We had pulled up to a parking spot in front of the Starbucks that used to be Burger that Ate the World (or whatever it was) and Woodruff approached me and asked if he could have our parking spot when we left. Sure, I said. But we were going to be gone at least an hour and a half.
Bummed, he turned back to his coffee, and we to our window-shopping. First impression - rugged, tallish, internally very busy.
I vaguely registered the archetypal Dennis Woodruff art car parked nearby - all glued-on action figures, acrylic-tornado paint scheme and "BUY MY MOVIE" slogans, but I didn't connect the guy with the van. Yet ...
My son and I zipped across the street to Golden Apple to ogle the monsters and robots (Bought the first volume of the Mac Raboy Flash Gordon collection and a missing issue of The Incal). We generally agreed that the big blue Macross robot with the shoulder-mounted cannon was the coolest one in the store (at 4, he is completely obsessed with robots), but decided not to buy any toys today. We hurried back to hook up with the rest of our party.
The Woodruff van beckoned, a garish blob of automotive eye candy amid all the "champagne-colored" econoboxes. I pulled out my camera to snap a couple of shots to add more local color to the rotating photo banners I've started putting at the top of LAvoice.. (NOTE TO USERS - SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS, and I'll pick a few to put into the rotation).
As I knelt to focus on the silver-painted skulls hanging from the trailer ball, Woodruff ambled up. with an armload of books: "Do you support local artists?" he said.
"Well, I am a local artist, I said.
"This car is featured in this book, it's a terrific book, a lot of the artists who do cars like this are represented here," he said, flipping through the pages - at my son's eye level, of course. "This would be a great book for the whole family."
I spotted the credit next to the Woodruff van photo - "So you're Harrod Blank?" I asked, then the tumblers clicked. "Oh, you're Woodruff."
"Harrod designed this one for me," he said, then kept on pitching me to buy the book. We chatted a bit more about Blank's work, I said I'd seen a few of the cars at the show last year at the Petersen, but I had to let him down gently - I thanked him (and it *is* a book I'd like to own at some point) but said I had just spent our last cash and couldn't buy it today.
Like someone who had been rejected ten thousand times before, he spun on his heel and trudged back to his coffee and his stack of books at the sidewalk tables, and we went on our way.
Second impression: Dogged, dogged, dogged. Though he's clearly past the years of romantic leading-man roles, Woodruff has a relentless taste for the ugliest of an actor's side jobs - looking for work.
It's something Angelyne never seems to have bothered with. I've probably seen her a dozen times floating around town Pepto-Bismol-pink 'Vette. But you just don't have the impression she does much all day to earn her Woodruff-like "famous-just-for-being-famous" status. The billboards have stopped coming. The film cameos are few and far between and she always seemed to be completely bankrolled and bored.
(Brain fart - Have Woodruff and Angelyne ever met? What if they married? What would their kids look like? Would they drive some twisted Brundle-fly of a minivan? Would they get work? Maybe their fame would compound like Brad and Jen's. Maybe they would simply wink out of existence.)
Does Woodruff have any talent? If his casting record is any judge - IMDB lists just one role - probably not. His cars seem to have appeared in more films.
But it's almost beside the point now for someone whose one huge, career-making starring role has been a life spent chasing a starring role. He's achieved more real fame than at least a couple of working, and certifiably talented actors and screenwriters I know.
As one veteran writer I know is fond of saying, "It's not what you're doing. It's what you look like you're doing that counts."
Woodruff can't stop the show.
And for what it's worth, he was nowhere in sight when we came back, though the van was still crammed into a stall at Starbucks. The more prominent on-street parking spot went to somebody else.
Posted by: mack_reed on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 11:59 PM
