Take Fountain

Field notes on AI hallucinations and Hollywood mythology

AI is full of shit, and it says everything with perfect punctuation.

Don’t trust a word.

In the hallucinatory wee hours last night, in an insomniac epiphany, I decided to change the rather insipid title of my upcoming poetry collection from Ode to LA to Take Fountain. Both are overcooked and not terribly exciting, but that’s sort of the point.

I asked Claude for a bit of Hollywood lore around around the phrase. It confidently informed me I was thinking of the famous Bette Davis line: “Take a Valium,” allegedly said to Johnny Carson on his show.

Had I been wrong all these years? Quel horreur.

But also: How perfect! Like a childhood game of telephone where the original sentence gets passed through too many sticky ears and returns utterly unrecognizable.

“Take a Valium” felt entirely plausible for that pill-slick Hollywood era.

Or maybe I just wanted it to be.

I asked Claude to tell me more and to kindly locate a source for this very elegant elucidation.

Claude responded (I’m paraphrasing):

No. That never happened. What are you talking about? She said “Take Fountain.”

Me: What the actual fuck—you just told me she said “Take a Valium” to Johnny Carson.

Claude: No. Oops. You’re right to question that.

It proceeded to unravel its own certainty, suggesting that Davis might not have said “Take Fountain” either. Ever. Which felt less like clarification and more like psychological escalation.

At that point, I switched platforms. ChatGPT informed me:

The famous LA phrase “Take Fountain” is most certainly attributed to filmmaker Billy Wilder. The story goes that when someone asked him for directions in Hollywood, he didn’t elaborate—he simply said: “Take Fountain.” Meaning: avoid the clogged arteries of Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard and reroute through Fountain Avenue instead.

I pushed back immediately: Not, maybe, Elizabeth Taylor?

ChatGPT, with robotic calm: Nope.

• Most credible attribution: Billy Wilder
• Bette Davis: stylistically plausible, but not historically supported
• Elizabeth Taylor: similarly circulated, but not origin

At this point I escalated the issue to Gemini, which, with great confidence and no discernible shame, insisted the phrase is attributed to Bette Davis—often framed as advice to aspiring ingénues navigating Hollywood.

Gemini added that there is no definitive proof she ever said it, but that it sounds like her, which apparently counts as evidence in certain cosmologies.

Gemini also mentioned that Davis lived off Fountain Avenue and named her car “Black Beauty,” which feels less like verification and more like atmosphere—like LA itself: vibes pretending to be facts.

I give up.

But I’m sticking with the title.

Take Fountain it is.

Because in Los Angeles, even direction is a form of fiction—and everyone is still lost, just differently.