she sings for me

a short film written by Rebecca Davey produced by BT Productions

[shesingsforme]

!Coming to film festivals everywhere! Woohooooo!

[shesingsforme]

Who says partner brains need to work the same way.

[good]

I know what helped me was just keeping a very small focus on what was in front of me. When I had cancer, when my mother died, and when I was truly rock bottom, what was helpful to me were just the smallest steps of even just lying still and breathing and being like: ‘Ok, I’m alive. I’m here. And I’m breathing. Now I’m going to take a step beyond that even if it’s just a literal step.’ It was so helpful to me to focus on a small area and to not worry about things too far ahead. Each of those small steps has led me down a much bigger, longer road.

Like this woman (Tig Notaro) a lot. Got to see her at Just For Laughs in Toronto last Thursday. She is sooooo funny and heartwarming. Comedy can be that. Doesn't have to be all fucks and shits and bad asssssss. Sometimes that is what my heart wants. I think our movie is a little bit gentle like that. 

[breakupnotes]

A Note About Bad Dates

I know I’ve been a cheerleader for dating, but let’s be real. Sometimes dating sucks. Really sucks. 

I’ve been on two bad dates so far.  Grab a drink and make yourself cozy while I tell you about them.

The first date was with a 30-something lawyer. Sounds promising, right? Sure it does.  

Well, he called me. Twice. Before the date. The only people who call me are my mother and my college asking for donations. I was not into this.

We met up for dessert (fine) because he doesn’t drink (okay) in Times Square (oh god no).  He told me he lives in Chelsea (far from me, but whatever), with his parents (run for the hills).  After quickly discovering that we have nothing in common, I spent most of this date asking him about his Netflix queue, which is always a good go-to date conversation starter.

Exactly an hour later, I told him I had to work and left as quickly as I could. He called me two days later to ask me out again. I politely refused.

The second guy was a 30-something IT guy. It was pretty obvious that he hated his job, which was really unattractive.  I agreed to go out with him because he seemed to have an okay sense of humor, and hey, why not?

We met up at a wine bar, at which he told me that he didn’t like wine.  We ordered a bottle of wine anyway.  He would take sips of wine, then chase it with a gulp of water.  

Hot tip:  If you don’t like wine, don’t take your date to a wine bar.

About four minutes into the date, he tells me he’s lactose intolerant.  I already know this is a deal breaker since he doesn’t like wine, but now he’s telling me he doesn’t like cheese?! He probably doesn’t like puppies either, now that I think of it.

About 10 minutes into the date, he’s telling me about his dead sister.

About 30 minutes into the date, he’s telling me how he’s still upset that he wasn’t nominated for homecoming court in high school.

As you can imagine, I’m drinking wine as fast as I can at this point.  As soon as the bottle was finished, I think I said, “Okay! We’re done!” and suggested we leave.  I could not get out of there fast enough.

He texted me several times over the next two days and finally said, “If you’re not into me, fine, but at least return my texts.”  Whoa.  So I returned his texts and told him that I was not, in fact, into him.  He then asked me to tell him why I wasn’t into him and what he could do to change.  

I didn’t respond.

[shesingsforme]

I have a feeling these are the kind of dates Holly has! Ha!

[brightwalldarkroom]

[shesingsforme]

'HOLLY' ON BLUE PAPER. 

[shesingsforme]

This is the look of equanimity. I am not worrying about funding, films, babies, dinner. I am just getting ready to drive my car and listen to R&B lyrics...which strangely, I happen to be really digging. For example, 'killer booty and a rack like wow.' That's a line. I need to get waaayyyyy more creative in my writing!

[shesingsforme]

Marie-Claire and I hit up a TIFF party tonight hosted by Raindance! We never made it to the Raindance premier of our webseries On The Heated Floor, so we're celebrating a year later...here! We don't really know what to do on the red carpet. Hug?

[femfreq]

wow. i need to watch something delicate and lovely having reading that onslaught. there is so much anger in our world.

Yes please, explain to me again how this has nothing to do with sexism.

[TRIGGER WARNING for EVERYTHING]

[good]

Me No Want Cookie!

[shesingsforme]

Branding veggies. Hm. Food for thought. Or veggies for thought. Hehe. I need more sleeepppp!!

[shesingsforme]

Took this in a dark room... Sneak peek.

[rprstudios]

Watch episode i. awakening

[shesingsforme]

This looks intriguing.

[shesingsforme]

Puckering up for some ADR.

[laurajunekirsch]

[staff]

Laura June Kirsch took one photo of Daniel Radcliffe every day for six years to achieve this shot of Daniel Radcliffe at our What If screening event. 

photo via laurajunekirsch

[shesingsforme]

We are close to a finished film. Almost walking.

[believermag]

"IT’S THE STORY YOU ENTER, NOT THE CHARACTER."

An Interview with Aimee Bender About Her Syllabus 

This is part of a series of conversations with writers who teach, where we discuss how they develop an idea for a course, generate a syllabus, and conduct a class. Read the full syllabus here.

Aimee Bender is the author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Her most recent short story collection, The Color Master, includes two retellings of fairy tales. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and Granta, among other places. She teaches at the University of Southern California.

—Stephanie Palumbo

I. THE ECONOMY OF THE TALE

STEPHANIE PALUMBO: Tell me about the background of this class.

AIMEE BENDER: I’ve only taught this as an undergraduate class, and the people that have taken it are not necessarily English majors—they’re science, pre-med, communications. It’s changing now, but the general education program had a template of things you had to include in a class: a certain amount of writing, emphasis on critical thinking, and pages of reading per week. You got to take those factors and stir them in a pot and come up with an idea. I knew I would naturally lean toward doing something with fairy tales. They’re perfect little nuggets to talk about.

SP: So many books have been influenced by fairy tales. How did you narrow down the reading list?

AB: I split it into two halves. One part was direct influence: stories taken from a specific tale. So for “Snow White,” we’d first discuss the tale and all different kinds of Snow Whites from various countries, then look at a new telling, like Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, which is radically different but uses the story as a base. There aren’t an endless amount of these direct retellings. The other part, which is super flexible, is indirect influence. I switch those readings a lot more, because so many things can fit. For years, we read José Saramago’s Blindness, but a lot of the students would argue that they didn’t feel it had fairy tale elements, just certain craft similarities, like very little internal reflection and characters without names. What makes a fairy tale a fairy tale is pretty debatable.

SP: How would you define a fairy tale?

AB: There are various definitions, including a great one by Bruno Bettelheim. I think fairy tales are usually quite short, have archetypes, include very little internal experience of the characters, involve an element of magic, and often objects and animals participate in some way. Bettelheim says they have to have a happy ending to qualify as a viable fairy tale, but I don’t know if I agree with that, because Hans Christian Andersen writes beautiful fairy tales, and they’re extremely melancholy. 

Read More

[shesingsforme]

"We tell ourselves stories [fairytales?] in order to live." JOAN DIDION

[good]

"We’re lost, but we’re making good time." - Yogi Berra