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6/13/05
:::
INTERVIEW WITH PAUL FEIG
Creator
of the hit TV show, Freaks and Geeks, Paul is
also an actor, director and author of two books of personal
essays -- Kick
Me - Adventures in Adolescence
and coming any day now, Superstud:
Or How I Became a 24-year-old Virgin.
FRESH
YARN contributor, Paul Feig talks to fellow TV writer/producer
and FRESH
YARN contributor, Maxine Lapiduss about his new book Superstud:
Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin.
ML:
You've written extensively about your
Freakiness and Geekiness for TV, in personal essays, film,
and books. How did you figure out your niche? When did it
dawn on you that this was a viable artistic and lucrative
theme to explore?
PF: I spent so many years
as an aspiring writer under the illusion that to be a true
writer, you had to write about things that had nothing to
do with you and your life, that you had to make everything
up and that to use anything or anyone from your real life
was cheating. And because of that I produced some of the most
soulless, stilted writing the world has ever seen. I created
characters and situations which I had no take on and so I
wrote these ridiculous scripts and stories that were filled
with characters based on characters I had seen in other people's
work and in whatever version of their reality I could make
up in my head. It wasn't until I decided that I needed to
write a low budget film, so that I could fund and direct it
myself, that I had my first breakthrough.
The movie idea I had was about Death and what would happen
if the Grim Reaper decided he wanted to quit his job. Not
a terribly original idea but it appealed to me because I saw
it as a way to address some subjects I had an interest in
and things I wanted to say about life and humans. And so I
decided to base the character of Death on myself. I figured
that it would be funny if Death was just sort of an awkward,
nerdy, opinionated guy who was trying to figure out his place
in the world. And suddenly I wrote this script and it came
out of me in a less painful way than scripts had normally
come out of me (to be honest, I had rarely even finished a
script because I would strand myself in a world I had no take
on, and so the story would just peter out as I lost interest
in it). And then when people read it, they actually liked
it. I didn't end up getting to make the film because it was
too expensive, but it didn't matter. I suddenly felt connected
to the material, and the fact that people really related to
it made me feel like I might be on to something. Maybe my
belief that real writers didn't write about themselves wasn't
true.
I wrote another low budget script that this time was really
low budget. And to make it that low budget, I decided to write
it for myself and a few of my friends to star in (I also decided
that the film should take place in one day on one location
to keep the costs really low). And because of this, I found
myself writing even more about myself and my hopes and fears
and then channeling other parts of my personality into the
other characters. I then used the personalities of the people
who were going to be in the movie with me to make their characters
more real and honest. And even though the movie was made and
the quality of it is questionable, the thing that came out
of it was my confidence to tell stories that were close to
me and my life. At the end of the day, I realized that these
were stories I had a take on and, more importantly, that I
could write and actually finish!
And this was what led me to write the spec pilot script for
Freaks and Geeks (which I wrote when I was
out on a Midwestern college tour with the above movie, which
was called Life Sold Separately). And now it
seems that I can't STOP writing about myself and my geekiness.
It's a short road from a creative breakthrough to flogging
a dead horse.
ML:
Is it pleasurable for you to write? If not, what compels you
to do it? What form do you like best -- TV, essays...etc?
PF: That's a hard question
to answer honestly. As I sit here now, I can easily say that
I love writing. But when I'm starting a project or stuck in
the day to day problems that arise whenever any of us put
pen to paper, I really hate it. But then when it's finished,
I can say that I love writing again. And so my motto seems
to be the following:
"I
hate writing. I love having written."
As far as my favorite form to write in, that is also hard
to answer honestly. I think that I like writing prose and
essays more than I like writing scripts, but when I'm having
a good burst on a script, it's more fun than anything to me.
It's just that those good moments come few and far between.
It's like a day of script writing is sitting around trying
to get yourself to have a few good bursts of energy and creativity.
The rest is all browbeating and confidence-crushing as you
sit there and say, "I have no idea what I'm doing and
this is the project where everyone's gonna figure out that
I'm a total fraud." And then you have a good burst and
you feel better until you push your luck and try to have more
good bursts than your brain will give you that day. Then you
end the day on the down note of "Man, I suck" and
"I just wasted an entire day."
But I guess if writing was fun, everybody would be doing it.
Oh, wait. Everybody IS doing it!
ML:
What's the best advice for people trying to find their voice
thru writing? How do you tell someone how to find it?
