A Star, as All Things, Is Temporary
I once read that, while shooting the film Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor refused to work whenever she was on her period. I think about this as I watch the wad of single-ply toilet paper I’ve collected to wipe my waste disintegrate into a pulpy red mass as I sit atop the throne of the on-set porta potty, which reeks of a grip’s shit. In Taylor’s defense, her Cleopatra costumes were quite tight; mine are the opposite, shapeless and baggy tubes of cotton which completely obscure any sort of form I may possess and therefore fully hide bloat. My role is not of a siren who drives men to madness, so this makes sense; regardless of menstrual status, I prefer dressing like a teenager trying to hide her pregnancy anyway.
The first scene we shoot takes place in a diner. In the process of shooting it, I eat so much I throw up — mid-regurgitation, I wonder if Brando ever did the same. I conclude he probably just digested it. That’s method.
I later discover the corned beef my body rejected was purchased at Gelson’s for $25 a pound, so the projectile puke it produced feels more like a net win than a loss. Its value is compounded by the fact that the bout of emesis it triggered renders me too infirm to eat my “lunch,” which is lukewarm, encased in multiple layers of plastic, and served at 1AM. I take it home and emotionlessly consume it, microwaved, when I wake up in a haze the next “morning” at 2PM.
Previous to vomiting, I am outwardly, overly, enthusiastic about eating unlimited amounts of free food — I am the sort of person who, if brought to an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet, can’t drive home afterward. As such, the fact that my character delivers her lines while masticating feels like a gift from an otherwise absentee God. I devour my series of rapidly softening sandwiches with aplomb, letting particulate cold cuts dribble from my gaping maw. The British head of the art department understands my excitement and tells me she once drank so much free liquor at a wrap party she had to “go to hospital.” I like her.
We shoot at night, when the city is so quiet any discernible noise must have a nefarious origin. The crew gathers and gawks as one man punches another in the head through an open car window in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven across the street. A drunk girl in the diner, which is still open during filming, gives her boyfriend an over-the-pants hand job in the booth near the bathroom. This, to me, is more interesting than making a movie. This makes being awake almost worth it.
I am not used to being up at this hour and I am not used to working in any traditional sense, period. I prefer to do my business prostrate, and have compartmentalized my life in order to achieve this. I find myself enviously staring at my stand-in, whose role it is to merely exist. It seems perverse that she’d want to be in my position, having to speak and emote on command, when she could just silently stare into the middle distance and still get paid.
The other stand-in, who resembles a teen runaway from any point in the last four decades, leans in and tells me I’m doing a good job. I don’t really believe him because he’s telling everyone that; we are also shooting a scene wherein literally only the back of my head can be seen. Then he says, “Acting is reacting, right?” and I think, “Wow, this kid’s already fully committed to being 100% full of shit.”
Having to feign the same surprise, delight, annoyance, indignance, et al over someone else’s words, over and over, feels wholly inorganic, but acting is reacting. God, don’t you just hate it when there’s truth in triteness? I now know more about acting than I, to be completely honest, ever wanted to. I even read a fucking book on the subject. It pains me to admit I found said book helpful.
I, like most cynics, have always believed acting to be an artless task committed, by and large, by egotists who ascribe far more worth to their “craft” than it warrants. Oh, how brave it is to play a pauper when you are rich, a gay when you are straight, a teenager when you are 25. How difficult it must be to be a fucking cypher, a conduit for another’s thought. How exhausting it must be to sit on your well-toned ass while someone who lives in North Hollywood rigs lights in 50 degree weather. Oh, aren’t the people who play heroes the real heroes?
It turns out, though, that acting is difficult — not more difficult than rigging lights in 50 degree weather, to be sure, but not not difficult. Acting is difficult and I do not care for it but, in fairness, I don’t care for most things I enjoy. I feel as though I must do it competently and so I am exhausted. If the grammar in this is shitty, I apologize. I am in cypher mode. My mind is, temporarily, anyhow, not my own.
A PA comes up to me in between takes and hands me a rose someone in the diner has purchased on my behalf; on it, in ballpoint pen, is written the words “[heart], Your Biggest Fan.” I am incredulous that I could have a fan, let alone a “biggest” one, but the rose is real, as is the parking lot I’m standing in, as are the cameras pointed at the back of my head. Still, I assume the rose purchaser merely saw a production taking place outside and bought the rose to, I don’t know, fuck with me? “Did she...know my name?” I ask the PA. She did. I furrow my brow in confusion.
Terry says I’m the next Bette Davis and I say yeah, I am, I’m smoking the prop cigarettes down to a nub. Thankfully the makeup artist, unlike every other I’ve ever had to work with, hasn’t made me look like Baby Jane. I am horrified to learn he is only 23 years old. He is shocked to hear I am 38. We are all surprised, in our own ways.