90's and have someone who passed from AIDS that you would like to memorialize, please feel free to include them in your video. Also, if Covid-19 has brought back any memories from that era, please comment.
When you shoot your video, please shoot horizontally (side to side) not vertical. You can upload your video preferably via WeTransfer to: marcsaltarelli@gmail.com
The deadline for submissions is August 25, 2020.
We are about to begin the last phase of production this month with limited funds available, so if you are able to support the completion of the film with a tax-deductible donation, please visit our fiscal sponsor HERE.
Thank you for your support! The Covid-19 crisis caused some delays, but we are cautiously beginning to plan our final phase of production. Currently we have an 80-minute rough cut. We just need your story to make it complete. Stay safe!
I have so many fond memories of the iconic club and cannot wait for this to come out ... maybe I need to track down my old WeHo friends and start talking!
Here's a taste of the feature documentary in the works about West Hollywood through the lens of Studio One Disco (1974-1993) and its sister music venue, The Backlot. I loved GOING THERE in the late '80s (as a tourist) and early '90s (as a resident) -- it felt like L.A.'s answer to Studio 54 -- and cannot wait to see the club's complete story, beginning at the rise of disco and the gay civil-rights movement to the tragic days of the AIDS crisis that decimated our community.
It's easy to understand why these guys didn't want to see the building torn down.
Save the Factory writes: The demolition has begun. The complete destruction of an LGBT National Register of Historic Places site (there are less than 15 in existence). What can be said? We fought. We fought hard. The vast majority of people wanted the building to be preserved. But another light snuffed, more darkness. Development, Politicians and Money -- the trifecta of these dark times.
And the money still does not exist for the promised Robertson Lane complex -- that includes no money for the fake, recreation of a portion of the original Factory Building (no, there will no "preservation" as the article repeats the same developer talking points without facts).
If you had told me nearly three decades ago when I was briefly living in Orange County, Calif. -- still longing for the bright lights of New York City, or at least L.A. -- that I would be wishing I could spend this Pride weekend in suburbia instead of Manhattan I'd have laughed at you. But that's just how I'm feeling right now after finding out the famed Boom Boom Room in Laguna Beach, where I spent many fun and drunken nights in my early 20s, is reopening for a one-night-only party this weekend!
As I just mentioned yesterday, I landed in Huntington Beach when I left Phoenix after graduating from Arizona State in 1989. I first crashed in the Windjammer apartments on Warner -- we called the complex the butt-jammer -- and then in a condo in the Sea Spray development on Brookhurst and Adams with Paul and Ken. My goal was to live in L.A., but after getting a job at The Orange County Register, I decided it made sense to live closer to work and "commute" to my play. But with that predictably unpredictable L.A. traffic, West Hollywood was an hour-plus drive from our apartment. So my roommates and I had our "local" bars in the OC that included Newport Station (Thursdays were the best!), the Lion's Den (where the hilarious Polyesters performed; Stan also worked at The Register), the Frat House (if you didn't mind watching people chain smoke near the "sandwich area") and, of course, the Boom Boom Room, a breezy dive tucked away in the bottom floor of the Coast Inn on Pacific Coast Highway. (The Little Shrimp was right nearby.)
While the city's wealth has completely changed it in the past 20 years, Laguna Beach was a quaint, artsy Speedo-clad boys town of sorts when I lived there, that had a gay friendly reputation dating back to 1930s when Los Angeles crowds headed south to escape the raids on gay and lesbian bars in Los Angeles. (Laguna Beach magazine called it "a prime gay playground.")
In the early 1980s, Laguna even elected Robert Gentry, the first openly gay mayor in the U.S., and the Boom Boom Room doubled as a community center for Orange County's LGBT community. Of course, it was still in Republican Land, so it didn't come as much of a surprise to my roommate Paul and me when a car full of frat boys drove past us one night on the street and screamed "Turd burglars!" as we walked to the bar. (We gave them an A+ for originality!) But like the rest of Orange County, the area seemed to get less queer over time, with the Boom Boom Room shutting its doors in 2007. (My friend in Anaheim says the Frat House is pretty much the only bar left in the entire area.)
The Blair Bitch Project
Shortly after my 1990 debut, my 23rd birthday rolled around and my friends and I wound up at the Boom Boom Room. And in what must have been a gift from God after spending my adolescence in the back of the closet longing for the hot boys at Dobson High, I felt like the belle of the ball that night as two very cute guys spent the evening vying for my affections -- each promising to make my birthday "unforgettable" if I went home with him. I was such a tease -- I was going through a bit of a Blair Warner phase, complete with blond highlights -- flitting from one side of the bar to other to flirt with each of them (and their friends!) in between music breaks on the small dance floor. At one point I slipped down to the beach to make out with one of my suitors, then sluttily ended up leaving with the other guy, who it turned out was crashing at a friend's mansion in Newport Harbor. (Despite his promises, the sex turned out to be most forgettable .., but that house!)
Halloween 1990 with my OC roommates Ken McDonald and Paul Samson. Ken, who dated a 20-years-his-senior aerobics instructor named Kip, has gone MIA. (Email me if you know where he is!) Paul, meanwhile, unwittingly discovered his boyfriend was porn star Brett Winters.