PF: You just have to put
yourself in the situations your characters are in, if you're
writing fiction or screenplays. It's like before I figured
out that it wasn't cheating to use your life and your experiences
in your writing, I would try to write science fiction (hey,
I TOLD you I was a geek). But I would always make the characters
so out of any reality I knew because they were in such absurd
situations. But then I realized that even if the situation
and circumstances your characters are in are nothing you've
ever been through, you still have to put yourself in those
situations and figure out what you would do.
This doesn't mean that every character has to do what you
would do. Otherwise you'd obviously have a story filled with
clones. But you have to divide up the different parts of your
personality and sprinkle them around on all your characters.
Then, even if you're writing a villain who does things you
would never in your life do, you can get inside his head and
try to meld your decision making processes and your beliefs
and insecurities into the personality of this fictional character
and then hopefully what will come out the other side is something
fresh and surprising, both to you and your audience.
It all goes back to one of the things I always climb on the
soapbox about and have since I was at USC film school back
in the 1980s. I was surrounded by film students who would
all watch movies all day long, every day, and who were obsessed
with movies. And that was obviously fine (why else would you
go to film school?). But then what would happen is that people
would write scripts and talk about their characters and plots
based on all the movies they had seen in their lives. And
so you'd hear that one character was a lot like this one character
from some famous movie, and that another character was like
a character from another movie, and that the story was inspired
by the plot of yet another movie. And so what you end up reading
is all this recycled reality. In fact, it wasn't even recycled
reality. It was a recycling of a recycling of a recycling.
People were (and still are, it seems) telling stories based
on stories that were told by people who had based their storytelling
on the stories of others who had perhaps told stories based
on other people's stories. I'm not saying this is completely
wrong. It's okay to be inspired by things. What I'm saying
is that if you're basing characters and their specific actions
on stories that have already existed, you're giving up having
a fresh take on the human condition. You're basing the decisions
and actions of your characters on the decisions of other writers.
We're all susceptible to it. We've all been so inundated by
movies and TV that when we come up with a plot and a character
has to react to something, a lot of times our first instinct
is to have that character do something we've seen other characters
do in other movies. It's then that I always try to stop myself
and say, "Wait, would I REALLY do that if I was that
character?" And more often than not, I discover that,
no, I wouldn't react like that. I'd do the complete opposite.
Or I'd do something that even I'm surprised at.
My feeling is that if you're doing nothing but seeing movies
and TV and basing your creative decision making on things
you've seen, you should instead of going to the movies one
day head down to the bus station. Or downtown. Or some neighborhood
you never in your life considered going to. And there you
should look around and see what people are doing and how they're
reacting to things and what conditions they're living under.
Whenever I do that, I almost always come away with a new idea
or take on something, no matter how small it is. Our job as
artists is to try to show the human condition in all its forms
and to try to get people to relate to each other and to not
feel so separate from the group. Granted, we also have to
write things that sell, but I feel that if we do things that
are really different and still interesting, then the people
in charge will respond.
Or if they don't, at least you don't have to feel like a total
sellout! Oh, you might not make your rent, but your self-respect
will be intact.
I don't think I'm giving out very good advice here.
ML: Anything you want people to know about your new
book coming out, Superstud?
PF: It's really embarrassing.
There are stories I tell in there that as I was writing them
I kept asking myself, "What in the world are you writing
that for?" But my goal was to a) make people laugh, and
b) maybe make some people say "I've done THAT but I always
thought I was the only one." The only danger with this
is that people might not do "b" and instead say,
"Wow, what a freak that guy is. I think I need to poke
my eyes out now."
Stories about sex, the fear of sex, bad dating, unsuccessful
relationships, and ill-conceived acts of onanism fill Superstud.
Enjoy.
ML: What
names were you tortured by as a kid? With Feig I'm sure there
were some doozies. (Probably nothing as bad as turning Maxine
Lapiduss into Maxi-pad LaPenis!)
PF:
Maxine, my heart goes out to you. The top contenders in my
life were "Fig Newton," as in the fruit-filled cookie,
and everyone's favorite, Paul Fag. A name I really don't like
is "Feigster." Don't know why that bugs me but it
does. But as a kid, when your name is only two letters off
from a slur against homosexuals, the local bully doesn't have
to invest too much time and effort in coming up with ways
to insult you. If only I had grown up in London. Then my nickname
would simply have been slang for a cigarette.
Paul
Feig created and co-executive produced NBC's acclaimed
show Freaks and Geeks which garnered him nominations
for two comedy writing Emmy Awards. He
wrote, produced and directed the independent feature film
entitled Life Sold Separately, which played
on the festival circuit and recently finished writing and
directing his second feature film entitled I Am David,
which will be released October 8th.
