Princess of Hollywood Pleasant Gehman

Filmmaking Confidential

Her Royal Highness the Princess of Hollywood Pleasant Gehman is a true renaissance woman: best-selling author and journalist, international dance performer and instructor, punk rock historian, blogger, Tarot card reader, and a critically acclaimed actor, musician and painter. A Hollywood icon, her multi-disciplinary creative output is nothing short of staggering.
During the 1970's, she was one of the first punks in Los Angeles, documenting the music scene she helped create in her fanzine Lobotomy, which lead to her writing for mainstream music and entertainment publications. From the age of 16 onwards, Pleasant worked as a journalist and cultural commentator with literally thousands of articles published nationally and internationally on everything from the arts and entertainment to Hollywood stuntwomen, sex workers and homeless teenage runaways. She has worked as a staff writer for LA Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, Variety, And The Hollywood Reporter and often free-lanced for Billboard, Spin and Rolling Stone. Her alternative city guide book The Underground Guide To Los Angeles spent nine weeks on The LA Times Best Sellers List.
In the early 1980's, Pleasant collaborated with producer/director Max Tash on a script based on her all-girl band The Screaming Sirens, called The Runnin' Kind (which she also starred in) released theatrically by MGM in 1989. The Screaming Sirens toured extensively throughout North America and released two albums on Enigma Records, Fiesta and Voodoo, as well as many singles. Concurrent with The Screaming Sirens, Pleasant and life-long friend Iris Berry founded The Ringling Sisters, a writing and spoken word group made up of female lead singers from popular LA bands. The Ringling Sisters soon morphed into a band, and were signed by Ode/ A&M Records, releasing the spoken word and music LP Sixty Watt Reality, produced by Lou Adler.
Under the stage name Princess Farhana; Pleasant has been an icon in the fields of belly dance and burlesque since the early 1990's. She is the author of The Belly Dance Handbook, considered by many to be the definitive resource. She has headlined both belly dance and burlesque festivals all over the world, appearing to perform and teach in Egypt, Turkey, Australia and China, toured many times across Europe and The UK, Mexico and Canada as well as throughout the USA. As a belly dancer, she has judged numerous competitions, and appeared on the covers of every belly dance trade publication. As a burlesque artist, she has been featured on the covers of numerous mainstream publications and on the cover of the London, UK Sunday Review's feature on American Burlesque.
Under the names Pleasant Gehman and Princess Farhana, she has acted and danced in music videos-for Madonna, Ricky Martin, Margaret Cho, and many others- and network television shows, including The Nanny. She was the principle dancer in comedian Margaret Cho's touring burlesque show, The Sensuous Woman and also appeared dancing and being interviewed in segments in Margaret Cho's DVD Assassin and her television series The Cho Show.
Pleasant's memoirs, short stories and poetry have been widely anthologized and many works were recorded on her spoken word CD Ruined. Additionally, she has written and recorded many music CDs and spoken word tracks, including Blacklite Sleaze, a collaboration with noted house music producers Peace Division, which became a hit in Europe and The UK, entering the British Charts above Madonna. She is one of the many authors featured in Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History Of LA Punk, compiled by curators John Doe and Tom De Savia. The book also features Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, members of The Go-Go's and several others involved in the late '70's Los Angeles punk scene.