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letterboxd · 5 years

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David Lowery Q&A.

“I think everyone in the industry at this moment is saying let’s take a step back and look at what our film sets look like and make sure that we’re not missing out on something.”

Writer-director-editor David Lowery has worked with Robert Redford twice (Pete’s Dragon and The Old Man & the Gun), and helmed A Ghost Story, which has become a much-admired slow-burner within the Letterboxd community.

We caught up with the Texan filmmaker at the recent Big Screen Symposium in New Zealand (organized by Script to Screen) for a lengthy chat about everything from taking Geena Davis’ advice on writing crowd scenes, to the fact that everyone is wrong in thinking A Ghost Story was filmed in 4:3 ratio, and how that film funded his wife’s debut feature, which in turn now sees her directing a stoner sequel to Home Alone with Ryan Reynolds.

David Lowery is a tease. On his laptop, which sits in plain sight, is an up-to-date spreadsheet of every film he’s seen, in what format, and where. (If it’s in bold, he saw it in a cinema.)

Lowery is a prime candidate for Letterboxd membership, and we tell him so. He agrees (“Letterboxd would be my favorite site if I wasn’t a director”), but will continue to hold out. “I love film criticism, I think it’s a beautiful art-form. I make movies to be part of the conversation about movies.

“But it’s also a conversation that, once I’ve made the movie, I can’t partake in anymore. Some filmmakers can read about their own work and are fine with it. But for me, I get too caught up in it and it’s important for me to keep those blinders on and to not engage with the discussion about my movies because I’ve had my say. The movie is what I’ve had to say and after that I find it almost inappropriate for me to continue the discourse.”

So we tell Lowery that, ever since A Ghost Story was released in 2017, the film has made a nice home for itself at Letterboxd, with its fair share of fans and repeat viewers (“That’s amazing to hear!”). We wonder how he feels about the slow-burning reaction to the film?

“I’m doing a lot of press for The Old Man & the Gun right now and going to a lot of screenings, and the common refrain is ‘The Old Man & the Gun’s great but, man, A Ghost Story is something else!” And I’ve become aware that that might be the movie that defines me more than any other and that’s fine because it’s the movie I’m the most proud of. I certainly know that it has struck a chord.”

David Lowery with Casey Affleck on the set of ‘A Ghost Story’.

Letterboxd: In your Big Screen Symposium keynote, you talked about how A Ghost Story came out of a sort of existential crisis in which you realized you might not become the world’s greatest filmmaker, or the best, so you were questioning why you made films at all. A Ghost Story came from wanting to make a small film about what a life means. An act of anti-legacy, if you will. But the film has become accidentally beloved, which means that, in fact, you’ve possibly created a legacy after all.

David Lowery: What a fascinating paradox. I mean the only thing I can say about that is that there’s no way to plan that. There’s no way for me to set out to make a film that will work the way A Ghost Story worked and it would be foolish to try to do so.

All I can do is make the movies the best that I can. I know that The Old Man & the Gun will be beloved by certain people but it won’t have the effect that A Ghost Story did. But I wouldn’t have known that two years ago. I wouldn’t have known that these two films would both function in such different ways. I would have probably assumed The Old Man & the Gun would be the more important one because of Robert Redford being in it. But A Ghost Story was the more important one for me to make, that’s certainly true, and maybe there’s something to be found in the fact that when you feel so compelled to do something it is because the subject matter at hand is more universal than you might understand in the moment.

A Ghost Story is a strange film, in that it washes over you, as opposed to something like Pete’s Dragon which is very much a dive-in fantasy-adventure.

I like to think of my movies as bodies of water, that’s a great metaphor for them. And I really like my movies to be lakes that just sort of ripple outward and sometimes they need to be diverted into streams or rivers or freeze in the glaciers.

Pete’s Dragon certainly is the most propulsive body of water that I have constructed so far in that the story moves along at a certain clip—and it needs to because it’s a certain type of movie. But A Ghost Story is a small pond that a rock got thrown into and that’s a type of experience that I really value when I go to the cinema.

It’s a very, like, wishy-washy metaphor but it really works for me, I really think about the way my movies move in terms of a natural flow and very often those flows calm down to just pure stasis and there’s great beauty in that.

You also made some really specific artistic decisions in the film. Was it shot in 4:3? [Lowery shakes his head firmly.] No?

It’s basically technically 1.33:1 but there’s a millimeter of difference between that and 4:3.

So how do those technical artistic decisions link in with the storytelling?

They were very intrinsic. I think the very first line, let me see. If I open up the script for A Ghost Story… [Lowery fires up his laptop.] I’ve been telling people this but I don’t actually know if it’s true or not… [Opens a draft of the script.] Yeah, so the first line of script says the whole movie will be shot and projected in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. And that’s been there from the very beginning. So those things are very conscientious. Or, if I go down here, like, let’s see, yeah, like I’m getting very specific about “camera pans left”. “We hold for a long time.” I think there was a draft where I actually wrote that we hold for an entire minute. I get very technical.

Well then, we need to talk about pie.

Yes.

Four minutes of pie. What does it say in the script about that? Does it say “Rooney Mara eats pie for four minutes”?

I mean it’s pretty specific [reading aloud]: “She walks past the ghost, she enters all in black, she goes to the sink, sees a pour-over filter, takes out the coffee grounds, throws them out, turns on the sink, rinses out the ceramic filter, lets the sink run for too long. Then she grabs a fork and knife and returns to the table, cuts a piece of pie and hungrily eats it down and then she eats the rest of the pie straight out of the dish.”

A Letterboxd exclusive! The pie-eating scene from ‘A Ghost Story’ as seen on Lowery’s laptop.

