by Judy Greer
I sound bitter. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who lets one silly little thing (or four) ruin her big night. And ultimately it didn’t. I got to go to the Oscars and the Governors Ball, then I got to meet up with my Prince Charming and take him with me to the Vanity Fair party, we ate and drank for free all night (not including fourth meal at the Taco Bell drive-thru), I met loads of people (who will never remember meeting me), and I held an Oscar statue (not mine)! I mean, jeez, Cinderella went to a ball all by herself, had a crazy-early curfew, and lost a shoe, but she still managed to have the best time of her life. At least I didn’t lose my shoe!
Papa, Paparazzi
I DON’T USUALLY GET MY PHOTO TAKEN BY PAPARAZZI, but if I do, I assume all the other celebrities are in foreign lands at film festivals I wasn’t invited to or that the shutterbugs are mistaking me for someone else, Kathy Griffin perhaps. Last fall I did my first Broadway play starring Norbert Leo Butz and Katie Holmes (she’s so cool, by the way, in case you were wondering). Needless to say, there were always loads of paparazzi waiting outside the stage door to get a shot of Katie as she walked from her car door to the door of the theater—it’s about a ten-foot distance, who knows what could happen in that ten feet. In the beginning of rehearsal and previews, I tried to dress cute every day, just in case they got a shot of me behind Katie, or if they happened to be whipping their cameras around to catch Al Pacino getting out of his town car across the street at the theater where he was working. Who knows, there might be a flash of my navy beret or a glimpse of my leopard-print jeans I bought in a shopping spree at Target. After a few weeks I ran out of cute outfits and realized it didn’t matter anyway, so I stopped trying so hard to look cute as I walked to the theater. Don’t get me wrong, I still wore my navy beret à la Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show because I was going to make it after all and some sunglasses because I did my makeup once I was backstage, and without makeup on I look slightly anemic and like I’ve been crying for a while (I am not anemic and probably hadn’t been crying for that long; that’s just the no-makeup look I was blessed with). I’d hate to get stuck behind Katie with no makeup on and no sunglasses while they were snapping away at her. If those photos were sold to a magazine, it would probably be for a story about how Katie Holmes was donating her time to a fancy charity and taking a clinically depressed, anemic woman to work with her for the day (again, not depressed and not anemic).
A few weeks prior, my husband (Dean Johnsen) had borrowed a guitar from Norbert Leo Butz (two-time Tony Award winner just in case you’re not familiar with his awesomeness) in order to learn a song to perform at the Johnsen family talent show that Christmas. Norbert needed the guitar back so he could learn a song for an actual New Year’s Eve show he was performing in, for money. Since Dean Johnsen was just trying to impress his siblings and wasn’t actually furthering his career or earning money to feed his family or pay his mortgage, his guitar time was quickly up, and I had to lug the thing back to work that evening. My husband asked if I felt comfortable carrying the guitar to work and if I thought that the photographers waiting outside the stage door for Katie would get a photo of me carrying a guitar. “Wouldn’t that be funny?” he said. No. As it turns out, my husband is smarter than I gave him credit for, and just as he predicted, the second I approached the stage door, the paparazzi, who never take my photo, started taking my photo. The worst part was that they were yelling, “Judy, can we get one with your guitar? Can you hold your guitar up?!” The horror. They asked me to lift “my” guitar higher so it could be in the shot. I would just like to say, for the record, I do not play the guitar. I do not own a guitar. I am in no way a musician, I can’t sing, I am musically challenged. I took piano lessons for six years, once a week, and cannot play a note. I was just carrying the guitar as a favor for my husband.
For me, the few times I’ve been papped, it’s like running into an ex: it only happens when I look like shit, have pinkeye, or post-yoga crotch sweat. Every fucking time. I could walk to Starbucks seven times a day looking like a normal human American girl, but the one day I am dressed like an extra from The Hunger Games, I get snapped.
