We're So Famous

by Jaime Clarke

  Sure enough outside the church there was a line of women all the way down the street and around the corner. You never saw so many miniskirts. I found out later I was supposed to actually choose thirty people, not just let in the first thirty. Alan said it didn’t really matter but that people would quit lining up if they weren’t one of the first thirty, and I said next time I’d do it right.

  The show used two cameras and both cameramen had on oversized T-shirts that read WHO FANCIES ME? The crowd filed in, sitting in the risers. Overhead a stereo played KROQ, a new song from Jewel.

  It feels like an assembly, from back in high school, Paque said.

  Alan—his hair slicked back and his face so white his eyebrows looked like two clouds floating in space—welcomed the audience and ‘those viewing from the safety of their homes’ and then introduced John Blake, who came out center stage and looked right into the camera. John gave his name and what kind of mate he was looking for (‘a caring person with a good heart who enjoys the outdoors and laughs easily’). He paused dramatically, like all contestants are supposed to, and then asked the crowd, Who fancies me? Everyone applauded and there was whistling too.

  Alan was right about needing ringers. Three chairs filled up pretty quickly, the girls preening for the camera in between smiles to their friends in the audience.

  Is there anyone else who fancies John, Alan asked the audience.

  A timid girl with glasses was pushed to the stage by her group of friends and you could tell she didn’t want to go up but the camera focused on her and so she sort of had to. Alan winked at Paque, who was sitting in the front row, and Paque sauntered onto the stage, to the delight of the crowd.

  The camera panned down the row of girls as each said her name and Alan handed John an oversized envelope, white with a red bow, which contained the questions John would ask to narrow down his admirers.

  John opened the bow dramatically and read the first question: After a date would you tell a guy to call you to make sure you got home safely, or ask him to nudge you for breakfast in the morning?

  The crowd whooped rabidly.

  Each of the girls answered the question and the first girl, the one called Katrina, was the first casualty.

  The girl with the glasses looked like she was going to cry as John read the second question: Size matters—true or false?

  The camera panned down the row and the girls each answered. Paque was the funniest because the two before her answered false and she looked at them like they were crazy and answered, True. The crowd clapped and whistled, as if on cue.

  The girl with the glasses bolted from the stage and disappeared behind the curtain to the exit. Alan deadpanned a stare into the camera and everyone laughed. Well, he said, and then there were three. He turned to the stage, Okay, John, let’s hear the next—

  Before Alan could finish an alarm sounded and the stage lights went down while a siren flashed. You know what that means, Alan said, turning to the stage, It’s time to fight for your man!

  The alarm stopped and the stage lights came back up and the portion of the show where the remaining girls verbally sparred over the contestant began when John, on cue, said, Who fancies me most?

  Girl #1: I do.

  Girl #2: I do more.

  Paque: I do too.

  Alan: Tell John what you love most about him girls.

  Girl #1: I love his dark eyes and long fingers. (The crowd oohs.)

  Girl #2 (looking at the camera, big smile): I love how his mind works. (The crowd boos. John gives a thumbs down)

  Paque (playfully): I like what I see. (The crowd erupts in applause.)

  It went on like that—finally it was just Paque and the second girl and they went at it. John, choose me and you won’t be sorry. John, let me show you what love’s about. John, choose your soul mate. John, I’ll take you to heaven and back.

  Paque’s job was to whip the other girl into a frenzy, which she did with flair, and John knew he couldn’t choose Paque anyway so it was really an entertainment about what Paque could get the other girl to say.

  John, choose me and you can do anything you want, she said, and Paque said, He’s yours then. The crowd stood and clapped wildly and the other girl looked confused for a moment but then John stood up and she went to him and they hugged like they were family. Offstage, Paque stood with her arms folded across her chest, smiling. I thought she did a quality acting job and Alan even said so later, after some of the guys from the crowd tried to give Paque a consolation prize.

  Fortunately, Who Fancies Me? was sold shortly thereafter because doing it for a week straight was boring.

