#19 Dead at the Gala
The stickiness that is being a young artist.
Hi hello! My beautiful and amazing readers. I am drowning in deadlines! Instead of enjoying a seasonal drink at Starbucks while watching Gilmore Girls on my phone, I am deep in Word docs and Canva templates, which makes me sound like a marketing girly, but I am actually writing my COMPLEX FEMINIST SCREENPLAY! Ok? Alright. Yes. There has not been a column for the usual while. So, I am very happy to announce that I got a juicy submission for us to dissect! My proposition is this: I will whine about my life, so you don’t have to cry about yours. Let’s do it?! I say yes.
Someone wrote:
“I always compare myself to other actors because I barely get jobs even though I put EVERYTHING I have into it. It makes me furious to see people get jobs because they are born into the industry and not because of talent and hard work. The jealousy sometimes eats me up. Especially when I notice how fake this industry seems to be.”
Oh, Anon. I feel you. Last week I went to a film gala. The next morning, I kind of wanted to be dead. And it has everything to do with your submission.
It was the second invitation to this red-carpet award ceremony I have had the honor to receive in my young career as a writer and director. A fancy (and ultimately boring) BUT IMPORTANT black-tie event at the opera. Free drinks and infinite appetizers! Even cake! All the best stuff, famous actors, producers, directors – a room full of talent. A room full of judges! The last time I also wanted to be dead but that was two years ago! Back then, I had felt like a total nobody because I was! I had shown up in a vintage white dress that kind of looked like a bridal gown and made me feel like a stupid child. Like a Lana del Rey fan.
This time, I thought, everything would be different. Wanting to be dead, that was before things in my career had kind of taken off. Now, I was excited to go. I knew that this time, I would be wearing a tweed blazer like the real professional writer that I am. I knew that there would be people there waiting for me. Not just to greet me from afar, out of politeness, but to talk to me. I had managed to become a little less of a total nobody over those two years. It. Would. Be. Different. This. Time. Around.
Anon. This industry, our industry, the film biz, it’s annoyingly tough. You’re forced to constantly get yourself out there, throw yourself into a costume, maybe in your case also that of dress and heels, just to then not get noticed, not get recognized and feel like a Lana del Rey fan. It is part of the deal for at least a little while when you’re still trying to get your foot in the door. You will spend years smiling at people who don’t know your name and don’t care about the kind of work you put in day after day to perfect the craft you have chosen to dedicate your life to. It can be harder than your real actual job. The only thing that will make you survive this torture is confidence, and… something else. Something I will come back to later.
You see, at these events you sit through approximately three and a half hours of award speeches, which tend to either be obnoxious and pathetic, or, at best, very long. They make you drift off into your own world. In my world, I am also thinking about awards. I am thinking about my career and my talent and the many things I am still not good at despite it feeling like I have been practicing way too long already. As if dozing in bed, I will drift in and out of my world and the present, only catching fragments of the speeches the laudators are giving on stage. Dreaming of artist residencies in Spain and film festival invitations to France, something like “…exceptional talent and artistic vision at just 22 years old” will catapult me right back to my seat. 22 as in twenty-two?????? What the actual fuck!
Jealousy has such a strange physicality to it you can really feel it jolt through your whole body. Sometimes I will feel so tense that I will get a headache from it. The other thing is that jealousy is usually followed by shame and if we don’t want to feel it, we will try to stay angry. Find ways to explain away someone’s accomplishments we feel threatened by. I, to keep with that example, will be in my seat, doing complex math: When were they born (22 years ago), when did they graduate (and where from), are their parents immigrants (what kind) and is their last name sounding a little too aristocratic for them to have real talent? I am just like the next person; I don’t want to feel bad feelings. I’m not that smart either! Well unfortunately, this kind of behavior will make you bitter and it may make you want to be dead at an award ceremony you have had the honor to have been invited to.
When the boring part of the ceremony had ended and it was time for drinks and networking, I had to pretend that I didn’t just spend the past three hours calculating the net worth and family trees of people I have never met. I was supposed to glide across the room like a charming and mysterious artist when in reality I felt like an epic fraud with sweaty palms and a rapidly disintegrating sense of self-worth. On a good day I can be a social butterfly, even while networking. I can come up with interesting questions. I can make people have a good time. But because I had just been calculatin’ and spiralin’, I turned into a toxic sociopathic lizard person. Every conversation started sounding like a test: Do they know who I am? Should I pretend that I don’t care if they don’t? Do they think I just got invited because I was some underpaid set runner replacement for a project? Embarrassing. I was giving invisible girl that night. Then, later that evening, it actually happened. Someone did not recognize me who coulda shoulda would have been able to. It happens. I should know better, I should know to regulate my feelings, hell, even use it to my advantage that they were sorry for the mishap right away! I didn’t. I just continued to spiral.
Anon. Nepotism is real. The game is rigged. We all know that. The film industry lives off favors being infinitely exchanged; if you’re not part of this cycle (yet) you don’t just feel like you’re excluded, you will notice it firsthand by the way the same few people will be competing over all the roles and jobs. Yet, I am not gonna sit here and just tell you it’s totally cool and good to indulge in those ugly feelings and thoughts about stuff you cannot change!
Bitterness usually doesn’t make for good art. You know what does? Ignorant trust and ambitious delusion. That’s where it all starts. And the ones who stick around long enough, who keep making stuff even when nobody is watching, somehow end up in the room again. That’s the something else I was talking about. The ability to stay curious and open when you feel like the world doesn’t give a damn.
Resilience in the face of obscurity, baby!
Anon, since you picked a career in the arts, you better get used to being one of the many who are talented and unrecognized. That’s the deal you signed up for. The beautiful, terrible, soul-crushing deal. But hey, the obscurity won’t last forever. Or maybe it will. Either way, you keep showing up.
I’ll be the first to admit that I often forget to focus on what I’m doing and what I love about making movies instead of ruminating over what I’m still doing wrong or how I am not living up to my potential yadda yadda. The truth is this: at this point in my career, nobody would care if I just stopped. Except for me (and maybe my mom). I need to keep going. Nobody will do that for me. To say it in the words of David Lynch, I need to focus on the donut, not the hole.
The next morning, I woke up wanting to be dead not because I was angry about how nobody had given me any praise or recognition, I regretted having wasted an entire evening I could have spent having fun if I had played my cards right. Later that afternoon, the person who did not recognize me in my tweed blazer the night before followed me back on Instagram. How embarrassing that it kind of saved my day.
Next year, the gala will pause. The city is totally broke. There’s no money left for fancy award ceremonies. But they’ll be back. I have another two years to focus on the real deal. And hope for a third invitation.
Use the burning fire to light up your ambition, Anon. Let it burn, but don’t let it harden you. Everyone you’re jealous of is jealous of someone else anyway. It never ends.
Don’t hate the cards you’re dealt. Focus on the friggin’ donut!!!
