Kids, I just played the prestigious ACME Theatre Company and guest-starred in an improv show called “Hollywood Dream Role” with the most insanely talented group of people – here’s the vid lv j xx
March-May 2010 sexyliciousblogalicious xxx
Kids, seriously,
I had such lovely intentions to write to you more when I got to the USA… but it has been such a mind-blowing experience that there has simply not been time.
March kicked off with me sitting for my Californian Driver’s license test. I had no idea that Californian law states that the driver must know how to apply lip gloss while reverse parking. It was all in the handbook, which included a superb pic and letter of encouragement from the Governator (“You can do it!”).
Locking down the license, I then became victim of a stabbing. Yes, Sophie my 1yr old, stabbed me in the eye with a rather gnarly looking, post-chewed finger nail, which was so effective in its precision that said nail managed to gauge out a scoop of cornea, narrowly missing my pupil. Nice.
It was all better when I hit the NBC chat show “The Bonnie Hunt Show”. She was just the most delicious and generous host and we had quite a giggle. (You can not believe how hot I thought I looked that day in the studio and then, when I saw it on the television, I looked like I might need to be moved in and out of my house by a crane).
Yay April… well, I turned 42 kids… yes… in this lighting it is hard to believe but it is true. My buddies found me a cake that was both shaped and coloured like a burger. It was so wrong and yet it tasted so wrong.
I also started my little appearances on Aussie brekky show Sunrise from LA. The 7 Network ‘bureau’ is next to the huge Westfield shopping centre in Century City so I just whipped myself upstairs, gave it a bit of showbiz, then it was back to the shops.
In April I got to have dinner with one of my all time idols, Phyllis Diller. An Aussie friend of mine knows her very well so he took me to see her. She is 92 not out and one of the greatest comedians ever. Phyllis was a pioneer for women in stand-up and I had the wonderful chance to let her know what an inspiration she continues to be. A true legend.
May has just departed already and I know each year we keep saying “where has that time gone” but in the words of young people… WTF?
LA is basically a big industry town and it is quite cyclical. January through till late March is ‘pilot season’… when comedy and drama pilots get made. April and May is decision time when the pilots get picked up to go to series or dumped.
I used this time to take a “Comedy Intensive” acting class with world renowned guru Lesly Kahn. It was 3 weeks of solid rehearsal based around sitcom and American joke rhythms and it really was one of the most exciting things I have ever done.
By the time the course was over, I found myself in late May, which is when the big guns from TV networks all over the world descend on LA to decide which shows they want to buy.
So as we enter June, we kick off the (in my opinion) best season of all…. the TV development season.
This is the time when little old comics (like me), come together with writers and producers and build a show. Kind of like build a bear… actually very like it. You just have to be braced for the stuffing part of the process. The shows that are picked up in Development season, go on to be the pilots for next pilot season… so each day really feels like we are on the road to something big… but who can tell?
Loads of love jmo x
p.s. are you impressed how much I have been on Facebook and Twitter? Seriously, it’s killing me.
Best friends with Bonnie, May 2010
Hi kids – here I am chatting to the delicious Bonnie Hunt lv Jxx (you might have to sit through an ad first though cos it’s embedded from a TV network site xx)
My first USA network TV stand up appearance
…On NBC’s The Bonnie Hunt Show, May 2010 lv j xx
Driving Miss J-Mo
Driving in LA can be a little tricky. Here are some no fail tips to drive like a local. It’s HollyVlog number 2!
Love J xx
HollyVlog! (March 2010)
Hey kids – it’s my very first video blog! Or is that Vlog? No wait, it’s a HollyVlog! Love J xxx
Hooray For Hollywood!
My Dear Friends,
I know it will come as a shock to you when I say One has been missing from One’s desk over the past few months, but here we are again six months after One’s last blog.
The Royal J-Mo caravan has been trixied up and put back on the road, this time for a few months in Hollywood. The sitcom pilot season is in full swing and it seemed silly to have another season go by without a little slice of the Mo.
The trip from Sydney to LAX was gruelling to say the least; the entire family were accidentally upgraded to business class thanks to some hurtfully handsome cabin crew on V Australia. Forcing myself to stay horizontal for 14 hours while sucking champagne through a glitter-pink- crazy straw certainly took me back to my halcyon days in the late 80’s, most of the 90’s and let’s face it, nearly every day ‘til about an hour ago.
Of course the theory of being upgraded meant we were in store for maximum relaxation and the holy grail of travel… sleep. The irony of being upgraded was that we were all so excited we couldn’t sleep… just drink and eat. There is nothing more attractive than parents of toddlers cruising through customs with booze rising like a spirit level in their eyes. Mummy needs a water.
My husband Dan and I have taken a delicious home in the Hollywood Hills up behind the Kodak Theatre and, in the style of the locals, are trying to take ourselves quite seriously. Never more seriously that when I am at the gym. Everyone seems to have their eyes on ‘The Burn’, while I am just trying to look busy until the hour is up. It can be very draining.
