Posts Tagged: Hollywood

publishing — 6 Comments
30
Dec 09

I Am Thwarted

Just now I was curled up on my side in the bathtub, crying and repeating “I am thwarted. I am thwarted. I am thwarted. I am thwarted.”

For maybe five minutes: “I am thwarted.”

I needed to relax after getting all worked up over this article about how you should be male if you want to publish literary fiction. Stuff I knew from personal experience, but this stirred up my fear and seemed to confirm my experience:

Playwright Julia Jordan pointed me toward a recent study about perceptions of male and female playwrights that showed that plays with female protagonists were the most devalued in blind readings. “The exact same play that had a female protagonist was rated far higher when the readers thought it had a male author,” Jordan said. “In fact, one of the questions on the blind survey was about the characters ‘likability,’and the exact same female character, same lines, same pagination, when written by a man was exceeding likable, when written by a woman was deemed extremely unlikable.”

I try to be careful about what I think about and talk about repetitively. My friend points out if you say something over and over, it becomes a mantra. I believe in the magic of daily life. I believe we create the world around us. I believe there’s power in our spells.

I fear the danger in giving in to this kind of grief: indulge in grief, and you create a world in which you are grieved.

Let yourself break down in the bathtub — let yourself say out loud those terrible, magic words — I am thwarted — and you feel relieved in the moment. It’s a catharsis, an emotional release, an acknowledgement that you exist and you matter and your reality deserves to be stated, or repeated over and over in a dramatic manner. But the fear is that if you indulge this way — or God forbid make a habit of it, let this become a way of life — the grief, the acknowledgement becomes your reality –

I am thwarted.

Did the words come first? Did I have “I am thwarted” inside me — did I believe in that mantra and then use my internal magic to create “I am thwarted” in my life? This is the question that keeps me up at night — the question that scares me. Because if I can’t tell, how can I keep it from happening again?

What’s worse — having these terrible words inside me and not giving voice to them, or having them inside me and giving voice to them and seeing them become reality? Is there a way to not have them inside me at all?

Perhaps they’re not even true. I know the truth is not only am I not thwarted, I am thriving. Many people are thwarted. I don’t want to diminish their suffering by taking it on as if it were my own.

What brought on the sobbing and the volley of “I am thwarted” was this — I posted about the article on Twitter. I don’t talk about this stuff very often in public because I’m afraid of how I’ll look — in the male dominated industry I work in, I am afraid of looking bitter or difficult or man-hating or whatever stigma might apply to outspoken feminists. But –how we live shows up in our writing, and how we write shows up in our lives. To protect my writing, I have to be honest, present, and emotional.

We live in the future, but women writers work in the past. It’s true that some women writers succeed, but shouldn’t the successful be more successful? Where are all the women showrunners, directors, working screenwriters? Pointing to fields where women get ahead like chick lit, rom-coms, and their TV equivalents as evidence of us succeeding reminds me of the women who were allowed to be film editors because it was a lot like sewing.

I don’t know the stats on women getting literary fiction published, but the male-exclusive lists and prizes certainly tell a story. And my experience tells a story: people loved my first novel. They should, because it’s good. And all the editors raved about how good it was — but said the main character was too unlikable. Or it was too original and Barnes & Noble wouldn’t know how to market it.

Many women writers don’t talk about this for fear — consciously or subconsciously — that talking about it will affect our ability to get work. I think women in Hollywood have Stockholm Syndrome. We know who we need to please to get ahead, so we pretend sexism isn’t as significant a force as it is — subconsciously, we identify with our captors. Our captors are not men, it’s thousands of years of bio/cultural forces that makes women and men feel like a woman cannot create A Great Work of Art. She can run a studio because that job seems like a glorified assistant — it’s less mythic. But there’s something so epic about making art that at a gut level most of us still feel like women can’t do it.

I have been afraid to speak about this publicly because I don’t want to drive away people who can hire me. The fact is — as a young woman trying to get writing jobs in Hollywood, I feel less afraid to write publicly about sucking the dick of some married Hollywood guy years ago than I do about my fears surrounding this industry’s sexism. I know I’m sticking my neck out here. But that’s my job. I stick my neck out, then I stick it out further.

When I get raw and emotional and vulnerable and honest, this is me practicing in public what I do when I face the script.

I am thwarted.

