We’re a long way from Hollywood here, but author Jim Newport, who these days spends much of his time in his home in Kamala, has chosen Hung Fat’s restaurant in Kalim for the launch of his fifth book, Tinsel Town, based loosely on his long experience of Hollywood.
Jim is one of those enviable people who’s had several lives, all of them immensely enjoyable. In his youth he was a rock photographer, hanging out in Swinging Sixties London with the likes of Eric Burdon of The Animals, and then later living in Laurel Canyon, California, alongside legends such as John Mayall and Canned Heat’s Bob “The Bear” Hite.
He moved from photography into movies, becoming a highly successful production designer. He’s been nominated for Emmy awards twice and has been responsible for the “look” of TV series such as Lost and movies such as Bangkok Dangerous, in which he got to design and build a starkly but gorgeously minimalist house and then later on blow it up as part of the movie’s plot. Bangkok Dangerous star Nicholas Cage was impressed enough with the house to ask him for the plans.
In his Jimmy Fame persona, Jim Newport sings Hendrix at this year's Phuket Blues-Rock Festival.
And then there’s his rock star persona, Jimmy Fame, singing blues, especially songs by Jimi Hendrix. “Eric Burdon once told me that being in a rock band had to be the best job in the world. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘how many jobs are there where you go to work and afterwards everyone stands up and applauds?’”
Singing the blues gives him his “instant karma”, while movies are a different kind of satisfaction, rather more long term, but still part of a team effort.
And then there’s the writing, which gives him yet another kind of satisfaction, this time solitary. So far, he’s had four books published – the Vampire of Siam trilogy, and a work of “faction”, Chasing Jimi, involving real characters from the Swinging London days in a semi-fictional plot.
The new book.
And now there’s his fifth book, Tinsel Town (subtitled Another Rotten Day in Paradise), about Hollywood around the time when he was making his mark there, a time he describes as “the wild and woolly Easy Rider days of independent filmmaking. A non-stop party.”
The first part, he admits, is generally autobiographical, but then the plot takes off at stranger, more fictional angles. It “doesn’t gloss over the cracks in the scenery, the grit, the stench, the plain old-fashioned blood and sweat that making movies is really about,” Jim says. “It gives the reader a glimpse into what it was like to enter this privileged arena.”
Despite the triple life and the weirdness and the famous people he has rubbed up against, Jim’s still one of the nicest people you could meet, so if you’re a reader who enjoys a rollicking good tale, make a note to meet him and buy a copy of the new book at his next book signing.