As
an actor, Paul was a series regular on Sabrina the Teenage
Witch as well as several other television shows including
Dirty Dancing, Good Sports, The Jackie Thomas Show
and The Louie Show. Film credits include Tom
Hanks' That Thing You Do. Feig
has recently been directing episodes of Fox's hit series,
Arrested Development, as well as being the
author of Kick Me - Adventures in Adolescence,
published by Random House. His second book, Superstud:
Too Much Information About the Author, will
be released in the summer of 2005, as well as writing and
directing a feature film adaptation of the young adult book
Stargirl for Paramount Studio/Nickelodeon.
Maxine
Lapiduss is an entertainer, TV comedy writer/producer,
and now, "Reality Show Diva." Beginning July 27th,
Maxine is one of the stars in an 8-hour reality series for
Bravo called Situation: Comedy -- a documentary
in the style of Project Green Light about writing and
producing sitcoms. Sean Hayes (Will and Grace) created
the series.
Maxine
has written and produced some of the most popular half hour
comedies of the past decade including the final season of
Ellen (Three Emmy nominations), Roseanne,
(Emmy nomination as Best Comedy Series and a Golden Globe
award the years Maxine was there), Home Improvement
(People's Choice Award for Best Comedy Series) and the last
season of Dharma and Greg, to name a few. Her
live show, SITUATION TRAGEDY: Observations on 10 years
in Hollywood...with Bongos, wowed critics and audiences
alike. It ran to sold-out houses in Hollywood, won fourteen
Dramalogue Awards, and was nominated for an Ovation Award
(The LA "Obie") for best New Musical.
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6/14/05
::: INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER LEHR AND BETT WILLIAMS
One
day, two Los Feliz locals were walking in the hills of Griffith
Park not too far from the Hollywood sign. Jennifer Lehr was
going down the hill. Bett Williams was going up. Jennifer's
dog Billie got the two strangers talking. As it turns out,
they had a lot to talk about. Both have new memoirs out.
And both write about sex in brutally honest and refreshing
ways. They continue their conversation here:
JL:
Your first book, Girl
Walking Backwards, is a novel. Your next, The
Wresting Party is a memoir. Why the different
genres?
BW:
When I first started writing seriously in my mid-20s, I had
an idea that books had to be very "literate" in
a way that was somewhat academic. Academic meaning liberal
arts college-ish. Thus, GWB was a very straightforward
novel. By the time I got to The Wrestling Party
I'd let go of those constraints.
JL:
We came to writing memoirs from totally opposite directions.
I was in art school frustrated that I couldn't say exactly
what I wanted to within the constraints of more visual work
so I turned to writing. My first project/book 78 Drawings
of my Face was 500 pages of stream-of-consciousness
writing inside a highly conceptual package. I had no intentions
of writing a literary novel of any kind. And then with Ill-Equipped
for a Life of Sex, I found that I wanted to write
a more conventional book-one that could be read from start
to finish, with a clearer point of view.
Now
for an abrupt segue: I love how you write about sex/desire:
straightforwardly. It can be terrible, erotic, interesting,
boring, awkward etc. but you don't try to eroticize or romanticize
it. Thank you.
BW:
Sex is so often ignored, hammered with poetic metaphor or
turned into erotica. I don't like erotica. For me, writing
about sex is a way to get to all those deeper truths that
go beyond the superficial titillation of the sex itself. Sex
is a mirror for EVERYTHING that's going on. That's one of
the main themes of your book, right?
JL:
Gosh, so well put. I think erotica/romanticized writing about
sex not only hides truth but ultimately can make people miserable
because it warps expectations about sex and relationships.
Yes I write about problems with sex as being symptoms of other
problems: terrible communication, depression, anxiety, money
and those warped expectations I just mentioned.
What
are you thoughts about writing explicitly about other people
in non-fiction?
BW:
The Wrestling Party has a scene where a
friend of mine is tied up in a hammock and she pees on my
tile floor. People often assume I'm disclosing everything.
I'm actually quite careful. I leave a lot out. I don't know
if it's an ethical thing or I'm afraid they won't like me
or be mad at me. I guess every writer has their own barometer
of how honest they are ready to be. Full disclosure doesn't
always necessarily equal honesty. It's a fine line. It seems
though, with your work, your emotional honesty comes through
a dedication to almost complete disclosure.
