Unpopular Opinion: Imitation Is NOT The Sincerest Form Of Flattery. It's Creepy AF!
And I lost the chance to play the part of a lifetime on stage when a diner waitress decided to Single White Female me and steal my dream role.
Hello, So...
This piece has me crying. And this is why. (Get ready for inside baseball type stuff that you may not be interested in and are free to skip to go down to the regular non-italicized part that you actually may want to read.) Our publishing schedule here at AJPT is roughly one main piece per day that gets emailed out to all subscribers. When it gets emailed out is anybody's call. (Well, it's my call, but the timing is anybody's guess, and is just based on various life fluctuations. Let me know by the way if you would rather a much more regular schedule than that, because we can change it. Or if haphazard once a day is ok.)
So here I was on a Sunday early afternoon with wonderful pieces from wonderful writers that I am really excited to show you, but none that fit well to email out today for various reasons. Right at the moment that I'm texting this dilemma to Corynne (poor Corynne), and figuring out what to do and whether I could write something worthwhile myself quickly enough to publish today, I got a DM from the wonderful Genevieve Sage (who I've gushed about many times in these intros before). So I took the opportunity to write her back sweetly before diving into what I really wanted: Would she write something for me real, real quickly? One hour later, I get what you have here below with all of the photos and captions and everything. Reading it made me cry, because of how good it is. And because of the relief that I can give you something today that I think will be a nice read for your Sunday or Monday or whenever you get to it.
Tell Genevieve in the comments how great she is, and also tell us if you can relate to what she's talking about here. I'll be over here waiting for your comments, accompanied by my tears of joy and relief. (Not hormonal.)
Love you lovelies! Thank you for being here!
-Jane
By Genevieve Sage
Amazon just released “Another Simple Favor,” and it is ….really bad. But the first one, “A Simple Favor” starring the au courant controversial Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, was a really fun popcorn-watch. (Blake’s character carries around a silver cane in both with a skull atop it for whatever reason? And teaches us how to make the perfect martini — which I personally appreciate.)
But the films are about Anna’s character kind of copying and taking over Blake’s life. Similar to a great, early ‘90s film we Gen X’ers remember as the OG “she’s copying me” movie called “Single White Female” starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda.
Well, what can I say, it happened to me…
They say, “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery” and I freaking DISAGREE. I do not like being copied. I think it's creepy and weird. Here’s the deal: I’m the oldest of three sisters, so you can imagine how many times my younger sisters copied me: clothing, hairstyles, makeup, musical tastes, crushes on young Brad Pitt in Growing Pains. As the oldest sister (the Marcia Brady of the family), I was copied a lot. And it really, really bugged me.
Get your own Guess jeans!!! Find your own teal mascara!! And stop using my sweet dance moves when we blast Fernando from the ABBA Greatest Hits album!
So, later, when I lived in Seattle in around the early aughts, free from my copycat sisters, I thought I was safe from this false flattery.
I would always hit up this one lunch spot diner in Ballard that had the most amazing Garden Burgers. Their specialty was topping them with blue cheese with a peach compote jam -- the combo was heaven in my mouth. At the time, I was heels deep into my acting career. (Well, my Pacific Northwest acting career — after I failed in LA, so truth be told, it was just a lot of little art house theater auditions). But I was always studying and bringing scripts to this one diner, and usually the same waitress, a girl about my height, also with dark hair, would wait on me. She would kind of peer out from the back between refilling salt and pepper shakers. She skulked.
Then, one day, she asked me, “You know? I always see you in here with scripts. Are you an actress?”
And I said, “Yeah, I am,” with an unabashed confidence that belied my actual resume.
One of those times, after ordering that delicious Garden Burger, when I’m not even a vegetarian, I had a big audition to study for. Dan Savage, of Savage Love column and political movement It Gets Better fame, who is of independent and arty distinction, was directing the abstract Broadway hit Equus, about a teenage boy who violently blinds six horses.
The play has some strong undercurrents of religious sacrifice, tones of adoration of “god” and a good amount sexual attraction. It’s mostly a male cast — with ONE good female role: “Jill.” The rest of the cast are horses.
So, as I settled into a booth and whipped out the script to go over Jill’s lines (that clearly was the role I was after) my usual waitress swooped over and said, “Oh...reading another script, are we?”
And I said, “Yes.”
Then she asked, “For what play?”
And I very excitedly and proudly told her, “Dan Savage is directing Equus, and I have an audition.”
And then she very nonchalantly just shrugged her shoulders and went, “Oh?...Huh” and wandered off to roll silverware or whatever. And that was that. Or so I thought.
The day of the audition arrived, and I sauntered down to the South Lake Union Playhouse—and I killed it. I was funny, I stage-projected across the cavernous warehouse theater, and I generally summoned my strongest theatrical presence.
Turns out, I got a part. I was cast … to play one of the horses. Not Jill, the sexy young girl who seduces the main character. A fucking horse. Except Dan, being the clever little dandy that he is, decided to change the horses into chickens. So technically, I was offered a role to play goddamn poultry.
Excuse me?!?! I studied at an acting conservatory! I felt insulted, and it was one of the few times I turned down a role. Even though I was chomping at the bit to work with Dan Savage, chomping at the bit was NOT a part I was going to play. I wasn’t going to be a fucking barn yard animal.
So, I told them I was cast in a film and simply could not accept the role. I think it was mostly a lie or at least a fudging of a half-truth. I was generally butt-hurt I didn’t get the good girl part. The HUMAN girl part.
A couple weeks went by, and the garden burger craving hit again, so I headed back to the diner. Same waitress. But this time, there's something different. An aura about her. Smug. A little cocky.
I order my lunch and pull out whatever script I’m working on for class or an audition—something harmless, casual. She approaches, and this time, she announces, “Oh. I’m going to be in a play, too.”
Now, she’d never mentioned acting before—no talk of headshots, or scene study or pounding the pavement—so I’m taken aback. Something stirs in my gut. A kind of Bette Davis-in-All About Eve feeling. I sit up straighter, meet her eyes, and coolly ask, “Really? What play?”
She doesn’t flinch. She knows. Knows I’m onto her. But she’s enjoying this. She wants to win as badly as I do.
And with a glint of triumph, she replies, “Equus.”