Feeling Pretty

I'm used to feeling pretty.  I don't mean LOOKING pretty -- I mean feeling pretty; because there is a difference.  By "feeling pretty" I mean feeling, inside, confident about the way I look and liking what I present to the world.  Whether it's a pony tail/ tinted sunscreen/ pink lipgloss and patched overalls day or a va-va voom eye/ deep rose lip/ great hair and a dress day, it's still ME.  I'm in charge of what goes on my face and body, and I get to make sure I go out into the world feeling comfortable and confident about the way I look. 

So today was interesting for me.  Doing background work on a period piece, when hair and makeup were finished with me I felt... ugly.  They lightened my olive skin tone three shades to look like I'd never been outside in my life, blackened and significantly extended my already-totally-natural brunette eye brows, gave me black under-eye eyeliner (I passionately hate under-eye eyeliner on me... and I also hate black eyeliner), gave me orange-red lipstick (orange-tinted lips look hideous on me -- I'm a pink lips girl), and pulled my hair into an unflattering bun (and as a ballet dancer, I know the difference between flattering buns and unflattering ones).  I did not feel pretty; I did not like what I looked like; and, in a surprisingly new and different experience, I did not feel confident in my interactions with other people.  I felt embarrassed about my looks, and it was worse because everyone else on set looked beautiful, while I looked about 15 years older than I am, sullen, ill, and like I had an eye brow hair growth problem that, if real, probably would need looking into by a doctor.  I haven't felt that embarrassed about my looks since my first week in the sixth grade when a kid named Donovan turned to another boy when we were picking partners for some class exercise and said, "Why don't you ask JESSICA!  Ewwww haha you're stuck with Jessica! *snicker snicker*" and pointed out a pimple to me....  I was glad when he left halfway through that school year....  I can't think of another time when I felt uncomfortable with how I look; I'm by no means perfect, but whether I'm wearing a face full of makeup and being a girly girl or going bare-faced, I feel fine and totally at ease with who I am.

So it was a bizarre experience for me to be so uncomfortable with how I looked for a full day, and I found it interesting how feeling insecure about my looks affected my behavior....

Normally I'm more comfortable with crew on set than with other background actors and am quick to joke around with them or strike up a conversation during down time.  But feeling so uncomfortable about my looks I realized made me quieter on set, and I kept to myself much more.  I was super aware of those hideous things above my eyes and wondered if anyone thought they were really my own.  Did anyone think I was a vampire and had never seen the sun?  What about the layers and layers of pancake makeup on my face?  Did people think I needed that much coverage?  What hideous skin must they think was hiding under all that powder?  Every time I looked in the mirror I thought I belonged in a horror film (there's some specific character I looked like, but I couldn't figure out who... though there was a passing resemblance to Edward Scissorhands: http://i.imgur.com/bYeIH.jpg), so surely that's what everyone else was thinking when they looked at me... right?  And I didn't want to make anyone look at me too long because as far as I was concerned, it wasn't a pretty sight, so how could I subject some innocent to this horrible vision?  When a fire alarm sent everyone on set outside milling around the studio lot while they verified the cause and that it was safe to return, I found myself standing around awkwardly; I felt like that sixth-grader with a pimple feeling shy and uncomfortable when normally I would be confident and smilingly chatting with someone.

Late in the night, around 11:30 PM, when the rest of background had a break but I was kept on set because I had a brief interaction with the principal so they wanted to keep me during the rehearsal, I found myself (now the only woman on my corner of the set) finally having a conversation with a couple PAs and joking and laughing with them as I normally would.  I was conscious of the fact that it was the first time that day I had laughed or teased anyone or behaved the way I normally would a dozen times during a day of shooting.  I don't know whether it was because I had forgotten how I looked or because there were no "pretty" girls on set anymore, but I was finally not letting my insecurity about my looks affect my behavior.  And I was finally having fun.  And no one was giving me a "Oh my gosh why is she talking to me -- she's so ugly" look.  To the contrary, once I was acting like my normal self, I felt no discernible difference in their behavior toward me from what it would be if I looked like my normal self.
 