When you’re getting that specific in your writing, what’s going on in your head? Are you seeing it?

Definitely I am seeing a version of it, I mean if you look at what’s written there it describes her sitting down at the table. But when we got it together to shoot the scene, Rooney wanted to sit on the floor and that made perfect sense, emotionally speaking, and so we refocused the scene to that, but even when she was sitting at the table, still the language and the grammar was going to be the same.

What is the process of developing the scene once you have your actors attached? Because once an actor is on board, they bring their own sense of their character to a scene. Once they read the script—no matter when filming starts—the work begins, doesn’t it?

It really does, it really does. I mean, A Ghost Story was so fast that there wasn’t much time between Rooney reading the script and her showing up to shoot that scene, like, it was very quick. A couple of weeks, I think.

Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in ‘A Ghost Story’.

Why so fast?

I just didn’t want to wait to make the movie. I mean we had one week of prep for the whole film. We planned it around Pete’s Dragon so I knew that Pete’s Dragon would finish on June 10th and I think on June 17th we started shooting A Ghost Story. And here and there on weekends I would fly to Texas to look for the house and then Jade, my production designer, got there a little ahead of time to start fixing the house up because it was in a state of disarray. But certainly there was not that much time to think things through. We didn’t really have a plan in place. We didn’t even have an assistant director until a day before we started shooting. It really came together very quickly.

In a way that’s even more extraordinary in terms of the way that that film is still growing and finding its audience.

I mean it was interesting looking at that page in the script [the pie scene] and seeing how thoroughly descriptive it was—and if you look at the whole screenplay the movie is very close to it. But at the same time we were just fumbling in the dark every single day and trying things out and just really looking to figure out how to make it, how to cut to the core of what we felt we were after. And we could never put a name on that. We never knew exactly what we were after, but we were collectively working towards it.

Intermission: here’s a Letterboxd list of David Lowery’s five favorite ghost films.

During your Big Screen Symposium keynote, you took time to talk through the first scenes of your new film, The Old Man & the Gun, and the long process of finding a strong opening, in which the relationship between Forrest (Robert Redford) and Jewel (Sissy Spacek) is established. You took a lot of inspiration for this from the diner scene in Michael Mann’s Thief.

When you have more preparation time with your actors, how does that affect the script’s development? What is the process between the draft you send them and the final version that gets filmed?

For example that scene in the diner that we talked about yesterday at the panel, that seemed to not change. That was, I wrote it and that’s what we shot, and [Redford and Spacek] illuminated it but they worked with that material.

But then there are other scenes that they had a lot of input on and Sissy, I give her all the credit for a jewelry store scene in the movie that she latched onto early on. It was a very short scene in the script and she saw a way in which to expand it that she felt was necessary for the character. It was 100% right, she was 100% right about that and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie—but it wouldn’t even have been in the movie had it not been for her.

Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek in ‘The Old Man & the Gun’.

Presumably A-list actors are often looking for ways to expand their scenes, but for female actors, who continue to be under-represented in strong roles on screen, it’s even more important?

Definitely, definitely, definitely. That’s an interesting perspective. I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. Because I always feel like I’m asking the actors to do too much, like, “that big scene? Let’s get rid of that so you can take a break tomorrow.” I mean, I never do that, but in my mind I always feel like I need to remove scenes so they don’t have to work so hard. I always want to give them a break because they’re doing so much.

But certainly, especially a movie called The Old Man & the Gun that’s about men, it was great to find any opportunity in that film to give precedence to the female characters. And so I’m so thankful that Sissy took that opportunity. She has great scenes in the movie. She’s in quite a bit of the film but she really used that scene to define who her character was for her. And then because it worked for her it works for the audience as well and for me.

Spacek and Redford in ‘The Old Man & the Gun’.

You also talked a bit about making sure that not everybody on your set looks like you. Would you elaborate on that?

I mean it’s certainly something I took for granted for a long time, it just wasn’t something I thought about and I certainly wasn’t working entirely with men. I’ve been surrounded by wonderful female collaborators since day one, but I think everyone in the industry at this moment is saying let’s take a step back and look at what our film sets look like and make sure that we’re not missing out on something. Missing out on the opportunity to collaborate with people who have different perspectives or can bring something new to the table and who might not have had those opportunities in the past because there is a tendency to just go for what’s familiar. You go for what feels familiar and often what feels familiar is yourself.

So, in spite of the fact that I have always worked with wonderful women and wonderful collaborators who I would never want to make a movie without these days, I definitely am looking at the wider body of our crews and making sure that they’re reflective of the world around us. I think that’s what everyone is doing and that’s a beautiful thing.

And I’m not perfect in it, no one is, but to just all of a sudden have that be part of your process when you’re putting a movie together is very… it’s a wonderful thing. It’s a really exciting thing because all of a sudden you just see the ways in which your movies are going to get better.

Do you write it into your scripts or do you say to your casting agents, “Anyone, this could be anyone”?

I say “anyone” but I’ve also learned that it’s important to write it into the scripts too, because there is that tendency with casting—and it’s nothing against the casting directors—but they assume [that because] I’m a white guy that I’m going to want to see a bunch of white people. So I’m now very consciously writing into the scripts making sure that there’s that diaspora represented on the screen as well.

I wish I could just say it’s open to anybody but I found that if I don’t inject that into the screenplay then I’m only going to see a certain number of actors who all look a certain way. Maybe if I want to be truly color-blind I would in an ideal world not have to do that, I would just see everybody, see actors of all ethnicities, of all creeds, of all colors and I’d get to pick the best actor. But that’s not where we are right now and it’s very helpful in terms of moving the needle to actually go into the screenplay and make sure that you specify that someone is not Caucasian. Or even “not male”.