I clearly have not come very far with my emotional development, because just as I am completely outraged at the photographers’ presence, I am later equally hurt when the photos are never printed. My brain is saying I want to be left alone, but my delicate actor ego is wondering why they don’t care about me? The photos must be worth so little my mom would probably pay more for a current picture of me than any magazine. She’s always asking what color my hair is now, and it’s so hard to describe the nuances of my highlights as they grow out.
I’m getting worse too. When my publicist/agents/manager first told me to start tweeting, Instagramming, and Facebooking, I became temporarily obsessed. I remember this feeling from when I was in high school and I would go to class and everyone would be talking about a party I wasn’t invited to the night before. It really sucked, and as soon as I started playing on Twitter, years and years later, those feelings came flooding back. I became obsessed with watching my number of Twitter followers grow, with who is following who, who posts what, how many followers he/she has, especially in comparison to me. It’s kind of a ridiculous time suck, isn’t it? I’m working on moderation in all areas of my life, but I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl, and I needed to back off. My friends tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen. I should have known. I was just as bad as my teenage stepkids—the three of us would sit on the sofa for hours thumbing our way through the Twittersphere and Instagramland. I am going to try not to judge other people for doing it, but I needed to get it under control. I liked not knowing what I was missing, but now we know everything all the time. We know where our friends are, what they are doing, who they are with, and when they are doing something that they didn’t invite us to. We also know when we are dumped for something better. I get canceled on a lot (to be fair, I cancel a lot too), and now I can see/read what the canceler is doing that was better than having dinner with me. Also, I am very sensitive, and I obsessively read my followers’ tweets and got really insecure when they said bad things. I needed to learn to either (a) not read anything, (b) not care (ding ding ding), or (c) quit everything and buy a lavender farm in Oregon. My mom told me when I was little that I needed to toughen up, but I didn’t think I would have to rely on that advice as an adult. Shouldn’t I be tough by now? I want to be beef jerky, not whipped cream. Hollywood, for me, has always felt like a popularity contest. Shouldn’t this town have made my skin at least a little thicker by now? I liked it when I was living in my little bubble where the only jobs I really knew about were the ones I auditioned for or watched once they were released. I was way less insecure before I could read tweets from all of the people I was following and see how busy they were as I sat on my sofa eating an entire pizza and watching Road House on a Tuesday afternoon.
Speaking of popularity contests, the red carpet is just about the worst place to take a stroll if you are having a low-self-esteem day. I have been on the red carpet for projects I am in, and the photographers are screaming out the names of the people walking up behind me. For the premiere of Arrested Development, I was behind David Cross and Amber Tamblyn on the carpet, and the rows and rows of photographers were screaming for her. They screamed, “Amber! Amber! Over here, Amber, OVER HERE!!!” I was standing right in front of them, and their cameras were pointed in the complete opposite direction of my face, and I was actually in Arrested Development. I know Amber Tamblyn is more famous than me, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but doesn’t it mean anything that I had acted in the TV show they were there to report on? I am so shy on the red carpet that to have to fight for the photographers’ attention is just not my style. I’d rather just go in, get some popcorn, and wait for the show to start.
One last thing I feel compelled to share (and will probably regret doing so), something that totally shocked me because I am, apparently, totally naive. Maybe you know about th
is, but my friend just told me that in those magazines you read in nail shops and hair salons, the magazines with all the blondes and Angelina Jolie on the cover, that famous people are sometimes paid to walk around carrying or wearing the stuff they are walking around carrying and wearing!!! Like if you see a photo of a celeb walking down the street holding an Arby’s shake, first of all, those shakes are delicious, so celebrities should walk around with them, but second of all, they were probably paid by Arby’s to do it. They, most likely, had their hair and makeup done too, and I’ll bet you my entire brass snail collection that there is water in that shake cup (Smartwater because Coca-Cola has deals with celebrities, and celebrities don’t eat dairy). I know that some oft-papped stars drive miles and miles out of their way so they can be photographed at prearranged locations Yes, I’m whistle-blowing here, and most likely ensuring that I will never get one of these lucrative offers, but I couldn’t believe it when I found out that those photos weren’t real, that Kim Kardashian didn’t really love (insert beverage name she was last photographed carrying here). Yes, me dumb.
