this weekend i was in a movie
October 22, 2002 09:43 AM

I was in a movie that we made, in our house, in three hours. On video. I guess it wasn't, strictly speaking, a movie. It was a video.

It's about five, maybe ten minutes long. There's a moment in which I scream "Hell on Wheels" repeatedly. Yes. It's one of those. This movie is part of the play we're doing this weekend. A play in which I do not scream "Hell on Wheels" at any point. But I do wear some underwear as outerwear, in a nod to Madonna and Mary Poppins.

Proof that I do not Have Everything Together. Follows. [Yes, usually I ramble and then sum up, because, well, I was once a high school debater, and I'm down with the rhetorical form. But today we're trying something a little different here at the edge.]

People do not look pretty on video under household light. Not even those extra pricey higher temperature lights that "reveal" your house's inner blueness. Those predominate in our house. We're gradually replacing the orange light that came with the place with blue(r) light, because blue light is better.

I do not look pretty on video under household light. I look sad. I look like I have a thousand tiny holes in my face, which I do, but not like those. I also look really fat. Much fatter than I think of myself being.

Oh, god. I have this bizarre demarcation in my head of how fat is too fat. And since we filmed this movie, a tiny gnat in the back of my mind has been fixated on this line that I have, according to its perception, crossed.

I envy people who are able to ignore the sight of their bodies, ignore gender and fat and all our ideas about these things. I've tried and I can't and I'm tired.

I was in a movie last weekend. It was a ton of fun to make, planning and setting up and shooting each scene so quickly. For once, I earned my producer credit in the program - I found us a cast, structured the scenes, set up our "locations". But the end product just made me feel fat.

Ah. I still have a long way to go.