You're on an Airplane

by Parker Posey

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Parker Posey

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  Blue Rider Press is a registered trademark and its colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC

  Ebook ISBN 9780735218215

  Craig McDean, photographer

  Jess Rotter, photo staging, illustration, and cover typography

  Diego Montoya, mirror mask

  Lee Kyle, photographer of Rob Roth’s “Craig”

  Cardboard chair designed by Chairigami

  Styling and wardrobe, Leana Zuniga of Electric Feathers

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part I

  You’re on an Airplane

  1. To Perform

  2. How I Got My Name

  3. Why Are You an Actor?

  4. Nonnie’s Fireball

  5. Pansies Are for Thought

  6. Indie Days

  7. Earth, Wind, and Fire

  8. Vampires

  9. The Death Star

  10. In Line

  11. Louie

  12. Dad and the Stage

  Part II

  As the World Turns

  13. Dazed/“Sweet Emotion”

  14. Southern Gothic

  15. Sacrifice

  16. Gracie

  17. Garbage on the Beach

  18. Imavegan

  19. Moving

  20. Master of Storms

  Part III

  Lost in Space

  21. What We Make

  22. Rear Window/Live Pie

  23. The Guest Films

  24. Shirley, the Coneheads, and Me

  25. Mom and the TV

  26. At the Wheel

  27. It’s Mine

  28. Being a Twin

  29. Wait Till Spring

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Part I

  You’re on an Airplane

  Hi, I have the window seat. How very kind, thank you; chivalry is not dead but I’ll just squeeze by. That’s okay, I’ll just smush them both under the seat and once we’re in the air I’ll take one out and use it as an ottoman. I sit cross-legged so Gracie can be on my lap once we’re off, but thank you. She is, actually. My boyfriend at the time, Ryan, his grandmother had just died and they’d watch the Burns and Allen show together when he was a kid. I wanted a name that could evoke a quality because I knew I’d be repeating it. I didn’t want to name her Snickers or something. “Something! Come here!”

  I sat next to a dog and its owner at the Union Square dog run once, and the dog had on a collar that spelled “BOW WOW” in separated silver lettering that slid and turned and the “bow” part was under the dog’s neck. I said to the owner, “I can’t believe you named your dog ‘Mom,’” and he was like, “It spells ‘bow wow.’” I told him that I was joking and then it got awkward, because he seemed to be sad or depressed. These are strange times; maybe naming your dog “Mom” isn’t so odd. It seems like everyone is feeling lonely, in some way—left out.

  I’m working on a book, actually. It’s about me. It’s okay, Gracie. She’s on a doggie downer. She’ll be okay once the plane takes off and the slamming doors stop. They bang no matter how you close them, like they were made to slam. Yeah, I like those movies, too. Best in Show’s a classic. You’ll hear more about it. Yes, she’s an emotional support dog, so she can be in my lap. I have the papers in the seat flap in front of me, if you need me to reach down there to get them. Seltzer with ice, please. No, I’m good, no lime; don’t bother.

  It used to be so different, flying.

  * * *

  –

  Yes, a book! I realized it was time. There were stories to share that my friends were entertained by, so I thought, you know, tell them. There’s also a literary agent who lives in my neighborhood, whose partner art-directed Party Girl. I started feeling guilty when I’d see him, because he’d say, “I know there’s a book in you.” So I went into a sort of labor and produced a sort of baby, where instead of being human it’s a bound object made of paper called “pages” with words on it. You bring it to life and make it talk. Just don’t leave it alone for too long or it will start crying.

  Can you hear Gracie snoring? Her little body vibrates when she does. I use my Southern accent when I talk to Gracie because she’s just too sweet. Being number one on the tarmac is so winning and such an honor, so thrilling. I got interested in acting because I was born into it—born into turbulence. It’s kind of simple: I’m a character actor because I come from a family of characters. When people ask if anyone in my family is an actor, I say all of them. They’re performative people. They’ll star somewhat in this, in the way Mother and Father star in our lives, constantly—as constant as the northern star—but I’ll take the lead.

  When my dad and I fought, he’d send me to my room to write him a letter. He wasn’t good at expressing his feelings when he was angry, he was better at letter writing, and since he was an adult and I was just a child, he won. He was passionate and knew how to pull heartstrings. We’d joke in our family that he was the puppeteer and he’d splay his hand wide, moving it slowly from side to side, controlling the strings.

  We’ll be in the air soon and closer to the real stars, which make the constellations, which branched the first stories from the heavens.

  My book is called You’re on an Airplane. It’s a memoir pronounced with the emphasis on “me.”

  Flying can be nice, once you’re in the air. Don’t you wish we could be here forever and never have to land?

  1

  To Perform

  Taxi! I mean, flight attendant! Hi, can I have a scotch, neat?

