DON'T MISS YOUR SHOT
I don't really have a Career career. Instead, through the years I've had 100 (or so) hobbies [I like to call them "projects"]. Sometimes I use a hobby to make a little money, and sometimes the hobby uses me. Rarely, a hobby takes over my life and requires a Hobby Intervention, with Hobby Rehab and/or a Hobby Exorcism as appropriate to set me free.
Free to pursue the NEXT hobby, that is.
One hobby that's stuck with me since childhood is photography. I'm not talking snapshots of emotional reactions to various life events, either. Almost as soon as I could point and click, I've been waving for people to scoot, duck, turn or leave the frame. I became a lifer after receiving my first camera for Christmas [one of those disk cameras -- remember them?], and from that moment on I was willing to stand in traffic or climb the nearest tree (or car or buddy) -- anything to get The Shot.
And I'm not too bad at it. In fact, photography has saved my ass every Christmas for the past two years because despite the fact that O'ahu is Hawai'i's haven for litterbugs, it's still pretty easy to snap a beautiful picture of something natural, rub out the tourists with Photoshop, sign it, frame it and send it to your mom [and it's WAY cheaper than that new coffee maker she wanted].
Yep. Everybody loves a pretty picture of "paradise." However, during the time frame of Christian's funeral, I was getting bored with landscapes and was digging into what I call "Algae Abstracts." Basically, I take extreme closeups of interesting things because I like how the final image morphs into an abstract composition. They aren't crowd pleasers per se, but the ones I take can only be taken in Hawai'i, and I won't live here forever. Therefore, I take my camera everywhere just in case because there's nothing more aggravating to folks like me than seeing The Shot and not having a camera handy.I'm sure you already see where this is going.
DORKING OUT: THE AFTERMATH
The great thing about making a complete ass out of yourself in front of someone you don't know is that the stakes disappear. You've got nothing to lose, and that someone can exercise his/her right to not know you and choose to avoid you without breaking any house rules. Everyone's free to move about the cabin, and you can tuck the incident into mental storage for later examination [with your therapist, "gay boyfriend" or equivalent] and move on with your life.
Moving on with my life meant waiting to be transported with all the other extras to the lunch tent, which was several blocks away. The vans shifted us 10 at a time, but there were a LOT of us, and it took nearly an hour. Luckily for us, Lewis fixed it so we could wait inside the church instead of outside in the now blistering heat. It was still warm inside, but we were able to strip off a few layers and leave the fans on. I was greatly relieved to take off The Jacket, and had some very funny moments when people around me noticed what I looked like without it.
Sherry, Dawn and I reconnected in a pew near the back of the church to discuss the particulars of the shoot and dish on our theories of LOST. Dawn laughed heartily at my Dork Moment, but not in a mean way. She told me, regardless of how pathetic I felt, the chances that Matthew Fox even noticed me were about zero. She said "those guys" are so used to being bombarded by desperate non-verbal communication on set, they're pretty much numb to it. Truth be told, she did make me feel relieved and less idiotic, and we pondered the bizarre nature of celebrity in general.
THE "OTHER" INCIDENT
With my glasses back on, I was finally able to examine the windows of the church more closely. They were really beautiful, and I got itchy to see the windows up front
, which couldn't be seen without walking right up to them. Once the crew had removed the lighting and camera set up, extras were allowed to walk through as a shortcut to the outside bathrooms. We didn't know if we'd be back after lunch or done for the day, so I told Sherry I was headed up front for a looksee. She said, "Carpe Diem," and then, almost too quietly, "Watch yer back." I looked over my shoulder at her thinking, Good grief! Watch my back for what?I wasn't confused for long. She said, "Watch yer back," but what she MEANT was, "Matthew Fox is in the aisle seat six rows ahead of us, arm dangling, chatting with Stephen Williams, and when you're up front he can see you so don't do anything you'll regret like tug up your pantyhose through your dress I-Love-Lucy style because I'm pretty sure you won't recover this time without medication."
[See, I told you. Mary is a GEM.]
