That time my mother was a movie star

Posted by Jessica Jewett 1 Comment »

Lori GrahamThe summer of 1992 was brutally hot in St. Louis. I was 10-years-old and my mother was quite close to the age that I am now (that’s an odd thought!). We had a pretty decent life, much more secure than it is now, but that was part of the economic boom in the 90s, I think. Everybody was a lot better off after the recession in the 80s. She had her portraits made a year or two after the fact, which is what you’re seeing on the left.

My mother had a best friend through her job at Southwestern Bell. Remember when it was Southwestern Bell? Her friend heard about a Steven Soderbergh movie called King of the Hill that was going to be filmed in the old part of the city and she really wanted to go and audition, but she was nervous. So my mother agreed to go and be moral support, although it really didn’t interest her. Friends just do that kind of thing for one another.

I don’t know much about how they were cast other than they needed extras to play tuberculosis patients in a sanitarium. My mother’s friend was terribly excited and hoping they put her close to one of the principal actors so she could get some camera time. In the end, my mother who really didn’t care about the movie, was eyeballed by the casting people. She noticed they were talking among themselves and looking at her. Before she knew it, she was cast as a tuberculosis patient and told that she would be placed quite close to the principal actress. Her friend, however, was too dark and too modern looking (the movie was Depression-era), so she was put much further away at the other end of the hospital. My mother was the one they wanted and she never intended to actually be an extra.

That night, my mother told me about how she was going to be in a movie and I was very excited. Being only 10, I thought my mother was going to be a real movie star. She was pretty enough, so it wasn’t that far-fetched in my childish mind. There were always comments about how she resembled Helen Hunt or Meryl Streep from strangers and friends alike in the same way that my grandmother was compared with Greta Garbo in her day. I loved movies then but I didn’t quite reach a magical place of wanting to be part of movies until The Last of the Mohicans came out that fall. It probably started then and blew up when The Last of the Mohicans came out, then Gettysburg, and The Age of Innocence in the next two years. My mother had a bit of magical fairy dust on her just by being part of a movie though.

I don’t remember if the shooting day was one or two days now. I just know that it was the longest day I had ever spent away from home and it might have been two days that my memory is blending together now. I was dropped off at a babysitter’s house before dawn and not picked up until well after dark. I remember it was murderously hot and I spent the day at the Queeny Park pool. Missouri summers are as hot as summers in the Deep South, except the humidity is much higher because St. Louis is wedged in the nook where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet. Everyone in the movie is sweating when you watch it. That’s not stage sweat. That’s real sweat.

While I was swimming at Queeny Park, my mother was in the old part of the city making her big screen debut. They chose a location for the tuberculosis sanitarium that was part of the Catholic church in the area. The building used to house nuns, and then when there was a tuberculosis problem in the city, they turned it into a sanitarium – so the movie people used it for their sanitarium too. My mother was herded with all of the other extras through makeup and wardrobe until somebody realized that she was supposed to be positioned next to the principal actress in the scene. Then she had to go and get better makeup, hair, and wardrobe fitting before she was taken to the set. To make her look like she was wasting away from tuberculosis, they put baby oil in her hair and braided it down her back. Then they powdered her face and hands to make her look sickly and pale, along with dark makeup under her eyes. She was given a real housecoat from the 1930s, which was greenish and long to the floor. They used the baggy housecoat to hide her healthy figure and trick the camera into thinking she was skeletal.

After Soderbergh was happy with how the extras looked, they were taken to the set. In those days, people could only visit their sick family members by standing in the courtyard of this U-shaped building and shouting up to their loved ones along the balconies. In the scene my mother shot, the boy in the movie – the main character – arrived to visit his mother who had been sick with tuberculosis for most of his life. She was on the second floor on the left-hand wing of the U-shaped building from the boy’s point of view in the courtyard. My mother was placed right next to her, on her right (left if from the boy’s point of view). She said it was about a bed-length away. My mother got her own “family” since she was so close to the principal actress and they were directed to pretend to communicate by mouthing words so their voices wouldn’t interrupt the emotional scene between the mother and son. She described long breaks between shooting takes because the lighting people were unhappy and trying to change things. The scene itself wasn’t very long but it took something like eleven hours to shoot. It was hot. They were all wearing scratchy old 1930s clothes. They were slathered in oil and heavy makeup used for film.