I recently read in one of my favorite beauty blogs, Into the Gloss, a post about Liv Tyler (she’s so cool too, by the way). She talks about how publicity and red carpets used to be different. She used to just wear something from her closet and do her own makeup for movie premieres, but with so many more paparazzi now and all the scrutiny actors are under to look perfect, it’s impossible! I loved reading that; it made me nostalgic for those times, when we were all on a more even playing field. I want to go back to simpler times, when people were famous for their specific talent, when actresses looked more natural, when their faces moved, when I knew the names of the people in the magazines. Jesus, I sound a hundred years old. Sorry, I’ll put away my walker and rotary telephone. I guess I just miss the times when people could just look how they looked and it was personality, talent, and charisma that mattered most, not who wore it best, because I already know the answer to that question—it’s the one with the most Twitter followers.
A Day Off on Location
MARCH 9, 2013
JAMIE MARKS IS DEAD, LIBERTY, NEW YORK
WE SHOT UNTIL LATE LAST NIGHT, SO TODAY I WOKE up around 11:00 a.m. I didn’t stand up until after 2:30 p.m. I got all my food by crawling across my bed and reaching the mini fridge without getting vertical at all, it’s a small room, and most everything is within reaching distance of the bed. I ate Fritos for breakfast. I had hummus as a snack straight from the container using my index finger as a utensil, and a KIND bar for lunch because I didn’t feel like walking to one of the seven fast-food options surrounding the hotel, and the Days Inn doesn’t offer room service. I was irritated because I was watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on my computer and I couldn’t hear the episode because the sound of the Fritos crunching in my mouth was too loud.
Eventually, I put on the same jeans and sweater I have been wearing for several days in a row and walked to the Liberty Diner to write. You can wear the same outfit for days on end when you’re working on location because you only really wear your clothes for the drive to and from work. I ordered my usual at the diner, a Greek salad (still obsessed with feta!), no anchovies, and a side of scrambled egg whites. This is what I eat almost every day here. I wrote for a while in a booth, but mostly I just people watched. A woman was sitting near me with her two kids; one was about five and had a Mohawk. Her mom was one of the waitresses. A man came in and sat at the bar, and for some reason the Mohawked boy really wanted to sit on his lap. The boy’s mom seemed to know the man and didn’t act like she cared either way what her son did. A young couple came in later, the guy was dropping his lady off at work, she was a waitress there too. He sat in a booth with headphones on drinking fountain Cokes and watching her. On my way back to my hotel room I stopped by my friend Mike Potter’s room. He is the makeup artist on the film. We drank Bud Light Limes, a beverage I would never have tried at home, but it’s really delicious and refreshing, and there’s not a lot of options at the AMPM across the street. We watched some episodes of The Real Housewives of Orange County and Vanderpump Rules. We propped his door open, and some of the cast and crew popped in and out. It was a pretty good day. I wonder how long I could live like this. I didn’t work out today and don’t plan to, but I might tomorrow. I should. I will try out my new Jillian Michaels DVD that I bought at Target on my day off last weekend. I also bought several new skin care products that I don’t need, except maybe the face masks. I think I need to start doing more face masks.
Everyone working on the movie is staying here at the Days Inn. It’s like a frat house. Most of us have our own rooms, though some people in the crew had to share. It’s an indie film, and that’s what you have to do sometimes if you want to work on a movie on location. Everyone wanders around the hotel like we own it—I think people even stopped locking their doors because it’s just easier than getting out of bed to open it if someone knocks. Our production office is downstairs in the Starlight Ballroom. The producers found a different office when they were scouting locations before we started filming, but when they got there on the first day, it didn’t have Internet, so they temporarily moved it to the Days Inn until they could find another office space, but they never did. Now they’re stuck here. I think some of the office staff actually never leaves the hotel. At least there are always free snacks in the production office, so I usually grab an apple or banana and a bottle of water before going up to my room at night after work.
