Beautiful Hollywood

This show comes with a trigger warning. We hope it can be something that helps you if you’re in the process of healing. You are never alone. Find support at RAINN.org.

Passion found a purpose for Claire Salvo, as she reached for a pen and began to sketch the face of the man who raped her. Salvo was 17 at the time of her attack. Her parents took her to the local police station immediately, but it would be ten years before she ever saw that face again.

Salvo is a survivor of sexual assault. A former DJ living in New York, the now Venice-based artist, shares the stories of nine survivors of sexual assault in her latest portrait series, ME:WE.

Hear Claire talk about her journey as a survivor and an artist. And, discover how in the end, her attacker landed life in prison.

Take a leap of faith and follow your dream.  Elite athlete and former Team USA figure skater Maddison Bullock proves that risks lead to rewards as she transitions into a career as an actress, producer, and screenwriter.  Her first feature The Ice Movie is available now on Amazon and she is already working on her second through her production company, Maddness Pictures. Find out how Maddison, armed with a simple composition book and a pen, stays accountable with a life-hack anyone can use.

Authenticity is the "Queer Superpower" according to Singer Jaake Castro. Hosts Melanie Camp and Enrique Jesus Hernandez talk to the singer-songwriter and host of the live gAYGUTs show at Boardners, about growing up Christian, signing up for conversion camps, and believing he could "pray the gay away." Thank Goddess that didn't work!  "You don't realize it when you're going through the chaos and pain of everything but, when you come out on the other side, the ability to actually be who you want to be is what I think everyone craves," says Castro. Sharing the stories of Queer artists in Los Angeles. This is Beautiful Hollywood X gAYGUTs.

“Words are how we record our thoughts and put them in other people’s heads,” says Brian Sonia-Wallace aka Rent Poet. Brian uses a typewriter and his poetry to pay the rent. Beautiful Hollywood host Melanie Camp chats with the wordsmith about poetry and getting paid.

Setting intentions to have them manifest is something INA likes to practice. Even as a child, she would tell people something was going to happen as a way of hoping it would happen. This helped her survive a traumatic childhood and go on to live a Beautiful Hollywood dream as lead singer for Los Angeles pop-rock group KINGQUEEN. Listen to her story here.

Quentin Ring is the Executive Director at Beyond Baroque, a literary arts center in Venice, CA. To celebrate National Poetry Month, Beautiful Hollywood host, Melanie Camp, chats with Quentin discovering how poetry can change your life. Plus, find out more about the Wednesday Night Workshop which has run continuously since 1969 and is where the likes of Patti Smith, Tom Waits, and legendary Los Angeles band X have all honed their craft.

gAYGUTs is new series on Beautiful Hollywood that shares the stories of queer artists in Los Angeles. See them live at Boardners. Listen to their stories here.

Domestic violence survivor, musician, and gAYGUTs creator, Enrique Jesus Hernandez makes space for queer artists who have a story to share through art. The gAY GUTs slogan is Unity Through Vulnerability. Hear how music helped Hernandez process surviving domestic abuse and what you can expect from a live gAYGUTs show. 

#YouBelongQueer.

Kelly Donohue is the woman of WearsKelly.com a fashion blog that began in 2013. Initially, Kelly moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA and like so many other, act. Kelly’s dreams were on track, and WearsKelly was merely a hobby, a creative outlet and a way of giving the uncertain life of an actor a bit of structure. That transitioned, and WearsKelly is now the dream Kelly Donohue is doing. Hear her journey; how a hobby became a dream where her blog has over 12,000 followers, and Kelly gets paid to collaborate with brand names and designers.

Elizabeth Taylor once told Venice Art Crawl president and photographer Sunny Bak she was up way past her bedtime, but that is just how it goes when you’re rolling around New York with paparazzi as a teenager. Beautiful Hollywood talks to Bak about how a need to make money to buy theater tickets turned a passion into a lifelong career, hanging with the Beastie Boys, and how the outbreak of AIDs shuttered free love and saw a rise in homophobia in the ’80s. For Bak, life is art.

From celebrity clients to campaigns for PETA and Old Navy, to editorials for People and Nylon magazines, Aaron Barry has 12 years experience in makeup and 15 in hair.

But it wasn’t always red carpets and Hollywood glam.

Aaron grew up in Ireland struggling against gay stereotypes and having no idea what he wanted from his life. Once he found his passion, everything he overcame as a young man with a dream helped shaped hime into a man with a plan.

Find out how Aaron got to Hollywood and how he continues to grow in the competitive world of Hair and Makeup.

As Aaron says, "everyone in this life is entitled to happiness." Sometimes, you've just got to #jumponaplane.