This, along with our previous celebrity memoir, were picked up when I randomly browsed what was on the shelves of the local branch of the CPL in advance of a week-long trip to Palm Springs. I didn't realize Parker Posey had written a memoir (I would imagine most people also, did not know this) but I always liked her in anything I saw her in, and appreciated the niche she had carved out for herself in film. It also would be a good book to read on a trip such as this.
Actually, it was not, because I felt vaguely self-conscious whenever I opened it on one of the 4 different flights I took, irrationally concerned that a fellow passenger might see the cover and consider it too apropos and ironic, as if I was reading it for a reaction. Usually, when a person next to you remarks on your book, it is a welcome exchange (it is for me, at least, given this blog). I remember a particularly positive one, on a flight to New York in 2017, involving Elena Ferrante, so hip and "advanced" as New Yorkers continually prove themselves to be, that portended a meaningful return.
People namecheck Elena Ferrante so they can sound "in the know" (Hollywood did come knocking, more than once, most recently with a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal that I liked, but which is apparently very divisive); and certainly, people that namecheck Parker Posey may not be "in the know" to the burgeoning cultural moment, but they are certainly "in the know" about independent film.
Yet some of us only know an actor's oeuvre in broad strokes, as each performance gets spit out immediately after it has coalesced into a vision. When an actor finishes a role, they are done with it--unless sequels are planned, or it is a TV show.
My dad has gotten into a number of TV shows lately, and I have tried to watch them on his recommendation. We agreed on Fleabag and The Mandalorian. I enjoyed The Queen's Gambit, but not quite to the same degree (ditto for The Marvelous Ms. Maisel). I have not finished WandaVision, but I have liked what I have seen fine. His latest binge has been on Lost in Space and I had been meaning to start it. Shortly after I checked this out from the CPL, I found out that Parker Posey is the star of that show (or at least its biggest star), and now I will be starting it sooner. I will also get around to seeing Blade: Trinity (which I think also requires watching the first two), because I believe that she is good in everything she does.
***
It is perhaps easiest to begin by forming a list of adjectives to describe the book: "quirky," "manic," "irreverent," "disorganized," "messy," "educational," "surprising," "humorous," "ironic," and "cute." It is pretty light reading, yet I found it somewhat difficult to engage with the material until I had locked in for a few pages and could follow the thread of each narrative episode. So, it was not a quick read.
I was somewhat put-off by the first 50-100 pages, because it seemed like the book was going to be "padded," with all of the cutesy re-purposed photographs in the margins of its pages. By its end, that decision made a certain amount of sense: nearly every biography, and many memoirs, contains a section of pages near the middle (or perhaps several such sections), that consist exclusively of photographs with captions. Now, these are always welcome respites and feel like "shortcuts" through the book, yet they tend to deepen and enliven the material, particularly when the artists themselves are steeped in the art of photography (I am thinking of Patti Smith and Susan Sontag, here).
Posey need not do that, because her life's work is on film. Reproducing stills from the films would feel self-congratulatory and unnecessary, and while there might be a few candid photos with other celebrities, these are kept private, because Hollywood is a very dirty place, it seems.