The change rooms are actually more stressful than the workout. May I ask you a personal question? Do you get uneasy when presented with a line up of multinational beaver? Not just furry patches, we’re talking full bear with a pink backpack. No judgement, I’m just saying that as I make my way back to my locker mummified from earlobes to ankles in my 8ft bath sheet I would prefer not to have an involuntary extrusion of my stomach contents, that’s all.
In order to be considered for lots of roles and not just those rare Australian ones (that’s not a knife), I have been working on my American accent. It’s been loads of fun as I drive through the LA streets. The local advice is just say out loud what you see… so a typical practice session would be seeing McDonalds, Carls Jnr, In & Out Burger, Burger King, Vons and … thank god I brought my All Bran over with me.
Dan and I renewed our vows at a drive-through wedding chapel in Vegas a couple of weeks ago. In our usual style with anything romantic like that, it was very deep. Our original wedding in Vegas was 4 years ago so we thought we needed a little top up. The little women were with us and they made it really special by eating chips throughout the ceremony. It certainly made it that much more emotional for us all when a crinkle cut caught at the back of the baby’s throat right before the “I do’s”. Nothing says “I Love You” like your baby hoiking in the background.
Had the best time a few weeks ago in the audience of Ellen (Yes some of you did spot me, well done!) and OH MY GOD she is gorgeous. She seriously looks about 20 in the flesh and I did lean forward to lick her on the face during the dancing opener but was stopped by security in the nick of time.
Last week I had superb fun auditioning for the team at Jay Leno. The gig was down at Hermosa Beach (about 45 mins from the private home) and at a club called “Comedy and Magic”. Well, the crowd were both. The gig was way too much fun and I was much less nervous to be in the green room with a big group of really established comedians who were also poo-ing their pants about going on stage. I have not felt real nerves since the late 70’s so it was a refreshing change.
The show went well so now we just wait for the next step. In the meantime I’m just heading to auditions, melting like ice creams in acting classes and generally having sensational LA times… today I even passed on having butter. I’ve really changed.
Hope you are way too well and I can’t wait to hear your news.
Love J-Mo x
February 2010
March – August 09 Mega Blog!
Hey Funsters,
Well it must be that time of year again when I make myself available to the world wide interweb by putting finger to keyboard and whip out a bit of blog action directly from what is left of my grey matter. Now as some of you will be aware of by now… I am not the most efficient blogger. Where does all this typing time come from? I have had some good lessons from Wil Anderson on how to tweet so hang in there… I am may even out-groove myself and get on twitter… 160 characters twice a year shouldn’t be too taxing. So… Aside from the nappies (the baby’s, not mine) the inevitable bouts of various delightful childhood diseases and spending more time in parks and various playcentres than on any sort of red carpet!
It has been quite a busy couple of months touring this wide brown land (Australia) and even heading further afield to the United States of the Americas and Canada. It was great to see some of you in April for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We had a terrific week staying in St Kilda and had a very different festival than in years gone by with so many comics forgoing the massive nights out, to all meet up in parks with our kids… I am telling you we were all dancing on tables in Ibiza a moment ago and now we spend our time picking up snotty tissues and mashing up banana. – Don’t you just love the celebrity lifestyle? It is exactly the same as everyone else except we wear more gowns.
Sydney is always ready and waiting for the Cracker Festival in April. This year I got to host the Gala at the Enmore which was a great honour. The show was going so smoothly and I even had USA management in to watch me with the hopes of looking after me for American work. I have to admit that I did have one of those back patting moments where you put some time aside to just love yourself. I may have a few too many of those – but I digress:
Well… I had one more act to introduce and then my official duties were over. He was one of the bigger acts of the festival and is a huge star in the States but to be honest I had not heard of him – but do bear in mind that in no way am I groovy or with any sort of finger on the pulse. (Mind you I can tell you any intricate detail of useless celebrity gossip or what new style of shoe Christian Louboutin is about to release – but when it comes to popular US comics I have no idea.) So I gave him a big intro and welcomed Pablo Rodriguez to the stage. I was relaxing off to the side when all of a sudden I saw 6 people running up the side of stage stairs and I thought “what the hell is wrong with these freaks?”. It was then that my stomach sank and I realised that I had used the wrong name for the top ‘name’ on the bill. The comedian, fabulous USA impressionist Pablo Francisco, had now had his name changed by me and all hell had broken loose… whoopsie. In my defence, new baby Sophie was only a few months old and poor old mumma’s nappy brain was in full of poo poo… so Pablo, beg pardon. The word of my outrageous faux pas spread far and wide and even earned me a Time Out award, aptly named “The Pablo Rodriguez award for excellence in MCing”.