My mother was exhausted by the time it was over and had witnessed lots of squabbling about whether it should be a wide shot on the whole wing or a close shot on the mother’s face. So after everything and then being a bed-length away from the actress, there was a good chance she wouldn’t make the cut in the scene anyway. Of course, as an adult, I know now that it’s pretty typical of films to cut, re-cut, edit, redo, etc.

You can watch the scene in this video. It starts at the 7:35 mark, roughly.

Now that it’s not the murderously hot summer of 1992 anymore and she’s not slathered in oil and makeup, she is rather happy that she was in a movie. She didn’t make the cut because Soderbergh and his editing people decided to use the close shots on the principal actress rather than the wide shots. It was the experience that sticks out in her mind now. She was very excited when Netflix picked up the movie so we could watch it again.

You know what’s really awesome too? These people were in the movie. Adrien Brody wasn’t a big star yet. Elizabeth McGovern wasn’t the Countess of Grantham yet. Lauren Hill wasn’t crazy yet. I love Adrien Brody! For the rest of my life, I can say my mother once worked on a Steven Soderbergh film that had Adrian Brody in it.

Adrien Brody

Elizabeth McGovern

Lauren Hill

I watched the movie last night on Netflix. I hadn’t seen it since we all watched it when it was released. Even though my mother didn’t make the cut because they used the close shot, I know she was there and my interest in movies gives me something to talk about with her. I told her that if I ever win an Oscar or something, I will have to mention that my mother was once an extra in a Steven Soderbergh movie. There is still a 10-year-old girl in me who thinks my mother was pretty and bright enough to be a real movie star.

 

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Farewell, Janine

Posted by Jessica Jewett 1 Comment »

JanineEarlier this week, I lost a friend, Janine. This picture was of her on her last birthday in May.

She fought like a warrior for about two years through cholangiocarcinoma, which is basically cancerous growth in one of the ducts that carries bile from the liver to the small intestine. That’s the cold medical definition. The painful reality was far more graphic and horrifying, and I couldn’t possibly recount her battle with any justice. You must read Janine’s blog to see what she went through in her own words. Her last post was January 5, and not long after that, she was placed in hospice care. The last time I heard from her directly was February 4, my birthday. She was in hospice care and entirely too unwell to think about other people, but she thought about me, and I’m so thankful that our last words to each other were exchanges of love and support. I was able to tell her that I loved her before she died. That has been a great comfort to me.

I first came to know Janine about eighteen years ago. At that time, I was living in St. Louis, going to school, and just learning to use the internet. Happenstance brought me to a chat room for my favorite television show at the time, Dr. Quinn. Remember those early days of the internet when chat rooms were about meeting like-minded people instead of nasty places where dirty old men troll for underage girls and boys now? It was more innocent back then. I met Janine there, as well as many others, and all of us got together every Saturday night to talk about the show. Three of them – Janine, Jennifer, and Mariann – became lifelong friends for me. We were all writers in one way or another. We were all interested in history. We were all relatively close in age.

Janine and I were a bit closer over time though. We had a bond that lacked real explanation, nor did we ever try to explain it. A great number of trials and tribulations befell both of us as we grew into womanhood, as well as sharing innumerable secrets between women that will never again be uttered aloud. Despite the physical distance, Janine became one of my best friends. She was the first person I confided in about my past life case as Fanny Chamberlain, and when I eventually wrote a book about it, I made sure I included her in it. She never judged me when I felt completely insane by the whole thing. That was her way in any situation. She could be loud and opinionated when the passion of a thing overtook her, but there was a gentleness in her that made a person feel secure in enjoying full confidences. Now that I’m looking back on it, I can’t think of a single incident in which my confidence was broken. Until you’ve enjoyed the rarity of someone so incapable of petty gossip, I don’t think you could fully understand the value of it.