In The Old Man & the Gun there are a lot of characters in the movie who in the script were ‘bank manager number one’, ‘bank manager number two’, ‘bank manager number three’, and something that was very important for me to do was to give them all names, and then as we were casting to never bring in actors for any specific part. I just said bring in a bunch of actors, I’m not going to tell you who they’re for I just want to meet a bunch of people. And in doing that I met lots of men, women, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, I met everybody.

And then I could just start filling the cast in that way but I just never had people audition for any specific role because that way you free yourself from those expectations and no one knows who you’re bringing these actors in for. The casting director doesn’t know who you’re actually looking at them for and the actors don’t know either and so it just liberates you a little bit. You can’t do that for every part but it was really great on Old Man & the Gun to be able to do that and it’s beautiful to just fill a movie with people who don’t look the same, there’s just something so special.

It’s possibly making a bit more work for yourself?

It does, but that’s good work. It’s good work. Geena Davis said something about how when you write, in terms of getting more women on screen, when you write a crowd scene just write into the script “50% of this crowd is women”.

And that is one of those things that you wish you didn’t have to do but it makes everything work, it makes it so much easier because then the assistant director will read that and was like, “oh we need to have 50%”. They’ll take it literally because that’s their job, to take everything literally and then you wind up with a crowd scene of extras, 50% of whom are women.

And does also reading something like that flip a switch in your brain that maybe wasn’t flipped?

Definitely. I mean it’s very important to be open about the fact that that switch had not been flipped, I just took for granted the fact that I work with a lot of great women. But I certainly never thought about it in a cultural perspective and I never thought about from a woman’s perspective. But now I am and I feel like I’m a much better person for doing so.

Lowery and Redford on the set of ‘Pete’s Dragon’.

A nerdy question: in your wildest dream when you began being a filmmaker could you have imagined making not one but two films with the great Robert Redford?

No. But also because when I first started making movies those weren’t the movies I was interested in, you know? I wanted to make, from an early age, Star Wars movies, so I didn’t even become aware of Robert Redford until I became aware of the Sundance Film Festival when I was 11 or 12 or 13.

And so for me the goal was always to be associated with him through his festival. The goal for me to be a part of what he’d created. His films came later. I got to know him more as a director than as an actor because I saw A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show, I think the first thing I saw him in was The Horse Whisperer. It was only later that I got to know all those early classics. I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid shockingly late in life… So working with him twice now I recognize the weight of it but it certainly wasn’t on my checklist of things to do. It’s really been a nice surprise to fall into alignment with him in the way that I have.

What’s the best thing about working with him? What do we not know about the way that he works that you would like people to know?

I feel like everyone sort of expects this and it’s not going to be a surprise but that it’s just so laid back and fun. He just really likes to have fun. He's very, very playful and that twinkle in his eye that we know and love on the big screen is there when you're working with him because he loves doing what he does. And he doesn't take himself seriously. He takes the work seriously but he doesn't take himself seriously and neither do I and so I think one of the reasons we get along so well is because we both are just having fun doing it.

Intermission: here’s David Lowery’s five favorite Robert Redford performances (plus one more).

You directed one of the great recent live-action family films, Pete’s Dragon. What are your earliest movie memories?

Well, I grew up without a television. My parents wouldn’t let us have a TV and so my earliest memories were going to the cinema and I saw Pinocchio and E.T. Those were the first two films I saw and I was obsessed with them. But I didn’t have a way to watch them again so we’d go to the library and at that time you could get storybooks of movies like Star Wars or for E.T. there were storybooks that had lots of photographs in them and so I would just get those books and read them repeatedly. I didn’t even see Star Wars for a couple of years after I had become aware of it. I knew the entire story but it was just through the books.

And finally one day my grandparents taped it off the television and showed it to me. I finally got to see it but I knew the whole story backwards and forwards at that point.

I remember wanting to see Clash of the Titans. I was really into Greek mythology and so I knew that Clash of the Titans was a Greek mythology film and had Medusa in it and so finally we rented this TV and VCR and I went and got Clash of the Titans from the video store and just watched it four times. Like, I just watched it over and over again because I knew that I only had that one weekend to see it.

When you were making Pete’s Dragon was there a sense that you wanted kids to have a similar experience?

Definitely. I just really tried to make a movie that I would have loved when I was seven. That was the barometer. I feel very in touch with me as a seven year old! I feel like I ceased to mature at the age of seven and so it’s not hard for me to tap into that mindset and I just would think about the things that I liked and often what I liked at seven years old were the movies that would scare me. Or that would provoke some emotion in me that I didn’t know how to handle.

I was terrified of Ghostbusters. I had seen the beginning of it at a friend’s house and it terrified me but I couldn’t stop thinking about it and so that was like a really exciting thing to me. The idea of finding that balance of fear and scariness to inject into a movie that would have hooked me at that age, even though it would also have traumatized me to a certain extent. And then also making sure that it was a movie that I as a 37 year old would also really, really like.

Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Cami Morrone) in a scene from ‘Never Goin’ Back’, written and directed by Augustine Frizzell.

Since we’ve talked quite a bit about women in film, could you please pimp your wife Augustine Frizzell’s new movie?

Never Goin’ Back? It just came out in the States on Amazon Prime, I think it’ll be on DVD at Christmas. It’s based on her life. When she was 15 she moved out on her own with her brother and just had the most uproariously ridiculous experience as a young, underage teenager living on her own as an adult and it could have gone horribly wrong. It involved everything that you have seen in movies like Thirteen, where it’s just drugs and darkness and terrible things, but for some reason not only did she emerge from it unscathed but she looks at it with a sense of humor.

