But Enough About Me (2 page)

When you first meet a celebrity for an interview, remember one thing above all else: Do not, under any circumstances, work yourself into the opening chitchat. Want a dead gaze and a rigid smile? Start off the proceedings by saying that you're a “big fan.” Stee-rike one! Never, ever lead with the word
I
. Mention at your peril that their debut album prevented you from slitting your wrists during that “bad patch.” You may think you are offering up a heartfelt gift, but most artists have been told this very tidbit hundreds, sometimes thousands of times. If their album was the sound track to any major event in your life—wedding, prom, and the like—by all means keep it to yourself. Unless the event was losing your virginity, which might work as an icebreaker for certain metal bands.

Keep in mind that you have only a minute or two to engage your subject, so those first few moments are key for celebrity-nobody relations. Famous people are like taffy: They are only pliant for a short period of time before they harden, and you're left with canned answers as their eyes flick around the room, seeking a rescuing publicist. It's a critical period, so you must avoid the classic pitfalls. Never lead off with any sort of flattery (“You look incredible! Were you just on vacation?”), which is too obvious and used too liberally by everyone in a star's orbit, so do not join the chorus. Flattery,
for them, is the aural equivalent of soothing background noise, like the low murmur of a TV.

Never list the ways in which your subject looks different in person, which is conversational quicksand. Blurting out that they appear younger or thinner up close is a well-meaning but disastrous opener that not only starts the cogs of insecurity whirring in their minds (“Does this mean I don't look good on film?”) but is something that they constantly hear from fans when they are stopped in the street. You must avoid reminding them of a fan, or else their expressions will calcify into a bland, ever-so-slightly exasperated game face right before your eyes. In nine out of ten instances, if your subject is an actor, he or she will also be shorter in person than they appear onscreen: This, also, you must keep to yourself. Even if you think you are giving their lack of height a positive spin, you aren't. “You always seem larger than life in photos, but it's nice to see that in person you're just like us” might seem like a compliment, but what a star hears is
You're stumpy, and you will lose jobs to taller people.

If your subject is a musician, do not offer your “take” on their lyrics. And never compare their music to other bands' because it is an absolute no-win (if the competing band is superior, they will feel anxious; if it's perceived as substandard, they're insulted). If the band is a one-hit wonder, carefully avoid mentioning the hit, because you, of course, are interested in their more obscure, cruelly overlooked work. If you happen to find yourself interviewing E.U., best not mention “Da'Butt”; if Wall of Voodoo is your subject, skim over “Mexican Radio.”

If your subject is older than you, avoid pointing out that their work is a great favorite of your parents, or that one of their albums was the very first one you ever bought when you were in junior high. If it's thunderingly obvious that your subject's best work is well in the past, do not mention any classics from an earlier album, or they will wince. Keep it in the present, even if an artist's latest output is on a tiny Internet record label run by their cousin.

Now that you know what to avoid in that critical first minute, how do
you swiftly capture the attention of someone who is inured to both flattery and sincerity? You must surprise them with a Fun Fact about themselves. If you blow in with a newsy little item about
them,
there is instant festivity. Your celebrity can yell the news to their assistants (who are always nearby, usually talking at a low volume in the next room). They will come running in, and the party begins.

Scan your celebrity research as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls, trolling for any fresh news or obscure nugget that might have escaped the eye of their handlers. Have they been mentioned in a media studies course at a university? A veneer of intellectual respectability is always a plus. Were they recently praised by a fellow celebrity? That's a can't-miss. Even better, create your own logrolling. If you have an interview on Monday and a different one on Wednesday, ask Monday's famous person if they're a fan of Wednesday's. Invariably the answer will be an inoffensive yes, and then you can pass along the warm tidings of admiration.

Before I interviewed the cast of
Friends,
the cabdriver who picked me up at the airport was listening to Howard Stern, who, as it happens, was dissecting the latest
Friends
episode. I took notes, knowing that the cast was taping the show that morning and wouldn't be listening. Then, when I met them for dinner, I rolled in, sat down, and regaled them with Stern's impressions of the show. Howard Stern is a sure thing, because people will always have an opinion about him, and we started the proceedings on a lively note, with everyone talking animatedly at once.

Anything is better than a stilted “How are you?” as you unpack your tape recorder while your bored subject waits, silently and expectantly. “How are you?” is wasted time, a meaningless exchange, because your celebrity will dutifully answer “fine” or “great” and then you are back to square one. When I was to meet Britney Spears in her dressing room during a rehearsal for
Saturday Night Live
in New York, I brought along a press kit that had been sent to me of some young blond singer who was billed as “the new Britney Spears.” What you want to have happen is for her to call over her handlers, and for everyone to excitedly gather around and make the appropriate
remarks, which is exactly what occurred. What fun is a mini-event unless you have your handlers materialize? Britney yelled to her assistant, her mama's best friend, Felicia, who was just returning to the dressing room with a snack for Britney, a large, bright pink strawberry milkshake from McDonald's. A stylist ran over and made mean comments about Britney's hapless mini-me. Good times!

