Linda and Me
by Julianne Flynn

It wasn’t long after I packed up and moved to Los Angeles that I discovered a great new diet. It’s called poverty.

But thankfully I wasn’t dieting alone. It became clear rather quickly that almost everyone in L.A.—from Echo Park to Venice Beach-- was in the entertainment industry game way over their heads. The entry level salaries production houses paid were not enough to make even the most frugal and frayed ends meet. Not nearly enough.

But then again, nothing ever was.

The city began to feel like an elaborate house of credit cards, held together by minimum monthly payments and the foolish hope that someone will someday buy your screenplay.

Everyone everywhere seemed to be waiting for the big break, that well-connected contact to hook them up. Cash advances on the old Visa are a rule of thumb in the L.A. survival handbook. The key, it seemed, was to somehow stay afloat until some corner turned. Sometimes it did, but mostly it didn’t.

In the post-nine-eleven economy, the L.A. competition was so fierce for work-any work- that even Starbucks wanted a head shot with the job application.

I heard on the radio that an average of 729 new residents arrive in Los Angeles every single day. They flow in from the freeways like a faucet of optimism, with a couple of thousand bucks saved up and a tank full of gas.

The thing is: no one bothers to count how many people leave. How many people stuff potted plants and paperback novels and a handful of clothes on hangers into the backseat of their cars and leave on that very same day?

One cannot live a long time where one does not belong.

Today on the freeway heading out of town, someone will exhale an air of defeat and frustration and anger that she learned is useless to express. But where do the leavers go, I wondered? And what happened to the space their ambition occupied? Amongst them, how many of their lives will make a significant mark? And of them, how many will find some solid form of love, without hysteria or confusion.

Perhaps some important linkage within would splinter and they would become detached, unreachable--taking a job as a security guard in Philadelphia or somewhere.

My checkbook balance began its downward spiral, as soon as I exited the freeway towards my Spanish Style studio in Los Feliz. Four parking tickets in the first two weeks reduced me to a hood-pounding maniac. I am surprised they didn't take me away.

But with each negative collision with reality, I tried to restore a quickly disintegrating semblance of a positive mental outlook. I was going to make it here, I told myself. Returning home meant I had done nothing, and would never do anything.

For once, my exact location on the planet was easy to envision. I wasn't vaguely placed in the plains of the Midwest somewhere. I made it all the way to the edge of the country, the outer limits. The historical trajectory was set. The east was the solid rock that the collective “we” steps upon with sturdy, buckled shoes and lifted trusses. The west was the crumbling cliff that we all eventually throw ourselves off. We will be wearing fluorescent flip-flops, an image that will not fare well with time.

No, there really was no turning back. This was “sink or swim” to the bitter end. The direction of my own little manifest destiny could not be reversed.

Shameless flirtation flecked with giggles and teeth and desperation landed me a gig or three as a production assistant on the sets of music videos and television commercials. But being a P.A. produced nothing in terms of financial gain or even the remotest possibility of friendship. I was given an average of ninety dollars for mind-blanching sixteen hour days on sets wracked with manual labor and insults.

But this was valuable experience, I was reminded again and again. Besides you have to pay your dues in this industry. Again and again and again apparently.

I realized that the false airs of humility that I learned in the Midwest would get me nowhere in Hollywood. Feigned modesty only signaled to others that you were green, a rookie, a liar.

No one would toss themselves freely into this dirty competition, if they didn’t think they had something to offer the world; if they didn’t consider themselves the grandest thing that ever came down the pike. Why try to hide it? Flaunt it.

Hollywood was a place that revered Winona Ryder for jacking everything she could fit in her purse from Saks Fifth Avenue. Do what you feel, do what you feel, this town begged. And don’t apologize. Ever. That’s how you get your name on a t-shirt.

So here I was in another job interview, with another chance to find my way out of poverty. I say poverty realizing, I know nothing of real poverty. Of roaming streets collecting bottles and cans; of hand baths in public restrooms; of sleeping four, five, six in a trundle bed that is folded at dawn to make room for breakfast; of learning how to feed an entire family on next to nothing like most of the rest of the world does.

But still, it was a struggle. After a couple of months in Los Angeles, I realized nobody would ever freely decide to be an artist. It is not matter of choice. Getting by is just that brutal. Survival meant nothing was spared. I used everything, every insult, every tear.

The television executive glided out from behind the clean surfaces of her pea-pod desk to shake my hand. We gave each other the once-over. She in her tough materials: suede, denim, leather. Solid silver swooping earrings. A silver belt to match.

I was all, prints and linen and amber glass beads.

“The Art Institute of Chicago? Huh. That's different," the television executive said. She was slightly distracted, as if she were looking at something odd beyond me, behind my head.

I turned to acknowledge it, but didn't notice anything unusual. Just a sofa. An ebony end table. A glass vase, the shape of an ovary. Violet and white orchids.

