Hollywood Thrills and Chills: Stunt Drivers, Dangerous Rides, And a Manson Mystery Unveiled

A recounting of my conversation with the late, great Hollywood stuntman Pete Porteous

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Back on the red eye to New York after a modeling job in California, I closed my eyes, hoping to fall asleep, but instead, all I could think about was how much I hated my life.

On one hand, I was getting paid a lot of money for these catalog shoots and the opportunity to travel, but on the other, I was either sweating my ass off modeling winter clothes during the summer or freezing to death in summer clothes during the winter. To add insult to injury, as the designated “mature” model on the shoot, I’d been assigned what clients referred to as age-appropriate outfits. For whom, I wondered? Mennonites?

I could still see the smirk on the stylist Jeffrey’s face when he’d handed me my final outfit of the day, consisting of a puce-colored cotton turtleneck, a brown corduroy mid-calf length jumper, and the ugliest pair of black flats this side of the Mississippi. All I needed to complete the ensemble, I remembered thinking, was a little black bonnet with the strings hanging down on either side.

Okay, so I wasn’t doing a Vogue shoot, but neither was Jeffrey styling one. At least I’d managed to salvage the shoot and stave off the crushing…