Chapter 9 Filthy McNasty
NINE
FILTHY McNASTY
I HATED THE LIMELIGHT, and everywhere in West Hollywood was bathed in it.
Then came the Viper Room.
I’m here to tell you that the Viper Room was the coolest club that ever existed.
It was an otherwise squat and forgettable building at 8852 Sunset, right by Larrabee Street, built in the early 1920s.
Originally it was a nondescript grocery store, though it would go on to have multiple famous iterations across the decades: at one time it was a nightclub, and then a bar called the Melody Lounge, which was something of a wiseguy hangout.
Eventually, it became a club owned by and named for a legendary Angelino known to everyone as Filthy McNasty.
Filthy McNasty was from Berlin, and his real name was the much less fun Wilfried Bartsch—you can see why he was happier to go by a new name.
Filthy McNasty’s set the tone for what was to come.
Famous people—everyone from Evel Knievel to John Wayne—loved the place because photographers were not welcome.
In a city where paparazzi are as plentiful as fire hydrants, folks just wanted somewhere safe to hang out, away from prying lenses, especially in the days when celebrities cherished their privacy.
They also knew they had to maintain it, so that when they did finally emerge, their presence would be something to talk about and might put bums in theater seats and movie halls.
Nowadays, every famous person has an Instagram account where they share their most intimate moments the second they happen, but in an earlier time, it was imperative to keep a mystery about oneself, hence the advantage a place like Filthy McNasty’s had in turning away the fame vampires.
In the eighties, Filthy McNasty’s morphed into the Central, a jazz club that attracted performances by a young Rickie Lee Jones, as well as her musician friend Chuck E.
Weiss. Rickie would write about a conversation with the third member of that famous trio of musicians, Tom Waits, in her hit “Chuck E.’s in Love. ”
When Chuck E. eventually persuaded Johnny Depp and others to buy the Central and turn it into the Viper Room, the owners were quick to reestablish the emphasis on privacy.
They created a kind of speakeasy, an exclusive, secret-handshake sort of hangout that felt personal and familial, an escape from the crazy scene that dogged us everywhere we went in nineties Los Angeles.
Johnny also made sure that Chuck E. could still play there.
This was a big deal, because Chuck E. Weiss wasn’t to everyone’s taste—he sometimes thrummed a washboard and told long tales in between his blues songs, accompanied as he usually was by his band, the Goddamn Liars.
But I loved Chuck E., and he played at my twenty-second birthday party.
I’d been at the Viper Room’s opening night back when I was twenty-one, and by that twenty-second birthday, the Viper Room had become my home away from home.
It attracted all the coolest people, cats you just wanted to be around.
And it wasn’t just celebrities: it was all manner of weirdos—“us weirdos,” as we put it.
Everyone was treated the same on the inside, no special treatment for being famous or known.
Everyone was a character in their own way, like these four guys called the Millionaires’ Club, who were never seen in public unless they were dressed in three-piece suits.
Shannon and Carolyn and Tommi ran the Viper Room back then—they were the bartenders and managers, but really, they were its beating heart.
Sometimes when Shannon was overwhelmed, she would make me help her at the bar.
Then there was Sean G, who ran the front desk. These were my people.
The Viper Room was a list place—you couldn’t get in unless you were on it—but not for me.
For me it was a home. I was there almost every night.
Everyone felt like family, even the bouncers, like Big Ed, who was six foot five and could crush you if he wanted to, but who is also the sweetest man alive.
I felt safe because Johnny had a standing policy of no assholes in the Viper Room.
He wanted to create a place he could relax and hang out, and I felt the same way—it was the club where I could go and have drinks with a bunch of fucked-up fuckers, who didn’t care who I was, and I didn’t care who they were, as long as they were interesting and unfazed by fame.
Most nights there weren’t even paparazzi outside.
Everything, both inside and outside the Viper Room, was painted black.
The air was always thick with cigarette smoke because Johnny would never have a place that you couldn’t smoke inside.
He once said, “I wish I could graft another mouth on my cheek so I could smoke more.” There was a bar and booths, and my favorite spot, a secret room with one long bench opposite a wall that consisted of a one-way mirror, so you could sit in there on the bench and watch the whole club.
