Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Jan 19, 2017 20:18:40 GMT -6
www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/glow-wrestling-jeanne-basone-hollywood-hotel-sessions
HOW AN '80S FEMALE WRESTLING STAR MAKES THOUSANDS IN UNDERGROUND HOTEL FIGHTS
BETWEEN ITS LAUNCH in the mid-'80s and its unceremonious demise in 1990, GLOW – Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling -- captured and confounded the popular imagination. Its wrestlers, in an ungainly hybrid of sexist exploitation and zeitgeist-disrupting feminist statement-making, who acted out funny, risqué, and in some cases profoundly offensive routines, were featured in everything from sketch comedy, to daytime talk shows, to public service announcements about the ravages of weed.
During GLOW, "Hollywood" – real name Jeanne Basone -- was a breakout star. After it, she embarked on a long and lucrative career in the underground market of fetish "session wrestling," involving everything from private ring matches to costumed narratives acted out in the secrecy of hotel rooms across the country.
Now that Netflix has greenlit a period comedy inspired by GLOW, co-created by Orange Is the New Black and Homeland honchos, and starring Alison Brie and Marc Maron, we figured it'd be a good time to catch up with Hollywood -- now 47 and living in Nashville -- to look back at her insane early years and try to get some useful advice, should we ever want to get into the strange-dude-hotel-wrestling business ourselves. Here she is, in her own words.
Step 1. Draw blood by day, spill it by night
In 1985, I was 22 years old and working at a facility called Burbank Medical, drawing people's blood. I get a call from an agency casting for a new "sports show." They asked if I could come down to an audition that night at the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. They didn't tell me what kind of show it was, but I'm thinking, Whatever, I'm athletic. So I head down. It's this huge cattle call. Big girls and little girls; beautiful models to sporty-looking girls. Every race. Just a bunch of colorful, beautiful women.
There were some guys at a table -- who turned out to be GLOW's creator David McLane and his backers and producers and directors. We had to state our names and stats in front of the camera. Height, weight, that kind of thing. Then they revealed it was going to be a wrestling show. I think a quarter of the other girls heard "wrestling" and just got up and walked right out. But it sorta piqued my interest. The next thing you know I'm training Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, every week from 7 to 10 at night. I'm draining blood during the day and moonlighting as a wrestling apprentice. I'd go to work bruised and beat up, but I loved it.
Step 2. Learn the ropes
The early sessions of GLOW were filmed at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. When I walked in the first time as "Hollywood" -- they assigned me the character -- I saw David McLane in the lobby. He pointed to a 350lb woman and said, "You're going to wrestle her." It was Emily Dole, who played Mt. Fiji. My first day of moving to Vegas, now as a professional wrestler, and that's who I was teamed up with. [Editor's Note: Hollywood lost, which was usually her lot as a "bad girl."]
After that, we hit the road. The rules of GLOW were clear: We were always in character, and forbidden to socialize with our enemies on the show. There were even two buses, one for the bad girls and a separate one for the good girls. Our tour bus -- the bad girls -- had previously been Foghat's.
And the girls -- if you look at WWE women these days, they all look mostly the same. But GLOW wasn't like that. We were just a good group of natural-looking, beautiful women. Even if you're 350lbs, you're beautiful. If you're 4'9" and 95lbs, you're gorgeous. It was really empowering for women. There were no other characters in the culture for girls to look up to I think. Besides Wonder Woman.
Step 3. Offend everyone, everywhere, all the time; then repent
In those first seasons, they let us do whatever we wanted. And since nobody ever told us no, we took it to another level. Certain characters like The Heavy Metal Sisters -- Chainsaw and Spike -- really upset people. In a match, they would pull Spike away from the ring and put her in a straitjacket and we'd get letters telling us to tone it down, that we're mocking the mentally ill. Those two couldn't wrestle very well, and once they came out for a match against a black girl, and I'm telling you: They took a watermelon and cut it in half with a chainsaw, and then smashed it over her head.
There was also an Apartheid match, which was pretty bad, considering what was happening in South Africa at the time. It gives me chills just to say it. Incredibly offensive, and no way that would fly now. In a different match, one of the girls set a hula hoop on fire and made Southern Belle bark like a dog and jump through the flames.
We even did Nazi matches (without the swastikas) where villains like me and Matilda the Hun would walk out and sing Nazi march songs for a match against [the wrestler] Americana. America versus Nazis, basically. Our director took us to a prop warehouse in LA to get chains, files, gas masks -- whatever we thought would say "Nazi Germany" to use on our opponents. One time after one of those at the Riviera in Vegas I was walking back to my room and I looked at the the pool's diving board. Someone had painted Nazi symbols and swastikas all over it after the show. The next day it was gone and painted over, but man, the power of entertainment.
By Seasons 3 and 4 we had to tone it down, do those PSA commercials from the '80s -- "Hi, I'm Hollywood, and smoking pot is bad for you" -- to make a more positive presence. But man, the first and second season we got away with a lot.
