Toilet Paper at the Chateau

Another reminder that I have an obsession with the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood occurred when I saw an ad on Instagram and INSTANTLY recognized the bathroom as being the one in room 32. Stephen Dorff is the celebrity hawking healthy toilet paper. Please read that again.



The same guy who encouraged everyone to vape is now worrying about UTIs, hemorrhoids, and cancer of the a** because of toilet paper. He calls your “normal” roll of toilet paper “a nightmare for your body.”

Dorff became associated with the Chateau Marmont as a result of the 2010 Sofia Coppola film, “Somewhere.” For the film, Dorff’s character was filmed staying in room 59.



The color of the vintage bathroom tile is the same in both 59 and 32, but the layout of 32’s bathroom is slightly different. Below is a shot I took recently when I stayed in 32. A perfect match!



The bathroom from 59; not a perfect match:



There is already buzz out on the net about Dorff’s ad. This article popped up and is fairly hilarious:

I still remember where I was, kinda sorta, the day I saw Stephen Dorff shilling for Blu e-cigs. Certainly he was paid to do the ad, but something about his leathery skin, cement-truck voice, and popped suit collar just screamed “I have indeed sampled many electronic cigarettes.” He sold the hell out of that thing. To the point that I think I immediately texted my father, who is still a smoker despite being nearly 80, to ask if he’d ever tried an e-cig. “Vaping” wasn’t a word yet and what little I knew about it made it seem like it might be a slightly healthier alternative to cigarettes (probably still is, but we don’t need to get into a whole thing about it). My father never brought himself to switch to vaping, but I don’t blame that on Stephen Dorff. In fact I’m still grateful to the Blade star for giving me the idea. Why was I inspired to share with you such a memory? Well, because today I discovered (aka my old editor Brett sent to me) this new Instagram ad starring Stephen Dorff, in an arguably even better pitch than Blu e-cigs. These days, he’s hawking “100% toxin free” toilet paper. “I know a thing or two about assholes,” rasps a bathrobe-clad Dorff, sitting in a tiled, baby blue bathroom. “They're more sensitive than you may think. And your normal roll of toilet paper is contributing to your risk of cancer.” So you’re saying that it’s toilet paper… and it doesn’t have… poison? You have my attention. The ad goes on to claim that the bleach and formaldehyde used to process your toilet paper are “forever chemicals,” linked to a whole slew of maladies, from “inflammation,” to UTIs, to hemorrhoids. The causal link smells a little vague to me, and calling bleach a “forever chemical” seems like some kind of nominative overreach, but I do wipe my butt and also sometimes experience medical issues, so who am I to say? Being a human in the modern world means nothing if not cautiously believing in magic whenever convenient. Is that why I’m tired in the afternoon and I can’t drink the way I used to? Is it the toxins? All I know is that when you give Stephen Dorff a product to pitch, that man sells the shit out of it. I haven’t seen a commercial performance this committed since Michael Imperioli told me my tequila was gay (or possibly not gay enough?). He finishes things off telling us that his new poison-free toilet paper will cost only $15 more dollars per year. “That’s two damn moccachinos,” Dorff says, in the no nonsense tone of a cowboy who has just sidled up to you in a saloon and correctly surmised that you enjoy moccachinos. Can you not spare a couple moccachinos, pardner? Think of your asshole! In conclusion, God bless Stephen Dorff for bringing his A-game no matter the product, and also I would love to interview Stephen Dorff’s agent some time to see what gigs he has turned down. I also wouldn’t be surprised if eight out of ten of Stephen Dorff’s friends were electronic cigarette and poison-free toilet paper entrepreneurs.

Alicia Silverstone, of “Clueless” fame, is also promoting the same product. Unlike Dorff though, she doesn’t rate a Chateau Marmont restroom. Instead, she gets a regular bathroom stall and also has the added bonus of talking about “vulvoginitis.”



You’ll be happy to know that this product is approved by Dorff’s a**.



If you haven’t seen the ad yet, here it is:



See more pop culture photos at my main website.

Clueless in ’21

For 2021, there is one word that sums up the politicians, the media, and the medical profession: clueless. The world has suffered another year of ever-shifting policies, advice, and mandates. There is only one kind of “Clueless” that I can endure, and that’s the timeless 1995 comedy starring Alicia Silverstone.



Perfectly cast, Silverstone plays Cher, the ever-cheerful Beverly Hills High School student who loves to make people’s lives better through makeovers and matchmaking.



Director/writer Amy Heckerling (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) loosely based her story on the 1815 Jane Austen novel “Emma.” As Heckerling recalled, the studio execs couldn’t understand a teen movie that wasn’t “one of those slob comedies, and so what’s the point of a high school comedy that’s not like a raunchy high school comedy? So nobody wanted it, which was really depressing, and so they put the movie in turnaround.… People like happy movies and I certainly don’t feel like I was treating that age group with disrespect; it was like a fun version of a classy kind of world for teenagers. It was not like, ‘Oh my God, look at what kids are doing now!’ It was like here, this is what’s going on, kind of, not really, but not really, but fun…happy.” Originally written as a TV show, the script landed in the hands of  producer Scott Rudin, who “got it” and saw the potential of elevating it to a movie. A bidding war between the studios resulted in Paramount being the winner.

Bill Pope, Director of Photography: “It revolutionized teen movies by raising the bar. Teen movies were just sort of tossed off; they didn’t realize the teens were the smart ones, that you could actually make a movie with something in it.” Wallace Shawn (Mr. Hall): “It’s a smart movie. It doesn’t assume that the audience is stupid; it doesn’t assume that the audience is nasty. It assumes the audience is smart, intelligent, and clever.”



The casting was truly perfection; the three female leads are Silverstone, Brittany Murphy (in her first movie), and Stacey Dash.





The film had an impact on teen fashion and a long-lasting effect on the country’s vernacular. 



As if…whatever…totally bugging…I’m Audi…all still being used today.



Earlier this year, Silverstone reenacted a few scenes from the movie with her eleven-year old son. She has aged very little and still has all the charm of the character that she made famous.



See more Classic Movie photos at my main website.