on the cover of, being-yourself or not-being-yourself, and we will participate in your Fame. We will support it and keep it robust because we need it to stay there, we need it to be real and big and tangible. BUT YOU WILL NOT INTERRUPT THE CONVERSTATIONS OF REAL PEOPLE. You are not real.
“You know I can hear you. I’m right here.”
Me almost, under the skin, apoplectic. I can’t believe they don’t understand the fucking laws of physics or the carry of sound in the air or the fucking proximity of our three bodies.
“I can hear you.”
They look at me with small shock, but more offense. They are offended. I broke the rule. I shattered the fourth wall. I reached across the membrane between my plane of living and theirs. Out of my world, into the “real” world, and they were offended. I had been . . . rude? I was rude. I was rude for doing that to them. I can’t be in their world, their “real” world. Get the fuck out of our world.
* * *
A good friend of mine, a wife of a famous actor, told me about a time, one of the many times, that she was seen as not-a-person. Even worse, an obstacle. An obstacle between the fans and her husband, someone to be circumnavigated, or to be used to get to her husband. She told me about one day, late afternoon, a woman with eight teenagers was at her front gate, trying to talk to her son there, on the other side of the gate.
My friend’s son, seven years old or so, trying to shoot baskets in his front yard, and this woman crying out to him to “go get your dad. We’re here to see your dad.” As if he, the son, is also someone to circumnavigate or to use to get to the famous person. “Go get your dad for me.” My friend, the boy’s mother, she comes out.
“This is a private home. You need to leave right now.”
The woman, indignant, INDIGNANT. Outraged at being questioned, at being (possibly) turned away. She wasn’t having that. She’d had a fucking plan.
“But, we drove 60 miles! How dare you!” she bellowed at my friend. “How dare you. You’re going to deny my kids seeing him?”
Can you stand this? Can you imagine? “WE DROVE 60 MILES.” You told these teenagers, perhaps coordinated with their parents, put these teenagers into your car, and drove an hour or more, and then expected, demanded, that this child and this wife produce this famous person. Because they are not-people. Not the boy, not my friend, not the famous actor. None of them.
This happens; this happens a lot. You retreat, then, if you’re famous. You have a world, and there’s this other world. But, you are shut out. Don’t have an opinion.
“Shut up, you fucking actress. You dumb fucking actress.” Shut up.
So, you build your world up. You have friends, you make friends. You make a world, you populate your world. People you trust. People you don’t trust, but at least treat you as a person. Not as not-a-person. You let them around. Maybe not in, you don’t let them in, but you let them around, because with them you are at least not not-a-person. You have good friends, and you have your “team.” Your agent, your manager, your publicist, like I mentioned before. You have these. They depend on your Fame, your level of Fame; they make a commission on the work that needs your Fame. The Fame is the fuel, the currency. You pay the publicist to help control the Fame or generate direction, action. You take that Fame and . . . You don’t take the Fame; the Fame takes you and you have opportunities because of it. You have work opportunities and everyone is happy and needs the Fame to continue because it is the fuel for the machine. The machine will spit out nothing without the Fame. So, you want to leave? Go and just be a “real” person? You want to take off? No. People have done it. Some people have done it. At the height. Dave Chappelle, Josh Hartnett, Meg Tilly. I’ve heard of some who left abruptly, out, like that. Gone. And then back, sometimes back. But, the TEAM. Dependencies. Not bad. It’s good, They’re not bad, the team; there’s a purpose. But, the Fame, see? The Fame must continue.
On
I was at the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) convention in San Francisco. 1986 or ’87. There to help Family Ties make the sale to the syndication market. Whenever your program was about to hit the 100th episode, the networks would bring all the actors out to this convention to show them off to the local station executives. An enticement for them to buy the reruns of the show. So, there we were: Michael Gross, Meredith Baxter, Mike Fox, Tina Yothers, and me. We’re flown out and let loose amongst the syndication executives, to mingle and make conversation at this reception, there in our hotel. This is one of those occasions where you are to turn your Fame ON. You are not bulldozing through a shopping mall or an airport, careful to always keep moving and to avoid eye contact so you don’t get pulled down in a mob of handsy autograph seekers. No, this was smiling and greeting and inquiring as to the health of these people’s dogs. You were performing; you were Being Famous. This is the mode you entered for “public appearances”: parades, awards show presentations, mall openings. (Sure, I did one of those with my brother when we were first, not-quite-famous. They gave us each $500 worth of electronics for it. We were teenagers. It was fabulous.) So, I’m there, ready to smile and greet and ask after their dogs. I was always good at these things, right out of the gate.
Smile, shake hands, laugh at their comments, “Hey, Mallory! Where’s Nick?!” and watch them guffaw and slap each other on the backs over their own cleverness. Look, I’m not mocking them. It was just tiresome to hear the same comments from each cluster of people, each person assuming it was the first time I’d ever heard it.
So, I’m talking and smiling and answering their questions and meeting whatever relatives they’ve brought with them. Their wives, daughters, aunts, cousins. Whoever. They get them passes to come meet the cast of their favorite show. Shaking hands, smiling, listening, talking. Keeping an interested look on my face, smiling, moving onto the next person when it seems like the current person wants to kick the conversation up to the “Why don’t you come have dinner with the family tonight?” level. And then suddenly, I’m running on fumes. My Being Famous Performance Gas Tank has just run dry. I told you I was good at this right out of the gate. But, I was never good at keeping it going past a certain point. Maybe an hour, max. Then my tank runs out. The muscles in my face feel shaky from holding the smile for so long. My face feels like it has to choose between staying in this full-smile position or releasing the expression of any emotion at all. The facial muscles don’t feel like they can hold anything in between. Frozen full-smile, or nothing. Then my cheeks feel like they’re going to spasm from holding the smile and my brain doesn’t want to create conversational responses anymore. Doesn’t want to talk. Fumes running low now. I have to get out of there. I make some excuse, even though I have two more hours to be there, to smile and to chat, and I hustle to the hotel elevators. I hope no one will try to talk to me on my way.
I say, “I’ll be right back, I just have to . . .” Now I’m bulldozing. Let them think I just got my period or something.
Let them elbow each other knowingly, “lady issues” and all that. I don’t care. Bulldoze to the elevator. No one in it, thank God. Up to the room. Out on my floor, open my hotel room door, and get on the bed. Just sit on the bed. I just need nothing. Just sit and not talk, not smile, not think, if I can. Just have to do nothing for a while. I don’t know how long. Long enough to feel that my face can accomplish a look between manic happiness and apathy. Long enough to feel that my brain will accommodate small talk once again. At first, the time I think I need seems endless. I don’t know how long this will take. I just have to wait. But, I know I have to go back down there. And smile and shake hands and be ON. Eventually, I get there.
* * *
One of my favorite sociologists, Erving Goffman, would call this exceeding “the temporal length of performance.” His theory being that we are always engaged in “impression management”: trying to control what others think of us. He found that we can only spend so much time “playing host” or being nice to people or being ON. Like when you have a house guest, someone you’re not particularly close with, you can’t have them there in your house for that long, it’s too exhausting, too exhausting to