Janine and I cut our teeth in literature by sharing our writing with each other. We were both avid readers and writers, which was probably the biggest source of our bond. I probably wouldn’t have worked on improving my writing so much if I hadn’t had people like Janine, and a bit later, Martina, who were willing to be honest about what was good, bad, and ugly. Janine was a wonderful writer as well, although she never thought herself as anything much, and never (to my knowledge) tried to get herself published. Late last year, she asked me for advice about self-publishing, as publishing a book was on her bucket list, and I offered to help her through the process. She got sicker and sicker though. It never materialized. I hope one day, after the loss isn’t so raw, her family will find her stories and have them published. It was one of her dreams that never came to fruition.

A little more than ten years ago, I became engaged. I was the first one of us to take that plunge. That relationship became abusive in various forms that I don’t want to discuss now, but I didn’t see it until it was too late. Janine came to visit not long after we moved in together and she knew right away that things weren’t right. As is the case with so many women in abusive relationships, the face of denial becomes such a heavy mask that it will destroy every other relationship in her life. She and I hit the roughest patch of our relationship and I went on to have to smack rock bottom face first with a miscarriage, alcoholism, and pill addiction before I found the courage to leave. Janine and I were not on good terms during the years that I was with my ex but she never completely disappeared. She was there observing and was still there when others disappeared completely.

Rosary

And while she visited, she gave me a rosary that she’d had blessed by a priest specifically for me, pictured above. I often hid the rosary under broken parts of my old jewelry box and managed to save it from being stolen as I lived like a nomad in the years after leaving my ex. I used that rosary when I went on paranormal investigations and had it in hospitals with me. It has traveled almost as much as I have and I don’t feel right without it if I leave for any trip, whether paranormal related, history related, or just pleasure. The last trip I took it with me was when I went to San Francisco with PRS for paranormal work at the USS Hornet and Alcatraz. Janine was always supportive of my work in the paranormal. For many years, she was one of the only people on this planet who knew I was a child medium (and grew into an adult medium). She never judged or scolded me about it. She understood because she had been through some paranormal experiences of her own.

When I did my NoH8 picture about three years ago, I used Janine’s rosary as well, pictured below.

Jessica Jewett, NOH8

In repairing my life after going through abuse, a miscarriage, addiction, etc., Janine and I rebuilt our relationship too. This is one of the things I’m most grateful for in my life because it wasn’t too long after that when her symptoms appeared. Had either of us been too proud or too stubborn to forgive and reconcile, she would have died without us coming back together again as we were once.

There were times in the course of her illness when she expressed to me the fear and desire to know if I felt, on an intuitive level, if she was going to beat her cancer. She never fully asked. Part of her didn’t want the answer. I never gave an answer either, mainly because she never fully asked, and partially because I always had a foreboding that it was only a matter of time. Neither of us ever wanted to say it aloud but I think there was a silent understanding that we both knew. I made it a point to tell her I loved her as often as I could and that has given me a little peace over the terrible loss. Had I not conveyed my feelings to her and resolved our relationship, the unsettled feeling and the pain would be worse.

My grief is not so direct. Imagining what Milo, her husband, or her mother, or other family members must be going through is rather impossible. I’m so thankful that Janine finally found true love before she got sick. It was the greatest dream of her life to find a lifelong companion and a beautiful love, just as it has been for me as well. We spent many, many hours talking about such dreams. Janine nearly gave up on finding real love until Milo came along. She never spoke a harsh word against him, and he stood by her through every minute of her illness. I may never find a love that beautiful or a companion that devoted, but I was so glad Janine got to experience it in the last years of her life. She never took it for granted after all of the frogs she had to kiss and the years of solitude in between that it took to find her prince.

