HOW TO BE A MAJOR MINOR CELEBRITY: HOST YOUR OWN TALK SHOW, GET
EVERYTHING FOR FREE AND MEET THE HOTTEST MEN ON THE PLANET.
I’m a minor celebrity. In a town of mostly minor celebrities, the name Victoria Looseleaf means something, although, quite frankly, I’m not sure what. And I’m not quite sure to whom. Nevertheless, I, Victoria Looseleaf, am the Goddess of Public Access (and no, Looseleaf is not my real name, while, yes, Public Access Goddess is probably an oxymoron), but still: I do have my fans.
Until Los Angeles killed public access (December 2008), The Leaf had been hosting a talk/variety show, The Looseleaf Report. Not to be confused with The McNeil Lehrer Report, The Kinsey Report or The Hite Report. Or, to update the matter: The Colbert Report! No. It was simply,The Looseleaf Report.
By the way, we shortened it from Looseleafkowitz.
And they said it wouldn’t last. And when ya think about it, several decades on the air made for some kind of mythic status. If the Los Angeles Opera Company could milk their tenth season, 15th, 20th and yes, its quarter century staying power, why couldn’t The Leaf?
Well, she did.
She was talking late night, babies, not that daytime talk drivel. She talked real live singing and dancing. Intelligent interviews, conversation. Comedy. Literary Minutes. (Sydney Sheldon reading from one of his unintelligible, massively popular mega-money-making ersatz novels). Reviews. (“…Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepard exudes as much warmth as a rusted toaster oven…” – OKAY: This dates The Leaf, if nothing else).
And no commercials.
She was talking hot guests like Leonardo DiCaprio when he still wet the bed.[FOR THE SKINNY ON LEO, BUY HER OUT-OF-PRINT BIO OF LEO ON AMAZON FOR A WHOPPING two cents, hahaha, boohoohoo].
She was talking Jim Carrey before Ace Ventura – way, way, way before, but does it really, in the grand scheme of things, matter? And look at Mr. Carrey now, that penguin movie aside. (Was it a hit? Do we care?)
She was talking Placido Domingo (and still does), the Flying Russian from one of the original Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas and the resurrection of the group, Cream. Would you believe Tippi Hedren, erstwhile star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds but now more famous for being, er, Melanie Griffith‘s mother?
Believe.
Yea, she talked. Because that’s what The Leaf does best. She’s talking both Bill and Ted before that excellent adventure. (Uh, huh. Keanu…stoned reciting Shakespeare, “To puff or not to puff…”). Trading quips with George Carlin - too bad that was the day that her hairdresser chose to affix a circular braided hairpiece atop her skull, where it resembled nothing less than a danish in search of a diner.
Steve Allen.
???
Steve Allen, peeps. He invented the ground zero of late-night gabfests, The Tonight Show.
And perhaps more to the point.
For your information: The Leaf succeeded where so many before her had not. When you think of the talk shows that have come and gone - Joan Rivers, Dennis Miller, Arsenio Hall, Chevy Chase, Whoopi Goldberg, Rick Dees, Pat Sajak (like he should ever have been allowed to show that plastic puss of his on screen at all is a travesty of diode tube justice worthy of a kind of Napoleonic exile), etal – and realize that The Looseleaf Report outlasted all of that drivel, this is pretty impressive stuff.
But then when you realize: SHE DID NOT GET PAID…this is fairly mind-boggling… and she must have been the one out of her boggled mind.
Why, then, did she do it?
The perks?
Perhaps.
Oh, yes. The perks.
She was/is on a first name basis with my UPS man (“Tom”), my Fed Ex guy (“Dick”), my City Post fella (“Harry”), not to mention all of those beautiful boys in blue down at the Post Office who do deliver, to me, on a daily basis, a plethora of cds, books, audiotapes, videotapes, candy, flowers and – gasp – the occasional odd piece of Victoria’s Secret lingerie.
And the fan letters. Whoa.
Then there are the: free clothes, including gowns (both ball and tea-length courtesy of the fabulous Bruno Duluc and the late Holly Harp), skirts slit up the front, sides and back, velvet palazzo pants and shimmering satin jackets suitable for dining at Sardi’s and Chinois; eyeglasses, yoga classes, courtesy of Barbara Simon‘s Romancing Your Soul, gym memberships (accompanied by one of those cute trainer-types named ‘Brick’ – so what if he had the IQ of a Diet Coke…), acupuncture treatments, weekly hair dos (including: straightening, coloring, highlighting, cutting, washing, conditioning, setting and/or blow-drying) and make-up; facials for life; endless pairs of shoes that even a card-carrying foot fetishist would approve; press tickets to virtually any show in and out of town (including New York, San Francisco, Miami and London); gratis drinks and meals (oysters Rockefeller anyone?); gourmet coffees and frommages from a little shop called Cheeseworld of Cleveland (full disclosure: Cheeseworld shuttered its doors, boohoo)…and the one-off oil painting done personally pour moi (okay, so it was a life-size nude – at least I had the balls to unveil it on the show – would Letterman do that?). And lest I forget: my very own Christmas wreath(seasonal only), to adorn the minimal set (literally – an old TV painted in pastels and two plastic martini cups), of The Looseleaf Report.
But she digresses.
For those of you out there who don’t what Public Access was, you missed out, but will be able to relive some of The Looseleaf Report‘s most illustrious moments on YouTube, not to worry. And since this was a preamble to a book The Leaf was writing, she’s not going to go into how she bragged about being the future of television, because, gulp, the future of television has already arrived and we now know it’s the Internet, iPhones, iPads, iAnythings that bring you too much digital information – like this post.
Who knew?
The Leaf used to say that she was to Public Access what Martin Scorcese was to movies.
That she was the flip side of network TV.
And the point was that she was going to instruct you all how to conquer this medium.
Small, medium, large, whatever you wanted to call it – it could have all been yours, too.
Oh, well.
Keep in mind, that Victoria Looseleaf and The Looseleaf Report, bare-bones, raw, mistake-riddled and bizarre as the show was, was, in fact, also addicting. (Indeed, The Leaf was recognized just recently in her box at the Hollywood Bowl by another journalist who knew her from those glory daze. Ah, ain’t life grand!
Why not: Public Access was called the vaudeville of the 90′s (by The Leaf – she coined that one); citing herself as the “deconstructionist Ed Sullivan” for that same decade. (Actually, the Los Angeles Times called her that, and Details, that so-called arbiter of cool, common low-denominator mag called The Leaf the “Goddess of Public…”, well, you know the rest).
But in a nutshell, Public Access was vanity television. You pays your money, you gets your own TV show. It’s that simple. Indeed, it was Fred Karger, the gay Independent Republican who is currently running for – gasp – president of these United States, who produced The Leaf’s early shows. (More on that – and Karger – later.)
Here in Los Angeles, however, the television capital of the world, most producers of Public Access television shows did aspire to the Roseanne/Tim/Jerry/Jay/Dave/megastardom thing, or, at least…hope to get some kind of a paycheck.
So, after crawling up the lowly ranks for more than two decades and taping more than 400 shows of The Looseleaf Report, The Leaf can proudly say that she was once at the top of the bottom of that heap.
And now, since it’s all viral, she’s just one of the many billions trying to get her story told.
As to that entire story, well, she’s still penning the memoir. Until then, please enjoy her scribblings about the arts and culture (and whatever else might happen into her life/mind/existence). And remember: The Looseleaf Report lives!
And just for old time’s sake, here’s the song The Leaf wrote that closed her original TV show, The Looseleaf Report – it’s about an adventure in Acapulco, Aca-Aca-Acapulco