***
Before I read this book, I knew Parker Posey to be an actress that did not hog the spotlight, that seemed comfortable being a "character actor." I had recently re-watched Best in Show shortly before I picked this up, and was reminded of her delirious performance in that, which has to be one of her best. I didn't remember her in much else, to be honest, except the film adaptation of the Dennis Cooper novel, Frisk, because she was also the biggest star in it. She was in Dazed and Confused, but sort of blended into the background with all the other famous actors in their breakout performances. She is in pretty much every Christopher Guest movie since Waiting for Guffman (and always a highlight in each). I am pretty sure I saw Broken English and Fay Grim, but I remember nothing about either. I enjoyed Irrational Man more than I was expecting, but I forgot she was in it. I also forgot she had a character arc on Louie. I don't remember her in Scream 3, but I think I am about to re-watch it, a Scream marathon, for the new one. I'm pretty sure I watched Party Girl (which for some reason, I believe is her "iconic" performance, and the one that gave her the vaguely acknowledged moniker as the "queen of independent cinema"), but I don't remember much about it. I liked Kicking and Screaming, but again, do not remember much about it
That was Noah Baumbach's debut, which came out in 1995, and only now, in the past couple of years, probably after Greta Gerwig put out Ladybird, is he acknowledged as a marquee director. I could write about other directors referenced here that later "had their moment" (Richard Linklater, though he did that right out of the gates; Greg Mottola; Julian Schnabel; Hal Hartley and Greg Araki, though never major names, but major icons of independent film; Zoe Cassavetes, and it's surprising just how many "acclaimed artists" Netflix has managed to snag). I wanted to make a special note that I loved the movie subUrbia and also did not realize she was in it. I do not remember much at all about Superman Returns except that Kevin Spacey played Lex Luthor and that it failed to generate sequels. There was probably some sketchiness on the set with the director being Bryan Singer, but Posey is not interested in getting any artists "canceled."
I could write about a lot of things in this review, because this book sort of encompasses everything about Hollywood over the past 30 years, and because Posey feels omnipresent and underappreciated within that, but we should stick to the text.
***
She was born at the tail-end of the 1960's with a fraternal twin brother (the first fact I did not know), and raised in or around Shreveport, Louisiana. And here we have to mention the single best part of this memoir, which is her writing about her father.
Her father is, frankly, outrageous, and it feels vulnerable to admit this, but I have always been sort of ambivalent about having children (to say nothing of economic barriers) until reading this, because I would love to be the sort of dad that he was to her. In short, more human beings could stand to be like him:
"My dad brings the 'never met a stranger' phrase [she earlier described him as "a comedian without a venue"] to a whole other level. I've met people on sidewalks in New York who say they had a great time with my dad on a flight or in a restaurant somewhere--they go out of their way to tell me this. He's so charismatic and seductive that he once gave an impromptu chiropractic adjustment to someone he'd just met at a business party, in San Diego. No, he's not a professional chiropractor, he was a car salesman. He got that lady to lie on a table so he could crack her neck. When we saw her rubbing her neck, looking like she was in pain as she walked to her husband, we tiptoed, running, out of there. When he'd try to sell a new car to a potential buyer, he'd put a fake poopy diaper in the trunk to 'break the ice'--that kind of shit. He could sell ice to water." (116)
I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find the story about a road trip her family took where they stopped at a random convenience store along with the way and bought masks (one of them was Nixon) and how her parents drove with the masks on to freak out other drivers, and how they drank, less, in the car, but it was driving me nuts, so I just had to paraphrase it from memory.
There are other stories with her dad, but you can see one problem with the text already: it's a blur. That said, flipping through these pages for 30 minutes leads to other things I want to write about, and reminds me that I did, actually, fly through the last 200 pages of the book (maybe because I was waiting around a hospital for hours last week) and cannot situate excerpts. It's a blur, and sometimes there are throwaway lines, throwaway paragraphs--there could have been finer editing, and it seems Posey had total creative control to write this maniacally--yet on the whole this is life in all of its glorious messiness. It is extremely difficult to remain focused when you have lived a storied life and have simply too many intriguing anecdotes to relate.
***
There are many threads running throughout this book, but if there is one that sets it apart and make it unique, it is the attention Posey pays to the myriad ways that all of our lives are intertwined. There is some form of cosmic connection, it seems, and when we recognize certain coincidences as being too bizarre for belief, it generally merits mention.
Like the anecdotes about her father, these would be difficult to locate, but one, at least, should be easy.
And it's not! What a surprise. The story I can't find involves Wiley Wiggins and Jason London, perhaps 15 or 20 years after co-starring in Dazed and Confused, and I really shouldn't spoil it, anyways.
Another story I could find involves Shirley MacLaine and Coneheads and UFOs, but that would basically involve copying the entire chapter "Shirley, the Coneheads, and Me," which yes, is one of the standout chapters.
