Scrappy Little Nobody Read online

I think of my mom as a softie. She emotes more than anyone else in the family. She has a big, easy smile, and most of my friends describe her as “adorable” within three minutes of knowing her. She’s a people pleaser, but she doesn’t take shit from anybody.

  When I was in the second week of filming Pitch Perfect in Baton Rouge, my mother called me around five a.m. to tell me that my grandmother had died. She was ninety-three. The woman had made miraculous recoveries from illness and injury, but she’d said for years that she was ready to die, and a few weeks after asking express permission from both of her daughters, she let go.

  My mom didn’t cry. Sometimes I forget that when it comes to serious matters, she’s kind of stoic and dignified. If she didn’t object to violence, she would have made an impressive and beloved general.

  I didn’t cry either. The funeral plans would be made soon; she needed to discuss them with the rest of the family. We said good-bye and I got ready for work. It was Monday, which meant an early call time, so I needed to be out the door soon anyway.

  I stopped at base camp to tell Debbie, our makeup artist. Actors have weird interactions with the vanity departments. We tell them private things like “I think I’m getting a rash” or “I’m on my period,” the way a race car driver would tell his pit crew that the wheel’s pulling a little to the left. Sometimes, we have to tell them that a family member has died.

  I stepped up into the trailer and very quickly said, “Hey, Debbie, I’m fine, but I wanted to let you know my grandmother passed this morning, so you may have to keep an eye on me.”

  I’ve always appreciated when someone can sense that I am trying to keep it together and they don’t show too much sympathy.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ll have you covered.” She put a tube of waterproof mascara on her station and gave me a nod.

  Next, I had to go to set to tell Tommy, our second assistant director. When you start making movies, nobody tells you who to inform in the event of a death, but the second AD is an information hub, and I liked Tommy, so I decided on him. I rode to our shooting location in a van with a bunch of the cast. The small blessing of a five a.m. call time is that no one wants to talk. I did wonder if wearing my sunglasses pre-sunrise made me look more closed off than usual, but I also didn’t really care.

  I found Tommy, and I don’t remember what I said, but I found myself crying hard almost immediately. I was caught off guard; I really thought I’d be able to tell him without breaking. I was choking through “Sorry, shit, I’m sorry, Jesus, I thought I could stay professional and just tell you and I’m really sorry.”

  I felt like I was letting my mom down. I’d made it through that conversation with some dignity, and here I was crying in front of Tommy, making him embarrassed and uncomfortable. He was very kind of course, and he didn’t offer me water, which I respected. He told me he’d let “them” know and went off to speak to whoever “they” are.

  The truth is, I didn’t know what happened in these situations. I’d never wanted to ask, because asking would acknowledge that something bad might happen during a shoot.

  Luckily, later that day my mom told me the family could have the service on Saturday. When I updated Tommy he looked relieved. So I still don’t know what happens if your family can’t have a funeral on your day off, and I’ve still never asked.

  When I walked away from Tommy after that first conversation, Jinhee Joung, the actress who played Kimmy Jin, my character’s apathetic roommate, introduced herself. It was her first day and she wanted to say hi. I still had my sunglasses on and I was acting incredibly distant. I’ve always wondered if she thought I was a bitch or if she could tell I’d been crying, but I never explained myself. Maybe she just thought I was tired. Either way, her dry humor made me think that perhaps, like me, she didn’t put a lot of stock in “nice” anyway.

  We were getting ready to shoot the activities fair scene, and once the sun came up, I was happy to be spending the day outside. One by one, all the producers came up and said something awkward to me. Obviously, they had the best intentions and it’s the Emily Post thing to do, and I’m the weird one for hating it so much, but I wished more people could tell the difference between the “leave me alone” vibe I give off all the time by accident and my actual “leave me alone” vibe.

  I wasn’t sure if people in the cast would find out, and I wasn’t sure I wanted them to. I didn’t want anyone to think I was irritated with them, but at the same time I didn’t want to field more perfunctory condolences. But perhaps because death isn’t juicy gossip, or because everyone was used to me being a misanthrope, or because by noon that day Kim Kardashian had announced she was divorcing Kris Humphries after just seventy-two days of marriage, my news had not spread.