At the end of a life, the only thing that really matters is whether you gave love and received love. Janine was blessed on both accounts. She will be remembered for her loyalty, passion, creativity, opinionated nature, joy, courage, and for the beautiful love she built in her marriage. For me, she will be remembered as the friend who never gave up on me when I wanted to give up on myself.

Rest well, my friend.

 

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My Left Foot as seen by a quadriplegic

Posted by Jessica Jewett 8 Comments »

Daniel Day-LewisIn my lead up to the Oscars next month, I’m slowly watching Oscar movies I haven’t yet seen in my spare time. A couple of nights ago, the selection was My Left Foot.

I have avoided this movie since it came out despite Daniel Day-Lewis being in my top three favorite actors, if not my number one (he’s neck-and-neck with Clark Gable in that race). Something about My Left Foot has always terrified me. I can’t quite explain it but I’m sure you can draw conclusions. I’m severely disabled. Christy Brown was severely disabled. I’m an artist and writer. Christy Brown was an artist and writer. The idea of watching a film with Daniel Day-Lewis reportedly mastering being so severely disabled seemed to fall under the category of “hitting too close to home” for the last 20-something years. The problem was I don’t like claiming people as “favorite” in anything without examining their entire body of work. So I set aside my peculiar fear of this movie, cuddled my dog for comfort, and reluctantly clicked My Left Foot on Netflix.

It took twice as long to get through the entire movie as its runtime because I kept having to stop and take breaks. By the end, my eyes were so red and glassy from the exhausting emotional experience that my family tiptoed quietly around me as if I might have another one of my panic attacks to which I am prone. As I suspected, I would not have been capable of watching something like that when I was younger. Following my instinct to not see it 24 years ago was correct. I saw so much of myself in Christy Brown that it was like having certain old wounds ripped open and exposed to the world. Something about Daniel Day-Lewis – a decidedly able-bodied and athletic man – so thoroughly and masterfully crossing over into my world, so to speak, disturbed me in a way that I haven’t yet been able to understand. I think it had something to do with being reminded of how easily he could cross over into my physical world, while I can never cross over into his physical world. I will never climb through the rugged Irish countryside for solitude, or experience the thrill of speeding on a motorcycle, both things that he reportedly does. Human experience will always be limited for me. Yet this man who immersed himself in my world for this film managed to drag out the darkest parts of this kind of life into harsh, blinding light just by the pain in his eyes and the rawness of his performance. I didn’t know whether to love or hate Day-Lewis for exposing the darkness.

Day-Lewis’ interaction with the disabled community, and dedication before, during, and after the film made it even more compelling to me. He’s famous for being “obsessive” and “so Method” in his movies. I read that he spent months at a hospital for severely disabled people in Ireland getting to know them and learning to live that way. During filming, he couldn’t jump in and out of character, so he remained in his wheelchair even when the cameras weren’t rolling. Crew members were reportedly irritated by having to haul his wheelchair around for different setups. People had to feed him and give him drinks on breaks as well. When his English agent visited the set, he reportedly refused to jump out of character and the agent left in a frustrated huff. Being contorted in hunched positions that come with cerebral palsy broke two of his ribs but he kept filming with little to no complaint. And when he won his Best Actor Oscar for playing Christy Brown, he took the award back to the hospital where the disabled patients taught him to live that life and he spent a day letting them look at his Oscar in person and spent time with them.

Truthfully, there was no other way to approach this story from where I sit. If you open yourself to the claustrophobia of existing in a body that won’t obey your alert and beautiful mind, you have to be willing to go through the mental anguish of feeling trapped, rejected, and misunderstood. You have to be willing to find a way to push yourself through the imprisonment into a world of your own creation while everyone around you seems to push you back into entrapment for the sake of simple survival. If I ever got to speak to Day-Lewis, I would ask him directly if he ever felt trapped in his own body while filming. If so, then he truly grew as a human being.

