| |  | | | | December 13, 2016 | Letter No. 64 | | | | | | | | | | | | Dear Lennys,
I've been considering magical thinking a lot these past few days: how it can be both a help and a hindrance. Everyone engages in a little bit of magical thinking now and then — sometimes, I convince myself if I skip every third step down to the subway, the train will come faster. And if you have ever lived through an especially trying time, or a real, world-realigning trauma, you know how seductive illusions can become. They can lead to denial, to confusion, to disavowal of facts. But magical thinking can also be a necessary step in imagining a future that seems near impossible.
We are at a time of year when many people celebrate versions of magical thinking: we talk about miracles of lights and babies and resistance. As we draw closer to the longest night of the year, we sometimes have to fantasize about light and summer and warmth to keep us going.
This issue is full of magical thinking, in its best form. It's watching Hairspray as a child, uncertain where you may fit on the stage, but knowing it is where you belong, and years later discovering an actress like you, who makes you understand this leap of imagination can be a possibility. That's what Eve Lindley, who is in the new movie All We Had, discusses in her interview with Katie Holmes.
It's willing a beauty empire into being, an empire pliable enough to admit its mistakes and bring other women up, as Sharmadean Reid, the founder of WAH nails, does. It's the magical thinking we engage in as children, to try and get ourselves, somehow, to a version of adulthood, as Melissa Chadburn writes about in her beautiful essay about the security she finds in Christmas trees. It's the belief in the existence of a platonic latke and one's ability to attain it, as Gabi Moskowitz describes in her latest Lenny recipe. And it is the type of vision you have to believe in to become the first in your field, as the women directors of photography describe in this collected oral history by Goldie Goldberg.
This weird and awful year is almost over, and another one we can't even begin to imagine is about to arrive. We can spend this time engaging in fruitless fantasies or we can spend it diligently dreaming of what we can do to bring about a better year to come.
Kaitlyn Greenidge, contributing writer | | | | | | | | | | | | Every Year the Tree | | | | By Melissa Chadburn | | |
I have a thing for Christmas trees. When my mother and I lived in a crappy apartment on Westminster Avenue when I was twelve, we had a janky-ass fake Christmas tree. It was sad as shit. It was the saddest thing you ever saw. She put it together and placed it in front of the gold-veined mirror with small mirrored shelves we called the Bar. I do not know why we called it that. Maybe we assumed other people put alcohol on it. Normally my mom just put little Hallmark figurines, and those big cocktail mugs you get from Benihana, a geisha and a sumo wrestler.
There is a bus stop on the corner of Palms and Sepulveda right near our crappy apartment. It's a symbol of freedom — thrill and angst. I used to reach it through a hole in the fence outside. Across the street from the bus stop was a Grocery Warehouse. I'd hit up that bus stop when I was on the run from my complicated life with my mother. When I was on the run, my grandmother prayed for me. I can just imagine her kneeling before two porcelain busts, white long-haired people in robes, the man in blue she called O' Lord. "O' Lord, guide and protect Missy where she may be tonight." And maybe she would try to get things back to the way they once were. "Do you remember, O' Lord, when she would come stay with me in the summers? Do you remember the way she once cleaned her plate? She ate all the food. The meat I cooked. She slept beside me, her little chest rising and falling."
And maybe then she would begin haggling with O' Lord. She would give up chocolate. She would go to church twice on some days rather than merely once every day. She would give up pork.
After being on the run I wound up in Mainstream Home for Girls. Mainstream Home for Girls was next door to Palisades High School. Six girls — two to a room. And although the small house looked like a normal house, everyone knew it was a home for girls. Walking in and out of the front door was your scarlet letter. I ducked and sneaked from the back when no one was passing by. From my room in the basement, I could hear the bells at the end of each class. I could hear the football team practice. Running back and forth their stenchy, muscled bodies. One of the guys in front, he Used. Somehow, he was raised vegan in Topanga Canyon, and then there in the bathroom shooting dope, and then there on the big field, bent over in front with a tight ass, silly dark hairs above his lip. And me, I'd wave as I walked by, because he was one of the few who knew I'd been one of the Throwaways living in the home next door.
Another good thing about that intersection of Palms and Sepulveda is you could steal Christmas trees from the Grocery Warehouse parking lot. When I was finally living on my own at twenty, away from my mom and no longer in foster care, I hopped the fence and took a small one and threw it over the fence, and we stuffed it in the back of my roommate's brown Chevy Nova. She was a Hare Krishna and didn't give a shit about Christmas trees, she just liked the thrill of it all.