  I have to sign off now because Stella (the one I told you about) is taking us on our first celebrity scavenger hunt. I’ll let you know…

  Daisy

  Dear Sara and Keren,

  Paque is out with Alan so I thought now would be the right moment to drop you a line to fill you in. Please thank whoever it was in your office who sent the photo and newsletter. I tacked it up on the back of the door in our room, to give us inspiration.

  When I said above that Paque is out with Alan I mean that they are at Von’s, which is just up the street, getting some groceries. I didn’t want to give the impression that Paque and Alan were out on the town together, or that they were together in some vague California way. Paque and I haven’t had boyfriends in God knows how long. My last boyfriend, Daryll, didn’t last long (I don’t want to go into that now).

  I did meet this guy though. Remember I told you about the scavenger hunt? The hunt was pretty much a bust but afterwards there was this party thrown by a guy named T.J. He works as a professional housesitter, which I think is one of those jobs that you could only find in L.A. But apparendy there’s a real demand, so T.J. doesn’t have a place of his own and, as he puts it, ‘lives around.’

  The party was in Brentwood, at this enormous Spanish-style house that T.J. said belonged to one of O. J. Simpson’s lawyers, who was a friend of T.J.’s family. What I liked about T.J. was the way he cracked himself up. He would be in the middle of telling you a story and he’d say, Can you believe that? God, that’s funny. And then he’d laugh in such a way that you’d laugh too, whether it was funny or not. (Also, did I mention, he’s really, really, really cute.)

  There were only about ten or fifteen people and we hung out around the oblong pool in the back yard, sipping cold Budweisers. The trees hanging over the pool made the backyard seem really dark and T.J. lit the tiki torches pitched in the mound of lava rocks behind the diving board. Paque told Stella that we had to be back at a decent hour because the next day was the first day of filming and Alan had scheduled an early shoot. But I was happy where I was. T.J. was showing off for me, doing stunts off the end of the diving board. Others stripped down to their underwear and a competition started, who could make the biggest splash, who could jump the highest, the furthest, etc. I dipped my legs in the shallow end with Paque and Stella. Stella was telling us about this guy she met who thinks Kurt Cobain is still alive and that his suicide was a fake but I tuned her out, imagining instead that T.J. was my boyfriend and that we lived in the Spanish-style house. Paque and I have talked about it before and basically we decided that while we’re trying to establish ourselves we’re not allowed to have boyfriends. We want boyfriends, but all of our friends who have boyfriends have to spend all their free time with them. Pretty soon you’d see less and less of them and then they’d get married and you wouldn’t see them at all.

  We want to do all that, someday. I just don’t see how you could put anybody through being second fiddle to your dreams. I don’t know if you know Madonna personally but you probably know her story, about how she moved to New York from Detroit with basically no money. She wanted to be famous no matter what and she ended up sleeping in her band’s rehearsal space. After that she moved up to a bedroom smaller than you would get if you committed a crime and were put in prison. She lived off two dollars a day. In New York City. Paque and I have been to New
York City and you can’t do anything for two dollars a day. I always think of Madonna homeless, sleeping on a mattress, whenever I get down about how hard it is to get a break. You have to want it more, is all.

  Plus, to be honest, I feel responsible for ruining the start we got back in Phoenix. I suffer from anxiety, and that day at the SaltBed Fest was the most anxious I’ve ever been. Everything was really going our way until my accident. There aren’t any second chances either, we learned that. We weren’t so surprised that Scott Key from Sony wouldn’t take our call, but a couple weeks after that even Ian wouldn’t talk to us because of an article that came out in the Arizona Republic. But the reporter twisted what we said all around. In the article it sounded like Paque and I blamed Ian for what happened. And they had a good time about Jammin’ Jay, too. The reporter made Ian out to be some sort of faker for putting out our record even though we didn’t sing every track on it. Paque and I tried to call Ian to tell him that we didn’t blame him, that it was our fault for not practicing as hard as we could, but all we ever got was his answering machine.

  That’s why when Alan called from Hollywood with an offer to make a short film, Paque and I said yes right away. Alan had read about the film my brother made, Plastic Fantastic, in an interview Paque and I did with Phoenix Magazine. We’ve never even seen the movie (Chuck was supposed to send us a copy) and Alan admitted that he hadn’t seen it either but he thought making a movie would be a ‘great way to turn around what happened in Phoenix.’ When someone extends you a hand like that, you should take it, right?