JL:
Yes this is a tricky area that I've grappled with. Often one
of the first questions people ask me after reading Ill-Equipped
is: "What does your husband think of it?!" They
can't believe that he would be ok with me telling the world
he lost his sex drive for a couple of years. The truth is,
not only is John incredibly supportive, he knew what he was
getting into. When we first started dating he read 78
Drawings of My Face-a non-fiction work about 78 fellow
students and professors-from cover to cover. And loved it.
I actually mentioned on our first date that I was working
on Ill-Equipped for a Life of Sex.
But knowing is one thing and actually living through it is
another. I did tell him that if there was anything in my book
that was really uncomfortable for him that I would discuss
it with him. But he was ok with all of it. As a recovering
alcoholic he deals with being honest and sharing his story
all of the time. He's come such a long way that he doesn't
care if people know his impotency was for due to a strong
cocktail of depression, anxiety, propecia, fear of intimacy.
He's glad actually that it might help other people, to use
the cliché, "not feel so alone." That said,
he's the first to tell people that we're screwing now. I did,
however, change most people's names in the book. Also, I did
disguise people who I thought couldn't handle it to a greater
degree than others I thought wouldn't care.
BW:
Living in LA, I find myself wanting to write about celebrities
but it feels too gossipy. There's this writer, Camden Joy,
who takes celebrities and turns them into fictional characters.
Fabulous. I'd like to be able to do that. Instead I'm stuck
with the "How I came close to stealing Sophia Coppola's
bathing suit" story. Writing about sex no longer makes
me feel exposed, but writing about how famous people trigger
this really gross desire/shame dynamic really freaks me out.
JL:
It seems you've found your new topic. Are you writing something
in that vein? I think I'm stuck with the mundane topic plaguing
mid-thirty somethings like myself: Why have kids?
BW:
From anxiety about sex to anxiety about procreation! Perfect.
And no, I'm not writing seriously about celebrities yet. I'm
going to try to avoid it as long as I can.
(Bett Williams,
Billie and Jennifer Lehr in Griffith Park)
Jennifer
Lehr made a splash in 1998 when
she self-published the controversial book 78 Drawings
of my Face, a no-holds-barred look at the UCLA Graduate
Art School scene. She is the author of Ill-Equipped
for a Life of Sex: A Memoir (ReganBooks/ HarperCollins,
2004). An Elle Magazine "Must Read," they
called the book "bracing: "hilarious" "riveting"
and "stunning." The book was also hailed as a "brilliant,
razor-sharp read" by Us Magazine. It is coming
out in paperback September 2005.
With
her husband John Lehr, Jennifer is developing a television
show based on Ill-Equipped for Landscape Entertainment.
She and John have also recorded commentaries for NPR's All
Things Considered. Jennifer is a fellow of the artist
colony Yaddo. Jennifer also founded Private Edition Celebration
Books in 1998, a business that creates custom-designed coffee
table books/visual biographies commemorating people's lives.
Subjects include legendary producer Norman Lear and visionary
billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad. Her
Website: www.jenniferlehr.com
Bett
Williams is the author of the novel Girl
Walking Backwards and the memoir The
Wrestling Party. She was also seen wrestling in
oil on HBO's Real Sex.
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6/15/05
::: INTERVIEW WITH LAURIE NOTARO by KATIE FORD
Laurie
Notaro, author of several humorous memoirs including the best-selling
Idiot
Girls' Action-Adventure Club and Autobiography
of a Fat Bride, continues her adventures in marriage,
friendship, family, and the not-so-glorifying work of being
on a book tour in her latest book, We
Thought You'd Be Prettier: Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive.
Katie
Ford, multi-talented writer (Desperate Housewives,
Miss Congeniality, etc.) and FRESH
YARN contributor asks Laurie some questions.
KF:
Laurie, you are currently on tour for your new book. For those
who've never done it, what is a book tour like?
LN:
Well, to sum it up nicely, I once had a radio host tell me
sympathetically, "There's nothing worse than a book tour
-- except no book tour." It's a necessary evil. Most
people think that authors zip around the country in First
Class, get waited on hand and foot and when they're not meeting
their armies of fans, spend time getting hot rock massages
and pedicures, eating lobster in bed and attending parades
held in their honor. Unless you're Dan "DaVinci Code"
Brown or Danielle Steel, that's a bigger myth than eating
a ball of mozzarella will make you skinny. First of all, I
have feet like a hobbit so nobody is getting their hands on
my little piggies, and second of all, there's not enough time
to floss properly, let alone go to a spa, and if you DO have
spare time, it's wisest to spend it washing your dirty underwear
out in the sink. You spend most of your time eating cold eggs
in room service, standing in airport security lines, waiting
for planes, sitting next to someone in coach who has no boundaries
concerning personal space, and then going to bookstore after
bookstore in each city to sign stock. That's your whole day.
