Today we’d like to introduce you to Stacey Powells
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
For VoyageLA
I was born on the Sunset Strip at Kaiser Hospital during the summer of 1959. My mother said I was born three weeks late because I had to finish either writing or reading a book. For the first four years of my life, I lived in an apartment building owned by my Lithuanian grandmother on Blackburn Avenue near the Farmer’s Market (The Grove). I was an “accident” as my dad was still in Pharmacy school at USC. My mother told me that her in-laws were not pleased that she got pregnant with me. Oh well. It takes two, right?
We moved to Reseda, CA in the early 1960s and by 1964 I was in kindergarten at Vanalden Elementary School and my mom stayed at home with my younger siblings.
After the 1971 Sylmar Quake we moved to a home in Encino up in the hills near Mulholland Drive. My dad was THE Beverly Hills Pharmacist, catering to the rich, famous, and not-so-rich and famous. The pharmacy was his other “wife.” It drained him so by the time he got home at night, there was not a lot left for his family. Starting at 10-years-old, I worked in his pharmacy on Saturdays. When I got my driver’s license I got a job at the McDonalds on Ventura Blvd. and Haskel. I lasted two weeks because I couldn’t get the French Fry thing down, or maybe it was because I was caught eating a French Fry while on the clock. I then got a job at the Encino Theater where I stayed until I graduated high school.
I went to Portola Jr. High School in Tarzana then Birmingham High School in Van Nuys and could not wait to get out of Los Angeles in 1977 so I picked the farthest college away from LA but still in CA so I wouldn’t have to pay the out-of-state tuitions: Humboldt State University. I went in as a geology major as I am an Earth Science nerd. However, I could NOT pass chemistry no matter how hard I tried. Maybe it was because I was smoking too much weed or that the part of my brain which needed to put together equations hadn’t matured yet, either way, I switched to Theater Arts and graduated with a B.A. in1982.
After college, my intention was to live with my parents back in LA for a bit to save money so I could go back to Europe to travel. I lasted at my folks house for two weeks and ended up renting a room in a home in Laurel Canyon owned by Roderick Thorp, the author of Nothing Lasts Forever which became the Diehard series starring Bruce Willis. Wild times in Laurel Canyon.
Since I wasn’t living at home, I had to find work immediately. I signed up with an employment agency and after a two-week stint at the Beverly Hills business management firm of Neal Levin and Company, I ended up at Video Music International (VMI) just as music videos were becoming popular. VMI manufactured video jukeboxes. During this entire time, I knew I wanted to be a writer but making money for rent, food, gas and living was priority. I would make notes on stories I would write “one day” but got caught up in the “struggle for the legal tender” as Jackson Browne sang about in his song, “The Pretender.” It was at VMI that I learned how to license music for film and television. The music for the videos had to be cleared for use and my boss told me I was the one to do the job. VMI was raided by the FBI in the early spring of 1984 because it was a front for some sort of money laundering. Also, during this time, I met the person who would be my first husband. He was an actor and I met him at a party because I pretended to be a palm reader (long story).
When VMI was shut down by the government, I sent out my music licensing resume and ultimately got hired at Paramount Pictures in 1984 to work in their music department. I was there for almost 20 years licensing music for Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Entertainment Tonight and the first Arsenio Hall Show. What was also cool about working at Paramount was that my boys were part of the first group of kids enrolled at the first daycare center on a movie lot in Los Angeles (see pic)
Looking back, as writing is my soul fire, I should have tried to get into a writer’s room while I was working on the Paramount lot but so many things happened during that time that it was just a struggle to survive. Four months after I married my first husband he broke his leg. I took him to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in the middle of the night on 9/7/1984 and the cast they put on his leg to hold his leg steady for a week burned the back of his leg. He had third-degree burns from the top of his thigh down to his heel. It was awful. He had to have over a dozen surgeries over several years just to repair the damage. I got pregnant in between surgeries while this was all going on and working full-time. It was a very stressful time in my life. My asthma attacks were coming more frequently and I was hospitalized several times at Cedars Sinai. Living in LA full time, with the air quality being so bad, was wreaking havoc on my lungs.
In the winter of 1992, I asked my boss, Ridge Walker, if I could keep my music licensing job but work remotely from a place that had cleaner air; Mammoth Lakes, a ski town five hours north of Los Angeles and favored by the Los Angelino’s snow crowd. “Go ahead and write a proposal,” he said. “I’ll give it to the “suits” and see what they say.” Two months later the administration at Paramount and Arsenio Hall himself gave me a thumbs-up and I became the first telecommuter at Paramount Pictures Corp. The deal was I’d be on salary and had to come back down one week a month to take care of the music licensing paperwork for “The Arsenio Hall Show.”
I moved my family up to Mammoth Lakes the summer of 1992. At that time my husband’s acting career had taken a hit because of his leg accident so he was looking at other work options. We were also in the middle of an insane lawsuit with the hospital, doctors, nurses, etc… because you don’t go into a hospital with a broken leg and come out with third degree burns.