Posey is a lapsed Catholic, so I could relate to her form of spirituality, which also seems to involve a fair good bit of yoga. The chapter where she describes the entire series of a Sun Salutation ("Garbage on the Beach") was extremely familiar to me, as it likely is for many. The chapter on pottery, however, I did not like nearly as much. It has a moment or two, but felt too much like "inside baseball," despite writing from a beginner's perspective.
***
The book is useful for the recipes that Posey includes. Here, I will include the very rare photographic supplement to a review, for two simple recipes and one hard one:
"...the edge of the pie. I think this takes about 45 minutes. May God bless America." is the missing end to the sentence.
And this one is easy, too:
And this last one sounds tedious and expensive, but also amazing:
I am not including the recipe for Cheese Crisps by Lynda Posey, but the anecdote is quite amusing.
***
Posey does not trash anyone in this memoir. It was published in 2018, and so the #metoo movement must have had an impact on its writing. Posey details no meeting with Harvey Weinstein, and while it does not seem he had any impact on her career (in the Paltrow sense), he may have indirectly supported it by Making Independent Films Big, and I would imagine they had to have met, at some point.
If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all, and in Hollywood, when you do, you don't use their names. She does this at a few points in the memoir, and one could probably do a little research and figure out who she meant, but again, such anecdotes would be difficult to locate.
The chapter "Louie" is a turning point for the book, and it comes fairly early on (around page 100). Posey knows that people want to know what the real Louis C.K. is like, and this chapter should give a fair impression, though there is only a line or two that suggest any latent understandings. Ditto for the chapter "Master of Storms" on her experience working with Woody Allen on Irrational Man. It seems clear, she has serious respect for Allen (refers to him as the greatest living film director) and would not disown her work on his films.
She also talks a bit (yes, it should be "writes a bit," but the book is written as a long monologue on an airplane to a seatmate, though the device is not followed religiously) about her dog Gracie and how she got him when she was with her boyfriend Ryan, whose last name is later divulged as Adams. This may have been at the height of his career, or right when it was "taking off," and there are a couple light jabs, but nothing incendiary.
Basically, for the time this book is published--a book about being a Hollywood actress since the 90's--there is little, if any, reference to #metoo. It was published July 24, 2018, and #metoo became a thing in October 2017. Perhaps nothing bad happened to her, and she felt she couldn't write responsibly on the topic, but I can hardly believe this was the case. We should not expect memoirists to explore all of their deepest, darkest and most painful experiences--and this is certainly not that type of book--and perhaps she felt it was unnecessary and distracting. Whatever the case, it is pointless to conjecture as to her motives or the realities of writing and publishing; just know that when she dishes, it is usually more innocuous than damning. She is not out to get anyone canceled. And perhaps, in a way, because of this, the book does not come off as phony. Some might consider it somewhat superficial (a great deal of space is dedicated to a wrist injury and the perils of home renovation), but there is nothing phony about it. These elements do, unfortunately, make it feel somewhat like a tease, but if a reader is hoping for "dirt," that may say more about them than the author that chooses to make their memoir un-sensational.
***
I had mixed feelings as I waded through the text, but I never felt Posey to be anything less than charming, perhaps most so when she knew she was being annoying by writing an entire chapter about the mechanics of pottery-making. Upon completion, my feelings are more positive than not. The ending, while somewhat appropriate, is a totally random place to finish, and it's clear Posey was trying to do something different with this book. She is not a comedian, but clearly her father's love for comedy was passed down, and it reads more like a comedian's memoir than an actor's memoir. Her writing is effortless, and several rules are broken, but people say you need to learn all of the rules in order to break them, and this book probably would not exist if Posey had focused her efforts on writing rather than acting. It could have used better editing, but I also understand the choice was made to keep it weird. I appreciate that, and this book made me appreciate Parker Posey more than I already did, deepened the pseudo-crush I always had on her, and made me hope that perhaps one day our lives will also intersect. Arguably, they already did when she lived in Janeane Garafalo's building, and I lived across the street at 5th and 10th in 2001 (a dorm--former abode to Mark Twain and apparently Edith Wharton, which I didn't know until reading this); but no "on point" anecdote exists that merits mention, not yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment