Scrappy Little Nobody (23 page)

When I behave, I find myself in the line of fire for innocuous comments that lodge in my brain and explode like tiny, hateful pipe bombs right before I fall asleep. The photographer for one artsy magazine told me to relax my shoulders, twenty-one times. (I’d always thought my shoulders were fine.) A photographer for a men’s mag asked, “Can we lose the bra?” in a tone that felt as rhetorical as “Can you get that report on my desk by Friday?” When he saw me glance at the monitor, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll slim out your legs.” (I’d always thought my legs were fine.)

I have one piece of advice for photographers. I know you have no reason to listen to advice from me, but please, it’s good for everyone. If you are photographing an actress, or a bride, or a recent graduate who doesn’t have the jaded, knowing sensibility of a model, please just take lots of pictures and say lots of nice things. None of you shoot on film anymore! It costs you nothing to just keep snapping away and shouting praise! It’s like teaching a little kid to hit a baseball. You don’t stand there and stare at him like,
This little chump isn’t even using a regulation bat.
You throw the ball and say “good job,” and eventually he hits one. That technique won’t help A-Rod improve his batting average, but I’m not A-Rod—I’m the little kid with the Styrofoam bat who can’t see ’cause the helmet’s too big.

Paparazzi

Generally speaking (knock on wood) I don’t have many problems with paparazzi. Occasionally I’ll see a photo of myself online
that I didn’t know was being taken. It’s unsettling. Usually, I’m just worried I got caught picking my nose. So far, so good, but keep me in your prayers!

When
Up in the Air
came out, there was a period where some paparazzi staked out my apartment. Of course, I didn’t know this for a while. The first time I spotted a paparazzo was in the basement of an Ikea in Burbank. I’d gone to get some storage boxes (the all-time greatest stress-relieving activity), and about half an hour into my shopping trip I looked up from my cart and saw a man taking photos of me.

Okay
, I thought,
so this is it, this is the first time this happens
.

I put my throw pillows into the cart (yes, I know I was there to get storage boxes; perhaps you don’t understand how Ikea works) and walked over to him. He put his camera down. He looked bewildered but not defensive, like this wasn’t normal, but he didn’t anticipate a Colin Farrell situation.

I pulled on the sleeves of my hoodie. “Hi. Um . . . how did you . . .”
Know I’d be here? Find me?
It all sounded so espionage. He knew what I meant.

“Oh, I was just in here.”

I knew that didn’t sound right, but I was so out of my element, I just accepted that he happened to be in the basement of Ikea with his long-lens camera at the same time I was.

He nodded sympathetically. “Oh right, you’re new to the game.”

Ew.

I wasn’t offended in a righteous indignation way, like,
My life is not some
game
!
It was just a cringey thing to say.

I suppressed an eye roll and said, “Right, so . . . what happens now? Are you gonna, like, follow me around the store?”

“If I can get a good shot of you now, I’ll just leave, no problem. I promise I won’t follow you home.”

Follow me home. I hadn’t even thought of that.

Letting this guy take my picture so that he would go away seemed like the path of least resistance, so I went back to my cart and stood there.

“Grab something off the shelf, and you can look up like you just spotted me. Don’t smile or anything, you can look annoyed.”

Yeah, I’ll try to manage that.

He took the picture, and, true to his word, he left. He called someone else from his agency to follow me home, so technically, he kept his promise. For the next three weeks or so, someone was outside my apartment. What they didn’t count on was my god-given ability to stay indoors and do nothing. The real beauty of it was I didn’t even have to alter my behavior. I wasn’t holed up Waco-style; I was just doing me. Every now and then a similar thing will happen. I’ll notice a strange car outside, and, as an experiment, I’ll take a trip to Home Depot, and when the car follows me, I think,
Looks like a two-week stretch of takeout and Netflix is in order; this poor man doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.