But then, the payoff is at night at an event. For me, it's
probably comparable to childbirth -- it's a pain in the ass
to get there, you're swollen, puffy and cranky and you've
probably vomited at least once that day, but then you get
to meet all of these cool girls who come to the readings and
could all be your friends. The girls rock. We have a great
time at the readings, I tell stories, they tell stories, sometimes
there is song, we laugh and then there's usually dessert.
I love meeting them -- how can you not love someone that drives
seven hours and has blown off a final to come to a reading?
Usually, there are a bunch of people that I've corresponded
with over the years -- some from when I was a columnist at
the ASU college newspaper -- so I know them, we've just never
met. It's incredible. There's nothing like it. Of course,
then you always have the reading when nobody or one person
shows up, and she just got caught sitting in one of the chairs
to flip through a Nora Roberts book when the reading starts,
and then the bookstore manager makes some employees come and
sit down, too, so you don't feel quite so much like setting
yourself on fire. There's always at least one reading like
that each tour. THE READING WHEN NOBODY CAME.
KF:
How do your friends and family react to being written about?
Are they blindly flattered or litigiously outraged? (or something
in between).
LN: Well, typically, everyone
is a good sport. Sometimes. Part of the time. It depends.
The person I always run everything by before I hand the manuscript
in is Jamie, my best friend. If she doesn't okay the pieces
that she's in, I won't use them. That's never happened, because
I always read her the pieces when she's drunk so she's always
game (kidding), but there are other people who have some problems
with some of the stuff that's in there. Like my mother. When
my second book came out, there's a mention of a scare I had
with VD, but I justified writing about it because I didn't
actually have VD; it was merely a "VD Scare." But
months had gone by and she never said anything, and I figured,
well, it will take her a good chunk of time to finish that
Rosie O'Donnell book in her bathroom since she only reads
it five minutes at a time, so I'm safe for at least a few
years before she moves on to my book -- but the one day she
called me and said, "You had sex with that animal you
brought over here the one day? I HOPE you caught a filthy
disease. You were NAKED with that animal?" Frankly, I
needed to be institutionalized after that phone call, I mean,
that violated so many sacred boundaries that I should have
rightfully spontaneously combusted. I did find out that my
mother tells her friends that I "exaggerate" about
her in the books (particularly her QVC "problem")
and that I have a "very vivid imagination," and
I had to confront her and say, "Stop saying that! People
are going to think that I'm lying and we both know I'm not.
So if you keep telling your church friends that I'm making
this up, I'm showing up at your next prayer chain meeting
and I'm going to take them on a QVC tour of this house and
I'm not sparing anything, not the pina colada maker or the
food dehydrator. You will never need that thing, you are not
an astronaut!"
KF:
How did you first get published? (did
you self publish at one point?)
LN:
I did self-publish initially -- like a million other writers
out there, I found it hard to get published the first time.
I had tried to get Idiot Girls published for about seven years,
and for a portion of that time, I had a literary agent who
couldn't find a publisher for me, either. It was tiring. One
day, I was looking for a book on barnesandnoble.com and saw
an ad for a publishing on demand company and I decided to
look into it. I did a lot of research on them and decided
that maybe this was what I needed to do to get my stuff out
there. I figured that if I proved to myself it could sell
and I had the numbers to back it up, maybe a traditional publisher
would take a closer look instead of just sending out a rejection
notice. So I did it, it cost me $99 and I marketed the hell
out of it. With most publishing on demand companies, you can
get your book listed on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com, so
I concentrated my marketing online -- mostly at Amazon, who,
at the time, had a advertising offer that worked really well
for me (it's now defunct). I took an "ad" out on
the pages of similar authors, and the agent of one of those
authors saw my book listed on her client's page and found
me through my web site. She asked for the book and signed
me on after she read it. We worked on the proposal for a second
book for about a month, and then we sent it out. Villard,
an imprint of Random House, bought the book, Autobiography
of a Fat Bride -- and the first book, The Idiot Girls' Action
Adventure Club, as well -- two days later. I couldn't believe
it. Overall, however, I'm really glad I spent all of those
years trying to get published, because otherwise, I wouldn't
have known just how lucky I was and I would have taken it
for granted. I've met other authors who went on a radio show
and then had a book deal a day later. That wouldn't have been
good for me. In the end, I'm fortunate that my publishing
story wasn't like that -- I think it was important for me
to really work for it and to have those disappointments and
rejections. It made me work harder and it made me really question
whether I had enough belief in myself, and my book, to push
it through.
