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What an awful place is Los Angeles!

Unthinkable mixture of crazy ambitions, shallow, mediocre writers and ignorant actors, they all are driving me mad. A phantom of mad frustration is wandering the streets where a boastful statement "I am an actor/actress" is logically followed by a question: "Really? So in which restaurant do you work?" The fact is that 99 percent of those madmen shall never fulfill their dreams; they will work as doormen at "in" place, pushing off regular visitors and, with a naive hope of a miracle, allowing the entrance to sloppy agents…

Cyrus and I also made up our minds to try ourselves in acting. To avoid the affliction of losers we decided to use our material supremacy and register for an individual training course which was offered by a teacher belonging to a famous school of Larry Moss (this teacher was known for practicing the Stanislavsky system); the price for this fun was four hundred dollars an hour for the two of us.

I had to prepare a short scene for the first lesson and I chose from my famous book by M. Bulgakov, "Master and Margaret," the meeting between Azazello and Margaret.

In the action set up in the thirties in the USSR, Azazello, Devil's messenger, was to explain to Margaret, a common Russian woman in her 30s, that she was invited as a host for a solemn ball party that Satan was organizing.

We did our best with Cyrus. Cyrus coped with the task perfectly which I could not claim about myself; on his part he demonstrated a wide emotional polyphony, he was wheedling and angry, complaining and threatening, ridiculous and pitiful and simultaneously powerful and possessing an unearthly strength.

Our 35 year old and extremely overweight teacher that was sprawling on the sofa, chewing cakes and dropping crumbles, was absolutely unimpressed.

"What is this rubbish about? Cyrus, who do you try to portray?" — She asked scattering large bits of cake that were falling out of her mouth. — "People should relate to the character, they should act as if they got a normal job from 9 to 5, like everybody. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but…" Uncertainly objected Cyrus, — "You see, he is not a common person… He is no human at all… He is the Devil's aide…"

"Oh, yes, he comes from the space. In this case you should act lake characters from the Star Wars, the best acting ever, in case you didn't know that!"

We exchanged glances, gave her four hundred dollars and left.

Then somebody recommended us a Russian teacher, a very affable and well-educated actor, who rehearsed Chekhov and Shakespeare with us. He refused to speak about "Master and Margaret."

The fact is that they attempted to film or stage this ingenious novel over ten times (I shall not be surprised if I learn that the true number of attempts was 13).

Every time there would be an accident: the scenery would burn out in fire, a director would get a heart attack, an actor would die, etc.

And in couple of cases when they succeeded to accomplish staging or filming, the result turned out to be a pot-boiler having nothing to do with the original masterpiece.

In Russia, some years ago they undertook to make a serial film with participation of very good and well-known actors, they filmed for about a year and regularly informed the public that "everything goes in a normal way, no accidents recorded…" They finished filming, set the date for the opening night and all of a sudden all the negatives disappeared.

Nobody was surprised.

This book is popular even among foreign elite.

Mick Jagger and John Malkovich desired to appear in the character of the Devil, Mila Jovovich wanted to appear in the character of Margaret. I learned this from Peter Hoffman, who knows "Master and Margaret" by heart and it has been a dream of his life to put the book on the screen. Good luck!

Anyhow we managed to squeeze into an independent film "Ellie Parker" with Naomi Watts playing the lead.

Something extremely funny happened in the course of the filming.

The fact is that a while before I had made a plastic surgery and so I was taking painkillers. The drug effect was magic, no wonder people got hooked on it.

I used to weep and hysterically laugh, now and again simultaneously, ten times a day, driven by emotions, and I had extremely pleasant feeling of unreality of everything around me, like a change of set-dressing.

We stayed in the Beverly Willsher Hotel.

The "Ellie Parker" shooting took place in my room.

I perfectly coped with the character of an arrogant drug addict producer!

After the shooting we all went down to the hotel bar. Alcohol and painkillers affected me, the contours of surrounding objects blurred as in a mist from which suddenly materialized a known Hollywood producer M. We had not been acquainted, but we had met twice on festivals in Cannes and New York.

M. was a bulky man weighing some 150 kilograms.

"Hi," said M. — "What room do you stay in?"

"Hi," said I. — My room is 625."

"O.K.," said the producer and disappeared.

After that I spent half an hour with my friends in the bar and all of us went up to my room.

There was a knock on the door. I opened: it was M.

I invited him to come inside and introduced him to my friends, four men, and Cyrus, my boy-friend.

"Nice to meet you," said the producer, "Where is the bathroom?"

"I'll show you," I lead him through the corridor, he followed me. When we reached the bathroom, he simply pushed me inside, locked the door and with one hand fumbled for his zipper on his trousers. I guess it was not an easy task considering the size of his stomac which he supported with the other hand.

I thought I had hallucinations, possibly caused by an extra pill, and the sight was so comical that I burst out hysterically laughing.

The producer took no offence at all, yet he perspired a bit.

"It is somewhat uncomfortable here, let's go to my room," he suggested.

"Sure, let's go!" I said. "You go first, I'll join you later."

We left the bathroom.

"I go to the lobby," the producer declared peremptorily to my friends and went out of my room. I told them what had happened in the bathroom.

Ironically, they all wanted to become actors.

"Naturally he is an animal," they said, "and yet M. happens to be a most influential Hollywood producer, you should not quarrel with him. Go downstairs and tell him you feel under par, you are not in good health right now."

Unbelievingly in retrospective, and yet, since I was affected by drugs and alcohol, like zombie, I went downstairs.

"I'm sorry, M.," I babbled, "I'm right after the surgery, so I'm not into sex right now, maybe another time…"

M. caught me by the hand and dragged somewhere. As though in a mist, I followed him.

Suddenly a man addressed M. The latter stopped and began to talk with the former. I turned around and rushed away.

I thought the better not to use the elevator: I could hear M.'s heavy steps behind me and him calling "Victoria! Victoria!" So I ran into a pigeonhole under the stairs and hid inside. His nasty voice was getting closer and closer — I decided not to wait any longer and ran upstairs to the sixth floor.

I rushed into my room and shouted: "He is insane! He nearly dragged me into his hotel!"

The phone rang. Cyrus picked it up.

"But, M., Victoria is not in the room." Cyrus put down the receiver. "He says he is coming up."

"We shall not open the door," I said.

"Oh, come on! It is impossible! You can't deny entrance to M. He will never film us again! What shall we do?" The voices rose in a tumult.

There was a knock on the door. The boys hastily found a solution: they pushed me into a locker in the bathroom.

M. entered and I heard them saying: "Victoria went downstairs to see you…"

Obviously they were artless actors, and having primarily checked possible hiding places behind the curtains M. advanced to the locker and threw open the doors.

What was I to do? I vehemently embraced him with a guffaw. This surprise attack made M. shout in fear, his eyes orbited and: he fell down on the floor.

He seemed to have a heart attack, since he was heavily breathing and pressing his right hand to the left side of his chest.

I was sorry for him. I said there was a misunderstanding and I had not meant an intimate follow-up when I told him my room's number; and I definitely was not aspiring for a career of an actress.

"Do you happen to be Jewish?" — M. shouted panting, and this question seemed rather odd under the circumstances.

"Yes," I said in the hope that my answer might be consoling.

"Oh, right, let's be friends!"

We helped M. to get up, he politely said "good-bye" to everybody and left.

My russian friend Africa sad: "That's it, Victoria, you just blew up you're the only chance to become famous — if M died on you right now, at list you would be in the news!"

And we laughed for a long time after that. And some time later I wept because I was very sorry for those girls who were ready to sleep with anybody in order to get a role in a movie!

To hell with Los Angeles!

To hell with acting!

…On getting back to Europe we went to Mallorca where in a restaurant we overheard some tourists talking at another table. They seemed so clever, so intellectual as compared with the Los Angeles public!

As far as I remember they were talking about the weather…