I stole throughout my youth. We stole premixed Club alcoholic beverages. Sex on the Beach, Long Island Iced Tea, all lined up in back in the corner store where my friend's mom sold tamales. Where we bought jabón for the dogs with fleas. We stole the Club drinks and then smoked pot. It was the two Cuban girls, the one black girl, and the Mexican girl, and the two white girls who were also sisters, and me, the blackapina. The white girls were Eastern European, or from somewhere that made them hairy, and they used Jolen to bleach their moustaches. We hung in the apartment where the Mexican girl lived with her father because he was never home. There was a graffiti artist there named Baba. Big and beautiful. He was like Maverick in Top Gun was to me when I was little. Something special. I drew pictures of Africa and drank the Club drink, and smoking pot made me feel like crying, and I thought about apartheid. The Cuban sisters always got in a fight. They'd fight about clothing, how the younger one messed up the older one's stuff. The younger one had acne and liked to get wasted and the older one always had her matte chili MAC lipstick on perfect.
At first, in the group home, Mom sent a card. One every day. One of those pastel cards with the calligraphy, To My Daughter With Love. As time passed, it would be a card a week. At one of our visitations when I was fifteen years old, she picked me up in her ugly car and drove me to Marie Callender's, the pie shop across the street from the Pic N' Save. "Here, poopee." This is what she called me. This is what I hated her calling me. She handed me a bag, filled with cards. Each one marked with a different day of the week. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Two months in, I'd bailed on many of our visitations — I complained of sickness, or my period, or homework, but really I was just tired of being a disappointment.
"When are you coming home?" she'd ask.
In my twenties I left that place of stealing, that roommate with a Chevy Nova, and moved to Oakland, where I no longer stole but was just poor most of the time. I wanted a tree so bad and didn't have a car, or even know how to drive yet, so I bought a Christmas tree at the Home Depot and pushed it home in one of those Home Depot lumber carts. I pushed it all the way down San Pablo, past the Pak N' Save, past the casino bar where everyone bets on horses and where my play-brother threw darts and drank every day when he was "on vacation" (from sobriety), past the Bank of America where I got jacked, past the Giant Burger all the way to 53rd Street. None of my roommates were home and I was left to decorate the tree by myself. I felt lonely doing it. Because once again it felt like I was the only one who cared about this thing.
That kind of caring, that kind of hopefulness, always makes me think back to being a teenager at that home for girls. At night, all the girls in the group home lay there after lights out. My roommate Olivia, me, the two girls next door, the two girls down the hall, and the case manager (some woman who was paid to spend the night, most often a well-intentioned student of psychology. We made a point not to like her too much for the mere fact that she got a paycheck to spend time with us). First, we sat up and gossiped and giggled. Then we lay down on our backs, then facing each other, and, finally, we turned away, facing the walls, signaling it was time to sleep. We kept our talk quiet — a secret thing — about nothing too important, unless one of the girls was in love, and then she was planning A Great Escape. And because we were teenagers, this happened often.
Perhaps O' Lord saw our late-night tears. Maybe he was present when we were last slapped by our parents. And as we lay there growing wilder, untrusting and running further away from where we came, maybe O' Lord was there, stroking our heads at night as we dreamed of being loved. Above us were stars, the same stars for all the world, and down the block below was the highway that led anywhere, back to our mothers, or away to our lovers, or further even to the lives we wanted, and beside the highway was the ocean, unsafe and fierce and uncorrupted by the rules of this world.
I knew I met my match at 33 when my Beloved and I were driving down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on our way to buy a tree and she confessed she'd always wanted a flocked tree growing up. Flocking is that incredibly environmentally unfriendly process that makes a Christmas tree appear like it's covered in snow, and I told her that we could have one and her face lit up — so bright — just at the idea …
"Really?"
"Yeah, we're grown-ups. We can have whatever we want."
From my room in the basement of the group home, I could hear the football team. The cards from Mom stopped altogether. The both of us — losing. Though it hurt when she asked, When are you coming home, it hurt more when she stopped asking.
During those early days with my Beloved, we had a small rough patch, and we talked about breaking it off one afternoon, but shortly after we each left for work she texted that she wanted to make it work: "Can we have Christmas together?" And I said, "Flock yeah." And that was a nice joke. Today was our seventh year of putting up a tree in our house with coral-and-white-striped awnings over the windows. The awnings are for rain but really they just hug leaves and baby sparrows. As a kid I would've spun a fantasy about them. That they served as slides for elves and fairies. That they were a bridge from one safe space to the big scary world. These were the kinds of stories my mom told whenever times were difficult — she'd weave tales of small snow-filled towns in New England. Another life and time, when things were nice.