"Feeling "ugly" was an interesting experience, but I'm glad that tomorrow I get to have rosy cheeks and my own eye brows, wear earth-colored eye shadow and a swipe of mascara, and choose from my vast array of Burt's Bees pink lip shimmers/shines/glosses.  Having control of my own face and feeling like I look like myself, whatever that might look like to the rest of the world, makes me a much smileyer and more confident person inside, ready to take on the world... and after hearing my whole life that beauty is more than skin deep, what I learned at 11:30 PM with my giant eyebrow and white skin is that it really is that inside part that makes us pretty after all.

Meow

What happens when you get too many women on a film set in a holding room together for hours on end: 

Woman A, with big face (her words, not mine), about movie star on set: I was surprised she has such a small face! I mean not that it looks on screen like she has a big face, but I didn't expect it to be so small, you know?  I mean I'm glad I have a big face, because big faces age better.

*crickets*

A: You know, because there's something for the skin to fall down on.

Polite woman:  Oh yeah?  I never heard that before.

A: Well, yeah... **gesturing *big face* ** because with a big face it can all fall down on bones, but with a small face it just... falls down onto air [trying to gesticulate this confusing face geography to us].

Polite woman: ....Huh.

A: Yeah.  So I'll age well.  And whenever I see people with big faces, they always look like they've aged better than people with small faces. 

~~

Later, during a discussion about how some actor someone knows doesn't like theatre: 

Woman C: I don't understand how he can want to act and not like theatre.

Woman B: Well I hate musicals.

Woman A: ...Ok?

B: I mean I detest them.  Ugh **shudders** they're horrible.  I won't go see one.

Everyone looks at her confusedly or expectantly.

B: I mean, no offense if you like them.

A: Well I love musicals.

B: Ugh, they make my skin crawl **shudders again**  It's just not real acting to me.   

~~

Later, I think out of nowhere, but maybe I missed the lead-in: 

B: Did you know [actress I've never heard of] only takes home $400,000 a year?

A: No...??

B: I mean she only takes home $400K a year.

A:  Yeah?  **Looking very confused about why this is a big deal** 

B: That shocks me.  She only takes home $400 thousand a year. I mean not that that's bad.  But I mean someone of her status. She just seems so larger than life.  So big. You'd just think she'd make more.

A:  I mean, I never even heard of her before.  She's only "famous" because she married [a movie star].  So... that seems like it's about right.

B:  Oh no.  I've been following her forever.  She's a wonderful actress.  Just wonderful.  I  always said she'd be the next Scarlett Johansson.

A:  Yeah but we've already got Scarlett Johansson.  And she's still young.  Soo.... why would we need the "next" Scarlett?

B: Well, I mean, she's so beautiful just like Scarlett but she's such a great actress.

A:  And Scarlett's not? I mean, she's considered a great actress.  She just happens to be beautiful.  Her beauty actually sometimes overshadows her acting, unfortunately, but she's a great actress. I loved her in the movies she did as a child.

B: Oh, I hated her in the movies she did as a child. 

A: [sigh] Okay.

B: Yeah and she's in big films.  I hate big films.  There's no real acting in big films.

So in conclusion, there's no real acting in either musicals or big films (and maybe by child actors), and only big-faced people will age well.  Got it. 

Incidentally (or not), the "small faced" star discussed in the first exchange -- who has worked on large films, small films, and everything in between -- not only looked absolutely lovely but seemed lovely on the inside as well.  And she's a very good actor (I think it was "real acting," but I haven't quite figured out what the distinction is between "real acting" and I guess "fake acting," so you'd have to ask Woman B about that). 

Frivolity in a Wooded Wonderland

A few more photos from high school exploring the themes of frivolity, a fresh look at things that seem routine, and looking at the ordinary through a lens that makes life more enchanting, more fun, and perhaps more interesting. 

Also, the name "the love tunnel" for the drainage tunnel below is not mine but is the local name for it.  One end of it is on our property, and as small children my brother and I would play in it, jumping back and forth over the stream that runs through it and trying to suspend ourselves spiderlike against the walls as we scurried from one end to the other (and occasionally, when feeling very brave, we'd briefly emerge out the other end of the tunnel, on the foreign land of someone else's property.  Clearly other local children weren't quite so respectful of the boundaries of property lines, but hey, at least it's called the love tunnel and not the hate tunnel.).  Most of the graffiti in it is about so-and-so loving so-and-so -- though not always written by either of the so-and-sos.

