Actual update more or less

So we did some practice runs of filimg our scenes yesterday. I hate the way I look on film, which such a severity that I think I should can my desire of being on film. No one else agrees, so I wonder if their being nice because of my semi-breakdown the other day or if it's just like getting used to hearing yourself on tape. I mean, granted, it doesn't matter if 90% of the MCUs look like shit... it's really only those 10% you need for editing I suppose. And I think I look good on the broader shots -- just I've too much chin and waaaaaaaay too much nose on the MCUs. But hey, at least I can act. Well.

There isn't really much more to say about the Heath Ledger thing other than "how to tell if there's a celebrity in your midst at a nice restaurant in Sydney -- they're the only one wearng jeans the door person will let in."

Rose Byrne (Troy) was one the speakers at the evening lecture the other day, and of course some twelve-year-old asked her about kissing Brad Pitt. Poor girls (both questioner and questionee) looked like they wanted to die.

Yesterday might have been the most perfect morning ever. I was dressed up for my scene work, and I went to La Petite Creme, and the light and the weather were just gorgeous, and I was listening to this CD sampler I've been on about (which exists not to get people to buy the albums, but to get films to license the music for their soundtracks and the whole thing is great, but the first two tracks are just _everything_ about being here. the first is called Green Grass of Tunnel by Mum and the second is (against all my good judgement, because the guy drives me up a tree most of the time) The One You Love by Rufus Wainwright), and walking around Darlinghurst to them was just glorious glorious glorious and I was grinning in that sly secret way the awkward girl whose really the fabulous girl in the movies does. It's hard to explain, but it was so weirdly excellent.

I had actually decided to listen to the CD the night before -- I'd had such a rough time of it in studio on Tuesday and I just couldn't be fucked to deal with anything that evening, so I came home, found my room gratefully empty and sat cross-legged on my bed turning the pages of this magazine and then I put on this CD and it just hit me (the first track, the Mum one, sort of makes Sydney feel like Lost in Translation) and I started bawling, but in a good way. This little moment led to two things: 1. me getting my focus together and having an ever important and slightly surreal visualization moment, but fuck desire, it's all about certitude and 2. me realizing that for all my talk and fascination with fame and image-making (which is very genuine and comes from as many intellectual places as eg-driven ones), I don't actually give a rat's ass. If you look at my pattern of entertainment-related interests both in terms of product and those who create product what fascinates me is the process by which people recreate the world in their own image, and my desire for fame is really just about viewing that as a means to an end towards that thing (which I think is really about self-insulation, created family and having the freedom to do whatever the fuck I please). All of you had probably already figured that one out, since you usually beat me to the punch. So there it is. I'm not sure what it means on a practical level, other than I really need to do possibly a lot of things -- like finding people to collaborate with, not being an eager little girl and just being a capable vision-driven professional, believing in the plausibility of being the magic and not the magician (who in this world is often just the logistics person), writing the stuff that's kicking around in my head for the stage or screen, and poking about a bit at directing. I have to do these things, and I have to do it without diluting my force of will. But it's critical to the one question that I've haven't yet answered, which is whether I need (as opposed to want) remake the world after my own image in the product or my life (or perhaps mostly importantly if I can figure out how to make myself one of the lucky winners where there's no damn difference). But let me reiterate: Not dilluting the focus, not deciding "oh, I'm not pretty enough to make it." No no no. hell, for the first time I'm sure I'm talented enough to make it. I guess the way to put it in marketing terms is to find a way to make myself a product in my own stable of brands as oppsoed to someone else's, eventhough there's obviously brand and corporate cross-polination, or something. I suppose I'm not making much sense, but I can at least follow along in my own head, and you all don't really need to at the moment, although gosh, always lovely (if anyone could stomach wading through this paragraph, i don't know).

Tonight's lecture is with some local agents and managers. I should blow it off since I can't legally work in this country and just get ready to attend the opening of The Eternity Man at the opera instead, but at the same time, I will go and schmooze, because really, if you go back to the beginning of the story, attending isn't just far from the worst idea in the world, it's the whole damn reason I'm apparently here.