  T.J. and I ended up kissing in the bathroom, his wet trunks pressed up against me. It was nice to kiss someone. I worried that he would want to do more, but someone knocked on the bathroom door and T.J. smiled. We’re caught, he laughed. God, isn’t that funny?

  Paque said it was time to get back and I rolled the window down and let the wind blow my hair as Stella drove us back to Alan’s, who was already in bed. T.J. asked for my number, which was the biggest compliment I’d had in as long as I could remember, but I took his number instead. Paque and I crept into our room, trying not to make any noise, and I put the scrap of paper with the carefully printed numbers under my pillow.

  In the morning, T.J.’s number was gone. I tore my sheets apart but couldn’t find it. I even suspected Paque of taking it, but didn’t say anything. The whole thing felt like a dream and it put me in a very bad mood, but honestly I’d forgotten all about it once Paque and I arrived on the set for our first day of shooting.

  Our movie is not called Plastic Fantastic II but World Gone Water, and Paque plays Angie Boulevard, a nymphomaniac patient in an avant-garde behavioral rehabilitation center run by Dr. Hatch (who is played by Jesse Armstrong, the guy who plays the father on that show about the twins who have mind powers). I play Jane Ramsey, ‘Dr. Hatch’s fetching assistant.’ The rest of the cast is Brian Del’Acorte, who plays a fellow patient nicknamed X-Rated (you can probably guess why) and Robert Anaconda as Caleb Stone, a guy from Arizona who transferred into the program from prison (where he spent time because he raped someone).

  It’s sort of an updated A Clockwork Orange, Alan told us.

  Alan explained that we would shoot all the interior shots first and then do the exterior shots, which was confusing to me. I thought that movies were made just the way you see them on the screen. By that I mean, if at the beginning of a movie a friend says a sad goodbye to someone at the airport and then at the end of the movie the friend says a warm hello, that final scene isn’t possible without everything that’s happened in the middle. But Alan said it’s too expensive to set up shots so that once everything is set in a particular locale, you shoot every scene that takes place there. Which makes being an actor that much harder, I thought.

  Fortunately, Alan said, most of the movie takes place inside the behavioral center.

  I noticed that most of the crew was from Who Fancies Me? The makeup and wardrobe girl, Cindy, recognized Paque and the two of them chatted it up while Cindy made me up in a white labcoat and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. I don’t usually wear makeup—I’m lucky enough to have fair skin—but Cindy insisted that because of the lights I would have to wear a special kind of base to prevent glare. The base made me very uncomfortable. It felt like I had cement skin. I tried smiling and my cheeks felt like they were breaking through a brick wall.

  We only shot one scene that first day, which is actually the first scene in the movie. It’s a scene with me, Dr. Hatch and Caleb Stone. Caleb has just come to the facility and Dr. Hatch is giving him an entrance interview. I only have one line in the scene: We respect honesty here, Mr. Stone. But Alan said there’s a lot of subtle stuff going on in the scene, namely that Jane is secretly falling for Caleb, a sort of ‘rebel without a cause’ type. So there were several takes of cutaway shots to me where I’m supposed to ‘smile with my eyes.’

  Everyone, including Paque, who wanted to get to her first scene, was annoyed with me because I wasn’t giving a good enough performance. When I felt like I was ‘smiling with my eyes,’ Alan said I looked like ‘a mentally unstable child staring at a piece of candy.’ I told Alan that yelling at me didn’t help and he said he was sorry, but Jesse Armstrong—Dr. Hatch—sighed every time I blew it and Alan had to yell cut.

  Finally, Alan called for a break. Paque and I wanted to go outside, maybe take a walk around the block, but Cindy said she’d have to redo my makeup and Alan said to just stay inside. So Paque and I went into the bathroom while Alan and the others huddled around a tiny screen to watch what we’d done so far.

  Paque washed her hands in the sink, not saying anything.

  I’m trying, I said, the words echoing off the bathroom walls.