All three pictures below are actually on my family's property -- because our property viewed through Jessica-tinted glasses is clearly some sort of wooded wonderland.  With soda cans as characters.  Of course.

 Forest Fashions

Garbage In The Love Tunnel

The Ugly Squirtling

Oops

Overnight a goblin ate my blog and made the photos in my previous post gigantic.  It's been fixed.

Yesterday -- Ghosts and Whispers

I have always found a melancholy elegance and beauty in the progression of things over time, in wear and tear, in things falling apart....  I am fascinated by the moment immediately after a break-up, when feelings haven't changed in a brief two minutes but the rules governing expression of those feelings have.  I am fascinated by friendships once vibrant and dynamic decaying over time, like a once-loved lilac bush that gets watered less and less frequently as life gets in the way, until one day its caretaker goes out to water it and finds nothing but dead brown leaves.  I am fascinated by good people making bad decision after bad decision until they're lost in a deep dark pit and they look around and have no idea how to climb up and so give in to the rotten darkness.  Advertising campaigns refer to "your favorite worn jeans," not your favorite new jeans.  No one loves their shoes until they're nearly worn out.  A pillow's no good until it's been used dozens of times and is lumpy and mushy.   But where's the line?  Where does something cross over from being well-worn and comfortable and familiar to being broken and haggard and past its time?  When does neglect turn to decay and become irreversible?  When I took photography in high school, my favorite subject was barns and houses that were falling apart.  I loved trying to capture the mystery they held of sunny, bright days gone by full of laughter and spirit... the echoes of voices, of dreams dreamt, of hard work and hard play....

While home at my parents' house, I came across some of those prints.  My photography classes were with real black & white film, developed in a dark room, with sepia toning done by chemicals and coloring done by hand on the print, so these are only shaky iPhone pics of the mounted originals...  but below are five of my favorite photos from my "Yesterday -- Ghosts and Whispers" series.   None of the buildings is standing today, though the bridge is still there.

Barn

House On the Corner

Once Upon a Porch

The Door

The Path

Being Sandra Spielberg

Last night I woke up at 4:17 AM because I'd had an incredible dream (and also because the air conditioning randomly went off because we have a ghost that drains phones and computers and turns off the AC, but I think mostly it was the dream that woke me).  At first I thought, "Oh well, I'll remember it in the morning" and closed my eyes again... and then I thought, "No, I'll remember that I had a cool dream and I'll wish that I wrote it down," so, puffy-eyed and fighting to keep my eyes open, I got up to jot it down... but then looking at what I'd written in purple ink (rainbow pens make writing much more fun) and remembering previous times I'd written down dreams and in the morning stared helplessly at the meaningless scribbles on paper, I thought, "My handwriting is completely illegible right now, so I better type it"... and then I thought, "Well, if I'm typing it I might as well really write down the whole thing"... so then an hour and a half and four single-spaced Word doc pages later, I finished typing up my dream.

It's probably the coolest dream I ever remembered upon waking.  It starred Pierce Brosnan, Audra McDonald, Sandra Bullock, a camera, and me.  Pierce plays a James Bond-like character, Audra plays the classic Bond girl who doesn't really know what's going on but is willing to help Pierce, Sandra plays a mysterious girl who we've only seen in passing and don't know what her deal is or if she's even significant to the story, the camera plays a really cool camera, and I play... well I can't tell you who I play because besides the camera that's one of the coolest parts and I want to turn this thing into a story or book or film one day....  And that camera.  The camera is awesome.  I love the camera in this dream.  The dream was a result, among other things, of having a conversation with my mom about the film Love Is All You Need starring Pierce Brosnan; reading an article last night right before bed about Audra McDonald (who I think is stunning and who has my favorite female singing voice) in Shuffle Along on Broadway; my frustration with the architecture of NYC public schools; a very unique book my brother got me for my birthday; and my desire to have both Sandra Bullock's career and Steven Spielberg's (and lamenting the other day as I read an Entertainment Weekly article about this man -- who as a teenager talked his way onto the Universal Studios lot and spent a summer without a lot-pass talking his way into post-production offices and onto sets and in this way created an unofficial internship for himself that ultimately led to his career -- that I once sat next to him for a Broadway show, including a 20-minute intermission, and never thought of a single word to say to the man who in many ways stands for the storytelling career I want and whose name I saw countless times in my finished Director's Chair "movies" as "A Steven Spielberg production, directed by Jessica Pollack," imagining the day that credit would be real).