(no subject)

It seems hard to believe I'll be back in America in just a few days. There are all sorts of things I feel unprepared to deal with, from the politics (which I expect will get worse with whatever gets announced at the innaugeration and have otherwise gone off the deep end with Today's NYTimes' piece on the war against Spongebob -- I can't take this, people... one day I'm into a Rufus Wainwright song and the next day I'm defending Spongebob????) to the scale of it. Other than eating at Sushi-e (4th Floor) I've not been higher than the second floor in 3 weeks.

There are scores of things I'll miss about Australia, but I won't necessarily miss their whinging about the state of their film industry and their belief that the second non-Australian money touches a project they loose all control and it's no longer an Australian story. Obviously money, control and Hollywood add up to lots of misery and stress and control issues, but this whole wacked out "Well, that's not really Australian" thing that they do about things that damn well are Australian makes me kinda crazy, especially sitting in an acting class where I'm hearing it's all my fault as an American that there aren't enough jobs for Australian actors. There aren't enough jobs for actors. Period. Want scapegoats? Reality TV would be a fabulous place to start and Europe, not America, unleashed that. But just in general, I wish that they would understand that Hollywood treats them badly, not because they're Australian, but because they've gone to the door of poweful dark forces that treat everyone badly. Australians are funny, so proud of themselves, but often only to any extent when they believe no one is watching, like singing into your hairbrush in the bathroom, but here it's lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Today I didn't dare ask, although I wanted to, what they would think of a non-Australian writing an Australian story (i.e., a story that must be set in Australia for the narrative to work).

Sydney has had a drought for the last several years and while it's been cloudy and intermittantly rainy while I've been here it waited until I was dressed for the opera to bloody pour. Which is all very picturesque and what not, and this dress looks stellar windblown, but I feel like a soggy cat right about now.

When I was a child, Sedutto made Cantelope icecream which has been discontinued for over two decades. While Sedutto doesn't make it here, it does exist, just as "melon" but it's distinctly cantelope and not honeydew. This is one of many food things I'll miss like crazy -- also coconut ice, sausage rolls and Anzac biscuits.

My earlier rant about the stuff going on in my head was of course incomplete. There's another digression in all of that about how I have to stop wanting to be adopted into other people's worlds, and just make my own and put myself on the other side of that power dynamic.

For such a weirdly whimsical city -- afterall, I just saw an opera that contained both a chorus of whores and a chorus of sharks (yes, the fishies), a group of spirits intoning the names of Sydney's neighborhoods, and an entire scene devoted to a recovering alcoholic who has found god, channeling the voices of a pair of one night stand gay lovers in a public park -- the ways in which people seem to strive agressively for uniformity (the nightlife and bars here puzzle me on every level, from the music to the clothes) really deeply saddens me. But I imagine it must be strange to be this far from everything -- do you try to connect or do you just let it go? It reminds me of listening to strange music in the dark as a child -- do you turn on the radio eventhough you don't much care for it because the shared point of reference is such a goddamn relief?

We storyboarded scenes in class today to try to understand film stuff from the behind-the-camera perspective. We had to choose three key moments, and of course somehow I came up with a 40-frame storyboard. Whoopsie. So yeah, I be going through a "thing"... and to make up for my crankiness about the industry ranting down here, I will say that every single Australian actor I've met at every stage of the game has such a deeper understanding of all aspects of creating artistic product than 99% of American actors I know -- I really admire that multi-tasking jack-of-all trades thing (which is probably why I'm surprised that Americans, for all I think we're rather lazy and stupid on the whole, find it so much easier to just, well, do what needs to be done. Cue: "Selling Out" from Absolute Beginners, I suppose, although that's British. But hey, who said I had to be consistent in my rambles?).

We also did some on-camera stuff today that I was really unhappy with, but it was my own stupid fault -- we had to just be ourselves on camera and talk about something that made us really happy without specifically naming it, and I really regretted what I chose and how I approached it. They didn't deserve it. And whatever... it was an exercise to just help us see our mannerisms. That I dwell on it, it just a testament to my being a nutjob. Tomorrow we're doing a practice screen test and reshooting the scenes we've been working on all week.