  I know, Paque said. But you just have to concentrate. You have to forget that you’re Daisy and pretend that you’re Jane Ramsey. I think that’s the problem. You aren’t pretending to be someone else. If you don’t believe that you’re Dr. Hatch’s assistant, then the audience isn’t going to believe it. It’s sort of like Robin Williams. You know how every Robin Williams movie makes you conscious of the fact that it’s Robin Williams—except for Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting—where at a certain point in the movie he breaks out of his character and does that thing with his lip and his voice gets crazy and he starts shaking his head and you say, Look, it’s Robin Williams. He becomes a stand-up comic in the middle of the movie. Compare that, she said, with the character in Good Will Hunting, where the last time you think about Robin Williams is when you see his name in the credits. After that, you believe that that psychiatrist is a real person, that he has a practice in Boston, and that you could fly there right now and be his patient. That’s the difference.

  I see what you mean, I said.

  So what’s Jane Ramsey’s favorite color, Paque asked.

  Blue, I said.

  What’s her favorite kind of food?

  Mexican.

  If she found a hundred dollars on the ground would she keep it or try to find out if someone dropped it?

  She’d keep it.

  And if she secretly liked a patient but didn’t want her boss to find out, would she try to let the patient know in a subtle way, or would she be obvious about it?

  Subtle.

  Then let’s see it, Paque said. I gave her a hug and Cindy knocked on the door and said, Okay let’s do it.

  Alan was grimacing and the others settled in, figuring it was going to take all week to get the scene.

  I’m proud to say I got it right in one take, which gave me a boost of self-confidence. When one thing goes right, it seems like everything is going right. (I found T.J.’s number, which had snaked itself inside my pillow case.) I’m riding that wave for now.

  Daisy

  Dear Sara and Keren,

  Alan got a new client today. Annette Laudin. She’s from London, but I’m not sure you would know who she is. She’s recently famous, as they say. Annette read the article in Variety about Alan and how he took on Paq
ue and me. She flew from New York to meet him. I asked Paque if she knew who Annette was but she said she didn’t, that Alan told her later that she used to be queen of the socialites in Manhattan, but that that was all just an experiment by these two women who had taken Annette away from her boutique job and decided to make her famous.

  How did they make her famous, I asked.

  Apparently one of the women was a publicist and the other one was a socialite, Paque said. The story reminded me of that movie Trading Places, where the two old men fuck someone’s life up for a dollar.

  These two women, the publicist and the socialite, decided to take Annette and dress her up in designer clothes. Betsey Johnson, Prada, Versace, DKNY, etc. They put her up in their houses in the Hamptons, making sure she arrived at all the parties in limos. At these parties they made sure Annette was photographed with any celebrity in the room. And the next day they called up their friends at the New York magazines and gave them nice little stories about Annette, what she was up to, what she said about so-and-so (only nice things, though).

  And it worked. Annette was a ‘must-have’ on every party list. She made friends with all the other famous people in New York—even Donald Trump. The daughter of some billionaire, one of Annette’s new friends, asked her to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. But the weekend of the wedding, the daughter of the billionaire discovered that her husband-to-be was in love with Annette and the wedding, hours away, was canceled.

  The next party Annette showed up for, she was turned away from the door by the very two women who had made her. You’re an ugly bitch, they screamed at her.

  I agreed with Paque that this was awful but in the back of my mind the story made me worry about our future. Alan had used his friends at Variety and Entertainment Weekly and the L.A. Times to print stories about World Gone Water, like those girls did to make Annette famous. I felt like we were Alan’s experiment. I started to think about what would happen to Paque and me after the movie came out. A certain number of people would hate it on principle, because these two no-names from nowhere were given attention that they, or someone they knew, deserved. A certain number of people would love it for the same reason. And maybe it would lead to parts in other films, and maybe we’d go on late-night talk shows and talk about what it was like to make it big. But I couldn’t fight the feeling that on the other side, no matter how hard it was to get famous, it was somehow harder once you did become famous. You had to watch out who you were seen talking to. You had to be careful where you went. You had to treat your body like a car you loved more than your own life.