BRETT RATNER'S HOUSE

Brook, I actually did go to Brett Ratner’s house once. It was Halloween, and I was a nineteen-year-old college student dressed like Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction. I never did the slutty halloween costume well. I knew I needed to be ‘hot’. But there was still something about being young and fuckable that made me feel like a Baywatch extra. I wanted to come off as one of those Sundance indie darlings. The kind of girl who only used a black and white headshot and had a name like Skye Bluestone- someone casting directors could pitch as young Cat Blanchett- An ingenue linked to Heath Ledger who went to studio on every pilot, and wore vintage fur coats to Swingers on the weekends.

My girlfriends told me they wouldn’t be seen with me if I dressed as Annie Hall, so I opted for Mia Wallace, sexy but NOT A BIMBO. If the late nineties taught us anything, it's that bimbos can never be brunettes with bangs… unless they work in the White House and become the target of the Clinton administration.

Brett owned this creepy house in Hancock Park—at least, I think that’s where I was. For some reason, it blurs in my mind with the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, another hip and happening place at the time. Don’t ask.

As you know, Brett’s Halloween parties were notorious, and I was nowhere cool enough to be invited. This wasn’t some UCLA date dash. It was a high-end Hollywood event that was catered and had a guest list. We stumbled upon this soiree by chance. While being turned away outside the Playboy Mansion, the guys in the car behind us pulled up and asked if we wanted to go somewhere else. Having no other plans aside from dressing up slutty and trying to sneak into the playboy mansion, of course, we said yes.