Duvall brilliant in melancholy ‘Get Low’

115/365: 1996-1997

Image by bloody marty mix
Thursday, 18 September 2008.

40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]
An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.

For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.

Year 29: 1996-1997

In 1996, Dave began to pursue a lifelong dream to become a filmmaker. He took night classes in film and video to build his portfolio of work and collect recommendations for film school. He studied for, and spectacularly aced, the GRE. He applied to several film schools, and went on several interviews. I was beside myself with excitement for him. He became an energetic bundle of enthusiasm and focus, hopping from project to project, writing scripts and building props. It filled me with joy to see him so happy, and I did my best to be supportive in any way I could.

I worried, though, about what would happen when the acceptance letters came in. He had narrowed his focus to the University of Texas, NYU, and Columbia College in Chicago. Texas was his first choice, and if he were accepted there, he would undoubtedly go. I would have followed him to Antarctica if he’d decided he wanted to go there, but I didn’t know if he would want me to go with him, and I didn’t want to assume. I told him as much, and made sure he understood that I was assuming nothing, and that when the time came, he would have to actually ask me to come. I think I was hoping to hear him say, "Oh, of course I want you to come," but he only nodded and said he understood. In the end, he got wait-listed at Texas and NYU, so the point was moot. He would attend Columbia College, and we would stay in Chicago.

That summer, we had two weddings to attend back in Michigan: my mom’s and Lisa’s. Lisa had been my best friend in junior high and high school, and had asked me to be her Maid of Honor. At first, I was delighted to accept. It was something we’d talked about since we were kids, and I was very excited for her. But, as the reality of bridesmaid dresses and fittings hit me, I soon realized that the body anxiety this would engender was something I would not be able to handle in a healthy way. I knew myself too well. My eating disorder recovery was precarious, and I just could not put myself in a position to backslide into dieting and bingeing and body obsession. I wrote Lisa a long letter, confessing my problem, and apologizing profusely for having to bow out of her wedding. I begged for forgiveness. She called me and said she completely understood and just wanted me to be OK. We agreed to tell people that I was having knee problems and didn’t think I could stand through the ceremony, and the ruse seemed to work.

In early July, just days after returning from Lisa’s wedding, I got a call from my mom. The house she had just purchased with her fiance a month prior had been destroyed by a tornado. She and her fiance were to be married in August, and now the house they were to live in was gone. I took some time off work and drove up to Michigan to help with the cleanup.

The destruction was incredible. I’d never seen anything like it. Tree trunks had been opened by the wind, and then snapped shut onto pieces of paper, which now seemed to spring forth from the wood like so many odd branches. I stood at the top of the steps to the front door, and where I’d seen the foyer and the living room just a month earlier, I now saw an entire valley of fields and trees spread out before me. The house was simply gone. The roof ended up in a Boy Scout camp about a mile away, the tub high in a tree in the front yard, and the family’s belongings scattered to the wind. Most of my things from childhood were still in storage at our old house, so I lost very little, but my brother lost everything. We were devastated for him. I combed the woods, picking up baseball cards, hoping to recover some of the rare and valuable cards he’d been given as gifts over the years. He was working that summer as a camp counselor and could not come back for the cleanup effort, so I did my best to gather up as many of his things as I could find. Fortunately, the old house had not yet been sold, so my mom took it off the market, and for the next year, she and her new husband lived there while they rebuilt their new home.

Back in Chicago, Dave and I realized we needed a much cheaper place to live, as we expected his income to decrease dramatically when he started film school. We got rid of my studio and moved out of his one-bedroom and into an enormous two-bedroom flat in Rogers Park, a neighborhood at the far northern edge of the city. Rogers Park had a reputation for diversity that encompassed copious gang activity, coffee shops full of stoned neo-hippies, and everything in between. It was also one of the best kept rent secrets in the city. Tremendously huge apartments could be had for a steal. We tripled our space and halved our expenses, and the occasional sound of gunfire in the distance seemed well worth it.

Who am I?

I am envious of other people’s dreams.

I didn’t grow up really wanting to be something in particular. I never had a career goal that I was passionate about, and that I believed would bring me fulfillment. I just wanted to "be happy" in some very non-specific way. There are advantages to this, in that I have cultivated a very go with the flow way of coping with life’s unexpected turns, but I also fear there’s a kind of emptiness in it, too. How wonderful it must be to wake up in the morning and be eager to go to work at a job that you’d do even if you weren’t getting paid for it! I don’t think I’ll ever really have that experience, at least not until they start paying people to surf the net, picking fights with gullible right-wing tools (everybody’s gotta have a hobby).

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Duvall brilliant in melancholy ‘Get Low’
In his long and varied career as an actor, Robert Duvall has shown that he is at his very best playing characters trying to atone for their very worst shortcomings.  read more »
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