Hope Edelman's Blog, page 3

The Making of Motherless Daughters

There's a really nice, very short clip over at Vimeo from the documentary-in-progress The Club about motherless women--the filmmakers did this interview with me about a year ago, talking about how I found the very first women I interviewed for the book. (Back in the pre-internet era.) They came to my house in LA and we had a beautiful afternoon together. Their hearts are 100 percent in the right place. Filmmakers contact me all the time about making a documentary about motherless daughters, but Carlye and Katie have gotten further along than any of them. Here's hoping they make it all the way to distribution!

I can't for the life of me figure out how to save this video to my hard drive and embed it, so I'll provide the link right here.

If you're interested in the documentary The Club, you can read more about it and see a trailer featuring Rosie O'Donnell here or join The Club's Facebook group.

Congratulations Katie and Carlye! You're doing beautiful work.

A Day at Disneyland

When you take five kids to Disneyland for your nine-year-old's birthday and almost pass out when you see what admission costs for six people; when you watch families from all over the U.S. walking around with those thick-ribbon necklaces covered with character pins they purchased one by one, knowing this might be the only vacation they can take all year; when you see the trash bins (ironically labeled "Waste Please") overflowing with paper goods and plastic bottles by 3 p.m.; and try to talk the nine-year-olds out of every sugar-laden treat on display that of course they all immediately want; and stand on line with 200 people for a ride that will last four minutes; and then walk to the next line and do it all over again--it's frighteningly easy to start believing that you're the only one here who notices or cares about all this excess, who realizes that the money being spent here in one day could probably solve a small nation's hunger for a week, and it's all too simple to start feeling smugly superior to everyone around you. And then you see a middle-aged mother and father dressed like Hell's Angels, pushing a wheelchair with a severely disabled child in it who's dressed in a Cinderella gown, and you realize, very humbly, that you don't know anything about anything at all.

Along the Way

Lately a lot of people have been asking what I'm up to, and why they haven't heard from me for a while, and why I haven't blogged in a long time, and what I'm working on next. Excellent questions, friends. There's one answer to all four questions. My next project is one I'm very excited about. It's helping Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez write their father-son memoir about family, fatherhood, and faith, set against the backdrops of Hollywood and northern Spain. At the moment it's titled Along the Way. You can read a brief article about the book here.

Most of you probably know Martin Sheen from Apocalypse Now and The West Wing (among other films) and Emilio Estevez from The Breakfast Club and The Mighty Ducks trilogy(among other films, including Bobby, which he wrote and directed). They've recently made a new film together called The Way which was filmed along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain.

As soon as you have a chance to see this movie, run—do not walk!—to the theater. It's the story of a father who scatters his estranged son's ashes along the Camino after his son dies on his first day trekking. If that sounds like a downer it's really not, because it's also about the odd assortment of people he befriends how he walks and how they change his life. The story is absolutely inspiring and the cinematography is absolutely stunning. You'll want to book a ticket to northern Spain and hit the path by the time it's done.

Some of you may remember that both Martin Sheen (page 268) and Apocalypse Now (323) were both named in The Possibility of Everything, which is a very odd coincidence. (It's not like I stick random actor's names in all my books.) This was one of just several odd coincidences that told me that this should be my next book project to work on. Who would have thought? Definitely not me.

The biggest coincidence of all was this: after The Possibility of Everything came out to excellent reviews and not-so-earthshattering sales, and after I'd spent about six months and umpteen dollars (of my own) to market and promote it to only marginal success, I was completely and profoundly exhausted. I knew I'd write another book eventually--I mean, that's what writers do, or else we feel useless and unworthy--but I just could not imagine hauling my butt back to the computer and starting this all over again. And even that assumed I had another book idea to jump on, which I didn't. I honestly didn't know what I'd do next, and the growing stack of bills on our kitchen counter said I'd better come up with an idea fast. So I made a list--I know it sounds simplistic, but it's true--of what I thought I was good at.

Here's what I came up with 1) Interviewing people; 2) Helping other people find their stories; and 3) Public speaking. I figured this meant I should either go back into teaching or become a census worker who breaks into spontaneous lectures.

But then, not even two days later, a phone call came in asking if I was interested in working on this book. Which would require hours of interviewing. And helping two people find both their individual and shared stories. Good example of sticking an Intention Stick into the air and attracting something right to it, eh?

Sometimes the signs are unmistakable. So even though this is wildly different from any book I've done before, I'm on board. Truly, it's because this is so different from any book I've done before that I wanted to do it. I welcome the challenge, and I'm always up for learning something new. And so far, it's been an enormously interesting ride. These two men are, without contest, two of the nicest guys in the world. With an incredible story to tell.

And that's all I'm saying until the book comes out.

Father's Day 2012. Or sooner. I'm planning to write like the wind.

Happy February to all,
Hope

My New Favorite TV Show. You'll Be Surprised.