She used to give me an advent calendar every year. One year, when we couldn't afford the calendar, she got me a tiny stocking from the 99-cent store. Every day she'd slip a note in it. A promise or some praise. Our last Christmas together, she took me, without permission, on an unsupervised overnight visitation to my grandmother's house by the old Army base. The visit was cut short on Christmas Day when my mother yelled in my face and shook me by the shoulders. Later, my grandmother, Lola Virgie, forgave the shaking and the screaming, swiped the crumbs of the day away, and proclaimed, "Listen to your mother. She knows best."
In this house my Beloved and I are free. The house is free of rage, and the fridge is free of beer. We are free to make love or curl up on the couch and binge-watch shows about monsters, or people like us, or shady people, or animals. We are free to argue from one room to the next room, or to ice each other out, have big walls of silence and discontent. We can pee with the door open. We can make big pasta dinners, and grill chicken on the barbecue, and we can sleep with our dogs in the bed. We can clean the house in our chonies and play the music loud. For a couple of weeks in December it is full of cheer and smells of cedar and pine and looks the way I always imagined a house would look in winter. The little white lights twinkle on our I-flocking-love-you tree.
Melissa Chadburn is a fellow for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Her essay, "The Throwaways," received notable mention in Best American Essays and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is forthcoming with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. | | | | | | | | | | | | Always Be Present | | | | By Katie Holmes | | |
After working in the entertainment industry for more than twenty years, spending so much of my life on set, and learning from amazing producers and directors, it felt like fate that day I found Annie Weatherwax's novel among the pile of books at my agency. I knew this story was something special and couldn't wait to bring it to the big screen as my feature directorial debut. One of the greatest honors I had in helping steer our team to success was working with our casting director to help find our Peter Pam. The lovely and magnetic Eve Lindley drew us in from her first audition, and similar to my character in All We Had, I quickly realized just how genuinely inspiring she is.
Katie Holmes: What inspired you to become an actress?
Eve Lindley: When I was really young, I remember going to see a lot of Broadway musicals. The one that really did it for me was Hairspray.
KH: Which I think is coming back …
EL: Yes. They're doing the live version of it, which is so cool. It's got an amazing cast. I think when I saw Hairspray, that's when I first caught the bug. But truthfully it was something that I always did even before I had the vocabulary for it. I was kind of a ham and a performer in my family, and then as I got older, I was like, "There are no trans actresses in Hollywood, this is not something that is realistic," and then when Laverne Cox joined the scene, that changed everything for me and I was suddenly able to pursue this dream.
Then, I guess about two years later, I met you and we made this movie together and it was like a dream come true.
KH: Well, it's a dream come true for me to work with you. I think that is what is so exciting about you, is that you're so naturally gifted and you listen as an actor, and I think that's one of the more challenging parts about being an actor, you really have to be present.
Are you happy with the character of Peter Pam? What was the poetry of the character that you wanted to reveal?
EL: Yes, I love Pam. She loves people, and people seem to really love her. There are some nasty things that happen to her throughout the film, but for the most part, it feels like she is very well-respected in her little community. I think it was important to show that this person might feel like an outcast, but the people around this person don't see her as an outcast. She is a valued member of this family, and that was something that was really great and something that I really related to in my own family.
One of the things that I've realized about this business is directors aren't always willing to find a character with you, to really sit and talk about the feelings and the thoughts and the little intricate parts of a character, and that was something that you were always willing to do. Was it hard for you to change hats, to suddenly have more on your shoulders as director, to really be carrying the film?
KH: It was challenging because you have to get into the mind-set of all the characters and understand them, but also be open to what the actors are bringing and their insights. You brought so much to Pam, and it revealed things that I didn't know. That was really, really exciting, and it actually took a lot of pressure off of me. I was just more inspired every day because everybody was bringing something new and different than I anticipated.
In terms of doing both acting and directing in this film, I really liked it because I could be there for the performances, but also experience them on my own. I think I would've been sad if I had just been behind the camera the whole time.
One of the reasons that I was drawn to this book [the movie is based on] was this sense of healing that can happen between people that not long ago were strangers, and I thought that was pretty powerful. And then when you filmed that scene, it was just so exciting to watch because it was that sort of same feeling in action. What are you working on right now?