  After lunch our director, Jason Moore, was going over an upcoming shot with me. Because it was a Steadicam shot, for a moment we found ourselves alone in a crowd. We were both idly studying the prop flyers on the “activity booth” in front of us, and he took a breath. “Hey, I didn’t say anything before—”

  “Huh-uh.”

  By the time I hit the second syllable he was walking away. He really sees me. About a month later he brought it up again and we said a few sentences about it. That was it.

  We shot more of the activities fair the next day, and on Wednesday we switched to nights to shoot the “riff-off.” Thursday was more of the riff-off and Friday we shot the initiation party scene where Jesse tells Beca they are going to have aca-children and Chloe gives her some bi-curious vibes. Not a bad night for Beca, actually. It was a little trickier for me. Night shoots start at sundown and go until sunrise, so we were scheduled to finish that scene around seven a.m. Saturday morning, the morning of the funeral. My flight was at seven a.m., so I packed my suitcase and brought it to set with me and got in a van to the airport at five a.m. That wide shot of us all dancing at the end of that scene? I’m not in it.

  I got through airport security and took off my makeup with a wet wipe in the bathroom. The sun started to rise. Since there are no direct flights from Baton Rouge to Bradenton, Florida, where my family was, my first leg took me somewhere in Texas. I understood that this was my fastest option, but as the fatigue started to set in, it was maddening to know that I was heading farther from my destination. The ability to sleep on planes would have been helpful. The next leg took me to Florida and I landed midday.

  My mom picked me up at the airport and we headed straight to the funeral home. I changed in the car so we wouldn’t be late. I had borrowed a simple dress from the Pitch Perfect wardrobe department since I didn’t have anything in Baton Rouge that was appropriate for a funeral.

  The service was lovely. Either the elderly are practiced at giving compliments or people really loved my grandmother. She may have been insensitive about weight gain and curt about proper piecrust technique and used terms like “lifestyle choice,” but she was generous to a fault and put others before herself. You could feel the love in the room. My mom started to lose it and so did I. Five years earlier, I’d refused to cry at my grandfather’s funeral as part of some misguided point of pride. My brother had done a reading and after every line, I distracted myself by making up a Dr. Seuss–like rhyme in my head.

  “He will not be burned though through the fire he walks.”

  I would not, could not with a fox!

  Even though I was exhausted, that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t hold it together this time. My mom was grieving the loss of her mother. I knew that before, but I could feel it now, and seeing my mom in that kind of pain was simply awful.

  I’d never been in a receiving line before, but everyone had nice things to say or a story to share. A few people seemed too happy to meet me given the circumstances. Some told me how proud my grandma was of me, and my mom would chime in, even through tears, “She was proud of all her grandchildren.” That was true. She talked about all four of us constantly; certain people just had selective interests. A few mourners seemed more focused on making weir
d comments to me than on grieving, which pissed me off, but I tried to grimace through it and chalk it up to faulty social filters after seventy or something.

  Then, as my mother stood next to me weeping, a woman reached for my hand and smiled as though she was about to say something playful and a little bit naughty.

  “So you’re the actress! Oh, you’re very good . . . but we know these aren’t acting tears!”

  Lady, what the fuck did you just say to me? You mean the tears streaming down my face as we prepare to bury my grandmother and my own mother sobs next to me? No, these are not “acting tears.”

  Maybe she says weird shit in every situation, maybe she felt like a jerk about it afterward, but I’ve never come so close to hitting someone who was smiling in my face.

  I had to get to Vancouver, because I was shooting a scene in The Company You Keep the next morning. Oh yeah, that was happening, too. I’d been warned that the logistics would be tricky because of Pitch Perfect, but I had said yes because Robert Redford was directing and that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.

  Under the circumstances, leaving my mother to film a glorified cameo felt decidedly unimportant. There was already a car in the parking lot waiting to take me to the airport. The situation was not conducive to grief. I said good-bye to my relatives and got my suitcase out of my mom’s trunk. In the car I changed back into jeans and browsed Reddit on my phone. I bought some trail mix at the airport and got on a plane to my layover city.