So she wanted to tell her story as a comedy as opposed to being the typical cautionary tale for young people. She was like, “We were really having a lot of fun back then. We were doing things we should not have been doing but it was a lot of fun, we were being idiots but there’s something glorious about that and the fact that I emerged as a fully formed adult who hasn’t killed too many brain cells, there’s something valuable about that.”

And so she wanted to make what is essentially a Superbad-style comedy for teenage girls. Some of the things that she did I am just like, “Seriously? That really happened and you are the person you are now?!”

And it’s great… I could go on with the long version.

Go on! We are all about husbands using half their interview time to talk about their wives.

She made the movie in 2014. Just jumped right into it, she got a grant the same way I got a grant from the Awesome Film Society to make my first film St Nick. She got a couple of grand together and made a version of the movie that she wasn’t happy with.

She made it right before we came here to New Zealand [to make Pete’s Dragon]. So she finished it, got on a plane to New Zealand, edited it and I remember around Christmas of that year watching the first cut. It was good, there was good stuff in it, but she was not happy with it. She felt like she hadn’t quite done what she wanted it to do. And so we started talking about re-shooting part of it or re-shooting the things that weren’t working.

And at a certain point she just decided, “I’m going to remake the entire thing. From scratch.” So she turned the feature that she had made into a short film.

And that film placed at SXSW and a couple of other places, and then she rewrote the script and recast it and when we made A Ghost Story and sold it to A24, we took proceeds from that and just put it right into her movie and used that to pay for her film. So she made the same film twice and the second time it worked, it was exactly the movie she wanted to make.

And now she has a career as a director and she’s about to make a Ryan Reynolds movie. It is a sequel to Home Alone. The working title that was announced under is Stoned Alone.

And, like, that is nothing that she could have ever planned for but because she’s a female director who made a really bawdy comedy, people reacted to it in a way that they wouldn’t have had a guy made that film. And I’m her husband so it’s easy for me to say this, but I’m just so proud of her for sticking to her guns, realizing that she could do better, making the film a second time and she’s reaping the rewards of having stuck to her intuition and not put a lesser, inferior version of the film out into the world.

As a collaborative partnership, you also did something really important, which is reinvest the money from your film into her film.

Our marriage luckily is founded on a mutual love of movies and so every decision we make about everything comes back to that love of movies. So it just made sense that if she had a movie she wanted to make I would do anything I could to make that happen. And that was one really efficient way to make sure her movie got made more quickly.

I’ve read the script and I don’t want to say too much about it, but as a fan of the first two Home Alone movies, I think this is a great follow up.

Because we’re at an event that is all about story and script, whose scripts have you studied closely or do you go back to again and again?

I go back to scripts that feel really messy, so I love Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies. He’s my favorite filmmaker but I also love his screenplays because they are just full of mistakes.

The Punch-Drunk Love script was published with all of the revised pages so it’s this multicolored document, and you see in that the process of revision that he goes through, and the process of intervention. It’s full of typos and they are so sloppy, but you see the things that matter to him like the fact that he will always randomly imprint that he’s dropping what lens he wants to shoot a shot on.

The Phantom Thread screenplay is also full of typos, and I read an interview with Daniel Day Lewis where he said that he loves the typos and tries to incorporate them into the dialogue. So if there is a typo in the dialogue he’ll make that part of the character because it just amuses him so much that the scripts are so sloppy.

So those are scripts that I like to go back to, just because it’s refreshing to look at something that is not perfect on the page. Out of that miasma they’re able to pull these movies that are just so, in my opinion, brilliant.

It shows a process where he’s obviously in a hurry to get the ideas out rather than to get them perfect.

Yes exactly, exactly. He doesn’t spend too much time polishing it. He just gets it out there on the page, he’s like, “we’re going to be able to make a movie from this document, but this document itself does not need to be perfectly refined. The refinement will come later.”

Last question: A24. Letterboxd members love the indie film production and distribution company. What have you personally gained from being in “the house of A24”?

I guess a lot of cool points, maybe? I don’t know! As someone who is a fan of studio logos there’s always like this certain thrill you get when you see a logo appear on screen that promises something. And you don’t have that that often any more. I feel like there was a period where like Lionsgate used to do that. I remember the old Lionsgate logo that was just the constellation. And you knew it was going to be a certain type of movie. There was like this really weird Canal Plus one that had these weird sounds and it was very strange.

So with A24, in spite of the fact that they make so many different types of movies, they all are within a certain scale. A scale that allows for there to be something, not subversive, but just surprising. They can take more risks and so even if you don’t know what the movie is, you know there’s a possibility for it to go in a direction that you can’t anticipate and that’s exciting.

They also are just very creative about how they get the word out about their movies and that contributes to that sense of culture. I don’t have much social media, I have Instagram and that’s it. But I know they’re very active on social media, and they don’t take themselves too seriously and they make everyone feel part of that. They’re very inclusive.

And so it’s easy to feel as a film fan, not just as a filmmaker, but as a fan, that you are part of a movement when you go see one of their movies or when you talk about one of their movies. There’s a scary aspect of it which is you wonder how long it can last? Because as a company they’re going to need to grow and I know because I’m continuing to make movies with them that they recognize that themselves, and are looking for ways to do that without changing what makes A24 so exciting.

I feel very grateful to have a front-row seat as a fan to see how they’re continuing to make movies, how they’re continuing to evolve, and I look forward to being part of that process myself.

Our thanks to David, Big Screen Symposium and Script to Screen. Here are seven recent films from filmmakers that David Lowery thinks you should watch next.