Fun Facts can arrive serendipitously. Before heading to Nashville for a chat with Dolly Parton, I was at the gym reading
Harper's Bazaar
on the treadmill when I came across an interview with Donatella Versace. She was asked whom she would love to dress, and she mentioned Dolly. Jackpot!
Harper's Bazaar
had just come out that day, and I took a gamble that the couture bible might not be Dolly's required reading.

Although an old-school pro like Ms. Parton didn't really need buttering up, I reasoned that it couldn't hurt. When we made our introductions, I imparted my Donatella Fun Fact. “What?” she hollered. “Well, how about that! Her clothes are probably tacky enough for me, right?” She called in her assistant to tell her the news, and the hand-clapping mood was set.

If all else fails, surf eBay and hunt for kooky merchandise that relates to your celebrity. At the very least, you can breeze in and open with, “Did you know that the bidding for one of your cigarette butts is up to twelve dollars and fifty cents?” Plop down chummily into a chair and continue. “And one of your sweaty tank tops is up to forty, and no reserve.” A normal person might recoil at your stalkerlike tendencies, but most famous people will hear this and light up like Times Square.

The process of engaging your celebrity is not unlike being a photographer at the Sears portrait studio. You just need a different version of a squeaky toy so that their eyes follow you and they smile occasionally.

My path toward interviewing the famous was a meandering one. When I was growing up, I loved being at home with my family in my small New Jersey town and certainly had no intention of ever leaving. With the myopia of youth, I assumed that every family across the nation shared our little foibles. Our cuisine, for instance: Surely, everyone on earth relished the fiber-free beige food that my family loved to bolt down—crescent rolls from a can, boil-in-a-bag noodles. Is it puffy? Is it off-white? Pull up a chair! Crab dip, French toast, twice-baked potatoes! Garlic bread, buttered Uncle Ben's rice, fettuccine Alfredo, turkey on white! Don't forget the mayo, or the Ex-Lax, for that matter, because you won't be going to the bathroom for the duration of the weekend! A sound that will always make me mistily nostalgic is the
fsst! fsst!
of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter being squirted on a biscuit. Ah, oui, à la recherche du temps perdu.

One of our favorite savory beige treats—reserved especially for holiday times—was called “breakfast strata,” in which you pour eggs over stale white bread, add a pound of cheese and another pound of greasy crumbled sausage. Bake in the oven, and gobble as you talk around the table with your mouth full. When I would beg my southern mother to give me an after-school snack, she would do the following: take a slice of bread, slather
some margarine on it, and dump a heapin' helpin' of sugar on top. Fold it over, and voilà! A sugar sandwich. It was heaven, the sugar crystals crunching between my teeth.

It was only when I served one of these delectations to some girls in my sixth-grade class that I realized that my family was a little different. The girls, Paige and Jennifer, were my social betters, and I had coaxed them over to my house after school, serial-killer style, with the promise of playing with a new kitten and eating unlimited snacks. “Um, what is this?” asked Paige, wrinkling her nose as I breezily handed her a sugar sandwich.

“Oh, does it need more sugar?” I asked, lifting up a corner of the bread.

Paige and Jennifer looked at each other. “You go ahead,” said Jennifer freezingly. I saw Paige ease her Docksider shoe over to Jennifer's and nudge it, ever so slightly. My chance at trading up cafeteria tables at lunch was over.

My mom was markedly different from the benign, fluttery suburban mothers of my friends. She hailed from the tiny town of Citronelle, Alabama, and had a slight southern accent. Of course, when I imitate her to my sisters, she becomes a dyspeptic Foghorn Leghorn: “‘Yoh
fahthuh
and I were out on the
veranduh
'” (they don't have a veranda, they have a deck) “‘enjoyin' a jeulip an' some peppuh cheese strahws as we gazed out over the
proh-
puh-ty.'” The key is to accent every fifth word, and to throw in every hackneyed reference to the South that you can think of: magnolias, hoop skirts, Sherman's march.

No kid in my town had a mother who was an erstwhile beauty-pageant winner. Mom was the very first Oil Queen of Citronelle. It was exotic for my friends to see the yellowing photo of Judith Ann Corners from 1960, holding a spray of roses, a crown shaped like a little oil derrick perched gaily on top of her head. When she was crowned at the Citronelle High School auditorium, Mom was presented with a seventy-five-dollar prize and a visit with Citronelle's mayor, who had the
Wizard of Oz–
sounding name of B. L. Onderdonk.