The other night I stumbled upon Billy the Exterminator on A&E, and I'm going to go out on a limb here to admit: I'm hooked. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a reality show a about a tough-guy exterminator who drives around greater Shreveport, Louisiana, in an enormous black Toyota Tundra pickup truck emblazoned with his company's name--Vex-Con--on both sides, and takes on tough-guy exterminator jobs that include (but are not limited to) snakes, rats, cockroaches, crocodiles, foxes tearing up backyards, squirrels trapped in fireplaces, and in one unforgettable episode, a possum carcass rotting underneath someone's house.

There is no job too large, too small, or too gross for this guy.

Billy Bretherton--that's his name. He's a former Air Force sergeant—I'm guessing he's in his mid to late 40s—with a penchant for a black cowboy hat, thin wraparound black shades, black leather, chains and studs. Think Axl Rose meets the Orkin guy and you've got the idea. Though I'm not sure how I'd react if my Orkin guy showed up sporting motorcycle boots and a weird little goatee. It'd definitely make Thursday mornings more interesting once a month.

Billy's family co-stars with him. They're priceless. His mother, Donnie, is a wisecracking Southern mama with excellent pouffy blond hair who calls Billy on the cell phone about every ten minutes with a new, challenging, and reliably disgusting or dangerous job, thus giving him the opportunity to slip in educational moments (while talking to her) about the biological or physiological risks homeowners might face if he doesn't get there fast. ("A rotting animal under a house can be a breeding ground for bacteria and disease.") There's also Billy's father, Big Bill, whose main purpose seems to be moping around in the background while he recovers from a recent heart attack and worries about the business end of things. Billy is often joined in the field by his younger brother, Ricky, who's categorically stuck in 1985, layered, blond collar-length hair and all. Ricky is my favorite. I think of him as the biggest risk taker of the clan, since he's apparently allergic to wasps yet, despite his mother's frequent warnings to bring his EpiPen or wear a mask, seems to consistently ignore this advice in favor of honoring his Inner Dude. In one episode he goes up in a cherry picker with Billy to destroy two wasp nests under the eaves of a hotel roof, with only his bare hands to protect his bare face. You can't help thinking, if this guy is really at risk for anaphylactic shock, is he crazy? Or dumb? Or both?

Also, Billy and Ricky call each other "dude" and "man." A lot.

As with every reality show, I'm sure a fair amount of this one is scripted, but something about it feels like it has an edge of authenticity to me. For one thing, the critters all look real. (Anyone who actually knows me knows I have a lifelong phobia of rats, so I have to flip the channel whenever he pulls one out of a trap.) And sure, Billy is a character, maybe even an invented one, but Vex-Con does have what looks like a legitimate web site and business that could have predated the show. Or maybe it's the gritty surroundings of semi-rural Louisiana that lend the show credibility. Definitely the clients look real; this is no beauty pageant here. For sure the producers choose and prep them before shoving them in front of cameras, but when an elderly guy with a lung condition sheepishly drawls about Billy's stomping, leather-and-chains arrival at his cockroach-infested trailer, "Well, he looked kinda scary but I knew he was the one for the job. He looked like he was ready to kill something" you have to at least hope a line like that wasn't scripted.

Plus, these client scenarios—I'm not sure they could be invented. I always found it slightly insulting to the collective intelligence when Jeff Corwin's just happened to stumble upon a rare viper while trekking through the jungle with a cameraman. Corwin's expressions of anticipation and surprise at those moments were so disingenuous the veil between real life and cinematic orchestration evaporated on the spot. But think about it: would anyone right-minded let producers infest their trailer home with 10,000 dead and living cockroaches just for six minutes of televised notoriety? Or stick a rotting possum carcass under their bathroom floor so A&E viewers can learn that their house smells really, really bad? I kind of think not.

I was a guest on an episode of a reality show about six years ago, back when these types of shows were still relatively new. Naively, I still thought that much of what we were seeing on these shows was real. So I was completely unprepared for the amount of stage direction that took place, like producers watching the action on a back-room screen sending orders into the cameraman's earpiece about how to direct group conversations, and having to reshoot "natural" scenes to do them differently the second time. And this was a very well-respected, well meaning show. The premise was a group of women who wanted to change their lives for different reasons were put up in a mansion in downtown Chicago and assigned life coaches to help them achieve their goals. I was there because one of the women was a motherless daughter trying to find out information about a mother who had died when she was very young. She felt she couldn't move forward in her life until she found out the details of her mother's life and death. I was brought in to have dinner with her and the local Motherless Daughters group, and to then go back to the house with her and see some art projects she had made to commemorate her mother's life.

The experience was decidedly more surreal than real. Oh, what the hell: I'll be honest. It was a total mind f*. It's like finding yourself at a board meeting completely different than the one you thought you were attending, and you have to learn the rules of protocol on the spot so you can play along. Only to discover the rules are totally whacked.