#letterboxd #interview #director #filmmaking #david lowery #robert redford #sissy spacek #a ghost story #a24

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[RF] I Am in Control

7:39 PM October 6th Seven days. It’s been seven days since I turned fourteen, and the only things I can think about are the cake I ate, and my mom’s decision to abandon her only daughter and husband. The shock that went through my body rapidly transformed into indescribable sadness the moment I read the text she sent. Every inch of my flesh feels like it’s burning with rage, yet frozen from the cold black mirror between my palms. A rush of chilly breeze brushes between the surface of my skin and my clothes. I habitually glance down at my body, completely occupied by the fact that I had been abandoned over a text message. I see my veiny hands holding my phone, and without notice, I shatter it on the pavement. How can she do this? A bond between a mother and her daughter should be invincible, shouldn't it? The little moments of joy and grief, the big events such as your wedding or your first day of high school. When you’d come home from school with a craft that you had just specifically created for your mom, the day you found out you had gotten your first period. It should all be in there. Shouldn’t it? I struggle to get up from the park bench. I push myself up slowly, yet I still feel the dizziness going through my head, spinning throughout my thoughts. And for a moment, I feel emptier than I have ever been. I feel every organ in my body rubbing against my bones, every vein, every movement. It was a pain I have never experienced, pain that only was caused by a simple text. You are so stupid, I tell myself. I dig my hands into my pocket, look at my broken phone, and restlessly walk back to my house. I’m barely even able to drag my feet on the ground, but I observe every motion in the distance. The mother cradling her baby on the park bench across the park, the boy trying to cross the monkey bars, the muddy dirt on the grass. You deserve this. I hear the voice in my head louder than the leaves crunching under my feet. I feel a rush of anger running down my spine before I enter my house. But the moment I step foot on the doorstep, I am attacked by my dad. “She took them!” He yelled, referring to my brothers. I look around and every piece of furniture in the house is exactly where it should be. The couch on the left side, just an inch away from the black, wood side table, The white curtains hang perfectly off the curtain rod, the carpet is pure white, the family frame on the fireplace. But my dad’s mind is not where it should be. I stare back at him as he launches towards me. “She took them!” I recognize this tone. It was the tone he used when I would come back with a B. It was the tone he used when his soup was a little too hot for his desire, the tone he used if I wore my hair a certain way. “I know,” I whisper with any and all courage I have left in me. “And she left you here with me. What am I even supposed to do with you?” He clenches his fists, hovering around. He suddenly stops in his tracks, looks at me, raises his hand, and without doubt, he swings it against my cold cheek. I don’t even flinch. I can smell the strong scent of alcohol in his breath. I look down at his left hand, holding a glass of whiskey, his favourite. “You made her leave,” He points at me. “If you weren’t so difficult all the time!” He raises his voice louder. “Why can’t you just be normal? Why can’t you just eat? The food is right in front of you. Why is it so hard for you to understand this?” Silence.

10:03 PM October 6th I grab my small notebook and a pen, and with relief, I start recording my intake for the day: Apple- 95 Calories, 0.3 grams of carbs; Green Tea- 0 Calories, 0 grams of carbs. I stare at my notebook with pride. It is the only thing I am able to control. Every bite, every chew, every swallow. It is the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind, it keeps me sane. But it was only a matter of seconds when my peacefulness would be disrupted. My father shows up to my room uninvited, and in his hand, he had a slice of cake on a plate. “You’re going to eat this cake.” It’s a big slice of chocolate cake. My birthday cake. The brown frosting is messily smeared on the plate and the fork in his hand. “I’m okay, I just ate dinner.” I lie. “This isn’t a question Ria.” He replies quietly. He isn’t doing this for me, he’s doing this to get my mom to come back. “But I’m not hungry” “You’re going to eat this damn cake or you know what’s going to happen.” He says in a stern voice. I tense up. I feel my heartbeat in my throat, I hold back the tears. He brings the plate to my bed, places it in front of me, and steps back a little bit, only to stand there and cross his arms. I smell the cake, and I immediately feel nauseous. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I bite the first piece, then the second, then the tenth. He just watches me.

7:34 AM October 7th I wake up the next morning with a still full stomach. I feel the heaviness of the cake on my arms, my stomach, my thighs. I immediately run to my scale. Forty-six point two kilograms. I feel a knot in my throat, I feel the tears streaming down my face. I can’t go to school like this. I can’t be fat. I cannot be fat. I will not be fat. I am in control. School was when all of this started. That one little comment that sparked up the conversation between my friends about my eating habits. I started to notice any comment that had even a slight mention of food or my eating habits. I remembered every bite I have ever had, every meal at a restaurant, every sip of a carbonated drink. That was the first time I truly understood what shame felt like. It wasn’t a feeling I got when I failed a class, it wasn’t a feeling I got when I cheated. It is a feeling I only got when I ate food. It is a feeling I get when I bite into a sandwich or a fry. It is a feeling of disappointment, defeat, weakness. As time went by, I started getting repulsed by the idea of food more and more. I thought that if I started to eat healthier, then I would have a different outlook on food. I made meal plans that had designated days for certain foods, a specific amount of water I would have to drink per day, and I definitely made sure to never eat more than two bites of something in front of any of my friends. Now the only thing on my mind is that cake. It took all of my mental strength to pick that fork up and eat it. I told my dad that I wasn’t feeling well and that I was going to bed just so I could process the fact that I finished the cake. All I feel is humiliation. Sitting on my bed, the only thing I can think about is the nauseating feeling throughout my body. My stomach, for once, feels full and I can feel my muscles in my throat tense from eating that much. It wasn’t even a lot, just a slice, but my body feels like I just ate enough to feed a small country. All I know is that I need to lie down. I can feel my body getting heavier from that cake. I feel disgusted with myself. Fat, fat and more fat, is all I see in the reflection. I feel my heart start to beat out of my chest as if I can feel every cell in my body move through my dense figure. I could feel my stomach getting bigger. My fists are clenched so tight around my waist covering the vile image staring back at me. This has to stop. The only way to feel better is to gain more control. I have to, that is the only way I will stop feeling so revolted. I am in control. I close my eyes and start to count back from one hundred. Something about numbers calmed me down. I think it was knowing the exact number that would come next that grounded me. I knew I was right, and I knew I was in control of what I was saying.