Many parts of the film could have easily been lifted from my own life. I was rather bothered when teenage Christy was with the other neighborhood kids playing spin the bottle and none of the girls wanted to acknowledge it when the bottle pointed to him. His guy friends stood up for him and the girl only kissed his cheek because they pressured her into it. Christy always seemed to be so painfully aware that his peers were moving past him and having boyfriends or girlfriends while he was not. He was a normal adolescent inside though, and craved those romantic connections. He liked the girl and painted her a sweet little picture to tell her so. At first, she swooned quite dreamily, thinking the romantic gesture was from his brother. When she realized it was from Christy, she took it back to him and told him she couldn’t accept it. She couldn’t accept the feelings of a man with such a severe disability, made obvious by the fact that she thought it was wonderfully romantic until her friends pointed out the true artist. Christy was largely left behind his peers.

The same story repeats itself over and over again no matter if it’s 1950 or 1990. I don’t have cerebral palsy like Christy did but my disability is no less “frightening” or “intimidating” to many who cross my path. I became aware of exactly how unsuitable I was as a girlfriend in middle school going into high school. Like every girl, I had my fair share of crushes. I watched my friends pair up, have first kisses, go on dates, etc., but it never happened for me. I learned to make boys laugh in an effort to make up for my physical shortcomings, and they were perfectly happy to pal around with me, but no boy ever had a crush on me. I knew exactly why. I knew as clearly as I knew the pain in Day-Lewis’ Christy when he was rejected more than once by ladies. Occasionally, I got brave early on if I liked a boy. I would tell him so. Rejection without looking me in the eye or giving me a clear reason why came too many times and I basically stopped trying when I reached my junior year in high school. I never had dates to dances, I never really went to parties, and I never had a prom date. The first boy I ever really loved came along my junior year – more than a simple crush – but by that time, I lost all nerve to try. Carl was on the football team and his girlfriend was a cheerleader. I never stood a chance and I knew it. Not only was I in a wheelchair but I lived with an abusive stepfather, so I was rather insecure, quiet, and unwilling to expose myself to more pain. He may or may not have known about my feelings – I don’t know. He was my friend regardless. To a teenage girl in love, though, friendship was just a consolation prize.

Christy Brown had a similar relationship in the film with his doctor. He fell in love with her through their friendship and she married someone else, which shattered the last hope in life that he had, and led him through the black door of considering suicide. The film depicts Day-Lewis as Christy grasping a pencil with his foot and writing a suicide note – “All is nothing, therefore nothing must end.” He then dropped the pencil and picked up a straight razor, which he attempted to use in slashing his own wrist but failed because of his own limitations. This was when the thought popped into my head: “I didn’t know whether to love or hate Day-Lewis for exposing the darkness.” Suicidal tendencies or full-fledged suicide attempts are a very dark secret among the disabled – so much so that we don’t even talk about it among ourselves in hushed tones. When the full weight of never leading an easier life and facing a life of solitude settles upon your shoulders, the weight presses you further and further into the grave if you allow it.

My method was not going to be slashing my wrists. Women very rarely mutilate their bodies in suicide, I’ve learned since then. I’ve been suicidal twice in my life to the point of formulating plans of how I was going to do it. The first time was as a senior in high school. My former stepfather was regularly sexually assaulting me for quite some time, combined with a lot of other issues related to facing 60 more years as a quadriplegic. I calculated how many sleeping pills it would take – not many because I’m small. The second time came at age 24, a few months after my miscarriage. I was in an abusive relationship and entirely blamed myself. If the only people who wanted to be in my life were parasites, then there was no reason to live. That time, it was going to be oxycodone and vodka. And as I watched Christy Brown fail at his escape attempt, I thought again what a cruel twist of the universe that people like us couldn’t even physically accomplish the escape. These severe disabilities are the only prisons from which escape is truly impossible. I have since found better spiritual footing and I abandoned those plans after the second time, but the devil does lurk in the darkness once in a while.

