ON THE OPINION OF A WRITER

So, the viewing marathon is over and my ballot has been cast.

I'm looking forward to seeing which performances my peers will select as the best of the year in the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. I've been eligible to vote all 18 years. That's a lot of years of keeping my dues current even when I've not been acting, but I keep it up because I never officially quit acting -- I've just been on a very prolonged maternity leave.

For those who don't know my story, like so many other starry-eyed young girls, I came to Hollywood intending to act. My road to stardom, however, quickly became very bumpy. Literally. Bumpy. Within weeks of arriving, I contracted my first of five consecutive major bumps.

Concealing an ever-growing "Baby Bump" while running to call-backs for roles like one recurring character who was supposed to be a skinny model was one thing, but after the colicky child arrived making it to any audition, rehearsal, or performance became next to impossible. It had all happened too quickly. Without extended family or resources to pay for babysitters, I could not go on auditions, and without going on auditions one can not get cast, and thus, can not act. I'm not complaining. That derailment ended up bringing me back to an earlier love -- writing. That was something I could do at home and I didn't need to hire babysitters nearly as often.

Over the past 18 years, I've come to look at movies from a much more writerly perspective. While I love a great performance, it is usually the story that that I find myself analyzing and celebrating most when it is well done. (And I would argue that actors rarely win "Best Actor" awards alone, but rather in partnership with well-written scripts.) Because of this, I have to really slow myself down when faced with the question of which film to choose for the "Outstanding Performance by a Cast" award. I have to remind myself that this award is not about the story, it's about the acting. This is such a collaborative art that the dissection is not always as easy as it might seem.

Watching all of these great performances does give me the itch to get back into that form of creative expression again, but I may have to wait a bit longer to do that. I'm still overseeing the education of three of my kids, and dedicating a lot of time to writing. I want to be Superwoman and juggle it all at once, but the truth is, I'm not. For now, I'm a writer and mom (or perhaps I should say "mom and writer" -- priorities always affect perspective.) Acting and painting (and traveling the world, not to mention keeping a clean house) will have to remain on hold.

All that said, I view my SAG screeners as an actor, and I view them as a writer. And I celebrate when both sides are pleased. Although, I would say this was far from the best year I have seen for performances paired with stories that blow me away, there were several celebration-worthy nominees. The Help easily won my vote for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast" and is (not surprisingly) also a "Best Picture" Academy Award nominee.

Personally, I found The Artist delightful, and yet I heard one Hollywood outsider say, "Oh brother! Not another film about making films! How self-indulgent can these filmmakers be?" It's a worthy (and fiscally necessary) challenge to strive for objectivity and to try to see films as those who are not in the industry might see them.

Then there are all those films about characters who happen to be writers -- sometimes they work and sometimes they do seem self-indulgent. Is the writer only being lazy and writing about what he or she does in order to avoid research? I do find myself wondering what non-writers think of these movies.

Whether a person is in a "creative profession" or not, however, we all do create -- we create the lives we live and the environments we inhabit; some create fantasy worlds so elaborately detailed that they even deceive themselves; we create relationships and networks of relationships (and sometimes we destroy them); we create harmony and disharmony.... Because creativity is at the core of what all people do in the living of life, I think stories about writers and artists, if done well, can embody that creativity (which is rather abstract) in a metaphor that resonates well beyond the surface of the storyline of a certain character and his profession.

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris was one of this year's films that did that well. The competition did not allow for me to cast my vote for it to get a SAG award, but I am glad to see that it received some Oscar nominations. It is a good story that I wouldn't mind watching again... and the writer in me absolutely loved this little exchange:

GIL: Would you read it?

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: Your novel?

GIL: Yeah, it's like 400 pages long and I'm just looking 

just for, you know, just an opinion. 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: My opinion is I hate it. 

GIL: I mean, you haven't even read it. 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: If it's bad I'll hate it because I hate 

bad writing. If it’s good, I'll be envious and hate it 

all the more. You don't want the opinion of another 

writer. 

(from Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, 2011)