As befits a former beauty queen, Mom was always chic and well turned out. I don't think I've ever seen her without lipstick, and always, always a bright pedicure, usually cherry red. Even when she was lounging around the house, she was wearing something trim and colorful, as opposed to my frighteningly random getups of ratty pajamas or breezy, carefree combos: undies 'n' T-shirts, robe 'n' slipper socks, sports bra 'n' sweats. When we were kids, she carefully dressed us up for airplane trips in order to “get better service.”

The prototypical steel magnolia, my mom was eccentric enough to keep things interesting. I knew, instinctively, that other kids weren't threatened with colorful southern expressions like
I'm going to slap you upside that wall.
Once, after a summer visit to Citronelle, Mom noticed that her brother Leslie Ray and his wife, Jackie, would have our cousins Thad and Tray (both names pronounced the southern way, with two syllables) answer every question with “Yes, sir” or “Yes'm.” This didn't translate very well in New Jersey, but my mom was obsessed, and so we were forced to give it a go. After dinner, we were instructed to chirp, “I enjoyed it, excuse me, please.” Thanks, Thad and Tray! Heather was in preschool at the time and didn't really grasp the whole “etiquette” thing. “'Joyed it,” she would lisp insanely, bringing her sausage breakfast strata to the table. I ask you: How was I supposed to have any friends in middle school when we were told to recite, “Dunn residence, this is Jancee speaking,” when the phone rang? She and my father were strict, using fear as the time-honored disciplinary tool: of being grounded, of extra chores, or simply of them being displeased.

Particularly my mother. Let's say that I was getting a little sassy at the dinner table. As I mouthed off, my mother would be calmly chewing her food, staring down at her plate as she munched her chicken-fried steak thickly coated with Club cracker crumbs. Once she decided that she had had enough, she would fasten her eyes on me with a bored expression, which carried an ever-so-slight undercurrent of menace. Slowly she would raise her fork and point it at me, tines down. For a few terrifying seconds, she would hold it there, while my feisty words died in my throat and I gawped at the
fork the way the mongoose sees the cobra. Then it would drop, and she would calmly continue eating.

We three kids got our drive squarely from her. The woman had grit. After a stint at Auburn University, she got restless and decided that the only way she could escape her small town and see the world was to become a stewardess. In those days, one of the job requirements was to have perfect vision, and she was practically blind. Undaunted, she made an appointment for an interview at United Airlines. When it came time to read the eye chart, she asked the instructor in a drawl as sweet as Karo syrup to fetch her a glass of
watuh.
She ran over, memorized the chart, and promptly landed the job.

From my father, we girls got our excessive sentimentality and our pathological love of habit. Here is a man who ate Raisin Bran—always Post, never Kellogg's—for decades (“Keeps you regular as a clock!”), who put timers on all the lights in our house so that they would switch on at six p.m. and off at eleven, and who, every Sunday through at least three presidential administrations, played the album
Gord's Gold,
from bearded Canadian troubadour Gordon “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” Lightfoot. Here was a man so mushy that his record collection also contained a number of anthologies that he ordered from late-night television commercials with names like
Slow Dancing
(Paul Anka's “Puppy Love”) and
Secret Love
(Air Supply's “I'm All Out of Love”).

My father worked for JCPenney as a teenager all the way until his retirement, as did his father before him, and his father before him. “Over one hundred and seventy-five years of service,” my dad liked to boast about our family (that, and the more terrifying “Not a single relative of ours has ever gotten divorced”).

I have always thought of James Cash Penney as a kind of distant, benevolent uncle. My father's name is J. C. Dunn, as was his father's before him, and I was supposed to carry on the family legacy as J. C. Dunn the Third. When I surprised my folks by being female, my parents hastily cooked up the name “Jancee” (remember, it was the sixties). I have a cousin named Penny, too, who…worked for JCPenney. How I wish this were all a coincidence.

In the den, my father proudly displayed a photo of Penney's lunchtime visit to our grandfather's house. On a nearby shelf—near the book
Power of Integrity: J. C. Penney—
sat a small bronze bust of J. C. Penney's head, and really, wasn't he much more relevant to our lives than some dimly remembered ex-president or Roman ruler? Arrayed on every available surface were group photos of JCPenney district managers, grinning cheerfully, most with a glasses-and-mustache combo, all with good, solid names: Vern Leister, Dutch Koenig, Dave Gable.

My father conducted both his business and his family life by the Golden Rule, a set of business principles established by Penney after he started his first store in 1908: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Treat people with courtesy and respect. Be honest. Dad had fervently hoped that one of us girls would work for Penney's and continue the family heritage, but it was not to be, aside from one summer when Heather did a brief, grudging evening-shift stint at the Penney's women's department at the Rockaway Mall, selling elasticized pants to older ladies before racing to catch a keg party. We always chafed at Penney's. As kids, we happily wore Garanimals, their children's line of easy-care pants and tops in seventies color schemes like striped avocado and orange, but as teens, we turned up our noses at Penney's offerings. We grew up in the preppy, status-obsessed eighties, and the items that we hungered for—Lacoste shirts, Tretorn sneakers, Bermuda bags—were out of our folks' price range and, more important, not offered at JCPenney.