3:23 PM October 7th I came to my house after school, with no motivation or energy to do anything but sleep. My head was spinning and I have my usual migraine. I can still feel yesterday’s dinner in my stomach and I want to curl up into a ball underneath my sheets and hide from everything. The only thought pounding in my head is the chocolate cake. I grab the bottle of water standing on my nightstand and chug it, feeling the water stream running down my throat, filling my stomach just a little, sufficing my intake for the day. I grab my notebook from my bag again and I write down today’s intake: 7 bottles of water, 0 calories, 0 grams of carbs. I weigh myself again, forty-five point eight. Not enough. I hear a voice in my head. I lay in my bed, frantically searching for a way to calm my breathing, but it isn’t stabilizing. I suddenly feel the world around me spin. I am engulfed by a wave of panic, and the next moment, I’m on my feet getting ready to go for a run. Running is the only time I feel like myself. Running is the only thing that can create a safe enough atmosphere for me to live in. I’m on the sidewalk, my feet are in motion, and I am Ria. The wind gushing against my face brings back a rush of blood to my lifeless, pale cheeks. I could hear and see every little thing. Every falling leaf, every voice in the distance, every face in the perimeter. My breathing is controlled, my eating is controlled, my body is controlled. I am in control. I manage to avoid my inebriated father after my run and skip dinner by pretending to study for a test, which is probably the biggest accomplishment of my day. I do not have the mental capacity to handle the same emotions that went through my head last night. I just could not feel the same way I felt last night, it was horrifying. By the time I get under my sheets, I notice my body shaking, my teeth jittering from my cold figure. My shoulders roll forward, caving into myself, my legs tuck into my chest as if I’m protecting my body from distant criticism. My head was dizzy and I could hear my stomach growl, almost a euphoric sensation. Allowing my body to feel like it was swaying in my bed, I fall asleep with a smile on my face.

5:47 AM October 8th I just woke up, physically. Emotionally and mentally I’m drained. The weight of the guilt from the cake still sinks my chest. The weight of my mother’s departure creates a larger force on my body, deluding the number on my scale. I step on it as I do every morning. I don’t look at the scale right away, my anxiety is eating me inside out. I feel a slight rush of heat travelling to my face. I rub my hands against my thighs, attempting to remove the gallon of sweat I managed to make in ten minutes. Forty-five point three kilograms. The number was looking at me, practically laughing in my face, making fun of my inability to achieve such a simple task without messing it up. I pinch myself. I brush my teeth vigorously, knowing the mint taste will prevent me from taking a bite of anything. I need to lose five kilograms. I am in control. My legs are bouncing as I brush my teeth, anxiously waiting to go for my morning run. I take a deep breath, I shake my limbs. Right arm, right leg, left arm, left leg. I repeat that again, and again, and then again. I did it four times. That's bad luck. My heartbeat starts to race, but I try to brush it off. I run my 10 kilometers. I come back before my dad wakes up, and quietly leave to go to school.

10:17 AM October 8th The only thing that is occupying my mind is the number on the scale. Forty-five point three. Four, Five, Three. Was I really that big? Did I eat too much? Was I not trying hard enough? It has to be the cake. It’s the cake. I can barely keep my eyes open during class, I’m exhausted, consumed by the three numbers on the scale- Four, Five, Three. My hands are too cold to even write anything, too cold to even tuck my hair behind my ear. I subconsciously lead myself to the library, skipping my third-period class. As I sit down in the chair, I feel my eyelids shut close. They weigh fifty pounds. It is so cold, I start shivering. The weather is changing, which is what had to explain my drowsiness. After school, I go straight into my room, eager to see my scale. It’s been seven hours and I have not had anything to eat today. I hope that helps. I take my clothes off and weigh myself. Forty-five point three. That number taunted me. I can’t remember the last time I was so frustrated with myself. For sure the number would have had to drop at least a little; I didn’t even drink water today. I was doing something wrong, I was eating too much.

6:27 PM October 8th I’m so exhausted, I’m trying so hard to finish this repetition of crunches. I can’t even do a hundred. Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine...

3:48 AM October 9th I wake up on the floor. I don’t even know where I am. My anxiety starts to build up as I quickly realize I’m in my room. I look around, it’s pitch black. I try to scramble for my phone before remembering that I broke it. I start to panic; I have to know the time. I have to know the time. I jolt up from my anxiety. I feel lightheaded; I stood up too fast. I lay on my bed to calm down for a minute. After I regain awareness, I immediately head downstairs to the kitchen. Every step I took down those stairs felt like stepping on knives, every bone in my body felt like glass, every inch of my skin felt like paper. I look at the microwave- it’s almost four in the morning. I’m trying to recollect memories to put yesterday's pieces together but I can’t even remember past three in the afternoon. I try to go back upstairs, but I can’t, I'm so tired. I lay down on the staircase, and I feel every glass bone break, and every paper skin rip. But the exhaustion was overpowering the pain. I can’t stay awake.