I should probably explain Director's Chair.  When I was a kid I had a Steven Spielberg-produced computer game called Director's Chair.  It was a game where, after an introduction by the master storyteller himself, the player got to direct a movie, all the way from script decisions and budgeting and casting to making a shooting schedule and filming to editing, special effects, promotion, and finally to the premiere.  You'd encounter problems along the way (it's raining on an outdoor shoot day -- do you reschedule or shoot the scene indoors?  There's a problem with some of the lights -- do you have the DP figure out a way to shoot with what you have or get behind schedule by waiting to get new ones?  You're over-time and don't have the time to get all the angles you wanted, so what do you do?) and can ask crew for advice, but no matter what you decide you'll always have some crew who don't agree with you.  The post production takes place on the studio lot and you go from one building to another to supervise the various aspects of post.  The more successful you were, the bigger your budget got.  I loved the game and had quite a few different finished films.  I remember my favorite was one called "Burn Baby Burn" that I made with my dad and that I'm pretty sure ended with the main character getting charred in an explosion and winding up on a gurney.... (My dad can have a rather dark sense of humor.)  I loved the game, and as a kid who had not only always been on stage but also always written and produced home movies and plays and puppet shows, it fed my love for the production side of storytelling.

Anyway, I had some incredibly awesome camera moves and directorial choices in the movie that was my dream last night -- cooler than anything I did in Director's Chair and certainly cooler than anything I did in college.  My characters all had complex motivations and even considered and evaluated the other characters' motivations when making their own decisions. I had strong POV and perspective choices, very creative angles that served a purpose, and very specific post-production decisions that played an active role in the storytelling.  The entire dream was scored and had sound effects and was quite sophisticated, and I really really really want to make it into a movie (that exists somewhere other than just inside my head) and direct it.  In the Anthony Breznican-penned EW article I read the other day, Breznican refers to Spielberg's 29th film, The BFG, as a story where the main characters "venture to a magical place where they capture dreams and nightmares like fireflies, bottle them, and transport them back to our world to place inside the heads of sleeping humans."  Spielberg says, "It's a literal image for what all of us do as storytellers, without ever thinking about it." 

I want to capture and bottle dreams.  I want to transport them to our world and tell them as stories, thereby transporting the humans whose eyes and ears the stories reach.  I want to play Director's Chair.  But in real life.  So hey, someone please hire me to help tell stories.

Oh, did you think this post would end by me telling my dream?  Nope, you'll have to wait to watch the movie.  Or help me make it.  I promise it won't be called "Burn Baby Burn."  And it probably won't end with a charred body on a gurney... but no promises.

Embrace the grey

Spoiler alert:  The following post contains moderate-level spoilers for Tim O'Brien's "In The Lake Of The Woods," my favorite book.  If you haven't read the book, do.  It is fascinating.

In high school, I once won a debate I got into with a teacher during class about the book In The Lake Of The Woods by Tim O'Brien.  We were discussing the themes of memory, reality, greyness, and uncertainty.  The book revolves around a woman's disappearance and the mystery of what happened to her.  I found the book incredibly frustrating because, though different possibilities are presented and explored, the book never definitively states what actually happened, leaving it up to the reader -- which I could have accepted, except I felt the author didn't know what happened either.  I successfully argued in class that day that it was a cheap out that ultimately left nothing but emptiness in its wake, because there WAS no real outcome.  As I saw it, it was pointless for the reader to wonder, "did A happen or did B happen or did C happen" because the author himself never picked one.  According to my argument that day, he got lazy, didn't choose a reality, and without a reality in place to the author -- whether or not the reader knows what it is -- a book (I said that day) is pointless.  I wanted there to exist a black and a white, even if we as readers never knew which one was reality.  Reality being grey was simply not acceptable to me.