It was a quieter spot where you could go and be alone, where you could corral your thoughts and take a breather.
You could barely even hear the music. Carolyn or Pharel or another friend and I would sit on the bench and chat.
Johnny instilled a cherished level of privacy for anyone, not just celebrities—the first rule of Fight Club, et cetera. It was our safe haven, a private place, and that’s how it will remain.
August 15, 1993
Last night at the Viper Room was a real turning point for me.
I was elated and was feeling extremely close to myself…
I’m happy, I realize that, even though the guilt is major…
I realize how much better my life is without [my abusive boyfriend].
How free I feel. It’s wonderful. How much time I have to take care of the important things in my life.
Even though I am exhausted today… my heart burns with so much love for my life. And so it is.
…
It’s too bright and patient
For us to wallow.
So let us be grown
Let us all blossom and sit
Under the Apple tree.
Sometime in 1995, I joined a show at the House of Blues called the Choreographer’s Ball.
All the choreographers in Los Angeles and beyond would put on a huge, beautiful dance production.
It brought a real dance culture to Los Angeles, which at that time was not a thing.
I remember performing to “Black Coffee” and a Prince song called “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?
” It was a wonderful chance for me to express myself through dance, something I’d done all my life, but not always to an audience.
Through friends I ended up meeting Robin Antin, a dancer and choreographer.
We hit it off—she even moved into my house for a while—and out of that friendship came the Pussycat Dolls.
Robin had been toying with creating a mixture of Bob Fosse, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and burlesque, with some fake striptease thrown in for good measure.
But mostly it was Fosse, Fosse, Fosse.
Initially there were no singers, and we didn’t even have a name.
We’d dance to anything from Eartha Kitt to the music from Kiss Me, Kate and Sweet Charity.
I described it back then as “a cross between Ann-Margret and James Bond girls.” We would head to the dance studio I’d built in my house and work out the choreography.
The Pussycat Dolls weren’t taking any clothes off, but we were giving the illusion that we were taking something off, layers upon layers leading to more layers.
It was suggestive in all the right ways.
To me, dance wasn’t sexual: it was a spiritual expression of pain and glory and all the things in between.
It was church. And I certainly never thought of myself as sexy.
In my early twenties, we’d all go to Flaming Colossus, a club on Bonnie Brae near MacArthur Park in a seedy corner of downtown Los Angeles.
(My drink of choice those nights was Southern Comfort because that was Janis Joplin’s drink and I was obsessed with her, and still am.) One night, some guy said to a friend of mine, “God, Christina is the unsexiest person I’ve ever met.
” Why my “friend” thought she should pass this on I’ll never know, but once again, a random comment from somebody I should have been able to ignore played directly into my insecurities.
I was on the cover of People’s 100 Most Beautiful once, and I remember coming across a comment that said I wasn’t beautiful: I was just chosen because I’d had cancer.
Those feelings ran deep into my relationships and into the bedroom.
Not one time have I looked in a mirror—even all done up—and thought, Oh, I look good.
Not once, never, swear on my life, from the first day I could think until writing this sentence.
Sure, I’ve seen okay pictures, but I’ve always put it down to the hairpiece or the lashes or the lighting or the airbrushing. It’s never me.
Over the years I have scrawled multiple phrases in lipstick on my bathroom mirrors so I don’t have to look at myself.
I read the words instead. If I fail and catch a glimpse, I feel sick.
I’ve lived my whole life onscreen, but if I ever catch the shows or movies on TV, my familiar internal monologue of “Fat, ugly, old” pushes its way in.
But dance… dance takes me out of my head and into my body. It’s about being me.
Eventually, my friend Shannon, the manager at the Viper Room, thought that the Pussycat Dolls would be a perfect fit for her Thursday speakeasy night.
Thursdays at the Viper already had a fun Prohibition-era feel—DJ Dean R.
Miller had been playing early-twentieth-century music every Thursday for months, and folks would dress in fedoras and suits—it was gangster, but in the original meaning of the word.
Shannon told Johnny about the Dolls, and he invited us to audition for a Thursday-night spot.