KF:
Have you ever drunkenly referred to yourself as a genius?
LN: No, but I have drunkenly
introduced myself as "Laurie Whorie," the dignity-shattering
nickname a pot-smoking slutty girl in high school attached
to me. I just saw her at my high school reunion, too -- she
has three soon-to-be felon children and I couldn't tell what
was more fake -- her tan or her gold accouterments, both of
which were embarrassingly excessive.
KF:
Growing up would you say your writing
and your voice was more influenced by books or television?
(and which books or shows or people).
LN: Well, I was a Little
House on the Prairie freak, and I read the books before
there was a show -- that made me want to become a writer,
but seeing the show made me something of a spaz, which was
a sad indication of the path the rest of my life would take.
When I was little, I wanted button up boots so bad that I
took a butter knife and unscrewed the blades from ice skates
and wore them as boots. With a sunbonnet I forced my mother
to make me. My mother said the neighbors were beginning to
think I was a Quaker, so I was only allowed to wear my Little
House outfit in the backyard. However, I don't think that
had a lot of influence on my voice as a writer -- probably
watching Rhoda had more of an influence -- I wanted to be
just like her and wear gauchos and head scarves (on the days
I wasn't wearing a sunbonnet and ice skates). Overall, I don't
really know where my voice came from -- it's really just the
way I talk to my friends. I know that's cheating, but it's
true.
KF:
I think you are brilliant. (That isn't really a question but
here's a question mark to make it look like it is)? Thank
you for your time? I can't wait to read your new book?
LN:
I think you're brilliant, Katie Ford. I really, really, really
hope that someday we get to work together. I think that would
rock, because usually, I don't want to work with anybody.
Anyway. Continued massive success on DH, and let's keep in
touch. Gotta go. My cat just peed in a box of credit cards
bills. Holy fuck. Little asshole.
Many many thanks,
laurie
Why
not check out all of Laurie's books?
For
more info on Laurie, go to her website www.laurienotaro.com
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6/16/05
::: LORI GOTTLIEB and ANDREA SEIGEL
Lori
Gottlieb, FRESH
YARN contributor and author of several books including
the national bestseller, Stick
Figure: A Diary of My Former Self, talks with
Andrea Seigel, author of Like
the Red Panda, which Publishers Weekly
calls, "Astute, confident and keenly articulated."
LG:
Your
first novel, LIKE THE RED PANDA, is about a
smart, eccentric, suicidal high school senior in Orange County
who's headed for Princeton. You grew up in Orange County and
wrote the book as a college student at Brown. In fact, you
set the book at your real-life high school, without changing
the school's name. What elements of your own life did you
use in writing this book?
AS:
I guess you could say that the entire book is a love poem
to suicide, which is also (and I know it sounds weird) what
my life has been. Beyond that, there are tons of episodes
in the book taken from experience -- the opening scene that
has Stella being forced to throw an "invisible"
beach ball up and down in drama class, that came from this
one time my parents signed me up for summerstock. They made
me play fake tennis there. And I wasn't "keeping my eye
on the ball" or whatever, so I got bitched out. Then
we learned how to "theater-slap," except I failed
at that, too, because I left a red handprint on my teacher's
face. But I like to say that PANDA is about 90% true
to my life, with the remaining 10% of untruth being that my
parents are still alive, that I've never gone topless in front
of an AP English classmate, and I don't eat cereal.
What
about your autobiographical work, especially your "autobiography
of an anorexic youth," STICK FIGURE: A DIARY OF
MY FORMER SELF? How much truth do you keep in your
stuff, and how much is sacrificed in the name of cohesive
storytelling?
LG:
Wait, first: you don't eat cereal? Why
not? Maybe you should write about a character who won't eat
cereal. Anyway, in STICK FIGURE, it's based on my diaries
from when I was 11, but because I recorded the play-by-play
of every single interaction with friends, teachers, my parents,
boys I liked, my shrink -- you name it -- I had to edit the
entries into a cohesive narrative. So, for instance, the chapter
on my first boy-girl party begins with a paragraph about the
classmate I had a crush on (simply to inform the scene). But
in the diaries, entries about this boy went on for months
and months (and pages and pages). Also, even though the diaries
are edited, I wanted to keep the voice authentic. I corrected
for spelling and grammar but I tried to stay true to my language
and speech patterns at 11 years old.