I have no idea how I won over the class that day, but I remember that I did.  And I was completely and utterly wrong.  I've since read the book several times, and it has morphed from a source of frustration to me to a reflection of the growing complexities of life.

In college, with my second reading of it for a class, I came to love the book for its ambiguity.  I saw that the point of the book is not simply what happened to the woman; to the contrary, the theme of the amorphous nature of truth, how memory affects truth, and what "truth" even really means would be lessened with a black and white "this is what happened" explanation.  Every outcome did happen, just as much as the next --  because they all could have happened.  The ambiguity and freedom to choose was beautiful to me.

After that second time reading it, free from the constraints of a classroom approach to it, I read other books by the author, Tim O'Brien, and became more familiar with his approach to the exploration of reality and memory, gaining a better understanding of where he was coming from in his own life when he wrote it and adding more depth to my third time through it.  Perhaps adding to my love of the book as I grow older is my growing love of ambiguity and greyness, both in characters and in life.  Though there are times we all want the clear definitions of black and white, far more often now than when I was in school I love the messiness of grey -- in life, in people, in relationships, in the choices we face....  Grey and muddy and undefined is so much more interesting and has so many more layers to explore than the black and white I craved that first time I read it....

And yet, I just finished the book for a fourth time, and now, more than a decade since I first read it, my perspective has changed yet again.  While it is no longer just the disappearance mystery of my first read-through, neither is it simply about ambiguity and the ever-illusive, shifting nature of truth.  Glaringly prominent to me in this last read was the role of the narrator in a story and the power the narrator has to influence the reader's perspective.  Rarely does a reader consider the trustworthiness of an omniscient narrator in a third-person story (or even that of a first-person narrator -- though on close inspection, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway can hardly be considered an objective or reliable teller of Gatsby's story in The Great Gatsby, and how much can Huck Finn be trusted as a narrator?  Even the third-person narrator of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is revealed to have a perspective).... Yet the narrator, on whom the reader relies for all information, filters the events, or "evidence," and not only chooses what we see but also shapes how we see it.  Through the unique structure of In The Lake Of The Woods, we hear the story not only told by the narrator (who only after thirty pages and two “Evidence” sections openly acknowledges his presence in a footnote at the end of Chapter 6... and then gradually reveals himself through ever-more footnotes to be something quite a bit more than the average shapeless-and-soulless storytelling voice) but also through interviews with the characters, who sometimes offer a very different perspective on a moment we read in narration.  A visit to a mini-mart before a boat excursion seems innocuous enough when supposedly objectively told by the narrator; yet a character's reference to it in an interview later presented to us in a chapter labeled "Evidence" colors the event with a tinge of menace the narrator chose not to acknowledge in his own telling of it.  In fact, after revealing himself, the narrator's footnote warns us that what might appear to be “fact” in this work must be viewed only as an “imaginative reconstruction of events,” and, despite the many chapters labeled “Evidence” in the novel, the narrator cautions the reader to remember that “evidence is not truth.”  If the reader cannot accept “evidence” as truth, then what can be considered truth?  When filtered through a narrator, the answer seems to be nothing. 

By the end of the book, the narrator has inserted himself into the emotional core of the book and is far more a character than an invisible voice.  In fact, eventually we are faced with the realization that the narrator is telling this story for a reason and with a personal objective, which necessarily influences how he tells the story and how he wants us to feel about the events and the characters.  And isn't that true of all storytellers?  No story gets told without a reason, a purpose.  No storyteller, whether of a novel, an article, or a news story, is completely emotionally uninvolved and distant.  There is always a filter, always a manipulation to make the reader or viewer feel a certain way and choose their version of the truth -- something I am all too aware of nowadays as I watch and read the news myself and hear other people talk about what they read and see in their own filtered version of the news.  Evidence is not truth, and no evidence is complete. 

Every time I've read In The Lake Of The Woods, I have had a different interpretation and the book has elicited different emotions.  Five years from now, I wonder if I'll think the book is about something completely different.  I can think of no greater accomplishment of literature than when the reader's life experiences enrich and complement the book just as the book enriches and complements the reader's life, creating a dynamic relationship between the book's meaning and the reader.  A book that is never static and continues to evolve throughout a reader's life, though the words on the page remain the same, is art at its best.