I remember in 1987, we did a string of TV show spots: Married... with Children, Sally Jessy Raphael. One time on The Phil Donahue Show, some stuffy woman in the audience asked, "How does this promote something positive for kids when you ladies are beating each other up?" This was the dawn of sports entertainment, before it was known the way it is today. I was like, God, she's right; we're tearing each other's hair out!
Step 4. Go into private practice
After the fourth season, in 1990, I got a phone call from somebody in management. GLOW was over. I'd been doing some modeling, including for Playboy, and I continued to do it here and there, but I needed to figure out what was next.
One of girls who came onto GLOW in the later seasons told me she knew a lady who needed wrestlers for some videos being shot in the Valley -- where some of the ladies and other models-slash-wrestlers would perform a GLOW-ish match in a studio. I started getting work with her. Another woman created a company that hosted private "sessions" with customers. Wrestlers would go to her house, which had a professional-style ring in her backyard, and get paid $350 to wrestle fans that had booked an hour session. The fans would get charged an extra hundred to use the ring. I did that too. It was easy, fast money.
But then I started to get smart, in the mid-'90s. I launched my own production company and website -- WebKitten.com [now Hollywould Productions]. I got a photographer/video guy from one of the other girls and was working with other girls I had worked with before. I'd take custom photos for fans, or videos. Fans would script out the holds they wanted to see, the girls they wanted to wrestle each other, and how they wanted the match to end. I'd charge them to make the video, and once they got their copy, I'd sell it on my site to make more money. I bought my house with that money.
Step 4. Go into private practice
After the fourth season, in 1990, I got a phone call from somebody in management. GLOW was over. I'd been doing some modeling, including for Playboy, and I continued to do it here and there, but I needed to figure out what was next.
One of girls who came onto GLOW in the later seasons told me she knew a lady who needed wrestlers for some videos being shot in the Valley -- where some of the ladies and other models-slash-wrestlers would perform a GLOW-ish match in a studio. I started getting work with her. Another woman created a company that hosted private "sessions" with customers. Wrestlers would go to her house, which had a professional-style ring in her backyard, and get paid $350 to wrestle fans that had booked an hour session. The fans would get charged an extra hundred to use the ring. I did that too. It was easy, fast money.
But then I started to get smart, in the mid-'90s. I launched my own production company and website -- WebKitten.com [now Hollywould Productions]. I got a photographer/video guy from one of the other girls and was working with other girls I had worked with before. I'd take custom photos for fans, or videos. Fans would script out the holds they wanted to see, the girls they wanted to wrestle each other, and how they wanted the match to end. I'd charge them to make the video, and once they got their copy, I'd sell it on my site to make more money. I bought my house with that money.
HOW AN '80S FEMALE WRESTLING STAR MAKES THOUSANDS IN UNDERGROUND HOTEL FIGHTS
BETWEEN ITS LAUNCH in the mid-'80s and its unceremonious demise in 1990, GLOW – Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling -- captured and confounded the popular imagination. Its wrestlers, in an ungainly hybrid of sexist exploitation and zeitgeist-disrupting feminist statement-making, who acted out funny, risqué, and in some cases profoundly offensive routines, were featured in everything from sketch comedy, to daytime talk shows, to public service announcements about the ravages of weed.
During GLOW, "Hollywood" – real name Jeanne Basone -- was a breakout star. After it, she embarked on a long and lucrative career in the underground market of fetish "session wrestling," involving everything from private ring matches to costumed narratives acted out in the secrecy of hotel rooms across the country.
Now that Netflix has greenlit a period comedy inspired by GLOW, co-created by Orange Is the New Black and Homeland honchos, and starring Alison Brie and Marc Maron, we figured it'd be a good time to catch up with Hollywood -- now 47 and living in Nashville -- to look back at her insane early years and try to get some useful advice, should we ever want to get into the strange-dude-hotel-wrestling business ourselves. Here she is, in her own words.
Step 1. Draw blood by day, spill it by night
In 1985, I was 22 years old and working at a facility called Burbank Medical, drawing people's blood. I get a call from an agency casting for a new "sports show." They asked if I could come down to an audition that night at the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. They didn't tell me what kind of show it was, but I'm thinking, Whatever, I'm athletic. So I head down. It's this huge cattle call. Big girls and little girls; beautiful models to sporty-looking girls. Every race. Just a bunch of colorful, beautiful women.
There were some guys at a table -- who turned out to be GLOW's creator David McLane and his backers and producers and directors. We had to state our names and stats in front of the camera. Height, weight, that kind of thing. Then they revealed it was going to be a wrestling show. I think a quarter of the other girls heard "wrestling" and just got up and walked right out. But it sorta piqued my interest. The next thing you know I'm training Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, every week from 7 to 10 at night. I'm draining blood during the day and moonlighting as a wrestling apprentice. I'd go to work bruised and beat up, but I loved it.
Step 2. Learn the ropes
The early sessions of GLOW were filmed at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. When I walked in the first time as "Hollywood" -- they assigned me the character -- I saw David McLane in the lobby. He pointed to a 350lb woman and said, "You're going to wrestle her." It was Emily Dole, who played Mt. Fiji. My first day of moving to Vegas, now as a professional wrestler, and that's who I was teamed up with. [Editor's Note: Hollywood lost, which was usually her lot as a "bad girl."]