9:32 AM October 9th I wake up to a force on my head. I try to lift my head up. There’s no one there. I fell asleep around four o’clock in the morning. I was so tired. I could not move a muscle in my body; breathing became so difficult as my rib cage felt as though it was crushing my lungs. My head is spinning as I try to process my thoughts, but last night’s nightmare suddenly replays in my head. I dreamt that my mom was serving me dinner. She put a plate in front of me; on it were two steaks the size of my face, a steaming mountain of mashed potatoes with peas rolling down the side of it like an avalanche. I was forced to eat it, or else my mother would leave again. It felt so real, so I ate. I snap back into reality, but I quickly start to feel a panic attack coming. I pinch myself, bite my lip, bite my nails, none of which were able to calm me down. My leg is shaking so fast, that stresses me out more. I feel the deep emptiness, contradicted by the flooding amount of emotions going through my body. My mind is racing.

12:59 PM October 9th I can barely walk up the stairs at school. Every tiny movement is a marathon for me. It feels like I’m walking out of time. I head to the washroom, close my eyes and sit on the floor. My stomach is finally empty, no more cake. It’s paradise. I finally feel like I am me again. I feel my eyes rolling to the back of my head and I enjoy every second of it. I sit on the floor for ten minutes relishing the feeling of my body finally being able to let go of any tension and relax. I feel satisfied. I am in control. Next period is gym class, my favourite class. On my way to the locker room, a girl stops me and compliments my physique. She asks what workouts I have been doing. I love hearing that. I tell her I have a whole planned routine for the week and tell her she could find the same workout online. For a minute I feel accomplished. I feel as if the drowsiness and the shivering were worth it. I knew it is worth it. I empty my gym bag and begin to change. I stand up and all I see are stars. I knew I got up too fast, I keep doing it. My entire body starts to feel like an electric current is going through it. I have to sit down but I can’t move. Every noise around me amplifies. I can’t have a panic attack now. I can’t get a panic attack now. My head starts to spin and I feel a harsh force hit my side. I was out cold. But only one thing matters- I am in control.

2:36 PM October 10th I barely open my eyes, the bright light above me is blinding me. I try to speak but the dryness of my mouth prevents me. I can’t move either, I can’t do anything. I try to make a noise, a grunt, a sigh, but nothing is coming out. I start to get really anxious. What time is it? What day is it? Where am I? All I want to do is scream out to my mother, all I want is for her to be next to me. But she’s not. With all the power that I have, I turn my head ever so slightly. My head feels like metal. I see my dad sitting in the corner of the room, snoring. I tried to call out to him but I barely got a whisper out. I had no energy. My eyes start to rapidly move around the room. I look down at my body and see three IVs stuck in my arm filled with potassium, sodium chloride and another chemical that I don’t recognize. I immediately realize I am at the hospital. My thoughts start to rush, I start to panic. I can’t get admitted now. I haven’t lost all the weight yet. The heart monitor starts to ding faster, and before I knew it, my father is awake. He looks at me, sighs, and walks out of the room. He walks back into the room with a doctor. “Hi Andria, I’m Dr. Fenech and this is my intern Oliver Yaseen. How do you feel?” I can’t speak. The fluids coming from the IVs create a burning feeling in my arm and I just want to rip them out of my arm but I can’t move. My father is sitting in the corner, drinking his coffee, but I know he mixed alcohol with it. ”I know this might be confusing to you right now, but you’re in the Intensive Care Unit. Your body gave out during gym.” The doctor clicks his pen. I don’t respond. “Your body is extremely malnourished. It’s a miracle you’re even alive right now. Have you been eating?” Every word that comes out of his mouth created a feeling of hatred, loathfulness, despise in me. But it was myself who I hate. I hate my brown hair, my brown eyes. I hate my round face, droopy eyes. The way my nail beds look, the way I laugh, the way I speak, my voice. It’s silent. “Your inpatient program start in a week, right?” Dr. Fenech asks. I try to nod my head, but all that came out was a sigh. “I understand it’s frustrating for you right now. However, we might need to start tube feeding you sooner.” My heart rate starts going up. The doctor notices it. “Your vitals are extremely low. Technically, these vitals shouldn’t even be real.” That doesn’t matter to me. I think. Voices start to fade, and before I know it, I’m asleep.

8:11 AM October 11th I woke up to the nurse fiddling with a plastic bag. Her blonde hair effortlessly fell down her shoulders. Her blue eyes are observing the bag so carefully she didn’t even notice I woke up. I look around the room and it is empty. It feels so peaceful whenever my dad is not around. His traditional personality oppresses me. His desire to make me look presentable and be the girly girl he wants all the time made me hate being the only girl. I started straightening my hair in grade five because my curly hair was too messy. My clothes were all picked out by him. His absence leaves me at ease and calmness, but not before the nurse realizes I’m awake and smiles at me. “Good morning” She speaks so softly, but loud enough that I can hear it. “How are you feeling?” “Okay, I guess.” I whisper. She tilts her head and furrows her eyebrows, alluding to her inability to hear me. I shrug and she chuckles. Her laugh is so cute. “I’m sorry to hear. It might not be the best time for this right now but I have to insert the feeding tube in you.” I can already hear myself think about all the ways I could burn off these calories. The idea of even gaining the slightest bit of weight makes me feel like five hundred kilograms of weight are dropped on my chest. I’m not in control.

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agirlnamedsteve · 5 years

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I’m getting published! Cool!