On Being Nice

The word “nice” means a couple different things for me now. In one area of my life, I can earn this descriptor very easily, almost too easily. People I meet who want to say hello or take a picture often say, “You’re so nice.” Don’t worry—never once have I deluded
myself into thinking I’ve done something to deserve this compliment. It’s often said after a twenty-second interaction at a restaurant or in a hotel lobby. I could have no other redeeming qualities, but I’m “nice” as long as I haven’t crippled a bellboy.

Don’t get me wrong, I find it incredibly sweet that anyone would say it, and I get that maybe they don’t mean anything more than “Thanks” but it comes out “You’re so nice.” Plus, people have said some weird-ass shit to me over the years, so I will take “You’re so nice” ANY day.

In a professional sense, “nice” is harder to earn. Harder for me anyway. Because “nice” often means she did what we told her to, no questions asked. I’ve seen nice defined as:
In working with XXXXX, I encountered no conflict which might have forced me to acknowledge this person as a fellow human capable of discomfort or creative input.
Not all people in my industry feel this way—certainly none of the people I’ve talked about in this book—but many do. This is highlighted by the fact that, in the professional realm, the opposite of nice is not “mean”; the opposite of nice is “difficult.”

Ninety percent of the people I’ve worked with who are disruptive or lazy or unskilled or addicts or likely to throw a tantrum are men. Ninety percent of the ones who get called “difficult” are women. Lest we be besmirched with that most damning label, it feels imperative that we strive for “nice.” When I’m put in an uncomfortable position or when someone asks something of me that I feel borders on taking advantage, the threat of “so nice” being snatched away from me hangs in the air. Should I stand my ground, or be a doormat? How many concessions would I
have to make, how much crap would I have to swallow to stay a “nice girl”? Usually more than I am willing.

Women encounter this in social situations as well.
Let me take you out. Don’t be so uptight. Just have one more drink.
And if you don’t, someone might strip you of an adjective you’ve been convinced has value, and label you as something else. Professional people are usually clever enough not to use this term, but in social situations, the threatened brand is “bitch.”

As Sondheim said,
Nice is different than good
. Do you need to do whatever you’re told to be a nice person? Maybe. Do you need to do whatever you’re told to be a good person? Of course not! Man, woman, personal, professional—some people have a skill for persuading you the best thing you can be is obedient.

A woman I was about to work with told me she’d been asking around about me. She said someone described me as “ten percent defiant.” She was quick to point out she didn’t think they’d meant it as a criticism. I was quick to point out I didn’t take it as one.

I gave up on being Nice. I started putting more value on other qualities instead: passion, bravery, intelligence, practicality, humor, patience, fairness, sensitivity. Those last three might seem like they are covered by “nice,” but make no mistake, they are not. A person who smiles a lot and remembers everyone’s birthday can turn out to be undercover crazy, a compulsive thief, and boring to boot. I don’t put a lot of stock in nice. I’d prefer to be around people who have any of the above qualities over “niceness,” and I’d prefer it if that applied to me, too. I’m also okay if the most accurate description of me is
nervous, and a little salty
. But at least I know what I want to strive for.

A
n award show isn’t glamorous. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to glamorous, so I’m not knocking it, but I know it’s not the real deal. Real glamour is opening night at the opera, or a lavish wedding on a tropical cliffside. I assume; I’ve never been invited to either of those things. An award show is as glamorous as a middle school dance. Again, I assume; I was never invited to a middle school dance, either. Industry fetes are populated with nervous idiots in the nicest clothes they could find and beleaguered chaperones in black jeans and blazers trying to make sure the nervous idiots don’t accidentally set the place on fire before the night is over.

I usually arrive to major events with a mild injury from maintaining the “wrinkle-free” position in the car on the way there. A stylist will have steamed my dress to smooth, buttery perfection, and there’s nothing like a long car ride to give you a nice erratic patch of creases just above your crotch, so you brace yourself like a corpse in a diagonal position on your seat. You must not bend at the waist! If there’s no one sitting next to you, you can lie across two seats, but even
my
body is not short enough to fit that way, so you’re up on your elbows the whole time. You’ll be
in this position for about half an hour, so choose wisely. Oh, and my favorite thing about this technique is that it doesn’t work.

