BOOKPLATES is the name given to the exclusive ongoing literary events held at Park La Brea, in the Miracle Mile area of Los Angeles. These are audiences with best selling authors talking about their latest publications. The contemporary theater setting at Park La Brea creates an intimate atmosphere, where attendees get a chance to interact with the host and special guests. The fifth in our Winter/Spring series of BOOKPLATES is with:

CARRIE WHITE  -  UPPER CUT  -  and

STEPHANIE HUBBARD - BLUFF ISLAND RESCUE SERVICE

MARCH 14, 2012

UPPER CUT:

I was living a hairdresser’s dream. I was making my mark in this all-male field. My appointment book was filled with more and more celebrities. And I was becoming competition for my heroes . . .

Behind the scenes of every Hollywood photo shoot, TV appearance, and party in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, there was Carrie White. As the “First Lady of Hairdressing,” Carrie collaborated with Richard Avedon on shoots for Vogue, partied with Jim Morrison, styled Sharon Tate’s hair before her wedding to Roman Polanski, and got high with Jimi Hendrix. She has counted Jennifer Jones, Betsy Bloomingdale, Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, and Camille Cosby among her favorite clients.

But behind the glamorous facade, Carrie’s world was in perpetual disarray and always had been. After her father abandoned the family when she was still a child, she was sexually abused by her domineering stepfather, and her alcoholic mother was unstable and unreliable. Carrie was sipping cocktails before her tenth birthday, and had had five children and three husbands before her twenty-eighth. She fueled the frenetic pace of her professional life with a steady diet of champagne and vodka, diet pills, cocaine, and heroin, until she eventually lost her home, her car, her career—and nearly her children. But she battled her way back, getting sober, rebuilding her relationships and her reputation as a hairdresser, and today, the name Carrie White is once again on the door of one of Beverly Hills’s most respected salons. An unflinching portrayal of addiction and recovery, Upper Cut proves that even in Hollywood, sometimes you have to fight for a happy ending.

BLUFF ISLAND RESCUE SERVICE:

The year before she was born, Stephanie Hubbard’s father - a Madison Avenue magazine writer - bought Bluff Island, an uninhabited forty-acre island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Stephanie grew up on this island, a true believer in her father’s idealized version of splendid isolation. But what began as a family adventure became a daughter’s lifelong struggle to live a life worthy of her father and ultimately to create a life worthy of herself.
With a cinematic eye, Stephanie Hubbard recalls the memorable scenes that make up her life story - from the birth of her younger brother through the birth of her son a few years ago - and the result is something transformative.
STEPHANIE HUBBARD is an award winning documentary film editor based in Los Angeles. Her work has been shown on PBS, History Channel, Discovery Channel and Court TV. She’s had plays produced at Sacred Fools theater and won awards for her poetry and earleir memoirs, one of which, as a short film, won the audience award in its category at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was screened at the Sundance Film Festival.