It was during my first stint living in Mammoth Lakes that I secured a weekly column with the local newspaper calling it, “Exhausted Parent.” I was finally writing! I wrote weekly about the shenanigans with my two boys who I called “The Two-Man Swarm,” and how having-it-all isn’t as easy as it looks. I won’t go into all the details but the first marriage didn’t work out for a plethora of reasons. We separated the winter of 1998 and my husband moved back to Los Angeles the spring of 1998. Since my ex was a stay-at-home dad, I thought it would be best to move closer to LA and out of Mammoth Lakes. My two boys and I moved to Santa Clarita the summer of 1998. I was still able to work from home, licensing music for Paramount. However, that all changed when my boss retired and I had to work under this horrible, misogynistic, foul man who insisted I come into the Paramount Music Clearance office every day from Santa Clarita. (I write about this, and many other incidents in my life, in my book of personal essays, “Empty Cupboards,” available on Amazon)
I ended up having a spectacular nervous breakdown in 2001 as everything in my life was falling apart. The divorce was very acrimonious, my older teen started getting in trouble and my job at Paramount imploded because of that disgusting man. This was also the time that my youngest son came out as gay to me. He wrote a long letter one day and shoved it under my bedroom door. I told him that I knew he was born gay and that it didn’t matter to me who he loves as long has he’s happy. The catalyst for my book, “Empty Cupboards,” was my nervous breakdown because I wasn’t supposed to break down. Us women are supposed to hold up the sky while raising our families and working full-time. How dare we break down!
My older son got into so much trouble in Santa Clarita and I was getting no help from their father who blamed me for every … little … thing. Two days before Christmas in 2003 I had my older son taken out of my home at four in the morning to a lockdown boarding school in Montana, hoping this would turn his life around. My younger son wasn’t faring much better so in the summer of 2004, I packed us up and moved back to Mammoth Lakes. I still had music licensing clients in Los Angeles so I was driving up and down highway 395 all the time.
When I moved back to Mammoth in 2004, I secured a job at the local radio station as a morning show host and the news director. In 2007 I was hired at the local newspaper full-time as a journalist so my writing career was on a roll but not in the way I had planned.
After a string of really stupid decisions surrounding men (also talked about in my book “Empty Cupboards”) I met my second and final husband. I say “final” because we are such a perfect match that if he goes before me, I’m done coupling. We got married on a beach in the mountains, June Lake Beach, September 12, 2010. Not only did I have a new marriage but I also acquired three fabulous stepdaughters. By this time my oldest son was married with a daughter of his own and my youngest son was living in Los Angeles and hustling to become an in-demand makeup artist.
Over the last 10 years I have written several books (some yet to be published), have been published in several magazines, and am working on a getting a television project with my writing partner, Griff Lambert — called Beverly Hills Pharmacist — off the ground. It is based on my experiences as the daughter of THE Beverly Hills Pharmacist as well as the show business life Griff was raised in. I’m also working on a memoir called, “The Inch Between Us,” about being the mother of a felon and the stigma surrounding parents of incarcerated children.
I am also a wedding officiant, something I decided to do because I loved our wedding so much and the fact that I have no problem speaking in front of a crowd.
My younger son, Erik David (IG@IamErikDavid) is a fabulous makeup artist located in Los Angeles and I still drive up and down Highway 395 all the time back and forth to Los Angeles because yes, I’m still working in the music licensing, clearance, and cue sheet business and have clients in The City of Angels. At least until “Beverly Hills Pharmacist” gets picked up by Netflix or HBO or Showtime or Hulu When that happens I will be the one hiring the music supervisor for this show which takes place in the early 1970s, my favorite time period for music!
I’m also an avid storm chaser and have just returned from a month-long chase in the Midwest. Storms and videos/movies about natural disasters are my porn!
Never give up your dreams no matter what! Even at my young age of 64, I’m finally writing full-time, a faculty member at www.storysummit.us, (started by David Kirkpatrick, former studio head at Paramount and Disney) and keeping a hold on my Los Angeles roots.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I don’t know anyone who’s had a smooth road and it’s such a tough time to be on this planet right now. I wrote about many of my struggles in “Empty Cupboards,” but what I do know is that we must be kind to one another. We are all we have.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I still work in the music licensing and cue sheet business but am also writing full time now … finally. I’ve written several books (some not published) and have been published in magazines and poetry anthologies. I write memoir, fiction, poetry, screenplays and am looking to grab that brass ring. Heaven knows I’ve put in the years of experience and paid my dues. It’s my time now. I’m most proud of coming through all the turmoil in my life, especially because I’m a cancer survivor.
I have a TV interview show on lpptv with Jason Brown and have been on several podcasts. Some links below
https://www.islands.com/story/pacific/how-to-experience-a-different-kind-of-fiji/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/style/tiny-modern-love-stories-the-middle-of-a-post-divorce-breakdown.html
https://a.com/d/h7Aa9HF
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My girlfriends have played a huge role in who I am today: Elyse, Betty, Lori, Amy, Bannin, Sandi, Deanna, Randee, Jarrett, Wendi, Patti, Sue, Diane, Catherine, Lina and so many more. They are the wind beneath my wings.
I have several writing mentors now: David Kirkpatrick, former head of production at Paramount and Disney. Jeff Arch, screenwriter for “Sleepless in Seattle.” Margaret South, former producer for Bette Midler’s company All Girl Productions. And Debra Engle who is not only a wonderful author (“The Only Little Prayer Your Need”) but a wonderful spiritual being who ascends. I met all these people through www.storysummit.us.
Ridge Walker was my boss at Paramount Pictures in the Music Department. He challenged me to be the best at what I did and I was devastated when he retired.
And my second and final husband, Dan Lyster, who gives me room to breathe and write. He is my match in every way.
My kids have also been very supportive but I doubt they’ve read anything I’ve written 🙂
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.staceypowells.com
- Instagram: IG@staceypowellslyster
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stacey.powells
- Youtube: Stacey Powells
Image Credits
N/A