“There are good versions of all those things at Penney's,” my father would insist. He just didn't understand that while the Penney's renditions were skilled copies, they were still a tad off in crucial ways. Instead of Levi's, for instance, Penney's offered Plain Pockets.

“They don't have the red tag,” Heather pointed out.

“Exactly,” said my father. “Other than that, you can't tell the difference.”

“
I
can tell the difference!” Heather raged, thumping up the stairs to her room and banging the door shut. “Okay?
My whole school can tell the difference!
”

“Bunk,” said my dad.

Instead of Lacoste alligator shirts, Penney's offered the Fox. “It's half the price, and that's before my employee discount,” my father said. “And it looks like an alligator from far away.”

“I'm just going to save up my babysitting money and get an alligator shirt,” said Dinah, handing him back the bag.

He also struck out when he brought home Penney's translation of the Polo shirt. It was called Hunt Club, but instead of Ralph Lauren's horse and rider, Hunt Club just had the horse. “There's no guy on top of the horse,” I pointed out.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” my father said irritably.

Our youthful snottiness reached a pinnacle when Dinah and I were snooping in my parents' closet before Christmas and unearthed a Penney's bag of presents. “What are these?” Dinah wondered, pulling out some pink sweatpants and a sweatshirt. She read the label aloud. “Sweatworks,” she said. I usually led Dinah into trouble. She was my compadre, always willing, when we were kids and playing pretend, to dress up as the monster. Or the prince. On snowy days, we would take a sled outside, attach it to a rope, and play Horse and Carriage, and Dinah never put up any fight about being the horse. When my father built Heather a dollhouse, Dinah spent the whole day decorating it as a surprise, down to the most intricate detail: carpeting, pictures on the wall, fake food on the table. She was the most softhearted girl I knew, and I manipulated her shamelessly.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, examining the Sweatworks. I was the “edgy” one in the family, so I tended to swear a lot. “They're kind of like Generra sweatshirts. Only they're not.”

“They're so not,” agreed Dinah.

I held them up to myself. “I guess I could cut off the sleeves.” This practice was fashionable at the time.

“Or we can wear them inside out. I saw Tory Fair do that at school.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sweatworks!” I said, holding them up to myself and pretending to walk.

Dinah joined in, cackling. “Oh, are you admiring my sweatshirt? It's from
Sweatworks
!” We pranced around the room.

“You mean you haven't heard of Sweatworks?” I cried, tossing a purple set into the air. I looked at Dinah to see if I was getting a laugh, but she was motionless, gazing, stricken, at the doorway.

My father was standing there. “I guess you found our Christmas presents,” he said. He gathered up the Sweatworks and silently put them back in the bags. He suddenly looked tired, and sad. Dinah and I could barely meet each other's eyes. We were absolutely radiating shame, and when Christmas came, we put on those pink and purple Sweatworks right from the box and kept them on all day. “Dad, I seriously need sweats, this is great,” I said with hearty cheer.

“Do these come in other colors, Dad?” asked Dinah. “I might need to get more.”

The thing was, while I wouldn't wear Hunt Club shirts, I still loved JCPenney. I loved paging through the giant catalog, with its bland-looking models frozen in unnatural poses as they cavorted on a fake beach, or smiled contentedly as they pretended to sleep in a throw pillow–strewn bed. It soothed me to see the cheery, retro clothing categories (“Spring Separates, in Missy Sizes, Too!” “Easy Care Slacks with Comfort Stretch!” “Step into Slippers: Flirty, Floral, Feminine!”). As I thumbed through the home-merchandise pages, I was comforted by the Vidal Sassoon Hard Bonnet Hair Dryer, the Standard Toilet Lid Cover in Dusty Rose or Bronze Gold, the Cozy Recliner in Fashion Colors.

Best of all was visiting my father at the actual store in Wayne, New Jersey. My dad was the manager, and his employees loved their tall, handsome, affable boss—if they had a wedding, he was there; if a relative died, he showed up for the funeral—so they were especially kind to us girls. If we bought some Ultima II lipstick, a winking counter girl would toss samples of mascara and nail polish in the bag. As we rampaged through the Campus Shop or Home Expressions armed with his employee discount card, my father would make his eternal rounds through the store, wearing his natty suit with the “Jay
Dunn” nametag, joking with clerks but keeping a sharp eye out for anything that was amiss—a Separate that had slipped off a hanger, a gum wrapper that had fallen onto the rug. Well after his retirement, when we made our frequent stops to check out other Penney stores (“I heard this one does a big business in portable audio”), my father would constantly bend over to pick up any trash that he saw on the floor.