True Lies And Non-Fiction Fiction

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "film is a lie at 24 frames per second."  Well, that's true, of course, because a film is not life, it's a construction.  Even a documentary cannot be anything other than a construction.  But in openly-admitted fiction that is in no way trying to be True, how much is true by necessity?

A common debate you'll hear throughout the humanities centers on how much of the artist is evident in the art.  How much of what's written is the writer?  There are whole schools of criticism that take up variations of that one question.  You can build a whole career in critical studies just exploring auteur theory.  Way back when, one of my professors (also a novelist) was deeply annoyed we (his idiot students) kept making assumptions about an author based a novel he wrote.  For instance, one of the characters was quite perverse which prompted our creative interpretations of what the author believed about sex and women and sundry accoutrements.  The discussion got pretty detailed, and gross, and my professor ended up throwing a chair to get our attention back.  

I had yet to brave the admission I was, myself, a writer.  Publishing cartoons and writing all the time were my hobbies and side-lines, things I knew I would do for the rest of my life, but only in addition to a real career.  Because no-one writes books or draws cartoons for a living.  Those rare exceptions I saw in the newspaper or magazines or bookstore were freaks of nature or products of nepotism or luck.  They were not regular, real people from no-where like me.  Regular, real people from no-where go into law or medicine or other linear careers of easily measured success (apologies to the lawyers, doctors, and others laughing at me right now, but  these were the assumptions of my juvenile mind).  I had not yet faced the fact that I was headed for a creative career, so I didn't yet realize having any sort of audience meant I, too, was going to have to brave being exposed.  As a multi-panel cartoonist, I joked I was a "stripper" by trade.  I didn't realize at the time how very accurate that would be.

Creating anything--even if you couch it in lies and call it fiction--is a kind of personal striptease.  Naturally, everything we "create" on some level reflects who and what we are.  Even intentionally avoiding subjects, settings, events, or characters from personal history is revealing.  No wonder it's such a daring and nerve-wracking thing to do.  I get nervous as bathing-suit weather approaches, I certainly don't feel any more confident showing my insides as well as my outsides.  When I started considering a creative career, I engaged in ridiculous fantasies to keep myself hidden.  I'd write under pseudonyms, use caricatures instead of photos of myself, hire an actor to stand in for me at public functions:

"And the award goes to...Jody Lindke.  Playing Jody this evening and accepting on her behalf, please welcome Vin Diesel." 

What's almost worse than feeling so self-conscious is the counter-impulse of feeling supremely vain.  Creative expression strikes the insecure me as a narcissistic act of screaming on paper, "look at me!"  My inner-critic is fat and happy as it goes to town mixing low-self-exteme with guilt-generating shame, and the result, I've discovered (as it was recently pointed out to me again) is I chronically hold back in my work.  


I'd been dealing with rejections and couldn't help asking myself over and over "what do they want?"--they in this case being publishers and producers and agents and readers and every level of gate-keeping in between--and I did this within hearing of a friend who reminded me, "what they want, really, is a piece of your soul."  Did you feel a chill?  'Cause I sure did.  If I didn't want to share my visage with others, I certainly didn't feel any more confident exposing any fraction of my soul to derision.  I wasn't gonna do it.  There had to be a way out.  I had to be able to pretend convincingly enough to keep myself separate--and safe--and still create compelling fiction and films.

Not so.  

Looking at the stories I revisit most, the shows and films and books I turn to, I realized it's not only true, that bit about the soul, it's right that it's true.  It is just.  It is good.  


It's also really, really, really intimidating...

Whether you're consuming art or creating it, you're engaged in an act of sharing, and what you're sharing is yourself, your humanity--y'know, that thing supernatural or immortal creatures always envy in us, that thing we always recognize in friendly aliens from other worlds and never find in the ones who want to eat us.  That thing is what makes a good story great, that makes us laugh and cry and feel we not just engaged with art but experienced it.

I thought I was done with a particular bit of fiction.  It does all the things it needs to do.  It's funny, it's moving, it's got a plot, plants have pay-offs...but some parts feel clipped, some opportunities lost, because I'd approached it as a story about "those people" in "that place," and kept myself away from it.  So what could be great is only good.  If I dig in and let that bit of soul I've been hoarding show, if I scrape down to expose the raw, real emotion and pain of what I'm writing about, it could be one of those stories you can't look away from or forget, the kind of story that becomes as real and personal as lived memory.  Drama is action driven by feeling, and I hadn't wanted to feel what drove the actions I'd written about.  I'd written about death and fear and lust and love and joy, but I'd protected myself, kept my clothes on, kept my humanity to myself.  It's intimidating to think of an audience seeing this and saying, "this is Jody's fear and lust and love and joy," reducing me to what fragments of myself slipped through.  I don't want the censure or humiliation.  If I invest myself and the work is rejected, I lose the self-soothing, "well, that wasn't really me."  However much I give any piece of writing, it is by nature a construction, but if I only ever play it safe, my work can never be more than artifice.  