EL: I'm currently in an Off Broadway play called Street Children. It's about homeless queer and trans youths in the '80s, and how they formed their own bonds and families within the Harlem Ballroom scene and the Christopher Street piers. It's a lot. It's a very rich culture that is very deserving of being talked about, so I feel really great to be here.
KH: That's amazing. Are you inspired to tell stories of your own now?
EL: Yes. I write in my spare time, and I've been working on a pilot. As an actor, I very much identify with the title of "storyteller," which is really cheesy but also very real for me. When I was a kid, I used to make up fanciful crazy stories, and then I realized, "Oh, I'm living a great story." So it's something that I've definitely been excited to explore.
KH: With the success of Laverne Cox and yourself, do you feel that there are more roles for transgender performers, and do you envision a world where you can play anything?
EL: Yes, yes. That is something that I think we're not too far away from hopefully, because as much as it is cathartic and lovely to portray a role that has something very big in common with who I am, there are also so many more facets to who I am. I think one day I would love to portray a role where maybe it's just undisclosed. The people in my life, it's not like we all sit around and talk about how transgender I am.
KH: That's also what you and I talked about with Pam.
EL: Yes, absolutely. These people know her and they don't feel the need to qualify her as any one thing except for who she is. The people around her really knew her, and that was what felt the most real.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Katie Holmes is an actress and director who has received critical acclaim for a spectrum of diversified roles on stage and screen. All We Had, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, was her directorial debut. It was released on December 9. | | | | | | | | | | | | The Miracle of Latkes | | | | By Gabi Moskowitz | | |
You can keep your jelly doughnuts, Hanukkah gelt, and Hanukkah cookies. For me, there is no Hanukkah food — nay, holiday food — that even comes close to a plateful of lacy-edged, crispy latkes with sour cream, apple sauce, and maybe a little smoked salmon. They are a miracle (both because they are delicious and because it is a custom to eat foods cooked in oil on Hanukkah to celebrate the miracle of the day's worth of oil that lasted for eight days). But for every toothsome, crisp-exterior/tender-interior, golden-brown potato pancake served this Hanukkah, there are dozens of burned, overcooked potato pucks or, worse, underdone, raw-middled, oily disasters. Perhaps saddest of all is the inevitable batch of perfectly cooked latkes that are improperly drained, stacked on top of one another, rendering them sad and limp before they even get a chance to go wading in a river of sour cream.
Through research and trial and error (so many failed batches of latkes), I have finally found the path laid down by so many latke-makers before me. What follows is all you need to know to achieve latke bliss.
Dry = Crispy This applies both to the type of potatoes you choose (drier varieties like Russet and Yukon Gold are my preference for traditional laktes) and to how you treat your grated potatoes and onions. The idea is to remove as much moisture as possible, so it is absolutely crucial not to skip wringing the hell out them. This is easy to do (and a great way to release any holiday-related stress): Simply place the grated potatoes and onions in three- to four-cup batches on a clean dish towel. Salt lightly, and let sit for about ten minutes, then gather up the edges to form a sack and twist, twist, twist over the sink until you remove as much liquid as will come out.
Don't Bother Peeling the Potatoes This one is controversial, but I feel strongly about it. As long as your potatoes are scrubbed clean, the peel will only add depth of flavor and texture.
Use the Right Kind of Oil, Plenty of It, and Make Sure It's Hot You want something with a high-ish smoke point (my preferences are safflower and grapeseed oil, and occasionally refined coconut oil if I'm making sweet-potato latkes — more on that later). Also, this is not the time to go light on the oil — you need plenty of it in your frying pan to properly cook the latkes (about half an inch). Finally, be sure that the oil is very hot before you add the potato batter, since too-cool oil will seep too deeply into the potatoes without properly cooking the exterior, leaving them pale and floppy.
Do Not Attempt to Rush the Process There is no such thing as great latkes in a hurry. Really good ones take time and need to be left alone while they cook. Don't crank up the heat while they cook, and don't flip them before each side has finished cooking.
Drain Them Really Well Draining is the final step that increases the crispiness of latkes, so don't skip it! It's important to draw out any excess oil so the latkes stay crispy. Drain your latkes on paper towels, and spread them in a single layer (don't pile them on top of each other — it defeats the purpose and makes them soggy). If you are cooking a large batch of latkes, arrange them on a rimmed baking sheet (or, better yet, on a rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet) and keep them warm in a 200°F oven for up to an hour.
