34. A Parisien Saturday with French Actresses.
My thoughts on their idyllic pursuit of artistic endeavors compared to my professional Hollywood experiences.
Bienvenue to the 34th article in my Medium publication, Inside Me Inside Paris, a work-in-progress memoir about my 2016 deep-dive into Paris & my journey to find my soul amidst the onslaught of depression…
C’est le samedi, 6 août 2016:
Sonadie and I had an Ethiopian lunch today at a quaint restaurant called Chez Lucy, on a side street off the main street Rue des Orteaux in the 20th Arrondissement. We started with a plate of assorted goodies and beef in a red sauce. We ate with our hands. I’ve never eaten with my hands before.
My grandma Juliana, who grew up in a rural province in the northern Philippines, used to eat with her hands when I was a small boy, and I recall being so grossed out by it. But here I was, way out of my comfort zone, eating with my hands. We used a grain flatbread called injera to scoop the food. I wanted to ask the owner of the restaurant about Ethiopian customs, but because I knew very little French, I refrained. I noticed I was a little unnerved by that — dealing with two customs, simultaneously French and Ethiopian. Another reminder of how unfamiliar I am with so much of the world. How is one even a whole human being of full intellectual thought and emotional intelligence without traveling and seeing the world?
Sonadie had the divine makings of being a movie star but I suspect she got in her own way all the time.
Sonadie, you might recall, acted in Greg’s and Geraldine’s short film with which I helped make last month. She was fascinating and unique. Along with her silver streak of hair, she is half Cambodian, half French, and full of French spirit. I loved her infectious laugh and her humor. She spoke a broken English basked in her ingenue French accent and it inspired me to keep practicing French, as an obligation as a citizen of the world, but it also triggered a sense of embarrassment in that I couldn’t go toe-to-toe with my own French.
Sonadie is full bore into being present and riding the mindfulness bandwagon. She kept emphasizing that to be alive, one must have full consciousness, love what you do, and for all of it to come from your heart.
Sonadie had the divine makings of being a movie star but I suspect she got in her own way all the time. Could she actually sustain all this navel gazing for the marathon of life? I had a feeling that behind her bright and shiny Pollyanna curtain, Sonadie. the brooding French woman. lurked in the shadows — that if you crossed her, her passion for positivity would turn into her passion for biting your head off, especially if you infringed on her high moral and spiritual standards. Bear in mind that despite my innate disposition to incessantly observe the human carnival, my viewpoint may be polluted by a skepticism oozing out of my ever-lingering depression and the suicidal thoughts. One justifiable medical reason that I could use some good weed right now. Anything would do. I’m imploding.
After lunch with Sonadie, I took the metro to meet up with Frederique in L’Odeon. I’m exploring creatively again, out of sheer will, to see about making a film with a Parisien flavor. I have to keep checking myself to have zero expectations from our creative meetings except to merely explore and have fun and not wrap myself up in pursuing any kind of grandiose outcome in the way I always have been since I began in the film business twenty some years ago.
Over a glass of wine, we concocted a French story about a woman and her existential crisis, which is very French and can be a winding masturbation of words and thoughts that doesn’t make for good visual cinema, so I’m not sure that’s the creative direction I want to go. Frederique doesn’t have much filmmaking experience and she’s also an actor who wants to feature in this film, so I’m tempering my enthusiasm. In my experiences directing or collaborating with aspiring actresses (read: non-working actors), I’ve often had to assuage the actresses’s ego with the same or higher priority as focusing on the merits of the story or the truth of the character.
I recall a story of a time when I was directing an actress in rehearsals for a scene from the play Rabbit Hole. The actress, playing the same role as Nicole Kidman did in the movie version, was tired of all the rehearsals we were doing, but I simply didn’t think her performance was viable enough to then assemble and feed a small film crew who would be doing me a big favor making this little film. To note: the actress who was funding it only wanted to spend $200 for the entire ten minute filmed version from soup to nuts. $200 would have been just barely enough to feed the crew much less paying for their services or renting equipment. Honestly, she just didn’t have the chops — she was too cerebral and mechanical — but I was willing to do as many rehearsals as necessary to mold the clay into a nice little vase. The actress did not interpret my dedication as such and wrote me a long two page e-mail telling me that what she wanted was “to be seen as vulnerable,” or “to embody Meryl Streep,” or other peripheral objectives that didn’t serve the character or the story. One doesn’t act vulnerable. One opens her heart and bares her soul to feel, and by this, we will experience vulnerability personified. I’ve had quite a few of these kinds of Spinal Tap-esque experiences.
Frederique seemed receptive to my notes and thoughts, so that’s a nice start, but we shall soon see if she’s open enough to take the story where I think it needs to go cinematically and in regards to its emotional and story logic. This isn’t a stage play, it’s a film — and yet I also want to experiment with the art so I’m wrestling with all of it. I’ve been down this road WAY TOO MANY TIMES, where the conversations initially have potential and dreams of making movies are discussed but the flame peters out because when it’s time to take action, time and money is being invested and public exposure is at stake. The shortness of breath that subsequently occurs, often causes the purity of the creative intent —story or emotional logic — to take a back seat to self-centeredness and narcissism.
After our creative meeting, Frederique and I walked around the 6th Arrondissement. She singled out Gèrard Mulot, a boulangerie she swore was the best bakery to get a millefeuille. I scribbled that down in my pocket notebook for future reference.
We ended up at the Fontaine Saint-Sulpice, which was built in the 1800’s. Back home in Los Angeles, nothing from the 1800’s exists within a ten-mile sprawl of modernity. Part of the reason I attended West Point for college was less about a lust for military life but for more things like experiencing its historic soil and the air of classic American history on a daily basis. I love that about Paris — tangible reminders that the world existed hundreds of years ago from where I stand.
On the metro ride home — ligne 4 to ligne 1 to ligne 9, I reflected on my lunch chat with Sonadie earlier today. She spoke with vigor about acting as a genuine art and not in the tone of personal ambition in the way actors — typically non-working actors— talk about acting in Los Angeles. I was enamored by the purity and fun in Sonadie’s passion. It made me think — boy, can I recapture that love and fun of creativity in me, or has the Hollywood machine pummeled it out of my soul so completely that it’s time to look elsewhere for creative fulfillment? Maybe Paris? In Los Angeles, acting and filmmaking are professions like being a doctor or an architect. Pure artistic pursuits sound trite and amateurish and simply aren’t enough to see the dream through to its full-term conception.
Sonadie nor Frederique may not fare well in Hollywood, but that’s okay. Their pursuit of acting, while pure and refreshing, is easier to express when it’s merely a hobby. In my be-all-end-all 21 year Hollywood career, that approach doesn’t seem to endure, but maybe they’re on to something and I want their playfulness and innocence to rub off on me, if I want to take my creative voice to a more authentic place.
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