Getting out of the car is always a little fun, I’ll admit, because I like to go out the “wrong” side. This is a HUGE deal for no reason at all and I get a rush of mischievous pleasure every time I do it. The event organizers want you to get out on the side where the red carpet is set up so that photographers can get the “coming out of the car” shot. That shot is universally awful. Even if there’s no possibility of an up-skirt, I’ve
just
contorted my body back to a recognizable human position and all the blood is returning to my fingers; let’s not capture that for posterity. Without fail, the headset-clad representative who has been sent to begin chaperoning me will open the car door to find me exiting the other side and start sputtering that I need to get out on this side, on this side! But it’s too late, and ten seconds later when I am beside them (because like Bear Grylls or the dog in
Homeward Bound
, somehow I persevered and made it to my destination), even they seem confused about why their heart rate is so elevated. And then the shouting begins.

The good shouting is from people who have come to take pictures on their phones and mid-range digital cameras. They are friendly and sincere and when I wave at them they cheer, and I won’t lie, I feel like I’m a slightly taller Kim Jong-un and it’s dope as hell. At the big award shows you stand between the fans and the line of photographers, and I like to swing around every couple of steps and make ugly faces at the friendly side to remind myself that we’re all just pretending. I often regret it
because someone in the crowd catches a photo that ends up online, but it’s the price I pay to keep my public happy! (Sorry . . . it goes to your head fast. I would make a great ruthless dictator.)

The bad shouting is from the line of photographers. They don’t want a good picture, they
need
a good picture. This is their job, and “Over here! Smile! Tell us who you’re wearing!” is not a request floated by a fan; it’s a demand. They are traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and they will be heard, dammit.

“Buy! Sell! Over here! Over the shoulder! Over the shoulder, Anna! Show us the back of the dressssssss!” You must maintain your smile through it, though. You cannot give any indication that a hundred people are shouting at you like drowning victims begging for a lifeboat. And when they say “Blow us a kiss!”—don’t do it. First of all, the photograph won’t have a caption that says, “Some red-faced photographer asked her to do this—she didn’t just walk up to the red carpet and think,
How can I make myself look like an asshole?
” And second, your eyes always half close when you blow a kiss, which makes you look drunk. This is especially frustrating when you managed to limit your intake to four drinks pre-carpet. Get good at saying “No thank you” through clenched teeth. Otherwise, they’ll get a photo where you look scowly, and
In Touch Weekly
will use it the next time they want to imply your husband is cheating on you with your dog psychic.

After photos, you talk to some on-camera journalists. I have probably given my worst sound bites on red carpets. Cameras are
going off, people are screaming, Grumpy Cat shows up. There should be special training for this, like they did with horses in the First World War.

More than once I have literally bailed three words into a response. “Yeah, it’s exciting to be here, uh . . . I don’t, uh, I’m bad at this, I’m sorry.” I have said those words verbatim. Why do they keep inviting me back?

There’s a campaign called #AskHerMore, which was started by some thoughtful, intelligent females (Lena Dunham, Reese Witherspoon, Shonda Rhimes, etc.). It aims to ensure that when women attend events, they are asked about more than their dresses. Men don’t answer questions exclusively about their clothes; why should we? A simple and understandable request.

However, if people could ask
me
less, that would be great. I would love it if we could limit my red carpet topics to my favorite colors, what sound a duck makes, and my thoughts on McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast—blessing or curse?

The next step is finding someone you know. Once I find someone who is willing to talk to me, I don’t leave their side for the rest of the evening. Unless I find someone better. Then I’m like, “God, some loser named Chris Pine has been following me around all night, let’s shake him!”

Meeting someone new in these situations is odd, because you don’t normally meet someone for the first time in a gown or a tuxedo. The clothes have a strange effect on my speech, and unless I know the person very well I take on a mannered, old-timey tone. I find myself asking men things like “May I take your arm?” instead of saying, “Dude, my heels are a shit show, so
I’m gonna hold on to you, ’cause if I don’t I’m gonna drop faster than anything I’ve ever been handed that’s over ten pounds.”