Striptease may be an art, but making art is a striptease.  You can't hide and create. 

I often say story lets us live surrogate lives, but I realize now that's only possible when the teller is courageous enough to give real life to it.  That bit of soul they want is where Truth with the capital "T" resides.  Art doesn't give us feelings of strength or courage or empathy or solidarity or love or loss or hope.  Art stimulates real feelings because real feelings were put into that art. Feeling is the heart (note the phrase) of story.  That's what gives it the power to teach, to reveal our humanity, to cement our connectedness and acknowledge our fragility.  Dismissing it by calling it "fiction" is kind of naive.

Pre-emptive Fear Blows

Worrying is expensive.  It’s like emotional interest attached to any given event.

I don’t care how big or small, all features struggle with budget.  Whether you’re working with a hundred thousand or a hundred million, no budget ever seems like it can be enough, you’re always gonna struggle with costs, always going to push for more money. 

Getting a film financed has never been easy, but it’s particularly tough now with so much uncertainty in the US and world economies, especially since large-venue distribution (movie theaters) has steadily shrunk for as long as I’ve been alive.  Independent feature films not completely funded by pre-sales are a GIGANTIC financial gamble, but there are some hold-outs who do sometimes find the film equivalent of venture capital – cash with strings – and use it to make their films. 

I worked on one feature that had such funding but a big chunk of it was coming from a nervous source who stalled production day by day for weeks instead of releasing the funds.  Delays of any kind drive up costs, and this extended push lost the production some of its committed talent as their windows of availability closed and they went on to other projects.  The film was eventually a month past its start date and well over budget before a single frame had been shot—caused by the investor’s withholding of funds—and this only made that same investor even more uneasy to commit.

Can you say Catch-22?  Meanwhile, everyone held their breath and kept working, clinging to the hope they’d be able to pay their department employees and vendors.

Production finally started, but the financier insisted it stay within the original budget numbers, thereby eating the costs of the delay, and that meant there was no money for music.  At all.  None.  A script composed to modern published songs with references to at least one published song and shot in a way that begged a hip and trendy generation-defining collection of pop music to accompany its embedded array of meta- and pop-culture references—by necessity—went without.  It wasn't a silent film, all involved did their best "in post" to make do with little means and tied hands.  But the editing that needed music and sound design to help the scenes live and breathe, to punctuate performance, to build subtext or ease transitions – all that was sorely lacking.  It hurt the film, and it’s excruciating to see a hundred or more people give their all to something only to have it flounder.

About SPOILER ALERT! Bambi...

We have a very vocal apartment.  Our refrigerator occasionally wails a shrill, broken-hearted lament that sometimes goes on for quarters of an hour, our walls are thin, and our bathroom is a cacophony of water, pipe and pressure any time of day.  If you've ever done sound design, it's a great place to live.  Our twins soon took an interest in the sounds and their many suspected causes, but one day I was startled to notice one or the other storming around (they like to take turns with these things -- they're impressively fair about things like this) with crossed arms and bloody-murderous looks.  

"What's the matter?  Did something happen?" I ask.

"I'm mad!"

"I can see that.  You look mad.  What are you mad about?"

"No, I'm angry!"

"Oh, I see.  What are you angry about?"

After a moment of deep introspection, she'd announce, with a vehemence that trumpeted intolerable personal offense, "THE WATER IN THE PIPES!" and then go on storming and huffing and crossing arms with vicious expressions.

They were practicing.  I'm a youngest child, and I didn't recall ever seeing children practice feelings before.  I guess we'd managed a relatively conflict-free household up 'til then, because for months, typically on alternating days (to share), one would affect the pose and manner of outrage and go through the motions of being mad and talking about it.  It was really difficult not to laugh -- it was REALLY cute! -- but it was obvious this process was sincere and an important component of developmental emotional play.

