Red Scare - Comments Section w/ Bruce Wagner *TEASER*

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Novelist and screenwriter Bruce Wagner stops by the pod to discuss modern day spirituality, the incest taboo, LA's haunted lore, and his latest book, The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers.

who are trying to pursue success in this very mysterious industry. They don't know how to be successful in it and they're looking to anyone who can ostensibly tell them how to succeed. And that I found to be just very pervasive in LA throughout, like not even among actors, but just, yeah, like everyone's looking for

like a guru or a mentor, like some kind of guidance. But because it's fundamentally godless, they end up in these like very like, you know, esoteric meditative new agey areas that become very dark. I wanted to ask you about like the deep LA lore of Lonnie Wilson, who makes a cameo in your last book. Do you know her personally? Do you know about this girl? makes a cameo in her last book. Do you know her personally? Do you know about this girl?

She was like a beautiful and successful fitness model and I guess wannabe actress who was married to Jeremy Jackson from Baywatch and her claim to fame now is that she's like on the Daily Mail or in the New York Post because she's like a crackhead junkie on the streets of LA. She's like not wearing any makeup,

missing all her teeth and she looks so amazing. She looks like she's walking Elena Velez. Like she's a beautiful woman, so she's always gonna be beautiful no matter what she does. Yeah, so she's part of the Met Gala and she's actually part of Saints and Seekers. It's the only time I bookended a character. But I just was riveted by that.

Loni Wilson? Do you know what I mean? L-O-N-I, I think, maybe. I was riveted by that story. But I never, I passed that point in time where I think about when I was a younger writer, I would have seen if I could have interviewed her or visited her. Because I did have seen if I could have interviewed her or visited. Yeah.

Because I did that once. I could fix her. There was a homeless woman that I used to see when there were payphones. Uh-huh. She's gorgeous. Relentlessly on the phone, on the payphone, in front of Holloway Cleaners in West Hollywood. And I wrote, I created something all around her in, I think it was I'm Losing You, or course majeure. And I did finally ask her, I thought in the story that I wrote, the woman was talking

to no one, there was no one on the other end. But in the story, that's who she was. She was quite mad. But I went up to the woman finally in real life and I said, I'm so sorry to ask you this, but who is it that you're talking to? Because I've been seeing her for months. And she simply said, my old teacher. Whoa.

And it just made sense enough and was conversational enough for me to drop it. Uh-huh, yeah. Because it was clear that it didn't matter who she was talking to or if there was someone there or not. So I was interested in Lonnie for those reasons. Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's always tragic. It's more tragic when like some great misfortune

befalls the person who's like naturally beautiful. No one wants to admit that, but it's true. It is true. And it's like more captivating and salacious, but there's also something kind of beautiful and sublime about a person who has so many like natural gifts and talents becoming like one with the universe again. She's like St. Mary of Egypt.

She like is wandering the desert. With like no shoes and like low rise jeans. Yeah, she's like getting sun damage, like you wouldn't believe. But this is a very poetic Daily Mail headline about Lonnie Wilson hauls shopping cart and dumpster dives for food after insisting, this is a quote from her,

there's nothing that anyone can offer me there is no helping yeah I can touch the outside of a building but I can't go inside Lonnie said I think because they pick up on the electricity I also pick up on other things like certain chemicals or batteries or fuses like wires like different kinds of metals so I think my body even filters that kind of stuff beautiful she can it. Yeah, that's beautiful. She can't go inside. She has to be homeless because she can't go inside a building.

The vibes are too bad. Unexpected, I was talking about earlier that you're not gonna find with the waddling billionaire. You're gonna find something odd, poetic, you know, that will startle you.