So when my friend on Twitter said that female authors sell much better than literary fiction authors do — and when I pointed out that I AM A FEMALE AUTHOR AND I WRITE LITERARY FICTION — he amended to say he meant pop versus literary fiction — and I responded — My point is that as a woman, I’m allowed to write pop books. I’m not allowed to write literature. I am an artist. I am thwarted.

Saying it in public is what sent me to the bathtub. It felt dangerous — like by saying it out loud, I was making it true. Conjuring the mantra. And waving a flag to the world — this is who I am. I am thwarted. But it felt good too. I felt recognized, I recognized myself. Because I matter, and my reality matters. I deserve to tell the world what my world looks like. And I think that’s why it came out over and over in a flood — it felt so good to say it publicly, I couldn’t stop saying it.

I am thwarted. I feel thwarted.

I hope I’m neither. But if that’s what I turn out to be, you’re gonna fucking hear about it.

women — 16 Comments
9
Oct 09

The Letterman Experience: How To Sell An Unlikable Character

Many women who have held or want to hold jobs have a Letterman cracking jokes in the hallways of their psyches.

Like most industries, Hollywood is built on relationships. If you’re trying to make it, you’re constantly being told (reminded, warned, threatened) that you need to be meeting as many people as possible, that contacts are the only way forward, that it’s all just who you know. And that under no circumstances can you afford to jeopardize a relationship with a contact or future contact.

Fuck that. I’ve decided I can afford to lose relationships with a lot of people — people I have known. People I have yet to meet who may not approve of what I’m about to say. People who might circle the wagons against those who speak truth to power, whom they may perceive (rightly or wrongly) as troublemakers.

So the prevailing wisdom round these parts is you never ever burn a contact. You never stop pretending you like someone no matter how they fuck you. You never just draw a line in the sand and say here is my integrity. Anything you do that falls outside this line is something I’m going to have to call you out on. Because they might be willing to help you some day (though they never do, because a person who has acted badly just wants to forget about it and you). Or, God forbid, they might keep you from getting a job. They know people.

So you keep other people’s secrets for them. Because you want to work in this town, you want other people to like you. You don’t want their emotional failure or indiscretion or moral problem to reflect badly on you.

And you wonder if it wasn’t your fault.

Here’s how it goes down:

You get a job. Maybe it’s your dream job. There’s lots of competition, lots of back-biting, cattiness from other women, dick-measuring from other men. And then there’s one person there who’s like, the star. He’s the boss, or the team leader, or the cool guy, or literally, the star of the show. Everyone looks up to him, the entire focus of the operation revolves around him. His personal charisma drives the machine forward and puts food on everyone’s table. People get excited when he smiles or calls them by name.

And suddenly, for whatever reason, this star takes an interest in you. It’s not like you’re amazing looking — you’re just a nice girl from whereever you came from, and that’s what makes you fun. Because you’re unspoiled, because you’re still capable of blossoming under the light of a powerful sun, because he can still make his mark on you. He’s as good as married, or he is married, or it doesn’t matter, because he isn’t having a real give-and-take relationship with you. He’s giving you as little as he possibly can in order to take what he wants—he gives you crumbs of attention, charisma, the illusion that he cares.

He has a good time, and so do you. Or you think you do at the time. You’ll never be unspoiled again.

As the gnawing unease of what you’ve done sets in, you wonder how you caused this to happen. Was he responding to something he sensed inside you? You could have stopped it before it started, or before it got to this point, or before you did. And now, you won’t tell anyone — because you’re ashamed. And he’s your friend.

Most of us have some kind of Letterman.

Say you’ve just spent years writing your first novel only to be told by editors that if you revised it it might be published, so you’re fighting your way through clinical depression in order to make the revision, throwing two more years down that rabbit hole. Say you finally made your way out to L.A., say you don’t know many people, you’ve got no money whatsoever, all you’ve got is this novel you’re trying to revise and the fact you know it’s good and will be published because people said it might. Say you’re living on hope, literally living on someone’s couch. And say because you don’t have health insurance, you’re taking an experimental antidepressant that makes you gain thirty pounds. You hate the way you look; you feel dead inside. Say you don’t know yet that that novel will turn out great but will never be published in the end.

And then in the middle of all this, some Hollywood guy befriends you. He’s married, but that doesn’t matter, because you’re just friends, and you’re supposed to be developing industry contacts, right? In a very hard, lonely time, he gives you attention, support, advice, counsel. Career perspective. You sincerely believe it’s totally innocent, that you’re just friends and he has no intentions otherwise. You certainly have no intentions otherwise.