Have fun With Flavors It's important to adhere to proper latke-making technique, but as long as you have that covered, feel free to go crazy with add-ins and toppings. I'm crazy for sweet-potato laktes with curry powder and sriracha mixed into the batter, and adore potato latkes with everything-bagel spice mix — they taste like the love child of my two favorite carbs. Need to make them gluten-free? No problem: subbing white-rice flour for the usual all-purpose flour results in perfectly crisp, light latkes. Latke-making should be fun, so if you want to stray from tradition, have at it. Here's my favorite basic latke recipe, with some swap-in suggestions below. Happy Hanukkah!
Ingredients
4 pounds Russet or Yukon Gold potatoes (about 6 medium potatoes), scrubbed clean and towel-dried
2 medium onions, peeled, ends removed
2 tablespoons salt, plus more for finishing the latkes
4 eggs
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
Safflower oil (or other high-smoke-point oil, like peanut or canola), for frying
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 200°F.
2. Use a food processor or hand grater to grate the potatoes and onions (it's fine to mix them together).
3. Divide the potato-and-onion mixture between a few clean dish towels (you'll likely need two or three).
4. Sprinkle with the salt, and let sit for 10 minutes.
5. Gather up the corners of a dish towel, hold it over the sink, and twist to squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the potatoes. Repeat with the remaining dish towels and potatoes.
6. Transfer the wrung-out potato-and-onion mixture to a mixing bowl.
7. Stir in the eggs and mix well.
8. Stir in the flour and mix well.
9. Cover a large baking sheet with paper towels and set it near the stove.
10. Pour 1/2 inch of oil into a large nonstick or cast-iron frying pan (or 2, if you are cooking a large batch and want to speed things up). I know it seems like a lot, but you'll need it.
11. Heat the oil over medium heat until it reaches 350°F (if you don't have a thermometer, let the oil heat up until you think it's hot enough, then make a little test latke. If it browns nicely, it's ready).
12. Wet your hands with cool water, then pick up about 2 tablespoons' worth of latke batter.
13. Gently drop it into the sizzling oil, being careful not to splatter.
14. Working in small batches (you don't want to overcrowd the pan), repeat with the remaining batter. Depending on the size of your pan, you'll likely cook 5 to 6 latkes at a time.
15. Cook the latkes for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until they are golden-brown and crispy. Don't be tempted to turn up the heat and rush the process — you'll get latkes that are burned on the outside and raw inside. Add more oil as necessary.
16. Once the latkes have finished cooking, transfer them with a spatula to the prepared baking sheets and sprinkle lightly with salt.
17. Once the paper-towel-lined sheet has filled up, transfer the cooked latkes to clean rimmed baking sheets and keep in the oven for up to an hour before serving.
18. Serve the latkes hot with applesauce, sour cream, and/or lox.
Makes about 30 small latkes.
A Few Variations
Spicy Curried Sweet-Potato Latkes
Use red garnet yams in place of the regular potatoes, and add 1 tablespoon curry powder and 2 tablespoons sriracha to the batter. Cook in refined coconut oil. Serve with sour cream with a little lime juice stirred in, and applesauce with a touch of cardamom.
Everything-Bagel-and-Lox Latkes
Combine a tablespoon each of dried onion, dried granulated garlic, poppy seeds, and sesame seeds, plus 2 teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt. Set aside. Cook the latkes per the directions, but sprinkle their tops with the everything-bagel spice mixture as soon as they come out of the pan. Serve them topped with sour cream and a small slice of lox.
Vegan Latkes
In place of the eggs, use 3/4 cup quick-cooking rolled oats prepared according to the package directions. Let cool until warm (but not hot) to the touch. Stir in where the eggs are called for in the directions. I know it sounds crazy, but it works.
Gluten-Free Latkes
Replace the all-purpose flour with an equal amount of white-rice flour.
Root-Vegetable Latkes
Replace half the potatoes called for with a mixture of any or all of the following: red garnet yams, peeled parsnips, peeled carrots, and peeled beets. Continue as directed.
Gabi Moskowitz is the editor in chief of the nationally acclaimed blog BrokeAss Gourmet and author of The BrokeAss Gourmet Cookbook; Pizza Dough: 100 Delicious, Unexpected Recipes; and a forthcoming book, Hot Mess Kitchen. Currently, she is a producer of Young & Hungry, a Freeform comedy now in its fourth season inspired by her life and writing. | | | | | | | | | | | | You Can Be a Weirdo Anywhere | | | | By Simran Hans | | | |
In person, Sharmadean Reid has the kind of negotiating skills that make me feel as though I ought to be taking notes. Born and raised in Wolverhampton, a gray industrial city in England's Midlands, the Jamaican-British founder of WAH Nails kick-started the nail-art craze, opening the cult East London salon in 2009. After graduating from Central Saint Martins (London's most prestigious art school), Reid worked as a stylist and creative consultant before starting her own business — and expanding it into a venture so successful that she was awarded with an MBE (an Order of the British Empire, courtesy of the Queen herself) in 2015.