Kenneth in the (714): With my college friend John in Laguna Beach, circa 1990
A few years ago I started getting emails from a reader who very coyly tried to jog my memory about an "encounter" we'd had back in Laguna Beach. At first I thought he might be my birthday trick, but he kept writing and writing and nothing he said rang a bell. He eventually sent a photo, but that still didn't do anything. He finally got so frustrated he just wrote: "We fucked on the beach." Well, I'm a lot of things. But above all I'm a prude with an elephantlike memory, so I was 100 percent confident this was not the case. (Can you imagine? You think getting sand out of your shoes is hard!)
My "twin" back in the day
To this day I'm still not sure what his emails were all about. (You might be surprised by how many odd messages I get.) But it later crossed my mind that he may have been mistaking me for my Orange County doppelgänger that people were constantly telling me I looked just like, a guy named Christian Ornelas, whom I eventually ended up meeting one night at Studio One and was so stunned by the resemblance I had to lean against the wall to compose myself. Sadly, I later learned he had passed away about four years ago or else I might be able to solve this sex-on-a-beach caper once and for all.
I rarely had a camera back in those days. But luckily Alan Light was leading a more glamorous version of my life at the exact same time, so all of his pictures make nice stand-ins! More Laguna Beach 1990 photos HERE.
A mid-aughts effort to save the Boom Boom Room was unsuccessful, but I'm hearing it could reopen if this one-night-only party goes well!
Fred Karger, who spearheaded Save the Boom, just sent me this photo of the Boom Boom Room tonight, all decked out for OC Pride.
He also tells me the space has been rented out for various parties over the years since it closed, and he sent me a trove of photos that you can view HERE.
Wow. The West Hollywood building that housed Studio One -- the gay disco in which my friends and I spent our early 20s dancing the night away when not hanging out in the Backlot -- has been declared "endangered." I know it became AXIS after I moved east and is apparently still in business as its original name, The Factory. Would be a shame to see what was truly the closest thing the West Coast had to Studio 54 go.
A building that once was home to a pioneering gay disco has been declared "endangered" in the hopes to save it from—yep—development in West Hollywood.
The Factory, located at 652 North La Peer Drive, was designated one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation on Wednesday. The building was first built in 1929, and has been host to the changing history of Los Angeles through its life. At first it served as a factory for the Mitchell Camera Corporation, whose cameras have been recognized by the Academy for their contributions for the movie industry. The company moved out after the War and from 1967 to 1972 it was simply "The Factory," a popular nightclub for celebrities. It wasn't until Scott Forbes took over the space in 1974 that it became the disco Studio One, an epicenter for gay nightlife and activism.
Studio One "offered no shortage of mirrored balls (seven to be exact), strobe lights, lasers, a gleaming red neon Pegasus and a fish tank in the men's room that spouted water for hand washing," WeHoville says in their history of the space. "Studio One was planned, designed and conceived for gay people, gay male people," Forbes told the L.A. Times. Patti LaBelle, Joan Rivers and Liza Minnelli all performed at the club, and in the early-80s it also hosted one of the first major fundraisers in response to the AIDS epidemic.
Christian Ornelas, my WeHo doppelganger (another look HERE)
Have so many fond memories of Studio One, most notably going there every Saturday night with my roommates Paul Samson and Ken McDonald. (If you see this, Ken, please contact me!) "Groove Is in the Heart" (by Dee-Lite) and "Use It Up and Wear It Out" (a Pat and Mick cover of the old Odyssey classic produced by Stock-Aitken-Waterman) were the songs that made people go crazy on the dancefloor, and that's where I finally met my "Latin twin" named Christian Ornelas, a guy people were telling me about for years. It turned out to be true -- in certain light it was uncanny! -- but I found out as I researched this he passed away a couple years ago from complications of HIV/AIDS, which suddenly made this whole thing incredibly sad.
My other (albeit haziest) memory is the time I got so drunk I was sort of "resting" in a bathroom stall, and one of the big hunky bouncers came in and CARRIED me down to the front door. Once there, he could see I was in no condition to actually leave, so he propped me up in the seat where the guy checking IDs normally sat. (Maybe he was the doorman too.) Well, next thing I knew a line of gay guys came along and started pulling out their driver's licenses, so I just went along with it in my drunken stupor and started carding people. It was only when I asked the (distracted) bouncer for a flashlight that the jig was up!
You can show your support by signing a petition to keep the building alive HERE.
Studio One is now called The Factory..... a sad imitation of Studio One and only open for special parties... The Backlot is a small dance club, not nearly as busy as The Abbey, across the street or Mickey's & other WeHo clubs. Probe had a fire in the 1990s and is long gone...Sad Sad.
As I flipped through this photo essay about Brad Pitt 's ever-changing hairdos yesterday in the new Us Weekly, I couldn't help but...
Fake Jan Alert
My blog is featured in Susan Olsen's tell-all about the ill-fated "Brady Bunch Variety Hour"!
Little Kenny
Growing up in Madison Heights, Mich.
Back to the Old House
The Web leads to an unexpected return to a house I grew up in.
Oceans 11
Carlsbad, Calif. (2008)
1983
Go Behind the Music of my high-school band, A La Plage
A Death in the Family
Little Larry left us too soon.
Once I Had a Love
With Debbie Harry
'Jungle' Fever
With Robert Buckley
Roger & Me
With Roger Federer
Step Brother McMullen
With Ed Burns
Headline News
With Thomas Roberts
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