Shooting a movie on location is like summer camp, at least my experience of summer camp. You don’t know anyone when you get there, then you become fast friends with almost everyone and wonder how you survived without them in your life, there’s some structured activities (work), some free time (days off), and then it’s over as quickly as it began, and you don’t see or talk to any of your new best friends ever again. It’s sad to think about, but this is usually just how it is. Yes, there are exceptions, those jobs where you meet a true kindred spirit and make a forever friend, but that is rare (I hope that happens with the previously mentioned Mike Potter, fingers crossed). You always have the best of intentions when the job is winding down, but when you get home, there is so much shit you have to deal with because you have been hiding out for a month or more, you try to keep in touch, but time goes by, and before you know it, you don’t.
Reentry can be jarring. Trying to explain to your friends and family what all the jokes were that you shared with your fellow location campers, why you’re using new phrases and who you learned them from. You probably have loads of mail to deal with too, phone calls to return, not to mention that you need to get a new job. That hunt begins as the old one is wrapping up, toward the end of your stay out of town, but if there isn’t one to go directly to, you have to really hustle when you get back to civilization, and that jolts you back to reality and out of camp mode immediately.
It’s hard on friends and family, too. You’re usually in a different time zone, schedules don’t match up, they are eating dinner when you need to go to bed or vice versa. And it’s really hard for the person stuck at home doing all the mundane everyday tasks and keeping shit together while you’re away doing all kinds of new things with new people that he or she has never met. It takes a big person to deal with that. While you’ve been gone, everyone has learned to get on without you, but now you’re back, taking up space and making a mess in places that have been organized in your absence. Your friends don’t feel like going over all the stories and gossip you’ve missed, it’s all old news for them, so you feel just as left out as they do in the world you just left. Everything works itself out in a short time, but reentry can be tough for everyone.
I have worked in a lot of random locations. When I was starting out, I was hoping for exciting and exotic locales like London, the Maldives, or at least Miami. Well, my first on-location movie was shot in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I lived in a Best Western for a month and spent most of my evenings either at the Brat Stop or singin
g karaoke in the lobby bar. Then there was a Holiday Inn in Casa Grande, Arizona. I have no idea where I stayed in Mexicali—I never saw it in daylight. I left before sunrise every morning and returned after sunset every night. In Scottsdale the hotel was the Hotel Valley Ho. It had a funky 1950s theme, and the pool turned into a nightclub on the weekends. Very spring break–like. In Vancouver everyone stays at the Sutton Place, except once. When I was shooting Marmaduke, I got really lucky and got to stay at the Shangri-La, but the hotel had just opened, and the production got an insane deal. I’m convinced I’ll never get to stay there again unless I pay for it. I work in New York, a lot, and have stayed in too many different hotels and apartments there to count. I lived with the entire cast of The Village in a bed-and-breakfast that was rented out for the shoot in rural Pennsylvania. I’ve worked in Lexington, Kentucky, Seattle, Las Vegas, Rhode Island, the Hamptons, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Hawaii (finally, an exotic locale!), New Orleans, Shreveport, and Toronto. Not all so horrible, but not what I was fantasizing about when I got my SAG card.
I have learned to live in, and love, all of these cities. On my days off, I drive around them until I’m lost. I go running and see all the shops and restaurants close-up. I ask locals who look like people I would be friends with where they hang out. I look for parks and museums. I read travel guides. I rent bikes. I actually bought a bike on Craigslist last summer in Toronto because it was cheaper than renting. It’s a fun adventure. Figuring out a new location, pretending I live there. Sure, I have my melodramatic homesick moments when I cry on the phone with my husband, or send long, sad e-mails to my friends back home hoping for sympathy because I’m so lonely, but I’ve gotten good at making new friends. Sometimes I feel like a sailor with a girl in every port, but instead I am an actress with a friend in every town.
