"Power Trippin' " with Jackie Collins...if You Dare

By Laura Medina

Since Britweek is all about Brits done good in Hollywood, let's focus on the one who really set this town on fire and people are still gobbling up her juicy bits...Jackie Collins.

During Oscar Week in February, Jackie did a literary salon where she invites highly esteemed columnists to debut her latest hot cake of a seller, "Power Trip" and to share her thoughts on the writing process, social media, and women.

A month prior to her literary salon, this scribe was so fortunate in receiving Jackie's latest release, "Power Trip" on a birthday then spent the next twelve hours reading it from front to back.

In describing how she conjure up story ideas, all she suggest is this...people have fun playing the guessing game and inspirations from ripped from today's headlines.

Since Jackie is so well-versed in the idea of the celebrity, she presents what and who are the celebrities of today.

"Power Trip" is a microcosm of different types of celebrities.  The types of celebrities portrayed by the characters represent their countries' idea or ideal of success and desires..;and the yacht is the petri dish while the Baja Sea is the experiment that goes bad until a journalist saves the day.

Aleksandr Kasianenko is the billionaire Russian oligarch who won in the newly-discovered free market in Russia.  He and his girlfriend, a sexy, multi-ethnic American supermodel, Bianca (which he named his yacht after), invited an assortment of international celebrities...and his journalist friend, Flynn, an odd man out.  A maverick journalist with his Asian renegade bisexual female friend, Xuan.

His party guests are: Taye Sherwin, a famous black UK footballer and his interior designer wife, Ashley, a former girl group member.  Luca Perez, a male Latin singing sensation with his older decadent boyfriend, Jeromy, an English interior designer.  Hammond Patterson, an abusive, ruthless American senator, and his lovely, dutiful but unhappily abused wife, Sierra.

By taking her readers into an escapism, when Aleksandr asked his guests to leave their smart phones and computers behind as soon as they board the yacht, they and the readers are soaked in the sun, the sea, the surf, the sarongs, the caviar, the champagne, the entertainment, the music, the beach...and the pirates.  Their isolation from the real world will be their downfall until the most unlikely of people saves the night...but you have to read or listen to the audio book of "Power Trip" to find out what happens at http://jackiecollins.com/book/the-power-trip/.

She called the guests' interaction with the crew an "Upstairs, Downstairs" dynamic.

In making "Power Trip" available to her fans, Jackie said doing an audio book, where she voices one of the characters, is lot like doing a play on tape.  Sidney Poiter's daughter, also named Sidney, does one of the characters.

Regarding social media she loves it.  She loves connecting with her fans and readers.  She met people this way.  This is how she met Ross Matthews; and they have been having dinners and going to parties ever since then.

When she first started this social media thing, she had all of three fans and they were drag queens, "I'm English that way." 

Jackie Collins is constantly churning out ideas and projects.  She has in works: a play, a cookbook, and an autobiography.

While getting her play off the ground is a lot of work, she is having more fun when things are on the fast track.

Her "Lucky Santangelo Cookbook" she plans to have it release on Mother's Day next year.  It's a collection of Italian recipes with the usual fabulous illustrations that are intersperse with Lucky Santangelo's chapters in her life.

What's really juicy is her autobiography she's working on "Reform School Hollywood."

That's what her parent called it when she dropped out of school in London then dumped her school uniform in the Thames River. 

Throwing their hands up in the air, they sped her off to Hollywood to go live with her big sister, Joan Collins, the hot Hollywood starlet working with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Harry Belafonte.

When Joan Collins picked up her baby sister, Jackie, her advice to her baby sister was...

"learn how to drive, here’s my card when you get into trouble. Good-bye'…then she was off making movies on location…and I love it! Because, I was already pretty street-wise fortunately."  

Jackie grew up in Hollywood from there on then.  She based one of her "Hollywood Wives" character, Angel, on one of her next door neighbors in Jackie's "Melrose Place-type" apartment complex where the folks were pumping gas and parking cars for a songs, dreaming to be writers, actors, and directors.

"Reform School Hollywood" is Jackie Collins' coming-of-age story...and what a story. 

After coming of age during the tail end of the Golden Age of Hollywood into the Swinging Hollywood of the Seventies and the Eighties, her advice to women is this...

 "My females (women characters) are strong.  I want my women to be strong, beautiful, sexy, savy, street-smart, vunerable, able to fall in love with the right man, and in control of their lives.  Because, you look around at the kids today, the 18 year-olds are going around in skirts that are just about sea-level and they’re jumping into bed with the first guy they met and they’re waiting to be catch but they wouldn’t be.  Young  women have to be smarter about the way they live their lives…and they have to have a career. Women have to have something for themselves.  Whether it’s making cupcakes, whether it’s sewing, they have to have something.  They can’t depend on a man for the rest of their lives because the right man can come and go."  

As for that submissive "50 Shades of Grey" phenomema...

 

"About “50 Shades of Grey,” I think it’s great she got a lot of people into the bookstore and she sold so many but it’s not a new concept.  Yet, I don’t understand why women are so obsessed with this book.  Maybe, the women who are reading it are repressed because once you are in leather and chains, getting spanked…once you do it, you don’t go back.

If my characters did that, they wouldn’t have this fabulous life. They’ll be asking their servants where’s the mask, the whip,…?!"

 Jackie expanded more on the empowered woman...

 "I felt like I created that character, Alexis Carrington Colby because I wrote this book, “The Stud.”  And I made a movie called “The Stud.” Starring my sister in it to pay her back when she took care of me when I was a kid in Hollywood.  She plays a jet-setting nympho-manic.  Aaron Spelling saw it and said I want that character. He admitted this to me, stole my character then changed her name to Alexis. It became a huge hit and it was fabulous for her.  I was really happy.  I paid her back in a good way."

She knows her fans are yearning to bring one of her books into a miniseries; and she has have meeting with network executives.

Looking at "Revenge" and "Scandal,"  Jackie knows there is a place for one of her strong women protagonists in a tv series but has yet to locate the right place, plot, and slot for her. 

After she is done handing off her handwritten manuscript notes to her assistant, back & forth, at 4pm, she cuddle up in bed in her favorite tracksuit, watches her favorite tv shows on one of her four Tivos, munch on her chocolate bar then gets up and gets ready for dinners with friends then they go to a party or a series of parties.

 "No wonder I don't sleep!" Jackie Collins.