The author of the brand-new memoir THE ROYAL NONESUCH talks with the LA Times’ Scott Timberg about his voyage to Hollywood a decade ago and finding himself brushing up against almost every pop trend of the last decade or so, including “alternative hip hop,” the mainstreaming of porn, the Internet boom and sub-Sundance indie film festivals. The book, Timberg writes, could serve as a sort of literary Rorschach test: if you are an angry heartland dweller looking for confirmation that Hollywood is a den of indulgence and sin, this is the book for you. For anyone who’s crossed paths with Hollywood youth culture in the post-Beck, post-“Pulp Fiction” age, you may see yourself or your friends in here. “I probably had slightly weirder adventures than most people I know,” said Glasgow Phillips. “But not really markedly weirder.”
In the midst of tales of internet boom and bust, tv shows that never quite took off and schemes that never quite fired, Phillips’s likability comes to the forefront. But don’t expect any moral. “I’ll be really grateful,” he said, “if somebody comes up with it and lets me know what it is.”