Properly warned, I went about my business. The windows were beautiful, and they were lit up like gangbusters in the late morning sun. However, the longer I checked them out, the more irritated I became.
I have a (very cool) small, digital camera for occasions like this. It fits in my purse, takes excellent pics AND video, and guess what folks: I HAD IT WITH ME. That's right! Even though cameras were SPECIFICALLY banned on set, and even though I had signed a legally binding document agreeing to abide by this rule (among others) and acknowledging that I ran the risk of being sued for 5 million (yes, I said MILLION) dollars, I had that camera tucked in my purse anyway. And I wasn't too worried about it because I hate spoilers and would never create any [and this is Hawai'i where bending the rules is a way of life].Not only was I prepared with a camera, I had access to a huge ladder (from crew setup) AND crew members to hold that ladder to keep me from falling to my death while snapping the closeups I wanted. AND I had Sherry with me to do "The Sherry" and make it happen with little fuss and many smiles.
Despite all this, I knew it was hopeless. I knew that if it was just "us," I'd have had my pictures, no problem. But with Matthew Fox and Stephen Williams RIGHT THERE, any discussion of an attempt to take the pictures would stir things up as the request traveled all the way up the PA chain until it reached Stephen Williams ["Some girl wants to take pictures of the windows. Yeah, that little one over there with the blue dress."], who would surely discuss it with the Big Actor sitting next to him before sending his answer back down through the chain to me: request denied, moron.
All in all, better to just let this one slide.
As I'm striding up the aisle to rejoin Sherry and Dawn, I'm barefoot in pantyhose, sleek in my blue dress, still sporting hair done to match The Jacket, shaking my head in disgust and thinking, God bleep mother bleeping piece of BLEEP I wanted that shot! Then, outta the corner of my eye, I noticed something strange.
Matthew Fox was totally watching me.
Have you ever been in a doctor's waiting room with a nothing but bad magazines and a big fish tank? Ever notice how something about the bubble/water noise of the tank keeps distracting you, drawing your attention even if you brought something interesting to read? Remember how you blank-stare the fish, watching them swim with no purpose until you notice that one fish seems to have some kind of agenda, and you sit there, passively observing this fish randomly zoom around the tank or pick on another fish or try to work a fish flake out from under a rock, or something like that, until the nurse calls your name, and, as you follow her, you auto-flush "your" fish's adventures out of your mind and never think of it again?
Well, that's EXACTLY how Matthew Fox was watching me.
JENNIFER'S THEORY OF CELEBRITIES
My pal Jennifer's hobby is acting. She's taken classes, been on auditions, been an extra several times and played leads in a few student films. However, just recently she learned she was cast as a "featured extra" [where you have lines, but you still get the crap pay]. She'd be a waitress in a diner. Her "customers?" Amber Tamblyn and Orlando Bloom (Main Street). I chewed my nails for her that first day of filming because Orlando Bloom really melts her butter, and I didn't see how she'd make it two days in a confined space with him without having an official Dork Panic Attack.
But that night she reported that filming was great, she chatted with both actors just fine and Orlando Bloom accidentally touched her boob, which made her feel 10 years younger. I was amazed, but she told me she'd used a trick she learned on set at a Rick Schroeder film.*
"You see," she said, "Celebrities are so used to being gawked at, scrutinized, badgered and entrapped, they develop this auto-defense thing." I asked what she meant by entrapped, and she said, "It's like when you're on the bus and you strike up a conversation with someone who seems pretty cool and you're feeling pretty good about it and then they sneaky turn the conversation and try to lead you to Jesus or sell you some vitamins or something. You feel duped because you fell for their spiel, which was totally false, and now you're forced to be a jerk and cut them off or play neutral/interested until you can get away. Basically, you were a mark, and it makes you feel really stupid and hate humans in general."
"Well, celebrities are conditioned/prepared to think like marks all the time because when you're famous, for whatever reason, everyone wants something from you. They keep their game faces on, too, because if they let anything or anyone get a reaction out of them, it's bad PR. Basically they get used to thinking of anyone they don't know as a fan, someone looking for a Golden Moment with them, some random interaction that makes the fan feel special, gives them a story to tell, you know? And the worst kind of fans are the ones that spend a lot of energy trying to sell themselves as "not like all those other fans," which is just like saying 'I'd like fries with my Golden Moment, please.'"
