The Tale of a Sometime Hollywood Denizen Who Could Have Been Someone
By MARY FRANCIS DAVIDSON
It’s 2 a.m. in 2014 and the phone in my little place east of LAX is ringing.
In between the roar of airplanes overhead—most of the noise blocked out by double-paned windows provided by Los Angeles County, I decide to answer it. Not surprising, as I am atypical.
Two a.m. is odd for such a business call, but I figured—why not?
It was Rossi.
I had placed an ad on Craigslist to hire recruits for a sales team I was trying to build.
The job offered easy money, no commitment, and twice-per-week pay.
Perfect for a would-be actor holding onto a thing which corrupts many, and which Hollywood never runs short of—The Dream.
The dream of fame and success and everything that comes with it, a life of grace, elegance and ease, all the good stuff, riches and wealth, mass adoration, of course.
Rossi was consumed with these aspects of the Hollywood Dream.
But the nuts and bolts, not so much. The nuts and bolts—not at all.
Definitely, he had no grasp of responsibility, honing skill, creativity and talent, or the ability to show up on time.
We spoke for a bit about my gig. He told me I sounded like a biker, which gave me pause, but not that much.
Next morning, we met at the proposed spot in Torrance along with my several other recruits.
Rossi was late because he was traveling by bus. But I waited. The other job hunters had already taken off by the time Rossi showed up wearing his signature black suit and tie.
He immediately handed me his card, which stated he was the director of, let’s say, “Big City Film Festival.”
Poor guy, I thought.
He missed the memo when it came to discerning reality.
And, over time, he missed the memo when it came to seeing me as I really was—as he was self-obsessed with keeping his new sales gig, with which he associated me, a secret.
He never saw that I was a true Hollywood Drop Out, a former Hollywood Dreamer, now realistic, and plugged in for years at this point.
So I knew his kind—all too well.
Right away, he seemed to me as a foil, a literary device that contrasts a secondary character with another character, usually the main character, to highlight the protagonist’s personality and qualities.
To me, Rossi would always seem a comic foil to reality overall, and we joked and laughed from A to Z.
Again, he defined me by the fact that I had such a scrappy sales gig and that I was okay with it. In other words, he looked down on me.
But I knew it didn’t matter.
Thus was our friendship, a tale of disconnected connection which spanned off and on across eight years, his cast of friends—more denizens of the Hollywood Dream and unattainable desires, and me, who at that point did not want any friends.
And our friendship continued further into his diagnoses of stage-four cancer in 2020 culminating in his sharp decline and death in 2022.
To begin at the beginning, I quickly gave Rossi a nickname, for our job only, the kind a stripper uses to mask her true identity.
He knew his secret was safe with me.
And so it has remained, and so it shall remain in this writing.
For our purpose here is to celebrate Rossi, an actor who deserves to be remembered, even though he may have had some questionable tendencies, and possibly a mildly bad reputation around town.
He did not understand, as so many who suffer from The Dream, don’t, until it’s too late, everyone knows.
We all know.
Your starring role is in your own personal version of The Emperor’s New Clothes.
And as an admitted lost soul myself, as is most of humanity at one time or another, one who has learned to listen to wise people, as an office coworker one admonished me to do, I always remained friendly and business-like towards Rossi.
This eulogy shall be broken into chapters:
One
Places I Went With Rossi
Los Angeles, South Los Angeles, San Pedro, Torrance, Palms, West Los Angeles, Reseda, Malibu, Bel Air, Westwood, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, East Hollywood, East Los Angeles, North East Los Angeles, Highland Park, Pasadena, San Gabriel, Alhambra, Monrovia, Irwindale, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, San Diego, Pacific Beach, University Park, Mission Valley, Apple Valley, San Fernando Valley, San Ysidro, Tijuana and more. Oftentimes, Rossi was tired and experiencing serious fatigue as we made our way. I scoffed, and thought he was lazy.
Two
Restaurants Where I Ate With Rossi
Any Chinese seafood buffet, (where he’d pile his plate high with crab legs, lobster, and the best items they served, while I ate green beans, white rice, cut fruit and the like), Denny’s, his place, other.
Rossi always wanted to eat more than he wanted to work.
From day one, he invited me to come up to his place so he could cook Italian food for us. I always declined. But after three or four years of knowing him, I did go up. And he was a great Italian cook.
Three
Rossi As Therapist
Many appreciative women know that Rossi communicates and goes over issues in depth like a female.