WAH — an acronym that stands for "We Ain't Hoes" — began as a fanzine about "what it feels like to be a girl." A DIY-style printed publication with a focus on hip-hop-influenced clothes and celebrities, the zine mixed high fashion with cut-and-paste culture. It developed Reid's personal brand into an aesthetic that she would later crystallize with WAH's tagline: "For downtown girls worldwide." Some four years later, Reid created a physical space for the London contingent of her downtown girls by way of a Dalston salon.
WAH's popularity spiraled; Reid and company soon found themselves at London Fashion Week, throwing parties for clients like Nike and Opening Ceremony Tokyo, and launching a pop-up salon in the luxury department store Selfridges. Later, Reid opened a concession in Topshop's flagship store and developed an exclusive line of products for British pharmacy chain Boots, all the while raising her young son, Roman. With her recent Princess Diana–themed capsule collection for ASOS and a new salon opening in Central London, she's not slowing down anytime soon, either. I talked to Reid over lunch at her favorite jerk spot in Soho (jerk chicken and salad for her, goat roti for me) about feeling like a weirdo, making beauty accessible, and building her business from the ground up.
Simran Hans: Let's talk a little bit about WAH Soho. You said you envisioned WAH as the kind of place for people to come and hang out and be part of a community of girls. It makes perfect sense that you would eventually open up a salon in Central London, but why are you doing it now?
Sharmadean Reid: For me, our position is really important, to be next to our friends at Bleach Hair, at Supreme, to build up a little new wave of what Soho means and is. But in the last few years I worked on a product range with [British pharmacy chain] Boots, and that took up a lot of my time, because I didn't raise any investment to grow my team.
There was no vernacular of start-up economy when I started WAH like there is now. I just started a business as a side project for fun — I had no funding, no plan, and didn't think about how I was going to grow it into a successful, scalable business.
It doesn't happen overnight. The bigger the decisions get, the longer it takes to do them. To open this salon, I have had to take an investment for the first time ever in seven years, but I'd spent a lot of time from October to now meeting loads of different wanky investors … Well, some of them are nice!
I didn't feel comfortable with any of the people that I met. No one jumped out where I was like, "I want to give you a piece of a brand I've spent the last six years building."
Finally, I did find a location, and I didn't have any funding in place for this location, but the location was just too perfect to not do. I just contacted the landlord and signed a lease without any money in place …
SH: Those are some serious powers of persuasion.
SR: I just thought, If I want it that bad, I'll get the money.
Everything I have been doing has been for a purpose. It's just taken me longer than someone who, say, has written their business plan, done all their research, raised $10 million, and launched a product line.
SH: A lot of people are quite guarded about the mistakes they've made, but you posted an article on Medium about why you closed your concession in Topshop's flagship store. I thought it was such a generous thing to do; what compelled you to share that stuff?
SR: I don't really care of anyone's opinion of me. There's nothing to hide. I don't want anyone to make the same mistakes that I'm making or made. I'm doing a girl business event [Future Girl Corp] in October with that exact theme. They don't have time to make the mistakes I made, because the industry's so crowded. I wrote the article because everyone thinks it's really cool to be in Topshop, or to be in Selfridges, or to get on ASOS, but it's not always the answer.
Everyone works to get into retailers, but this is the first time in the history of time that you can build a direct relationship with your customers. You don't have to get in retailers — it's actually a pain in the arse. I don't want girls to think that's the prize.
SH: Did that experience make you wary of working with other brands?
SR: No, not wary — like I said in the article, [you just have to] understand what it is you think you're getting out of the partnership.
SH: Do you train your nail technicians? Or is there some secret Rolodex of good nail technicians living in London? How do you find these girls?
SR: Before our business was well-known, there weren't any nail technicians doing the designs that we do. We changed the culture of nails. We had to train them. Everyone sees what we're doing on the Internet and they do it at home, so now we can find girls who pretty much can do nail art. They all get better and better the more they do it — and as soon as they start working in the salon.
SH: I think YouTube is massive in making beauty accessible for just your girl at home. Those girls know so much.
SR: I know, man, even I look at it! I literally watch eye-shadow tutorials on the Internet all the time.
SH: How did the ASOS collaboration come about?