[I love talking to Jen.]
"So they do this thing -- it's like -- active ignoring where they non-verbally
- Acknowledge your presence,
- Thank you for the attention,
- Ask you to leave them alone and
- Apologize for asking you to leave them alone --
"-- all without ever looking at you or stopping what they're doing. It's actually a pretty amazing skill. The problem is that celebrities don't realize that their auto-defense mechanism is really unnerving when you're not a fan because being actively ignored feels like taking a lie detector test in front of your boss and makes you go twitchy and laugh too loud."
And could make you go Dork, I say. She says, "Right. So if you want them to relax or even if you think you might like to chat, you have to genuinely ignore them, like in an almost snooty way. Go Parisian on them if you have to. Get it? And you have to be true to it. If they never talk to you, or even if they're rude, just keep on not giving a shit and focus on someone else, which isn't really hard on a movie set."
Jen went on to say that this trick works on anyone famous. It's like something shiny to a magpie.
"They can't resist it because it's so weird to them," she said, and, she'd been told, "Their curiosity tends to make them relax. Also, if you totally keep your cool, keep up the genuine ignoring and NEVER act like fan, it's like a Reverse Golden Moment for them, and they won't mind having you around" [If acting is your career, this is important].
Jen admitted she was a little shaky that first morning, but she prepped herself with an anti-Orlando mantra on which to base her ignoring.
Anti-Orlando Mantra
- Orlando Bloom is not worth my time.
- Orlando Bloom hasn't made a good movie in YEARS.
- Orlando Bloom only sleeps with way-too-skinny, 20-something, blondes.
- Number 3 is offensive, cliche, sad and demeans thousands of women worth having.
- Number 3 also means I could probably teach him a thing or two in bed.
- Chances are I'm way smarter than him in general.
- Come to think of it, Orlando Bloom is s*** on my shoe, and HE'D be flipping lucky to talk to ME!
None of these things are actually true -- well, some of them are true -- but the point is that Jen copped an attitude where she gave off a certain vibe, almost like disdain. She was never rude, mind you, but everything about her demeanor said "You are a potted plant" to Orlando Bloom.
And he opened like a flower.
It wasn't easy for her to maintain, however, and by the middle of the second day she sent me a text message:
"Can't believe attracted to man prettier than me in makeup. Still, proud of self for only dorking out on inside (must be acting classes). Need drink. Love, Jen."
THE INTERESTING FISH
Jen's story ran through my mind, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that Dawn was wrong. There was no way Matthew Fox had noticed me at all, much less enough to recognize me without The Jacket. Plus, truthfully, I wanted to believe I'd gotten away with going so very Dork without anyone but Sherry noticing.
Then I wondered, am I just delusional? Maybe I'm making this all up because I don't LIKE feeling like an ass, and discovering him watching me without pointing and laughing would take the sting out.
I wanted to be the fish.
I knew in my head that the best thing was not to look, but I was getting that prickly feeling you get when someone's staring at you. The urge to look when you have that feeling is instinctual. After all, in the wild, quickly assessing what's staring at you might give you a head start on whatever's about to eat you. As I got closer, it got harder and harder not to look.
So I gave in, but not until the very last second before I passed out of eyesight. He saw it coming, though, and quickly looked just past my head, shifting expressions from "watching the fish" to a glassy "staring at nothing in particular." And even though I knew my window watching could qualify me for Fan Attempt to Get Celebrity's Attention #24: Look Really Interested In Something Within Celebritiy's Eyesight, I felt better. I'd be auto-flushed, and that was a-okay with me.
And the NEXT time I was an extra and he was on set, I knew exactly what to do.
*By the way, Jen says that Rick Schroeder is totally hot in person and was very nice when she wouldn't let him cut in front of her in the chow line.
Next up: The Jacket OR Why Victoria Hamel is a Goddess