I may have been experiencing a mild nervous breakdown partly brought on by our traveling job and I would often refer to him as my only friend and my quasi-therapist, as I made money and he disappeared into various local restaurants to eat.
Four
My Favorite Rossi Stories
He was big. He was Italian. And he liked to fight.
He would hold up his fist while talking about his father and uncles and say, you should have seen theirs, they were twice the size of mine.
A.
Rossi was taking two classes with his friend Peter, another actor, who was crashing on his couch at the time.
One class in film editing. One class in ballet. Just let that sink in.
The pair, who found themselves in the occasional fist fight with each other, thought they could parasitically gain government financial aid from participating in said courses. (They didn’t, as far as I know.)
Before long as in usual habit and form, the actors, without regard for the film-editing instructor who might have been a viable Hollywood connection for them, found themselves in fisticuffs rolling around on the courtyard outside of class. Soon, Rossi’s pants were down around his calves, he told me, and since it was laundry day, Rossi was without undershorts.
Thank you Rossi, for the years of hilarity this episode has provided.
B.
“I was in the clinker when I called you back for work that second week.”
Rossi had the unfortunate belief that to be near celebrity and success means you’re part of it.
After putting on his tuxedo, Rossi rode his bike up to Sepulveda, caught the bus and made his way to the Shrine Auditorium, where he used a fake id lanyard of some sort to enter the event.
Walking through the crowd, as he was scouting for celebs to approach for an unassuming picture ( later placed on his IMDB page), Rossi crashed into a security guard, who said, “What are you a football player?”
Rossi answered, “No, I’m a baseball player.”
The guard stopped him.
“Who are you?” he asked, checking the lanyard.
This landed Rossi in a nearby police station for trespassing, where he begged the guards to let him answer my call because it was his new job and he did want to fired.
Only another Hollywood denizen with a sick sense of humor would appreciate the hilarity therein.
In a case of contradictions, I implored him, “Just make friends in the business. Work as an actor through the actual channels and get invited to these events. You don’t have to put yourself down this way!”
He said he liked getting free dinners at the events sometimes, to which I face palmed yet again.
But I said, “I know you’re gonna make it big. Bigger than you can imagine. And when you do, you can give me a job.”
He said, “I’ll give you the best job.”
”Thank you. I know you will,” I said, and got off the phone.
Five
Diagnosis
We were driving down to Huntington Beach because Rossi had a small part in a Mafia movie being filmed on location there.
I drove, as always. He needed copies of the script. We stopped at the FedEx near the 405 on-ramp at Jefferson and then got on the road.
He was experiencing fatigue again, which was often in the last few years. For some time, he had been going to the emergency room for what he called blood transfusions. Anemia. I didn’t know the details. I left that up to his girlfriend, Katie. That was her role. I was just the co-worker. But I defined his fatigue wholeheartedly as laziness.
I’ve never had any kids.
I have not been sick myself at all, so I never understood it and did not take it seriously. And I do regret it.
The Huntington Beach film set was in a house. After his short part was finished, we hung around.
Peter showed up later to play his part.
I was labeled a production assistant and acted as such to keep our aforementioned work secret intact.
As the day continued, Rossi was lying on the front lawn from fatigue.
I had seen him lying down many times over that last couple of years, and, again, I just thought he didn’t want to work.
I walked past him directly through the “shot ” of a Cadillac Escalade-type vehicle used for the show. Pete, who was sitting in the SUV as the focus of the shot, admonished me not to walk in front of the camera.
On the way home, Rossi asked, should I go to the hospital? I said he should ask his girlfriend, Katie.
That night he went to Cedars-Sinai rather than Ronald Reagan Hospital at UCLA and was diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer.
Two years later, and many more Hollywood stories later, he passed away. Katie invited me to come into his hospice room to say goodbye. I did. She stayed with him until the end, August 6, 2022.
During the interim, from the date of his diagnosis until the date of his passing he chased The Dream harder than before, it seemed.
He he wrote (part of) a screenplay called Italian Cowboy, and started filming it.
He started referring to himself as a film producer, which got him a lot more accolades from other unknowing Hollywood Dreamers.
He quickly wrote a book called, I Could Have Been Someone.
Hopefully, Richard Sciabbarrasi, 65, found his Dream in another world.
MARY FRANCES DAVIDSON is a writer-at-large for LAMonthly.org. She attended the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. She can be reached at davidson.mary@myyaho.com