SR: They've asked me a few times to do a collaboration. [I said,] "I want to do a collection based on Princess Diana," and they were like, "Cool!"
I'd just moved to West London, and you really see and feel Princess Diana everywhere. She was such a West London resident. She would go jogging, she'd drop her kids off at school … My [own] style started to change and become far more mum, West London mum–like. It's about twenty pieces, including shoes, jackets, dresses, jewelry.
Everyone 'round the world has access to ASOS. For me it's about doing things in a high style but making them accessible. That's why I [collaborated] with Boots as well. It's not about making things that no one can buy; it's about any girl, anywhere in the world can be able to buy into what we're doing.
SH: I think that's a very refreshing approach, because there's so much bullshit about exclusivity. I think something can be aspirational and accessible.
SR: Not many girls are going to be into the WAH vibe, but if you are and you're in a random city in the middle of Singapore, you should still be able to feel part of the culture. [The WAH girl] is not like a mainstream girl. That alternative girl should feel like she can be a weirdo anywhere.
SH: Is that how you felt when you were younger? Alternative or, in your own word, a weirdo?
SR: Yeah, of course I knew I was different. I just thought differently and acted differently to everyone else around me.
I'd buy the Sunday Times newspaper when I was about eleven, and my mum called me a snob just because I wanted to read the news that wasn't a tabloid.
I always listened to different music and cared about art. It wasn't an epiphany or anything; I just knew that I had different taste to everybody else.
SH: Not many people are able to make a business out of their tastes, though.
SR: That's where I feel I'm really lucky to do that. It doesn't feel like a job if you make a business out of your own taste, it just feels pleasurable. Even now, when I'm making decisions in the salon, I'm like, How cool is it that I'm sitting here making these design decisions, and it's just whatever my taste is? Easy.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Simran Hans is a freelance writer and Kanye apologist living in London. | | | | | | | | | | | | Subvert the Expectation | | | | By Goldie Goldberg | | |
We know Hollywood is a boys' club. Studies show that women are woefully underrepresented in so many fields across the board, but the noise and intolerance around this is getting louder. Female stories, and their writers, directors, actors, producers, and cinematographers, will not be ignored any longer. Historically, one of the most male-dominated departments has been the camera department, and female cinematographers (directors of photography, or DPs) in particular have been egregiously underrepresented.
Cinematography is a science and an art. With a mastery of lighting and camera work from both a visual and technological perspective, a DP is on set to establish and then protect and maintain the look of the project. They select the camera and the lenses, they set the light, and they are the head of the department that touches every image. They have arguably the hardest job on a set. They travel constantly, work incredibly long hours, are on their feet all day, and manage an entire department. They have to execute the creative wishes of the director while simultaneously pushing through their own artistic vision. They bring the audience into the story, capturing the whole spectrum — from intimate and emotional moments to epic landscape shots to high-octane action. They have to make you feel everything. DPs are, in essence, the director's right hand and the actors' rock.
The glass ceiling for female DPs has technically been broken — Brianne Murphy was the first woman admitted to the American Society of Cinematographers in 1980 — but rather than a flood, what followed was a trickle. But finally that seems to be changing: there are a bunch of female cinematographers straight killing it — working in commercials, documentaries, television shows, and movies.
I spoke with six female cinematographers, with a variety of experience in the business — some have been at it for more than twenty years, and some are earlier in their careers. Now, in their own words, excerpts of interviews with Ellen Kuras, Amy Vincent, Reed Morano, Natasha Braier, Nadia Hallgren, and Eve Cohen, a diverse group of DPs who refuse to back down and are responsible for some of the best and most beautiful projects out there. We would all be lucky to work with them, and we can't wait for more young women out there to join their ranks.
AMY VINCENT (Black Snake Moan, Hustle & Flow, This Film Is Not Yet Rated): I have to say that at the time I started, I did not know that I was going into a profession that was so male-dominated. I had no idea. I suppose if I had had any idea, I probably would have wanted to do it even more …
ELLEN KURAS (Away We Go, The Betrayal, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind): I really don't think about having broken the glass ceiling. I think of myself as someone who has a really cool pair of glass cutters in my back pocket, and I get to the ceiling and calmly edge a hole out of the ceiling and then I get a "ting!" and I just push it through and then I climb in like, "Oh, I'm here."
NATASHA BRAIER (Neon Demon, The Rover, Swimmer): I would say in the first ten years I really had to fight to be accepted as a cinematographer and to prove that I could [do it] as a woman. I was using my masculine energy a lot more. Then, when I got older and more established, I would relax a little bit and be myself because I didn't have to prove myself so much. I wasn't in defensive, fighting mode.
