PLAYLIST: The Chateau

Or, how I learned to love Los Angeles

Allow me to be insufferable for a moment. Somehow, in the past few years, I have become a regular at the Chateau. (You gotta say it like that, like when someone says garr-bage instead of garbage.)

The Chateau appealed to me, because as I understood it, it’s a place that, for one hundred fucking years, has drawn the same type of people to it. I knew successful (and unsuccessful) writers, musicians, comedians, and artists flocked to it. Every celebrity has been there but the most fucked up ones seem to like it the most. And it especially seemed to attract New Yorkers visiting Los Angeles.

In 2013, I did a bit on Instagram where I was becoming #HollywoodBrett, and things were escalating quickly, with my life completely falling apart over the course of a single night.

On this bit, I ran around Hollywood and even visited the Chateau under the guise of having to use their restroom. An incredible Trojan Horse if I do say so myself. And, oh, what a restroom it was! Ice in the urinals! I left immediately.

I was terrified to be there. After all it was the Chateau, and I was me. The idea that I was even there was a punchline to me. Not only was I not rich and famous, I was already pretending to be a New York guy at the time.

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. There was a hill you could walk to and see the skyline. There was a train in my town, but it only ran twice a day for commuters (with a transfer). For so much of my life, New York was an enormous presence but also just out of reach. All of the news on TV was New York news, all of the local commercials were New York commercials, most of the nationally aired shows were coming from New York City—even the movies I grew up on had a New York bent to them. I dreamt of being on SNL. I spent a lot of time on NJ Transit—in fact I’m visiting folks in the area and writing this now on a train to Hoboken, then I’ll transfer to the PATH, then onto the subway to get to some dumb bar.

Eventually, I conquered New York. Now they speak about me there in reverent tones (I get recognized, but only at a few specific Bushwick bars.) I was on the late night shows I loved (sorta, more featured background work but it counts). I got to be in the SNL writers room (I was a guest, not an actual writer, and it was the night where they did the “Hallelujah” thing). I was even on the local news!

This is not a piece about loving New York, but I loved New York, and still do. I’m Wilson Fisk ova here (minus the fascism and skullcrushing).

A few years ago, I was getting over my roughest breakup yet (a real one, not the one from the video above). I had worn myself ragged trying to make things happen career-wise, and things were only getting harder. The DIY venues and bar backrooms that I called home were disappearing or had already disappeared, and some people I loved passed away or moved on to different lives. Frankly, I had fallen out of love with New York. And I understood well enough to know it’s a city you need to love to survive in.

My move to Los Angeles was less of a “making my dreams come true” and more of a “well, let’s try this” kinda thing. Unlike New York, I didn’t “get” Los Angeles. On my initial visits, I kinda poked fun at the artifice of it all. I sincerely couldn’t begin to understand what makes this place tick.

On an exploratory visit to LA, just before the pandemic, I found myself in a new whirlwind romance. On a whim, I flew out west again since COVID-19 cleared up my schedule in a once-in-a-lifetime way, which led to an extended pandemic stay for a few months. This was a very nice period! Los Angeles was different; you could walk down the street and smell flowers. I was right near the beautiful Echo Park Lake, and convinced myself I made friends with a specific duck. Even though I couldn’t access my unemployment and things were scary on all fronts, I imagined a new, different life for me out west one things got sorted out. And then I got all that back pay at once and could actually afford to move. The universe was presenting big, blinking arrow signs.

Funny enough, when you decide to end a chapter, the end of that chapter can be real fun. The New York I returned to had life. All the bars and restaurants had street dining. The parks were full. I was attending protests, running into friends, and even had a big, fun hang in the park to get drunk with everyone one last time. It was a nice farewell.

I got dumped like two weeks before moving to the new city. Work was slow already, and due to an accidental gear mishap at the airport and some other bad timing, a cushy voice-acting gig dried up. The same week, my agent left the agency I was working with, and slow work came to a full stop. Everything in LA was closed and I didn’t know anyone here. I’d have weird Hinge dates in my driveway. I’d walk along the “hip” Sunset Blvd, lingering slowly as I passed the Black Cat—the only bar with outdoor seating where people would actually congregate. My long walks, which felt nice in New York, felt lonely in Los Angeles. Apparently, nobody walks but everyone hikes wtf? I tried to visit the Chateau and they looked at me like I was crazy.

My new normal was working my day job on my laptop in a hammock because I told myself I’d be outside all the time. I befriended the yard cats, who eventually became my cats. One time they gave me a dead rat. Without a guide to the city, I became my own guide, researching all the places I’d go when things opened back up.

But life threw more curveballs, and I was in a particular rut. I moved to exactly the wrong place for me at that time—a crumbling party house that once belonged to a cult, with a revolving door of terrifying roommates, police/EMT visits, and other unpredictabilities. (Also, Weird Al played there once, so it wasn’t all bad.) I often felt weird not being home, constantly worried about an unhoused person breaking in and locking themselves inside the house again. While my cats adjusted well to the move indoors, eventually my beloved cat Sid passed away. Due to a recurring gallbladder issue, I was spending my nights lying on the floor of my shower in the worst pain I’ve ever felt on a weekly basis. Things were scary. The LA experiment was not working out for me.

Whatever magic I had imagined Los Angeles having had crashed down to reality. New York is a living monument to itself—everything inspires and intersects. A melting pot, if you will. Los Angeles is not a melting pot. It’s like a banchan spread—a series of tiny, interesting dishes sitting next to each other, all with their own unique flavor. Maybe I still don’t understand it. It was not the Los Angeles from the TV, or from the movies. That was a fantasy, or so I thought.

Then one day, on a long, lonely walk that led me to the edge West Hollywood, I saw the Chateau, and was like, “I can probably just go in there now.” I made a reservation (that’s the trick), and sat down at the bar, which was playing The Maltese Falcon, and had a mocktail that the bartender suggested I help name (The Maltese Falcon, it’s known as today—a huge point of pride that I helped). I had a lovely time, made a few friends there, and declared this to be my new Cheers.

There’s just an energy there. Genuine lunatics like Abel Ferrara, Howard Hughes and Hunter S. Thompson had extended stays to feed on this energy. It inspired the writers of Rebel Without A Cause, an entire Jarvis Cocker record, numerous Eve Babitz essays and at least one Death Grips music video. From Greta Garbo to Greta Gerwig, this place seems to spark something in people, particularly ones that might not always fit in. Maybe it’s the heavy weight of everyone else’s history, some manifestation of old Hollywood ghosts where the glamorous nights, legendary stories and bad decisions have accumulated into a physical force you can actually feel. Or maybe it’s just the way the candles smell, idk.

I went home, and immediately lit a candle and played this Strokes demo that appears at the end of Somewhere in an attempt to keep my brain in Chateau mode. I watched every other film shot there, some terrible (sorry, Abel). I returned many times, with employees there starting to remember me.

I bought multiple books and absorbed the history, then would return and gawk at some detail of the place. “Wow, this must have been the phone booth that Desi Arnaz would drunkenly yell at Lucy when they’d have a lover’s quarrel.” “Wow, this is the chair from that Gram Parsons album cover.” “This is the elevator where Benicio Del Toro and Scarlett Johansson had…” Actually, no.

We don’t talk about what we see at the Chateau. At this place, discretion is observed by all. It says so right on the website. I brought my friend there once and she took a picture, and I hit the phone out of her hands. The DeuxMoi blind items I could have sent in… but no, I respect the sanctity. It’s a sacred space. Columbia Pictures founder Harry Cohn once said, “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau.” He said that in 1939 and that’s still kinda the vibe now.

And man, did life become more interesting when I started going there with frequency. I wasn’t partying excessively, but I had crazy nights. I shot the shit with a teenage celebrity crush who was only interested because a writer I had befriended an hour earlier at the told her I was “a genius” which felt very Hollywood. A tuxedoed friend who just got hired for SNL was in town for the Emmys, saw me getting into a DeLorean-esque sports car outside of the Chateau with a lithe, stylish model and a man I was told was in organized crime, and wondered what my life had become. And I can’t even talk about what happened in the aforementioned bathroom on Thanksgiving but I’ll give you a worrying hint: Saltburn. #HollywoodBrett was a bit. But #ChateauBrett was REAL and was a shortcut out of the doldrums.

If you’re sitting at the bar at the Chateau, people assume you are important and will give you their card in hopes you can make their movie. I take advantage of this misconception whenever possible. I might be a big shot like Mr. Sam Levinson, for all they know!

I’ve made fleeting friends (and maybe a fleeting enemy or two) at the bar many times. A gorgeous dentist from Paris with a jazz musician boyfriend that came up way too late in the convo; a guy who was in Tremors and had great memories of it; a drunken sommelier who said I should give RFK Jr. a chance (I didn’t).

I had a moment of appreciation while observing some of the ephemera on display with a famous musician who shall remain nameless and her alligator tour guide husband one time. (She has a Chateau tattoo.)

There are quadrants to this place. A bar, a lounge, a restaurant, the hotel, the pool. I explored each one at a time, on different visits, like I was completing levels in a video game. I brought friends in and we all got to experience this together. My friend (who gets it) and I were at the pool, and she took a handful from the water and splashed it on me.

“Medicinal waters.”

She was right. MARILYN MONROE swam in that pool. HUMPHREY BOGART swam in that pool. DAVID SPADE swam in that pool.

I am not one of those people. I am a mere visitor, but the history of the Chateau does not only belong to the legends, but also the pretenders—literal pretenders, but also probably the band too, come to think of it.

New York had the magic right there for me. In Los Angeles, I had to seek out the magic a little bit. But I found it here, for better or worse.

I don’t go so often these days. It was briefly a hyperfixation—an expensive hobby, even if you’re not ordering the steak. Eventually, even the guy in Somewhere leaves the Chateau. (And abandons his car in the desert? Weird ending.) I feel like I finally finished the game, but it’s a game I’ll pick up again and introduce to other people over and over again because something happens when you walk up that staircase. And to think, I, once a young schmuck dressed like Michael O’Donoghue, I couldn’t get past the bathroom. I didn’t even think to try.

I’m visiting New York again. I was staying at a Holiday Inn in downtown Brooklyn. But this time, I insisted if people wanted to pay court to me, they’d have to meet me at the Chelsea Hotel. I’m #ChateauBrett now.