Spray

I’m flashing on another moment. I’m 21. Shooting a film on location in South Carolina. Oh . . . there’s a few things about this film, this moment . . . OK, first things first. It’s nighttime and we’re out. Me and some of the crew, maybe one of the cast. We’re out. We want to go into this nightclub. They check IDs. The guy gets to me, checks my ID. Hands it back and shakes his head.

“No.”

No.

I’m not getting in. He thinks what, that it’s fake? That it’s not right? It’s a California driver’s license. I mean, prop departments on our sets used to make us all fake IDs back then, but hey, this one was real. I was 21. Was 21 and a half, or something.

“No.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“You’re not 21.”

“But, that’s my ID. I’m 21, that’s a California driver’s license, what do you mean?”

“No.”

What?

And then, here. Here. “You’re Mallory. Mallory’s not 21.”

Christ. The character, CHARACTER of “Mallory” on Family Ties, the show I was currently on hiatus from to shoot this film, was a year younger than me. A FICTICIOUS YEAR YOUNGER THAN ME. So, I am not 21. I am not getting into the club. Boom.

Do I tell you about the rest of this? I hadn’t planned on it. This experience, this time in South Carolina. There’s really just one other incident, in two parts. No, I guess three incidents. Jesus. OK. We had rehearsals for this movie in LA before we flew to film it in South Carolina. OK, so rehearsals. I wanted it to look good. I wanted to rehearse as much as we could, take advantage of the time, you know? One of the other cast members was not into it and calls me a “Star Bitch.” Now, OK. Why am I bringing this up, that’s work-related shit. And, I really want to focus on Fame here and nothing else. You get it. But, this . . . OK, I’m talking about the film Satisfaction and I mention this because we were all in a band. All equals, good friends, but goddamn if my volume of Fame couldn’t be looked past, at least by that one cast member. Shit. It took me by surprise. That sheath, that sheath of Fame that I’m looking out of and seeing everyone, all of us in the cast, as being at the same level, but the view outside of me, looking at me, was of the sheath. The Fame. So, I was “Star Bitch.”

OK, we leave to go on location, to shoot the film. Now, I’m thinking I’ve got to get this off somehow, this sheath, to properly be in the band, right? Got to get this Fame off somehow. An average of 26 million people have been watching me, continued to watch me, on Family Ties every week, so the Fame is soaring, and right at, probably, its peak, and I’m thinking of ways I can shed it or obscure it so I can “be with the cast.” First thing I do when we get to location, to South Carolina, is to get rid of my trailer, the motor home. That was the second incident. Production was thoroughly confused. My agent had negotiated that for me, everyone wanted that kind of thing, blah, blah, yeah. The rest of the cast had these small “honey wagon” rooms, so I thought I could just have one too. And so on. Tried to “be one of the guys.” But I couldn’t. It didn’t work.

Third incident: There was a scene, shooting a big group scene for the film. I don’t know how it started, but this same cast member blows up at me, more “Star Bitch,” loud, and more, in front of the crew. Fuck. Cannot get it off. Cannot be part of the group. Will not be allowed. Fuck. You’re just shut out. Not allowed. I don’t blame that cast member. It was the Fame. It wasn’t me. It was too much. Too much. You’re different, you’re up there, you won’t be included.

* * *

Actor Treat Williams told me about this country store he would go into, near his house. There was this group he was part of there, ten guys, maybe. Drinking coffee, shooting the shit. He loved being part of this group, felt included, accepted, IN.

Then one day, one day, this guy in the group says, “Hey, Treat! You must have really needed some money lately, because I saw a film you were in last night . . .”

Treat’s stomach tightened. He knew what was coming. You hope it’s not coming, but you know it’s coming.

“. . . I saw a film you were in last night; what a piece of shit that was.”

Fuck. You’re Treat, imagine you’re Treat. You love this place, this country store, the camaraderie, and with one sentence you’ve been excluded suddenly, cut out, set apart, far away. Treat unloaded on the guy. Of course. You would have done the same. And now he can’t go back in there, not in the same way, ever again. That guy took it from him. He pointed at the Fame and took Treat’s nice country store camaraderie away from him.

Fine. You’re out. But there is this nice thing, this other thing. The flip side of that, where you are automatically IN when you’re dealing with other famous people, people who have your level of Fame. The nod. “Wassup?” The Nod of Recognition.

“I see you. You, me. We get it. We get what’s going on. I feel you.”

It’s nice. In an airport, at an event, across a room, “Wassup?”

OK, like I’ve said, Fame is this other “reality.” It gets put on you. Some realities we think up for ourselves, but some are put on us. Other people are reflecting it onto you. You’re not generating it. C’mon. Do you know how many people would be “famous” if you could actually self-generate this? Because, no, you can’t. It gets put on you. Like every idea about you that someone has tried to spray onto you.

“You’re not very bright.”

“You’re the prettiest girl in the world.”

“You’re excellent at cooking.”

“You can’t do math.”

“You’re amazing.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“You don’t have good ideas.”

“You could have the run of this place if you wanted.”

You, you, you, you. Telling you who you are and what you can and can’t do. Shit, some of it is good. Some of it is good to absorb. When someone is spraying their “reality” all over you and it contains, “You can do it, because I believe in you . . .” Yeah, spray that reality all over me, all day. The rest of it can fuck you up.

So, Fame is an “imposed reality.” Someone sprays it on you. You’re not making it real; everyone around you is. Anyway, that’s what it’s like, from the inside.

“Everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed,” as musician Joe Walsh’s song goes.

You’re not any different. You don’t feel any different, don’t feel like you’ve just broken through into some higher level of understanding about life or accessed some way to perform miracles at will. Whatever, you’re the same. But not your reality, the one you count on, the one we take for granted will just be there for us—the sun comes up and you get ready for work and your coworkers treat you a certain way, you go to a game on the weekends, your good friends are Mike, Sharron, and so on. The country you live in, the language you speak, the gender you are (or want to be)—you’ve got a handle on your “reality.” Fame interrupts that. It hijacks it. Fame hijacks reality. I had a reality about me and my life and then I had Fame sprayed all over me and I was suddenly in another reality.

* * *

There’s this great sociological theory from Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood about how reality is created. “The five features of reality.” That you pick a position and then spin everything around you, all your encounters, to support that position. That the position is pretty ironclad if everyone around you is constantly reflecting that same position back to you. I mean, you hardy have to spin anything in that case. So, there you are, Fame sprayed on you in the form of everyone reflecting it back at you. Like everyone but you got the memo that you’re famous. And at some point you don’t know what else to do but to just go along with it. You can’t escape it being reflected back at you all the time. You’re just stuck in this new, imposed “reality.” So you go along.