Yesterday I got an email from the main editor of Killer and a Sweet Thang about a piece I submitted saying that they loved my writing and want to publish me in december which is some sort of weird dream for me. Not that it gives me any sort of recognition and it’s a really random website that not many people I know follow, but it’s a really big deal for me! I love online publications and would love to someday create a space like KAAST but mostly just love that I get to contribute something. And it’s a really deeply personal piece. I’ll attach it below. It’s basically just a revised version of a previous blog post. I was reading through the blog and seeing that there was such a wide array of articles, not all of them being about sex, and one of them even had to do with kavanaugh and who he is! I am assuming that the readership of this blog is anywhere from 16-25 ish probably? And I feel like the politics of my body is a way that I conceptualize my political involvement and also make sense of who I am. So I figured I would see if they wanted to publish me. It just affirms to me that this is what I want to be doing! Creative stuff! I like writing as though the world is my public journal. I am such an open book and love that about myself. Can’t wait to get back to school and see if there are any pubs I can get involved in.

“The Politics of My Body: Conceptualizing My Sexual Assault in a Post-Kavanaugh World”

I woke up relatively hungover in my hotel room and checked my phone to see more texts than I was expecting. Being halfway across the world, it’s not uncommon for people to check in on me and reach out during the hours when I’m sleeping since those are peak hours back home. Today was different though.

I was prepared for the news that a sexual assailant was joining the ranks of our oldest and whitest in government. I was prepared for the news, knowing fully well that even my foolish hopes that the outcries of survivors would make an impact on the vote couldn’t save us from this outcome. There was nothing I wasn’t prepared for, since the past two years since I started college and our country began its governance under yet another racist, sexist pig (I miss u Obama) I have felt that every news alert, every oppressive tweet, and every disappointment has just taken my body and thrown it against a building repeatedly. While it doesn’t show on the outside, my internal organs are bleeding and I have a heart that is bruised.

I received texts from friends who are with me abroad offering their support, from my older sister, former partners, and people who love me from all walks of life. I have recently made myself more vulnerable by sharing more personal details about myself on the internet and being much more politically active on my social media platforms regarding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and the nuances of women and survivors in a society where politics have never regarded anyone except white males as deserving of full respect. Reading some Brittney Cooper (“Eloquent Rage”) and the words of bell hooks and Cleo Wade and other intersectional feminist writers who I admire and engage with daily had been cathartic for me. It’s put things into perspective for me, and it’s expanded the ways that I go about processing difficult information.

First there’s the knowledge that women of color have always had it this bad. That Dr. Ford was more believable because she’s an academic and a white woman. That Anita Hill never had the chance Dr. Ford was given to be widely supported and believed. I’ve learned more about white feminism, and I’ve learned about who out of the men in my life are interested in speaking out and who will remain silent. I’ve appreciated and admired every person that has spoken out on their social media platforms and every person who had reached out to me and other survivors in any way, shape, or form to acknowledge our humanity and our anger. While it is easy for me to get caught up in the parts of my identity that have been more difficult–– being raised by a single mother, having an emotionally and physically unavailable father, growing up bisexual and struggling with body image, surviving sexual assault–– there are parts of my identity (my whiteness, upper-middle socio-eonomic upbringing, liberal arts college education) which grant me privilege and power that is simply not accessible to all people, especially POC. Additionally and above all, because I have benefitted from my whiteness, I often fail to see the intersections that amplify my power and recognize that regardless of how much I try to engage with female writers and activists of color, I can and should always be working to do better. And to know that I have this privilege, and to use it for the advancement of all people. But I digress…

That week I joined the survivors who came forward with their experiences of sexual assault. It has been two years and a few months, and I just never found the right time. It also took quite a bit of learning and unlearning for me to understand the depth and weight of what had happened to me. It took me a long time to remember that it was due to others not stepping up and sharing their stories and concerns with his behaviors of the past that I was put in the vulnerable position I was to be assaulted that night. He never would have been there in the first place if others had expressed their concerns of his predation. I don’t harbor any resentment for the situation I was placed in. I do, however, feel that it is my duty, as it was the duty of Dr. Ford, to out the people who have harmed us in an effort to make the world a safer and more just place. When I shared my experience, I don’t know what I expected. Learning that the process of due diligence meant that he needed to be contacted about what I had shared caused me immediate panic. I felt so heard and believed when I reported the incident. But I felt conflicted by the news that he would face consequences for his actions, or at least learn that he has had this lasting impact on someone he’s probably forgotten about. While I knew that must be part of the process, I had discounted how much it would affect me that he would have my name spoken to him, my experience relayed to him. I’m not pressing charges, so i’ll never have to sit in a courtroom opposite him and hear his voice, which will likely tell tales of assumed consent and blurred lines. The way I see it now, I was incapacitated, I blacked out during it, I have felt unsafe for myself and others in that space ever since.

On that morning, I drafted an email and decided I was done carrying the invalidation I was placing on myself on my shoulders anymore. In sending that email I didn’t suddenly become free. I didn’t call for celebration and I didn’t even feel different on the inside. But what’s followed has been the daily reminder to myself that I have survived and maybe even grown from my experience. An experience nobody should have to go through. Dr. Ford continues to be harassed daily, while I have been able to share my story in a much more quiet, almost secret in a way.

For people who are struggling with whether or not to share their stories, and those who have been burdened by the social media streams of personal experiences of victims and the reminder that so many people we know have been affected by sexual violence, I see you. I wish you peace. I know that even from my positionality it still took me a very long time and lots of support to come to terms with my experience. I have been realizing more and more that the need for me to speak out came less from a place of personal redemption and more from the understanding that my experience, my sexual assault, was political in and of itself. If we can’t hold men in our own communities accountable for their actions how can we expect that to be reflected in politics? It’s complicated, but watching Dr. Ford come forward with bravery and conviction convinced me that I could do the same.

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