I didn’t put much stock in this interview. As a thirty-something woman I had a better chance of being struck by lightening than being given a break by another woman in Hollywood. They will sabotage you with helpful hints like: “Well did you try calling Sony?”

The television executive’s phone rang. Holding her hand over the receiver, the television executive said, "Julianne will you excuse me for a moment? It's my attorney with some important matters to discuss."

"Sure," I said. Then wondered if she really wanted me to leave the room or just stand by. She beckoned again with a lift of her eyebrows. I jumped up and out of the room like a church mouse. This was part of it too: making you feel small.

In the hallway, I put my hands in my pockets and paced around the hall pretending to read the various plaques and awards in cases and cabinets. I hated her, I decided. I knew the type. All delays and distraction.

Dipping her head through the door, the television executive said, "I apologize Julianne, come back in."

She settles back behind the barricade of her desk and slides on a pair of black, diamond-studded reading glasses and looks down at my resume. "Now where were we?"

I'd seen it all before. This was the "now-I'm-getting-focused" part of the performance. The television executive puts the resume down. Takes off her glasses. I was sure she didn't read a word of it.

"What are your goals Julianne?"

I want to do everything, I decided. That was my primary goal.

I want to make films. Write them, direct them, perhaps a cameo appearance or two. I want to be a kind, benevolent, violent, demanding director throughout its production. People will talk about what it was like to work for me in documentary interviews for years to come.

I want to publish the next nationally celebrated novel. There will be a black and white photo of myself looking sharp, smart, cynical, serious, gazing softly, daringly, inquisitively at readers from the book’s back jacket. You’ll notice my novel on every subway, on every book club list.

I want to save the Redwoods and Sequoias and the baby Harp seals, and the whales while I’m at it. There I am making a report to Congress, getting legislation passed. The mover and shaker that I am.

I want to live the single Sex in the City life, laughing with girlfriends over wine in some Euro-trash, shabby chic café in Manhattan and spend weekends reading the Times with my handsome spectacled husband at our cottage in Cape Cod. There we are on our Pottery Barn lawn furniture, he in his Banana Republic khakis, me in my four-hundred dollar sweater from Anthropology.

I want to be known, of course, like everyone else. I want to be a part of the blockbuster action that’s been beaten into my brain since conception. I want to be known and remembered and understood and misunderstood. Why else would I be sitting here answering this obscenely obvious question? Why else would I allow myself to endure you and your attorneys and your central air-conditioning and your hideous furniture?

"I want to be a television producer," I answered, realizing ego-gratification was the most direct route to a job.

"Good," she said and took a self-satisfied breath. "Because the job of researcher is a training ground for a television producer."

I nodded, suddenly conscious of my over-bright eyes.

"You have to pay your dues," she explained. "A lot of people don't understand that. People come to Hollywood with high hopes. Big dreams. They want to write. They want to direct. They think they are too good for the work they first get. One thing I will not tolerate is a primadonna. "

I wondered how many times I was going to be given this lecture? From a primadonna, no less? How many dues did I have left to pay? I could pull out my list if she wanted. I had six months worth of material. A series of humiliations. Dog-whippings. Intricate coffee drink orders.

She reorganized herself as she waited for my happy acquiescence, shuffling some folders around on the pea-pod.

I tried to fight from the shrinking feeling that results from these pre-production belittlings. Besides, I knew her game. Her aim was to squelch my ambition, to torque my dreams and visions in such a way that they can be funneled into her bank account.

Her words backed me into a corner. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t agree and didn’t want to pretend to. This was not a job interview. This was a game of poker and it was my turn to throw in a chip. What would be my next bold move? The next thing I had to prove to myself?

“I'm hungry,” I said plainly.

“I've lived in three countries. Speak three languages. I've managed the education of over three hundred children in less than four years. I have an MFA in film that I paid fifty thousand dollars for. I can write. I can shoot. I can edit on the AVID. Six of my films have been featured in festivals. Does any of this register?”

She looked as if she had turned to stone.

“Look, I am thirty-three years old this Thursday and I need a job.... If you want me to answer your phone, or photocopy scripts, or drive twenty miles through traffic to pick up your Ahi tuna salad with field greens; I'll do it. No problem. I’ll collate; I’ll sort; I’ll staple; I’ll scan. Check every number, every column, every row. I’ll do everything right. Exceptionally right. Just spare me the due-paying talk."

The television executive was clearly stunned. I had just splashed acid in her face and she wasn't sure if she should wipe it off or let it sink in. She sat there for a moment. Took another dignified breath. And asked:

"What languages do you speak?"

Now we were getting somewhere.

Julianne Flynn <jflynn15@msn.com> made a break for Los Angeles after completing the MFA program in Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her life has been a series of absurdist encounters ever since. Julianne has used her experiences in the chaotic, soul-deafening land of media production as fodder for her first novel, It Has Come to This... Again. She currently teaches media literacy and Spanish in Santa Monica and is doing her best to dodge student loan collectors while working earnestly on her blog. This piece is © 2003 by Julianne Flynn.