Now, I'll admit to fast-forwarding Walt Disney's "Bambi" past the [SPOILER ALERT] mother's death scene, telling my girls simply, "it's time for Bambi to go spend time with his daddy now," and they still don't seem to mind.  Initially, I did this to let them see the parts of the story I thought they were best able to understand and enjoy.  After all, they're three now and still not quite clear on the idea that waking up from an afternoon nap is not waking up to an entirely different day.  But seeing them play-practice feelings (wholly new and doubly startling for me when they switched from acting out anger to "help, help, emergency!"), I realized what I was seeing them do is exactly the reason so many stories, especially directed at a child audience, make little kids cry.  Stories afford us the great luxury of a multitude of surrogate lifetimes, showing us our many possible futures.  The best ones, those true to the Virtues, show us paths to the light, ways to overcome tragedy, pain, loss, fear, and the consequences of yielding to the "dark side."  We see Bambi love and grow and suffer, and we see him overcome.  If a fawn can do it, so can we.  If only Darth Vader had watched Bambi. 

Realizing all this, I recently let the story play out, no fast-forward abbreviation or quick cut to Bambi's time with daddy, armed for the moment my daughters asked me to "pause it," so they could ask me with a mix of awe and wonder and empathy, "Did Bambi's mommy die?"


"Yes," I answered, relieved to see they don't quite get what that means yet.  

"Mommy, will you die?" my eldest asked, wide-eyed.


"Someday," I said, resolved to talk to them honestly and plainly, though I did add without any reasonable foundation beyond my own hope it's true, "but not for a long time."

Then she was quiet and I thought we were done for the moment until she asked very quietly, "Mommy, will I die?"


Mommy shoulda fast-forwarded...

Goblin with a Bow

I’m typically an excellent student, one of those predominantly “A” grade over-achievers begging teachers for extra homework (not an exaggeration – I’ve actually done that many times) and even gave one teacher a lump of coal before one Christmas break for providing lax instruction (again, not kidding).  But in the few art classes I’ve taken, I was a horrible student, and that probably accounts for the gigantic holes in my technique. 

The thing is, drawing was always an intensely personal thing for me, and I didn’t really understand that for the longest time.  I rarely showed anyone my work, and when I did I made sure to have a ready, enthusiastic, and kind audience, like my mom.  Really, I was that insular.  So, it’s kind of nuts that I ever pursued it as a career or source of income.  I’m terrible at “networking” and have to battle my inner critic near to death to engage in anything smacking of self-promotion.  “Braggart,” hisses that tiny, vicious voice in my head.  I’m afraid I let minor setbacks and rejections too often cripple my efforts, so you can probably imagine what even nurturing criticism did for me in a classroom setting.

On occasion, I bumped into extraordinary people, often gregarious and excessively kind, who grabbed me by the hair and ordered me to “draw, damn it!” with such gleaming enthusiasm, even my nasty little inner-critic couldn’t say no. 

One such person got me in such a vice grip of loving faith and merciless encouragement, I married him.  If you knew him as I do, you would, too.  But before I met my husband Christian, another such person found me:  James Wellborn, who gave me my first official cartooning job (for cash money, y’all!), and who was such a naturally unflappable and positive force, I put myself through college cartooning and became the first woman ever to receive the Charles Schulz Award from Scripps Howard.  Mr. Peanuts himself could sadly not be in attendance, but I got to shake Snoopy’s hand!

James was a big guy, in every way – big heart, big sense of humor, big in stature – an over-all huge individual.  And me, being the hermit-ing burrower I tend to be, never told him how much he changed my life and how deeply I am indebted to him for believing in me and bolstering my utter lack of confidence.  James was my first real, professional editor, my first big promoter, and my unwitting matchmaker, because thanks to his unrelenting, irresistible enthusiasm, my husband got to see my cartoons in the newspaper, and the poor guy fell in love with them and me long before we met in person. 

But just as I seem to reserve courage for others instead of myself, when it came to seeing to his own happiness, James fell short.  He was the sort of person who gave everything he had to those he cared about and believed in, so when he faced his own battles, sometimes he didn’t have enough left to keep himself going.  I wish I’d given him even a fraction of the multitude of thank-you-Jameses I’ve been silently storing in my mind since he first looked at my work and said, “sure.”  I can’t remember if I ever truly thanked him, which tells me whatever I did say was no-where near enough.

James ended his life last year.

I’ve thought of James, and will continue to, every time I sit down to draw, and I do my best to listen to the little voice he added to my brain, often imagining his big, broad smile, as he tells me, “Draw anyway, Jody.  And show it to someone.” 

So, here is something that I’ve been working on, and the path I took to get there.  It’s a goblin with a bow.  He looks a little worried to me.  Maybe he’s lost his friend.