  Norma Desmond, the fading silent-film star who bemoaned the advent of “talkies,” was portrayed by the inimitable Gloria Swanson, first clotheshorse and woman of indomitable spirit. You’ve seen it? So you know that she wore a turban in the film and said things like “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” Now look how small the pictures have gotten on these freaking iPhone screens. The tiny screens have gotten into people’s hands, and there’s all this swiping going on, all this shoo-fly bullshit. In the nineties, we had big screens in the cinema and big TVs in our homes. It boggles the mind that people can walk around with small televisions in their pockets and use them as telephones. I saw a baby in a stroller on an iPhone just the other day, on the sidewalks of Manhattan. Now, tell me: Who was that baby texting?

  Are you on Facebook? It’s wonderful that people have their Facebook friends but I don’t have Facebook “friends” because I’m not on it. I want to read people’s faces in present-time reality—and how could they be a book? It’s presumptuous and absurd. I went on someone’s Facebook once (now, that just sounds crude) and what I really wanted was proof that these are real people, but there is no proof because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t on the vacation,
at the graduation, at the spring break party. I wasn’t there for the birth of the baby or for all those salads. It should be called “Scrapbookface,” that’s more apropos. There was a movie made about that guy who invented it? Mark Zuckerberg, right, thank you. I never saw it but I did go to the premiere to mingle in the lobby of the theater and to social-network.

  Anyway, my Instagram followers say not to join because it’s a rabbit hole, and I trust them. Is this how I grow old? Saying things like “my followers,” like a cult leader, and going on about turbans? Looks like it!

  Headwear feels right, especially after you reach your mid-forties and start to see the older person you’ll become. Would you like a brush? Eye drops? Oh my God, that feels good. Care to slather your face with moisturizer? You have pretty hair, young lady. Don’t fall asleep; I want you to listen. Turbans apply to the men out there as well, who will become older ladies as they soften with age.

  It’s kind of fun getting older and giving advice, calling young people “dear,” and talking to myself in public, not caring who hears me. Uttering sentences that come out as extraneous sounds and feeling no need to explain myself in words because a facial expression will do. It’s “Perimenopausal Time,” which to me sounds like an adorable puppet troupe—maybe not.

  Here, let me put a turban on you; I travel with scarves, wraps, and throws. Press your finger on the fabric at the top of your forehead, where your hairline starts, and hold. I’ll wrap you up.

  It feels good to have something on your head that makes you feel like a witch or a genie, doesn’t it? Let’s get some magic back. Do you have a lover? You don’t have to tell me if you do or don’t, but if you do, they’ll dig this. After you get out of the bath together and make breakfast, like dry toast with a poached egg and a side of cantaloupe. “Come here so I can look you in the eyes,” you’ll hear. “We’re all multidimensional beings, babe, because everyone is a time traveler, if only for a moment. . . .” And then, maybe, “Are you upset about something? Do you need any help with anything?” Who knows what’ll happen after that. One thing’s for certain: your hair will dry and you’ll go to work, where you can get wrapped up again, caught up in the picture of the vacation you weren’t invited to join, and maybe you’ll text that little baby back. You can shoo-fly your phone till the cows come home.

  Don’t you feel better now that you know your head won’t fly off your body? Give me a headdress and a magic carpet, please. Why this diminishing of the feminine? Why is it still happening? I know it’s been like this for a long while now—since we stopped worshipping the sun and the moon—but it feels like we should be beyond that. Sun and moon: good and evil—blah, blah, blah. It’s All One. Will you press right here? Right between my thumb and forefinger? Yes, that’s where my headache is. Did you know that the Hollywood system of storytelling quadruples, for men, as they age? I read that somewhere. I guess it’s because the men are rarely home in those movies because the women don’t want machine guns or aliens in the house.

  I must’ve dozed off when you were pressing my hand like that. I had a dream I was running a marathon and staying in Matt Damon’s home in the wilderness. He lived there whenever there was a marathon. No, wait, I wasn’t running, I was on the side of the road walking to Matt Damon’s. We shared some eroticism and I noticed glitter all over his bedsheets. He said he’d gotten divorced and I wondered why because I’d heard his wife was so lovely. Then I saw a little movie, like a commercial, in my mind: Strange Christmas decorations appeared and dissolved—an icicle plaque with “The Damons” written on it, and then a fire poker with children’s names on it. Dinner was being served and the clang of silverware turned to Christmas. I don’t like Christmas; it’s too much of a production and I’ve already done too many. I do love Jesus, though.

  * * *

  –

  I was staying in Hollywood, at Chris Kattan’s house, and I was crying. This was not a dream; this was real. Chris is like a brother to me. I was sitting outside, on the stone steps Danny DeVito brought back from Big Sur or somewhere—Danny and Rhea Perlman owned the house before Chris bought it. Rhea had her dance studio in the bedroom where I slept. Anyway, I was on the phone with my manager at the time, and I was freaking out that I didn’t have a job. To encourage me, he said, “Look at Jeremy Renner,” who he also represented. “He didn’t start getting work until his forties.” And I said, “I know, but he’s a man. I’m not a man.”