My
mother, though, had an issue about "truth" after
she read the book. There's an incident in which, after watching
Charlie's Angels, I tell my parents that if the Angels
thought I was too thin, I'd believe THEM, because clearly
they know what thin is. So the next week Jaclyn Smith comes
over to take me out. And I wrote about how I knew my brother
had brought his friends over to gawk at Jaclyn Smith because
all their bikes were in the driveway when we pulled up after
lunch. So my mother says, "I don't think I ever let your
brother's friends park their bikes in the driveway."
Of all the issues she might have had with the book, THIS was
her concern about verisimilitude.
But
back to PANDA: I changed everyone's names except for
those of my immediate family members. Did people from your
high school read PANDA and recognize themselves, even
though you didn't use their real names? How close were these
characters to real people you went to school with? Or did
it happen that you completely made up a character and somebody
claimed that character as him/herself?
AS:
Cereal daunts me. I'm just really turned off by the idea of
eating a whole bunch of small crunchy things for a meal. I
can barely deal with Skittles. I don't feel the same way about
pasta because even though pasta is similarly a bunch of small
things pretending to
be one bigger thing, a spoonful of macaroni and cheese will
coalesce itself and at least pretend better.
I
think your mom and my mom should start hanging out. Last year
a reporter from a paper interviewed me and got tons of things
wrong, including the actual text from my book. My mom read
the article and all she said was, "Our house isn't beige!"
She was pissed the woman got our exterior paint color wrong.
As
for people from my high school reading the book and recognizing
themselves, that's only really happened with my friends, who
I made obvious on purpose as sort of a shout-out. There are
two people in the book who should recognize themselves because
their names are barely scrambled and I'm totally bitchy about
them, but they haven't. To be even more bitchy, I suspect
this is because they don't read. And then there's my high
school boyfriend, Jonny, who told my friend Taryn (Jonny and
I aren't in contact any more) that he "knows" the
charismatic boyfriend in my book is obviously based on him.
Which he's not.
Speaking
of ex-boyfriends- what I really want to know from you is if
you've ever been involved with someone who read your book
first and then wanted to meet you because of it? Or, alternately,
if you've become close with someone who's read your book after
you got together, and then had a strong reaction to the "you"
depicted in it?
LG:
Well, once I was boarding a plane during
book tour and I heard some guy yell, "STICK FIGURE! Hey,
Stick Figure!" So I turn around and this guy is running
toward me saying he recognized me from the book jacket but
forgot my name and wanted to sit next to me on the plane.
He said he's always wanted to date someone like me. It was
weird, because I don't think most guys are intrigued by 11-year-old
anorexic girls.
But
with boyfriends, the ones who read the book before meeting
me often have trouble distinguishing the preteen me from the
current me. And then they're confused when I'm not that girl.
Maybe even disappointed. My cynicism as an 11-year-old is
funnier and easier to take than my cynicism now. But I also
feel like reading the book gives boyfriends insight into why
I am the way I am today. It's like the Cliff's Notes on all
the stuff they missed before they met me and it informs little
things like why saying, "End of discussion" makes
me go Postal.
I
like it best when boyfriends read the book after they've gotten
to know me a bit but before they've met my parents. This way,
I don't have to give them the run-down on my dysfunctional
family. They've already been briefed.
While
we're on family dysfunction, I'm curious: Is there anything
you revealed in your book about your upbringing (despite PANDA
being "fiction") that your parents were pissed about?
Did they feel that since so much of the book is based on your
life, their privacy might have been invaded? Were they worried,
for instance, that because the main character is suicidal,
other people in their community would judge them for having
a "suicidal" daughter?
AS:
Whoa,
the plane guy must have really been staring at your author
photo because it's pretty hard to recognize authors from those.
That's a hardcore groupie.
To answer your question, my parents weren't really pissed
about anything specific in the book (maybe this is because
they don't appear in it at all) but I know my mom doesn't
always love my dark subject matter. So I think she might have,
at one point (although she's gotten used to it), been a little
queasy about people thinking I'm depressed and suicidal, but
she seems to have adjusted. At a Passover seder last week
I even did an abbreviated version of my pro-suicide spiel
during dinner, and she seems to have become
pretty immune to it. I think she's been far more horrified
by the "embarrassing" and "unfeminine"
details I've included in my nonfiction writing -- I know for
a fact she was horrified when I put up an old diary entry
about my childhood constipation on my website, and she totally
hates it when I do tampon ad analysis. That's the stuff she
gets pissed about -- I guess bodily function stuff.