You gradually feel more dependent on him emotionally. He tests your boundaries. He talks often about how wonderful his wife is, how great it is to be married. Occasionally you do get those red flag feelings, but you dismiss them because he keeps throwing carrots in your path. How he can help you. Why it would behoove you to stick around. And because you’re in Hollywood, you’re surrounded by the relentless drumbeat: You need more contacts, more contacts, more contacts ….

One day he calls to say he’s in your neighborhood and wants to take you to lunch. He’s at your door, then somehow, he’s in your apartment. Then he’s pinning you to the wall, he’s kissing you.

You feel gross and guilty and excited at once. Betrayed. So, so confused. This was someone you looked up to like a father. You thought you could trust him. You’re shocked, frankly, that he would do this—you’re also very naive. You feel humiliated, like you did this. Like you were some kind of cocktease, spending months leaning on someone emotionally … what the hell did you expect? And you’re excited too. Because here’s a man who is interested in you, despite what a mess your life is, despite how fat you are, despite everything you’ve revealed to him. And who are you not to repay him for his months of investment, if this is what he was doing it for? He’s been so kind.

I sucked his dick. The whole thing took less than an hour, and it’s haunted me for years. That was the only time—we didn’t see each other again. I get a knot in my stomach every time I think about it. Because before that moment I never ever thought I would do something like that. I’ve felt very ashamed of it ever since it happened. But I’m talking about it now, this publicly, because I’m tired of guarding myself, monitoring that everything I do and say is okay. Fact is—everything I do and say is okay. I have nothing to hide, and the more open I get, the more connected I am to the world.

I seriously hesitated to write this post, afraid I would alienate a whole lot of people. People who could hire me or get me work. And I didn’t want to sound like a victim or like I was blaming someone else for my mistakes. But you know what? We’re all going to get a lot further a lot faster if we tell the truth. And not just individually, but as a gender. As an age group. As an industry. As a people. We’re all in this together, and it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, what you’ve been doing. You can start now and decide to get honest with yourself and free yourself of the daily psychic burden of carrying your own secrets and those of other people.

I want to speak out for other women who don’t feel ready. For all of us who want jobs and are afraid that if we tell the truth, it’ll reflect badly on us. That no one will hire us. Because each one of us that does it makes it a little more okay for the next and the next. That’s how we help each other.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my blocks–what stops me up emotionally, what keeps me from writing, from relating to other people, what keeps me closed and afraid and frozen. What keeps me telling myself “I can’t,” “I won’t,” “I shouldn’t.” My blocks are mostly made of secrets, and shame, and fear. The fear of being found out.

But I’m a writer. I want to be found out. That’s what I wake up and do, every day. That’s what I strive for. So this is me, narcing on myself.

This was one of my Bad Secrets. The kind of thing I had only told a therapist. Until here now, where I’m telling the world. And ever since I started contemplating this post roughly a week ago, I’ve felt a little freer, a little less blocked. Just the thought that I could tell everyone something that previously I had told no one made me feel pretty okay.

The lesson here is this: I don’t like people who mess around with married people. I haven’t liked myself because of this incident. But your main character doesn’t need to be likable. Just tell your audience enough about her so they can grip emotionally. We don’t have to relate to what we find out about her — we can know a lot and not relate to a character. But knowing more sometimes helps us understand and at the very least helps us care about what happens next. We don’t need to like her, we just need to want to know more about her. And the more we know, the more we want to know.

Letterman played us like a fiddle in his series of apologies — wry and jokey and just a good old Indiana boy, mugging for the audience’s sympathy in finding out he’s a normal guy with flaws just like them. And that’s another strategy for selling an unlikable character: give him charisma, the power of persuasion, the ability to sell a crowd on the idea that despite his larger-than-life intensity and flaws, he’s really just like them. This is what makes us want to know more. Letterman’s apologies were a master class in how to develop an unlikable character that an audience would … like. But let’s not be duped by the charisma of a master showman who has spent a lifetime learning how to read and play on an audience’s sympathies.

Everyone made pains to point out that Letterman’s relationships were consensual. My relationship was consensual as well. And while I have no interest in outing or humiliating that man, I believe there were many factors that made us un-equal. The experience has been a deeply troubling burden I’ve carried ever since.

But now, having spent about a week digging around in this painful little place, probing it and really learning about what’s there, I like myself more.

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