David and Lisa Cambell’s artistic direction of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in June was a truimph. Everyone seemed to be very impressed at the star power they had gathered but the truth is they had just searched their global address book and invited a few old buddies, including the legendary Bernadette Peters (who I managed to introduce using the correct name…yessss). I arrived on stage to host the opening night Gala flying in on a wire – my life is so not normal some days. It was such a treat to see Jimmy Barnes singing with David and his sister Mahalia at a late night ‘Soul Mates’ gig that literally ripped the roof clean off the Adelaide Festival Centre. Having been such a massive Barking Spiders fan since I was a young woman… it was almost like a visitation.
The Brisbane “In Stitches” festival in June was loads of fun with two glorious nights at the sensational QPAC. Even Aussie film maker Brodie Lane made it up from Sydney to see the show. So just a quiet time as usual! Early July I managed to perform, for the first time in my 75 years in the business, at Sydney’s prestigious Opera House. The show was called Spontaneous Broadway and the cast were so insanely talented that it hurt my feelings. The magnificent Julia Zamiro, the delicious Genevieve Morris, the very sexy Geoff Payne, the hilarious Ross Daniels, fabulous Russell Fletcher and the musical wizard John Thorn. Both shows were way too much fun… there are not too many times in one’s career that we get to sing about two greyhounds named Paris and Nicole, who were fighting while running in the 5th race in Dapto. Enough said.
The good news from the past few months is that I have finally ‘let go’ of my obsession with people parking in the pram spaces at our local shopping centre in Bondi. It was getting to a stage where I was staking out the car park ready to pounce on the gym junkies who wanted to park near the door to go inside and run for 10kms. I was using some of my own private time to plan their deaths… and let’s face it, that’s really not that healthy, so I had to let it go. (I still twitch when I see one of them park but I just plan their deaths under my breath and drive on).
Then in mid July I packed a bag full of brand new Charlie Brown gowns and made my way to the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival (via a quick shopping trip in LA). The festival was wall to wall comedy stars and the gigs were all over town. There is something really fantastic about crossing the planet and going to a place were you have a ready made group of old mates and collegues… it’s like a fun school trip but with no curfew and a few dry white wiiiiines.
Most of the gigs went until midnight so by the time everyone made their way back to the Hyatt Montreal bar, there was little chance anyone was making it to bed before 3am. It was loads of laughs to clock who had written themselves off the night before and spent most of the next day apologising… I kept thinking ‘oh I have so been there’ but not this festival. I was on my best behaviour and did some really great business… where is old party jmo doing nude headstands in the corner? I do miss her. This time I was all business handing out my book to US TV execs and trying to direct everyone to my new website… The crew from Good News Week were there filming the big Galas and interviewing comedians from all over the world. Paul McDermott was in vintage form and really is a gentleman and a scholar. Wil Anderson was being heavenly and very funny, as was honorary Aussie Ross Noble and my dear old friend Hillsy (Adam) was in sparkling form, hosting every big gig in town. Jimeoin was still the funniest man on any bill and Akmal was ripping his gigs apart. Relative newcomer, Tom Ballard was not only charming and delightful but easily held his own with some of the best comics on the planet. It has to be said the Aussies really shone. My personal festival highlight was being chosen to be on Whoopi Goldberg’s All Star Gala. Whoopi was such a very generous host and really showed us how it’s done. She is relaxed while at the same time razor sharp. As Wil Anderson said “it was like watching a comedy masterclass” Whoopi is a true superstar.
So I am back in Sydney for the time being, getting lots of snuggles from my girls Ruby and Sophie… we still think Sophie is going to be a teen model, as she spends most of her 8 month old days smiling and chucking. Ruby is chatting very well for 2 and a half and is happy that winter is coming to an end. (The winter in Sydney can be so grueling and gets down to nearly 18 degrees some days so a cardi can be required). Both babies seemed to have curbed their swearing lately which is great but one of them has started to say “kiss my bum Mummy” and all I can think of when she asks that is that it feels like I am back working for the big networks. Oh well.
Keep an eye out for me over the next few months as I hit the road again… Looking forward to coming to Darwin and the Hunter in mid August, getting jiggy with my Fernwood homies in Canberra in early September, Brisbane Writers Festival the weekend of the 12th, and there are whispers of LA maybe in early October, soon followed by a long-overdue trip to Perth.
PHEW -THAT WAS HUGE! I am sure there is loads more news that I have forgotten but you know that my brain is not that big and I lose lots of stuff. Lots of love until I see you and hope that you and yours are way too well.
jmo x
Dear Friends
Hope you are way too well… I am relaxing in the private home of some close friends in Bel Air, just a little sun kissed from the convertible drive down to Malibu yesterday… sometimes showbiz can be a gruelling struggle.
Crossing my fingers I will see some of you in Montreal, as I take the royal JMo tour to Canada. The infamous ‘invitation meet’ Just For Laughs comedy festival should be a blast and I have to say I am looking forward to making myself available to one or two good times.
When I arrive back in Sydney I will be popping up on Good News Week and stoking the substantial number of irons that I have in so many of life’s fires.
Love you madly
JMo x