Mean to Me

I am mean to me. However mean someone could set out to be to me, I assure you that I can be meaner.

“Who is that guy?”

A young-ish friend of mine asks himself that every time he removes his hat and looks in the mirror. His hair is all but gone, and he is hella hard on himself about it. To my eye he is still a good-looking fellow: He has a good face, kind eyes, and is in pretty good shape. I am sure there are plenty of women his age who would find him attractive. He’s not ready to find out. He is wounded from a divorce and not ready to get back on the dating horse.

(I am not judging. After my last divorce I thought it best to keep my own company. I never got near that damnable equine again.)

A while back I was doing post-production ADR on a project that I really enjoyed doing. This is when actors go in and match their dialogue in a sound booth to enable the mixers to eliminate unwanted background noise. The term for it is looping, and it is used when the scene is disturbed by, say, a motorcycle’s revving by, or a helicopter overhead. Sometimes even a candy wrapper inside a prop handbag can be audibly distracting. It’s a routine part of finishing a movie or television show.

It’s also a chance for me to get a look at the movie, see if what I meant to do made it to the screen.

Oh, boy. The very first scene up is outside, and the camera is shooting up at me from below. A cruel angle in harsh lighting. An ugly ugly shot of me. I could barely look at it. My inner mean girl started to sharpen her knives.

I am a great looper. I can match whole paragraphs if I need to, and one or two lines at a time is a snap for me. I forged ahead, anxious and almost dreading viewing the next scenes.

It was a rough go. My performance was there, but, as is often the case for women over 50, there had been no thought or attention given to lighting and framing me. My inner voice started berating me for looking old in one shot and then somehow, inexplicably because I weigh 119 pounds, fat in the next one.

This is all very typical. On production after production the Director of Photography will spend 45 minutes lighting the young actress who is more often than not playing my daughter, then turn around and shoot me with zero minutes of effort. I am not worth it in terms of time. I am not “the money.”

That is just the deal. It’s a budgetary matter.

Ageism is so entrenched, so built into the mindset of Hollywood, that it is almost impossible to fight it. You can ask for better lighting, but they will wave you off. You can say “these pants are too big and wrong with this top.” They will shrug. “Those are the pants we have for you.” It is, I guess, considered poor form to appear to care about one’s appearance at my age, since it seems to be a given that no one watching the show will care. I am not “the money.”

“I will just be going along happy happy and then catch a glimpse of myself in a shop window and think … who is that guy?” my friend Tom told me at lunch one day. He has a good career on the cruise circuit, is happily married, and adores his family. Like me, like most of us … he still beats himself up.

I left that ADR session, got into my car almost in tears and feeling blue. Now here is the thing: I like my work in the movie, and also, there were good shots. Lots of good ones, but my black-hearted mean girl could only see the bad, and she was certain I should feel bad about it.

Who was that woman?

I allowed myself to dwell on my innumerable flaws, to see only the harshly lit scenes in my mind’s eye, and to feel rotten for exactly one day.

At this point in my life even that was one too many. There are only so many days ahead, and that is if I remain in this very lucky club of people who get to live them out. A whole bunch of folks I know of, and too many that I loved, didn’t get that chance.

Go to a high-school reunion at the age of sixty. The attrition rate is astonishing.

I thought about my movie husbands and movie love interests. The many wonderful actors I have gotten to work with over the years. They have all been my age or older. Our shared history in the entertainment business is both a comfort and a caution. On location we often go to the gym together, take long walks to escape the confines of hotel rooms. It is a comfort to be around my peers in the industry. Men are affected by ageism just as women are, and are hard on themselves, too. We share war stories and the occasional meal.

I have never looked at one of them and thought, “I see a few ... Eew this guy is older.” So why do I think that of myself?

I got the net and wrestled the old meanie to the mat. She is quieter now but no doubt waiting in the wings, ready to attack again. I think I have a fair amount of self-esteem, but I am always one side-glance in a mirror away from her criticism.

I work out and do everything I can to look my best. That is just going to have to be enough. There is too much life left to see to worry about how I am being seen. (I have, however set out to change every light bulb in my apartment to “soft-glow.”)

I still love what I do. I love my movie children and my movie mates. I love the crews and the directors and the fact that we come together to make a product that hopefully will bring a smile to people’s faces, or at least give them a break from the stressors in their lives.

The camera is going to see what it is going to see, and I am not always going to like that. I hope I can learn to see past my looks and into the joy in my heart when I am working. Even when the picture isn’t pretty, there is beauty in that …

And love.

On we go …