The only time I felt a sense of calmness or reprieve in this difficult film was when Christy was painting. There were only short glimpses of Day-Lewis acting out the process but it was calming to see it. Day-Lewis apparently could not master it with his left foot but he could with his right foot, so many of those scenes were shot through a mirror to give the illusion of being his left foot. I’m not surprised. I’m right handed and my right leg is also dominant. Day-Lewis is also right handed, so his right leg would be dominant too. In the opening sequence, Day-Lewis pulled a record from its sleeve, put it on the record player, and set the needle with his foot. He practiced doing it so much that he did it successfully on the first take. Unlike Christy Brown/Daniel Day-Lewis, I don’t have the flexibility or dexterity to paint, write, etc., with my feet. I do it with my mouth as you can learn here. Painting and writing are indeed the only times when I feel wholly at peace and rarely think of the difficulty in my life. I expect at least part of Christy Brown must have felt that same sense of peace. That may be why I was able to relax when watching those sequences, although they may still have been disturbing or pulled some other emotion from watching it. I especially related to the sequence in Christy’s gallery showing in which being a “crippled artist” vs simply an artist was briefly mentioned. People like Christy and me have probably never felt (or past tense as he is dead) secure in knowing whether people admire our art because it’s good or because we created in weird ways.

My only problem with My Left Foot was the somewhat misleading end. It appeared that Christy Brown finally got his happy ending by marrying Mary Carr, but what the movie doesn’t show is her alleged and probable abuse within that marriage. I confess, I was disappointed when I read the allegations. I had hoped Christy found some peace and contentment in life, but it has been reported that his wife was repeatedly unfaithful and bruises on his body at the time of his death suggested she was beating him. As disappointed as I was, I can’t say that I was entirely surprised. Abuse rates among the severely disabled have always been shockingly high compared to other minority groups. Among women, reports say that between 57% and 63% will be sexually or physically abused in their lifetime. People in general with disabilities are twice as likely to face abuse than the average population. I have been abused in every form by different people in different periods of my life, so these statistics are, unfortunately, a grim reality. I think the statistics were probably higher in Christy Brown’s generation. Still, I wanted to believe he got a happy ending like the film suggested but I suspect it wasn’t that happy. It is like filmmakers to tie up everything in a pretty bow though. As a storyteller in my own right, I understand why the ending happened the way it did.

Part of this passage written by Christy Brown himself was quoted at the end of the film. It struck me because I could not have found these words in my own vocabulary, yet it reflects my heart and mind as exactly as it reflected his heart and mind. Read:

“It would not be true to say that I am no longer lonely, now that I have reached out to thousands of people and communicated to them all my fears, frustrations and hopes which for so long lay bottled up inside me. I have made myself articulate and understood to people in many parts of the world, and this is something we all wish to do whether we are crippled or not. It is a common need to make ourselves understood by others, for none of us can live entirely alone or by our own devices. Yet like everyone else I am acutely conscious sometimes of my own isolation even in the midst of people, and I often give up hope of ever being able to communicate with them. It is not the sort of isolation that every writer or artist must experience in the creative mood if he is to create anything at all. It is like a black could sweeping down on me unexpectedly, cutting me off from others, a sort of deaf-muteness.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. The film was as dark as it was inspiring. And I still haven’t decided whether to love or hate Daniel Day-Lewis for exposing the darkness of imprisonment within these bodies in his performance. Once you open the door to hell, you cannot shut it again. You can only spend your life trying to stay on the safe side of it where inspiration, art, and love exist. Although I’ve looked through the doorway to hell more than once, just as Christy Brown did, I’m still here and I still know how to smile, paint, write, and live.

Jessica Jewett

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