Wave Staff Report
NEW YORK — In “How the Ferris Wheel Was Broken: A Love Letter to Los Angeles,” author Sebastian Tillinger writes an honest, stream-of-consciousness memoir that details his struggles to find work as an actor, audition after demoralizing audition, with 57 characters crammed in his head, while walking the tightrope between art and making money, celebrity parents, and his own insecurities.
Along with his search for work, purpose, and meaning, Tillinger writes about love in all its messiness. Years after they first met in acting class, he reconnects with Sarah, a “petite stunner” with black hair who grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and was a drummer in an all-girl punk band in the 1980s when it mattered. Six years his senior, she is the first woman he had sex with whom he truly loved.
He asked Sarah to marry him, mostly to prove he’s a man. (“I don’t believe in marriage,” he muses. “I don’t really know what I’m getting into.”) And he nearly screws up that chance when he gets high in the courthouse while they’re waiting to get their marriage license.
Deeply introspective and wildly entertaining, “How the Ferris Wheel Was Broken” captures a year of uncertainty, reinvention, and hard-earned self-discovery on the eve of a new millennium.
Sebastian Tillinger is an artist, writer, actor, musician, and painter. Born in Connecticut in 1974, he grew up in the bowels of the New York drama scene around hundreds of actors, writers, set designers, producers, and directors, including his father, Broadway theater director John Tillinger, and his mother, actress, director, and writer Dorothy Lyman.
He spent 20 years living and working in Los Angeles, landing roles in a few major movies — notably, “Hart’s War” (2002), “Eagle Eye” (2008), “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013), and “Café Society” (2016) — and numerous commercials. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, makeup artist and beauty specialist Pilar DeMann, and their daughter.
“How the Ferris Wheel Was Broken” is his first book.
“How the Ferris Wheel Was Broken” will be released by Regalo Press, an imprint of Post Hill Press July 28. It will be available at amazon.com and other book retailers.