REED MORANO (Meadowland, Vinyl, The Skeleton Twins): People still ask me — even now — "How heavy is the camera?" when it's their first time working with me. A lot of people just haven't really seen a woman doing it, even in this day and age. I don't take offense, and I sometimes take pride in it when I get to tell them, "It's 40 to 50 pounds, depending on what lenses are on it." They're like, "Whoa." It's okay if they're impressed by that. I don't think we, as women, should be insulted by that question, unless they're saying, "Do you need help with that?," in which case I would be like, "Get the fuck out of here, dude."
BRAIER: Like most cinematographers, I travel too much. I work where the most interesting projects are for me, so I keep moving all the time. There were a lot of occasions where I think I got the job because it was a director thinking, Oh, it would be really interesting with a woman DP. Of course, those are the ones you find out about. The ones where you were just crossed off the list by someone [because you're a woman], you would never know.
NADIA HALLGREN (Trouble the Water, Trapped, Citizen Koch): I'm struggling with the balance of trying to have a personal and a social life as well as continuing to do the type of work that I'm doing. My experience now is you work so hard to get to a place in your profession where you are being sought out by some of the best directors and people that you always imagined you would love to work with and to work on some of the best projects. It's so hard to say no to those opportunities.
KURAS: I just find it ironic that women get blamed for being emotional and yet, when it comes to movies, the thing that catches people in movies, and the thing that moves people in movies, is the emotional component in the story. How we identify with the character. I think that women are absolutely suited to this profession because they are able to tap into the emotional core of the story and are able to translate and impart that on film.
EVE COHEN (Be Somebody, The Visitor, Like the Water): The next step is just realizing that it's not actually even a risk to hire a woman to do something. The risk is you haven't worked with somebody. The risk is this person hasn't done this kind of film before. There's always going to be a moment where you take a chance. You have to take a chance. I want it to not be a big deal anymore. I want it to just be a shrug that I'm a woman and a DP and not like, "Whoa, that's so amazing!" It's great to hear "That's so amazing," but I want it to be amazing just because I'm a cinematographer, not because I'm a woman.
VINCENT: I think that being well trained, being secure and confident in your technique — including the equipment, the math, and the color science — is a really great foundation so that nobody can question your abilities. It's almost like a big box that you climb up on, and you stand on it with confidence all day, every day. I think that's a great place for any cinematographer to put themselves — male, female, young, old. You have to stay current with the technology, and you have to stay current with how things work on set because things have changed a lot over time. I also think that you have to be nice.
MORANO: The relationship between a director and a cinematographer is really interesting. It's a lot like brother and sister, mother and child, husband and wife. It can, actually, at different times during the shoot, fall into shrink and patient. It can fall into all of those categories. You really lean on each other.
HALLGREN: When I'm in a moment with a director, we just look at each other, and we know what the other is thinking. That's when I feel like we hit that moment. I know what they expect of me, and I also know what is possible in making that scene or that moment resonate with an audience. That's always what the end goal is for me. This is going to be in a movie theater, and is the audience going to experience this moment the way I'm experiencing it? How can I translate that?
KURAS: I wear dresses whenever we do crane shots just to make a point. I wear skirts and dresses; you're blowing up cars, being yourself, and dressing as you do. "Subvert the expectation" is a really great way of describing it. You're expecting me to be a certain way; well, I'm not going to neuter myself. I'm going to be myself. I'm going to put it in your face.
BRAIER: There has been a bit of everything in sixteen years, but yes, when it's rolling, it's like falling in love, like jamming and dancing together; it's magic and you never want it to end. I try to choose directors that inspire me a lot and that I feel I can get that sort of connection and co-creation experience. Sometimes you don't make the right choice and you realize too late, and then it's not that fun, but there's always something to learn from that experience. You just take a deep breath and try to get the best out of it.
COHEN: I would absolutely recommend this to anybody. I've heard it so many times and I never really understood what it meant, but people would always say to me, "Well, you have to love it because it's hard." It is actually true. You have to really be so excited to be on set, and so excited to be working, that you will put up with weeks and months where you don't have work and you're in a really low point of this roller coaster. You have to wait for it to come back up and you're doing everything that you can. You just can't give up on it.
VINCENT: I wear my motorcycle boots because I commute to work every day on a motorcycle, and it reminds me all day long that I am a badass.
To learn more about being a female DP in the industry, visit ICFC and CinematographersXX.
These interviews have been condensed and edited.
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