  There was a lull in the conversation, because I had a real point. I could hear my manager sense that I’d become too aware to be handled and coerced into delusion. Actors actually pay their agents and managers not only to negotiate contracts but also to encourage fantasies and help conjure them, which is what I think delusion is. It’s why I still love every agent I’ve ever had. Look how cozy that salad is in its little bowl.

  Well, my manager knew I wasn’t having it anymore, and that I’d had it. It’s possible that, somewhere in there, I’d remembered “not being available” to meet for one of those early action films with Matt Damon. It could’ve been the beginning of The Bourne Identity. I simply wasn’t prepared to be scared in a car for a few months, even with Matt’s daemon.

  There was an Anaconda movie, too, that I turned down because I didn’t want to wrestle with snakes or be in wet clothes while at work.

  Whenever I get to the point of exasperation, I like to say, “I feel like my head has flown off of my body,” or, “Where is the man who would want to put his hands on my head?” I will say that Jeremy Winner is a wonderful hugger because we were at Sundance and he gave me a really nice hug. I didn’t get to the point of having him place his hands on my head, but I’m almost certain he would’ve if I’d asked.

  * * *

  –

  I’ve maintained a career and I love to act, but I think every job is my last. And when I start the job, I forget that I know how to do it and by the time I find out that I do, I’m done. I’m always thinking of other jobs I could do instead, but maybe those are just characters I want to play. I’m not great at being a movie star; it’s either too boring or too much work. I’ve had too much therapy, I think.

  My career took shape organically (farm to table), when the culture supported independent films and I didn’t have to feel like a movie star if I didn’t want to. The independent film world in the early nineties had a real independence from the Hollywood system, much like in the seventies. It reminded me of my early silent-film work with auteurs like Cecil B. DeMille. And then, Time called me the queen of independent cinema and that’s when my career in independent cinema virtually ended. Oh my God, this cough!

  I don’t like games. I wasn’t, and I’m still not, good at them.

  They make me uncomfortable, even board games, and especially charades. I do like puzzles and an intimate in-house karaoke party. Singing is not a game. I do love The Voice. I make a really good cup of coffee.

  * * *

  –

  When I was a little girl, my dad would recite Emily Dickinson’s “I’m nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody, too? / Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! / They’d banish us, you know.” He’s an entertainer and fighter by nature: a star in his own life. My mother comes to life through the lens of my father but holds her own, naturally. I obviously came to life from my mother. They were movie stars in my eyes—fabulous Southern characters. So my own character, what could be a fragmentation of selves, finds a wholeness in performing many different parts and finds recognition in others of similar makeup. The arts and show business are full of these people.

  I had a “movie mother” in the late, great Nora Ephron. She sent me an email a few months before she left the planet that I’ve memorized and kept close to my heart: “Dear Parker, I love watching your life from the middle distance. No one has a career like yours, and although I understand it makes for moments that have to feel less than secure, it also means you have so many things you would never h
ave done if your life were more conventional. Love, your mother.” She’d tell me that there wasn’t a conventional bone in my body.

  A couple years back I wasn’t sure I could handle how financially motivated and conventional showbiz had become. Even in the theater, which was surprising and devastating. I originated a role (to a great review in the New York Times, thank you), only to be replaced with an actress who was more “bankable,” more of a “name,” when the play went to Broadway. Then I had a real nervous breakdown and ended up in the ER. After that, I had a giant and delicious slice of pizza with fried eggplant and mushrooms—a few blocks from Beth Israel at three in the morning—and walked home with my friends Jenn Ruff and Michael Panes. I had a wonderfully deep sleep from the Xanax.

  After a few days with curtains drawn, I’d somewhat accepted that the rules had changed and that things weren’t going to go my way. I even accepted my nervous breakdown as something I needed to go through and come out of. I got my curiosity and dignity back, enough to go out and hobnob. Ironically, I did that at the premiere party for the second season of Girls. Judd Appetite was there, in the distance, with no appetite for me. I saw a friend involved with that play that had sent me over the edge—someone who’d stayed at my house before. So I asked about the play, naturally. “What happened?” I said. “What went down?” And he said, “Do you want to talk about it here?” and I said, “Sure, why not?” Then someone pulled my focus for a second (the party was huge) and when I turned around, he had disappeared. Being real in showbiz gets you nowhere, kid.

  I met a really adorable Canadian fellow, around your age; a manager, with hopes of becoming a producer. He confided in me a recent epiphany: “I lie a little bit, all day long, over and over again . . .” He was dazed by the revelation and shook his head, perplexed. “I lie to people . . . on the phone, all day, that’s my work. I lie . . .” He knew the truth of what was ahead and was not going to quit. Yeah, showbiz can be dark.