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Lori
Gottlieb
is the author of the national bestseller, Stick Figure:
A Diary of My Former Self, an American Library Association
"Best Books 2001." Lori's second book, Inside
the Cult of Kibu, is an exposé of her experience
as editor-in-chief of an online teen magazine that she describes
as "Heathers meets Lord of the Flies."
A commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered,"
Lori's work has appeared in Time, The
New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,
People, Elle, Glamour,
Slate, and Salon, among many
others. Her personal essays appear in the anthologies
This Side of Doctoring, Scoot Over Skinny,
and The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt.
You can waste a lot of time by clicking through her Website
at www.lorigottlieb.com.
Andrea
Seigel's
debut novel, LIKE THE RED PANDA (Harcourt),
came out in April 2004 and was named one of amazon.com's best
ten debuts of the year. Her second book, TO FEEL STUFF,
comes out (also Harcourt) in spring 2006. If katie holmes
can declare that she had childhood fantasies of being with
Tom Cruise and have it come true, then Andrea would like to
announce that as a teen, she had fantasies of being with Trent
Reznor.
6/17/05
::: KATIE FORD
We
asked multi-talented writer (Desperate Housewives,
Miss Congeniality, etc.) and FRESH
YARN contributor Katie Ford some questions:
FY:
You started as a stand-up at a very
young age, how did you make the transition from writing jokes
to writing scripts?
KF:
You didn't mention my illistrious minicareer as a child actress
in Canada. I first wanted to (God help me) act -- so the first
thing I wrote (when I was 18) was a pilot I was to star in.
Shockingly, it never got off the ground, but I realized, a)
I'd rather sit home and write in my sweats than have to go
to a Diet Pepsi audition in a bathing suit and b) I loved
writing.
FY:
Do you remember who it was that first
acknowledged your gift for writing? What did they say?
KF:
It was a man named Joe Partington -- he produced a Canadian
Sitcom (what? what are those?) and he was the first one I
gave my pilot to -- he said "You are a real writer".
FY:
Are you able to share of yourself through
writing for TV and movies? How is the personal essay form
different for you?
KF:
The personal essay form is obviously the most true form. It
is like the condensed version of my voice -- the other forms
have the version after you add water. TV -- as a writer in
episodic TV your assignemt it to write to the voice of the
show or the creator of the show and lend your own voice to
it. Movies are a bigger beast -- again, my goal is to lend
my voice to the piece, to the story, but I am fully aware
of the other components I am serving. It is rarely "this
happened to me" kind of sharing of myself -- again, more
of lending my voice as part of a collaboration.
FY:
Has anyone ever described your work
(in a review, etc.) in a way that totally missed the point
or surprised you? Don't say who, but tell us what.
KF:
After living through reviews by Canadian Critics (I won't
say who, but her name rhymes with Antonia Zerbesias -- oh,
wait, maybe that was her name), I decided not to read reviews.
Although, did you see the raves I got for Laura Ingalls
Wilder's Little House on the Prairie? Oops, I didn't either.
FY:
If E! Entertainment Television decided
to turn the camera on writers and they were going to do YOUR
"E True Hollywood Story," what would be something
SHOCKING that they would exploit and use to get viewers to
tune in?
KF:
That when I was 15, Keanu Reeves wanted to date me. And I
used to love the Bay City Rollers.
# # #
Katie
Ford started writing for television on Family Ties.
She went on to create and Executive Produce a hit series for
Canadian television (she is aware that is an oxymoron). The
series, Material World, won Canada's Gemini
Award for Best Comedy and a Women in Film and Video Award.
Katie then wrote and produced for various U.S. television
shows and has written several television movies including
ABC's Mary and Rhoda for Mary Tyler Moore and
Valerie Harper, and Redhead:The Life of Lucille Ball
for CBS.
She
co-wrote the film Miss Congeniality and wrote
and produced a six-hour miniseries for ABC based on the first
Little House on the Prairie novel by Laura Ingalls
Wilder. Katie was also recently a writer/producer on
Desperate Housewives.
TAKE
ME TO THE PERSONAL ESSAYS
FRESH
DAILY ARCHIVES
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