At one point I was brought into a back room for an interview and was instructed to begin speaking a sentence with the opening line, "When she told me about her stepfather, I was thinking…" What I really wanted to say was, "When she told me about her stepfather, I was thinking, 'This woman needs a psychologist, not a life coach, and you are not doing this woman any favors here," but instead I said something blandly educational about motherless women's relationships with their stepfathers. I felt obligated to offer something helpful and useful and to sound like an expert, given that I'd been flown out to Chicago, fed a five-star dinner, and put up at the Hotel W for a night. In other words, I was deliberately not being honest, or real, because I was trying to please people who seemed to know exactly what I was supposed to say. But maybe I was dead wrong about that. Maybe being honest would have been better, because whatever I said didn't wind up making the final cut. If I'd been authentically myself in that moment at least I would have been speaking a truth instead of trying to participate in a form of packaged and manipulated truth that, in the end, isn't very real at all.

All this is a long way of saying that I know reality shows are anything but "real."Like memoir, they start with the raw material of life which is often slow and dull in its purest form and are then shaped and edited it into a narrative package that will sell. The closest thing to an actual reality show I can remember was back in 1973, when PBS ran the documentary An American Family, after filming the everyday domestic dramas of the Loud family of Santa Barbara for seven months. Anyone remember them? I was only nine, but I watched it religiously. Over the course of the season the typical American family was exposed as the anti-Brady Bunch. The parents' marriage started to unravel (whose wouldn't, with TV cameras in your kitchen every minute?). Their oldest son, Lance, was revealed to be gay. By the end of the show, we realized that an experiment to give us all a peek into ordinary middle-class life had devolved into a very big mess. More sociological experiment than award-winning TV, the Loud family should have been our cautionary tale about what happens when you ask people to live authentically in front of a camera. We should have learned back then it can't be done.

Of course, this begs the larger question "What is real?" if so much of what's presented as "real" today is airbrushed, scripted, manipulated, orchestrated, tweaked, shaped, stretched, or just outright lies? I don't know. Maybe all we can ever know for sure is what we feel—the love we have for each other, the grief that comes from loss, the triumph from achievement, the despair from lack of hope, the fear of danger, the exhilaration of risk.

Lance Loud died in 2001 from complications from a crystal meth addiction, Hepatitis C and HIV. That's about as real as it gets.

Maybe this is why I'm liking Billy the Exterminator right now. Because once you strip away all the attitude and the bad hair and the "Dudes" and the shades, it feels like it's just about a guy showing up to help regular people deal with everyday problems. Sometimes a dead rat in a trap really is just a dead rat in a trap. And maybe Billy's are planted there, but the ones that we trap a couple times a year in the space underneath our bathtub are real. I know that to be true.

Not that I actually look at them, of course.

An Open Note to Kids in Topanga

It is NOT FUNNY at all to leave a rubber baby rattlesnake on the file cabinet in the upstairs office when Mom is home alone. Not funny at all.

The Thing About Fumiko

This Sunday's New York Times Style section will contain an essay I wrote about the week my 11-year-old daughter had to carry a flour-sack baby--whom she named Fumiko--to school with her every day--to learn about the responsibilities of teen parenting.
Crazy week in our house!
Here's the link to the article, titled Maternal Wisdom (5 Pounds Worth)...and a photo of the one and only Fumiko himself.
For anyone wondering, he and Hursula Zero (who appeared in The Possibility of Everything) do share a bedroom, but not a cradle.
I'm sure it says something about me that I keep writing about my children's dolls..but I'll leave that conversation for the Comments section.
Enjoy!

Google as a Verb: Does It Replace "Remember"?

Driving from the Oakland Airport into San Francisco last week, I saw a huge billboard on the freeway advertising the show "Tales of the Maya Skies" at Oakland's Chabot Space and Science Center.

Being a Maya astronomy junkie, naturally I was intrigued. But I'd never heard of the Chabot Space and Science Center before, and I was traveling about 65 mph, in the car alone.

A couple of years ago, maybe even as recently as two, I would have fumbled around in my purse for a pen and scribbled the web ...

The Target Story

Everyone's been asking how the Target selection occurred. Well, I don't really have an answer. From my point of view, what happened was one day I got an email from my editor saying "Good news! Your book was chosen as a Target breakout book for the fall!"

I can see how some writers might get the scared deer look upon hearing this. Target? Not a retailer exactly known for its literary prominence. Sheet sets, yes. Memoirs? Not so much.

But me, I was beyond happy. "Excellent!" I wrote back.

You se...

The Possibility of Everything--newly out in paperback

In stores now. Online. And at your local Target. With a beautiful new cover, and an author Q&A and questions for Book Clubs inside.

The paperback retails for $15, which IMO is a much more reasonable price point for readers. Truth be told, I hardly buy hardcovers any more myself. But paperbacks, I can't resist. So here's hoping that potential readers of POE feel the same way.

Please help me spread the word! Here's a link to help you order the book online. You can also read more about the book he...

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Again

There's an odd pleasure to be had from reading other people's letters, particularly historical correspondence that captures both a character and an era. I relearned this today over at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library over in West Branch, Iowa, where I spent several hours reading years of letters between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane.

Yes, that Laura Ingalls Wilder. The author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Although calling her "the" author takes some ...