Demi Moore has style and 'The Substance'

Nov. 18, 2024 6 AM PT

I’ve been fighting a losing battle with the flu the past few days, so the only essential walk I’ve taken is from my sofa to the medicine cabinet. But I can dream of better days, fresh air and the opportunity to take a few of these excursions that Times staffer Deborah Netburn put together to best experience L.A.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter ... which, for the next few months, will be having a Monday edition as well. Too much of a good thing? You tell me.

Ghosts, dreams and the tiniest dog you’ve ever met

When a 1½-pound dog hops on your lap, there is only one possible response — joy.

The dog, a micro-Chihuahua named Pilaf, knows this, and Pilaf’s owner, Demi Moore, knows this as well, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t apologize and ask if you’re OK with Pilaf taking liberties. I’ve had leaves fall on me that felt heavier than this dog, I tell her. Besides, who could resist an animal that its owner calls the “bonsai tree of dogs”? It’s been all of two minutes and already there’s a lifetime bond.

We’re sitting on a couch in the pool house of a Mediterranean-style home in the Hollywood Hills that has been owned over the years by Mary Astor, record producer Marshall Chess and Marilyn Manson. Moore just kicked off her boots and, looking down at the transcription app running on my phone, starts telling me how she uses one to record her dreams.

“Sometimes I have a question that needs to be answered and I can ask that in my dreams,” Moore tells me.

“Like lucid dreaming?”

“More like dream incubation,” she answers.

Before I have time to properly follow up on that, and maybe because we’re sitting in a house giving off big ghost energy, we start talking about the dead appearing in our dreams — and our realities.

“My mother was a big smoker, and I have had quite a few experiences, not necessarily in my home but in a hotel room or maybe a boat, and all of a sudden I smell cigarette smoke,” Moore says. “And there’s no logical explanation. And I think, ‘Maybe that’s my mom popping in.’”

Moore just posted a series of behind-the-scenes photos from her new movie, “The Substance,” that may haunt the dreams of anyone following her Instagram account. In Coralie Fargeat’s blood-soaked fable about fear and self-loathing in Hollywood, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a faded star who submits to a back-alley rejuvenation regime to reset her career. Soon Elisabeth has a clone, Sue (Margaret Qualley), young and taut. They have to switch places every seven days in order to make the weird science work.

If you’ve seen the movie — or the old-age prosthetics she sports in those Instagram shots — you know it gets complicated.

Moore, 62, wrote with candor about her own struggles with body image in her 2019 memoir “Inside Out,” detailing the demands she put on herself, though they were often mandated by filmmakers, to project a certain physical ideal. Having read the book, it’s hard to imagine a better fit for the cautionary tale of “The Substance.”

We talked about that — and a lot more — in this interview. It was, as she noted, a day of play.

Conan O’Brien set to host the 2025 Oscars

The 2025 Oscars has a host and, in a surprising development, it’s actually a good choice. Conan O’Brien will be taking the reins of the 97th Academy Awards, replacing Jimmy Kimmel, who tapped out after hosting the past two ceremonies (and twice before that).

O’Brien feels like such an obvious pick that it’s a wonder he hasn’t hosted before or even really had his name bandied about in the past as a potential candidate. He’s a clever, quick-witted pro who has successfully emceed two Emmy ceremonies and, of course, iterations of his own late-night talk show and, currently, the terrific podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.” Equally adept being serious and silly, O’Brien will bring a refreshing, absurdist take to the show.

No word yet if Triumph the Insult Comic Dog will be joining him at the Oscars, but one can hope.