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I Wanted A Pony,
and All I Got Was This Lousy Web Link
“Holding a Boom
in Stilettos...
and Other Things I Haven’t Tried”
It’s hard to imagine what my life would be like without
all the fame and glory of being the only offspring of the
famous writer Dan Simmons. Every morning, the routine is the
same—get up at 5 a.m., primp in front of the vanity
for hours with age-defying beauty products, don my $200 hot
pink sweatpants with the word Juicy across the rear
and do a few J.Lo dance moves in the mirror to make sure that
all of the letters stay in place.
I adjust my foam John Deere baseball cap (it’s vintage, mind you) so that just a few tendrils of
unwashed, product-heavy hair tumble out, perch a ginormous
pair of Jackie O. sunglasses on my frail, bird-like face,
pop the collar of my polo shirt up, and do a quick check to
make sure that the “LV”s painted on my nails are
pointing in the right direction to match the ones on my Louis
Vuitton clutch.
I pause just before opening the front door, bracing myself
for the onslaught of cameras and paparazzi. Ten steps down
the sidewalk, fifteen to the Jag, half a mile to Starbucks
(where my nonfat half-caf soy caramel macchiato cup is already
collecting a sheen of dew around its circumference), and the
day will open up like a giant lotus flower of opportunities—opportunities
to stop, drop and shop. Lindsey Lohan, Mary Kate, Paris Hilton…
I understand these women (I just eat more
than them). Together, we bob on life rafts in the sea of public
oppression.
Pink life rafts.
With Wi-Fi.
It’s a demanding life when you’re the only child
of an eccentric writer, but someone’s got to do it.
And when the literary limelight throws a kink in my life with
elements of irony, hubris and tragedy, I brave them as any
great protagonist would— by letting a single, bi-syllabic
word escape from my lipstick-slathered mouth… “daddyyyyyyy!”
What? I saw it on MTV’s “My Super Sweet Sixteen.”
It could happen to me.
Let’s be honest. My day starts with a $3 bottle of
Herbal Essences, jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, a bowl of
Honey Nut Cheerios, and The Today Show playing on
my 12” TV in the background. For the past two years,
I’ve tried the patch, the gum and the spray,
and I’m still entrenched in the abusive relationship
that is my 15-minute Today Show fix.
My feelings for The Today Show are similar to the
feelings anyone has when viewing art from the Dada period,
a JPEG of the Virgin Mary grilled cheese, or the silhouetted
solo portion of Prince’s halftime show with his, er,
special guitar-- as soon as the image hits your retina, you
must quickly choose an emotional camp and never abandon it,
not even for a bathroom break. Love it or hate it, there is
no going back. And I love hating The Today Show.
I love the way my temples clench each time Al, Matt and Meredith
throw their heads back as they grasp each other, shrieking
with laughter at their improvised flirtatious dialogues. I
love standing in my kitchen and staring with a vacant expression,
hovering my spoon inches from my open mouth, not even wanting
to chew for fear of missing the entire news coverage for the
day (usually spanning from 8:00-8:01 a.m. on the dot). I love
that everything from presidential interviews to segments about
people who paint their hamsters’ toenails are drenched
in an unendingly, agonizingly awkward nuance. “Coming
up next, this semi-famous person!” the anchor’s
voice will brag as the screen fills with the face of a sweating
actor or “expert”, who must improvise an unsuspecting
expression until the producer cuts to commercial seven or
eight minutes later.
But most of all, I love and live for the moments when the
cast and crew are tossed to the cruel seas of unscripted live
television, when the strangled barks of producers can be made
out in the background, the anchors’ eyes widen with
fear above their permasmiles as their segment goes into uncharted
waters, and—if I’m lucky enough—the chaos
and cacophony will reach such an emergency state that I will
see a glimpse of the all-American hero: the production assistant.
Production assistants are much like Spiderman, you see. Largely
invisible, rarely ever heard, they live in tiny apartments
without renters insurance and work like indentured slaves,
silently holding our cities together like strategically-placed
duct tape. When Anne Curry hits the Irish coffee a little
too early on Halloween and begins to make snow angels on the
couch in a Cher costume, it is the arm of the production assistant
that enters stage right, jams a wireless microphone up through
the button hole of her pleather jacket, gives her two swift
slaps to the face and retreats like a lone gazelle into the
moonless Serengeti night. When Al Roker scrambles atop a poorly
balanced box on the rooftop of a skyscraper, stands on one
foot and does the weather report full of more giggles than
an entire Girl Scout troupe, it is the production assistant
who crawls in on her belly, dressed in camouflage from head
to toe. She is the Media Soldier who must stealthily hold
up a pen and a release form, releasing the network from all
liability when Al tumbles to his squishy end in Central Park’s
tennis courts, just inside the doubles line if the wind is
right.
Production assistants get up at dawn to schlep heavy equipment
up eight flights of stairs, electrocute themselves on 1,000-watt
lights, and order lunch entrées en masse for thirty
vegan and carnivorous executives who boast a variety of wheat
and dairy allergies. They powder the noses of prison inmates,
hold boom microphones over their heads for hours until Diane
Sawyer finally gets her 3-legged stool out and milks a single
tear out of Britney Spears’ tear ducts, and bounce screaming
babies in the hallway in an attempt to get them Gerber-cute
by the end of the commercial. At the end of the day, they
walk, skip and scooter back to their humble abodes, where
a few Netflix will be waiting in their mailbox and a hot pocket
will be waiting in their freezer.
 They
endure all of this—the live Will Ferrell skating segments
when Meredith will send herself into a concussion, the angry
reptiles that demand SAG cards before doing one more take
with Samuel L. Jackson, the marijuana-smoking camera operators
who pinch girls’ waists and hire interns based on cup
size. They do these bizarre and frequently demeaning things
because they dream that someday, they too will be able to
pay their rent and send their children to college with money
they earned in the film business. The Bicycle Thief, North
by Northwest, 8 ½ , The Great Escape, Mr. Bean Goes
to Church . . . these masterpieces were all formed by
the same hands that once dumped Splenda into lattes and pushed
limp reptiles out of overhead bins in Snakes on a Plane.
(Don’t follow the logic on that one, just come with
me on this). After a movie, I refuse to leave the theater
until the PA credits have rolled across the screen—these
people are my people, and I have felt their pain. I have schlepped
camera bags, shot across the room after jamming my thumb into
a 1K key light, held the boom over my head until my weak biceps
shook so hard that my audio editor would later ask if we’d
experienced a major earthquake.
I did these things because, like my superhero brethren, I
have a dream—in my case, a dream of documentary filmmaking.
And I also have a dream of having someone to dump Splenda
in my latté with no expectations of a paycheck. My
documentary travels have been a bizarre—let’s
qualify that-- freakishly bizarre journey, and there
is so much to tell.
But for now, it’s time for me to kick off my high heels,
lace-up my low tops, and trade my blue sweater for another
blue sweater-- those stories will have to wait for another
day.
And as my first real friend Mr. Rogers would say
(it’s true—when you’re an only child, you actually talk to Mr. Rogers on the television screen)...
“I really liked being with you. You make my day such
a special day by just you being yourself. I'll be back next
time, neighbor!”*.
Until next time,
Jane Kathryn
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