After that, we hit the road. The rules of GLOW were clear: We were always in character, and forbidden to socialize with our enemies on the show. There were even two buses, one for the bad girls and a separate one for the good girls. Our tour bus -- the bad girls -- had previously been Foghat's.
And the girls -- if you look at WWE women these days, they all look mostly the same. But GLOW wasn't like that. We were just a good group of natural-looking, beautiful women. Even if you're 350lbs, you're beautiful. If you're 4'9" and 95lbs, you're gorgeous. It was really empowering for women. There were no other characters in the culture for girls to look up to I think. Besides Wonder Woman.
Step 3. Offend everyone, everywhere, all the time; then repent
In those first seasons, they let us do whatever we wanted. And since nobody ever told us no, we took it to another level. Certain characters like The Heavy Metal Sisters -- Chainsaw and Spike -- really upset people. In a match, they would pull Spike away from the ring and put her in a straitjacket and we'd get letters telling us to tone it down, that we're mocking the mentally ill. Those two couldn't wrestle very well, and once they came out for a match against a black girl, and I'm telling you: They took a watermelon and cut it in half with a chainsaw, and then smashed it over her head.
There was also an Apartheid match, which was pretty bad, considering what was happening in South Africa at the time. It gives me chills just to say it. Incredibly offensive, and no way that would fly now. In a different match, one of the girls set a hula hoop on fire and made Southern Belle bark like a dog and jump through the flames.
We even did Nazi matches (without the swastikas) where villains like me and Matilda the Hun would walk out and sing Nazi march songs for a match against [the wrestler] Americana. America versus Nazis, basically. Our director took us to a prop warehouse in LA to get chains, files, gas masks -- whatever we thought would say "Nazi Germany" to use on our opponents. One time after one of those at the Riviera in Vegas I was walking back to my room and I looked at the the pool's diving board. Someone had painted Nazi symbols and swastikas all over it after the show. The next day it was gone and painted over, but man, the power of entertainment.
By Seasons 3 and 4 we had to tone it down, do those PSA commercials from the '80s -- "Hi, I'm Hollywood, and smoking pot is bad for you" -- to make a more positive presence. But man, the first and second season we got away with a lot.
I remember in 1987, we did a string of TV show spots: Married... with Children, Sally Jessy Raphael. One time on The Phil Donahue Show, some stuffy woman in the audience asked, "How does this promote something positive for kids when you ladies are beating each other up?" This was the dawn of sports entertainment, before it was known the way it is today. I was like, God, she's right; we're tearing each other's hair out!
Step 4. Go into private practice
After the fourth season, in 1990, I got a phone call from somebody in management. GLOW was over. I'd been doing some modeling, including for Playboy, and I continued to do it here and there, but I needed to figure out what was next.
One of girls who came onto GLOW in the later seasons told me she knew a lady who needed wrestlers for some videos being shot in the Valley -- where some of the ladies and other models-slash-wrestlers would perform a GLOW-ish match in a studio. I started getting work with her. Another woman created a company that hosted private "sessions" with customers. Wrestlers would go to her house, which had a professional-style ring in her backyard, and get paid $350 to wrestle fans that had booked an hour session. The fans would get charged an extra hundred to use the ring. I did that too. It was easy, fast money.
But then I started to get smart, in the mid-'90s. I launched my own production company and website -- WebKitten.com [now Hollywould Productions]. I got a photographer/video guy from one of the other girls and was working with other girls I had worked with before. I'd take custom photos for fans, or videos. Fans would script out the holds they wanted to see, the girls they wanted to wrestle each other, and how they wanted the match to end. I'd charge them to make the video, and once they got their copy, I'd sell it on my site to make more money. I bought my house with that money.
Step 4. Go into private practice
After the fourth season, in 1990, I got a phone call from somebody in management. GLOW was over. I'd been doing some modeling, including for Playboy, and I continued to do it here and there, but I needed to figure out what was next.
One of girls who came onto GLOW in the later seasons told me she knew a lady who needed wrestlers for some videos being shot in the Valley -- where some of the ladies and other models-slash-wrestlers would perform a GLOW-ish match in a studio. I started getting work with her. Another woman created a company that hosted private "sessions" with customers. Wrestlers would go to her house, which had a professional-style ring in her backyard, and get paid $350 to wrestle fans that had booked an hour session. The fans would get charged an extra hundred to use the ring. I did that too. It was easy, fast money.
But then I started to get smart, in the mid-'90s. I launched my own production company and website -- WebKitten.com [now Hollywould Productions]. I got a photographer/video guy from one of the other girls and was working with other girls I had worked with before. I'd take custom photos for fans, or videos. Fans would script out the holds they wanted to see, the girls they wanted to wrestle each other, and how they wanted the match to end. I'd charge them to make the video, and once they got their copy, I'd sell it on my site to make more money. I bought my house with that money.