  When I arrived in Seattle I saw my final leg into Vancouver was delayed. I found an empty corner of the airport—it wasn’t hard because at this point it was almost ten p.m.—and I sat still without any technology. I really cried for her then. Before, I had cried from discomfort and I had cried for my mom, but now, in an empty row of airport seating, I thought about my grandma. I’d be lying if I said we were extremely close. Both of my older cousins had spent more time with her as they grew up and I was envious of the relationship they had. But she had bathed me in her sink, and taught me to read, and she’d been a moral standard my whole life. She was a devout woman, and even though I am not, I fully expect that she is in the illustrated children’s Bible version of heaven. If she was on some plane now where she could see my soul laid bare, I wondered if she would be proud of me.

  I got on my flight to Vancouver.

  We landed, I got my work permit, made it through customs, and checked into my hotel. I’d been awake for thirty-two hours, but I still ordered a burger and a vodka, ’cause sometimes you can’t call it a day until something good happens.

  The next day, Sunday, I filmed a scene with Shia LaBeouf and Terrence Howard. Those actors have reputations for being . . . eccentric, but both of them were sensitive, warm, and professional, which I needed more than they could have known. But in retrospect it’s kind of a disappointment.

  Mr. Redford was equally lovely. In one shot at the end of the night my character is looking at an image of Redford as a young man. In between takes, he came up behind me, looked at the photo, sighed wistfully, and said, “God, I had fun.”

  My stomach flipped and I hoped that if my grandmother was hanging out in my soul, she got a kick out of that.

  That night I showered and got on a plane back to the Pitch Perfect set. When we touched down in Baton Rouge, it was Monday morning. I don’t actually remember if I went to my room and showered before going to set . . . I hope for the sake of my coworkers I had time. We were filming the finale performance and I was glad to have something physical to focus on. Some of the cast asked me how the Redford thing went, but it seemed most did not know anything else had happened.

  Working regularly has only made it harder to get home. Even when I’m not shooting, I have so many side projects that I have to check with five different “departments” in my life to ask permission to visit.

  Sometimes I fantasize about leaving LA and living on a little boat off the coast of Maine so I could see my family whenever I want. I doubt my hectic brain would let me do that. Plus I don’t think Seamless does maritime deliveries.

  I used to joke about turning down certain movies that had explicit content because “my grandmother’s alive and I’d like to keep it that way.” I thought about it as we continued to film the movie. It was only a joke, of course, but the day I shouted, “THAT’S MY DICK,” I thought it was probably for the best that my grandma would never see Pitch Perfect.

  fake parties i have planned with the detail of a real party

  Now that I am doing my dream job, I fantasize about a social life. I know what you’re thinking: But Anna, everything you’ve said in this book makes you sound so fun to be around! You must have literally thousands of friends at your beck and call!

  Sadly, even if that were true (it is—I am very well-liked, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just frightened by the power of their love for me), I barely have time to see anyone. Usually when I am at home, I’ve just come back from months out of town and I only have the energy to pick various essentials out of my oversize luggage day by day, leaving a trail of laundry, heat-styling tools, and half-empty bottles of face wash in every room. But even though my place is in a perpetual state of squalor, and I’ve got a maximum of three solid relationships in my life at any given moment, I’ve always dreamed of being a world-class hostess. I’m talking about chic-ass, highly detailed, “Suck on that, Pinterest”–style parties. These are just a few of the classy imaginary bashes I’ve thrown.

  Christmas

  Christmas is the ultimate party opportunity. It’s the only holiday that has whole categories of food, alcohol, and music dedicated to it. The décor can be elegant and traditional, modern and monochromatic, or whimsical and eclectic. If I could have my house decorated for Christmas year-round, I’d do it. In fact, if I could have nothing in my house BUT Christmas décor, that would be ideal. Seriously, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t even have furniture. Wait, it IS up to me? Oh crap.

  So I’m really not interested in interior design beyond tiny lights and tacky snow globes. One day I might start faking a romantic madness like a rich spinster in a Victorian novel so I can live in a winter wonderland full-time. I hate Christmas itself—it’s nothing but a source of anxiety and disappointment—but, like getting naked with a hot guy, I like the idea of it.

  My house is on a narrow, winding street off several other narrow, winding streets. It’s hard to find and parking is minimal. My neighbors are also so mean about parking that when I moved in, I thought they were doing a comedy bit. I playfully yelled back at them until the day I realized they legit hated me. This makes it complicated to throw my ultimate (imaginary) Christmas soiree, but I have a festive solution. I rent out a parking lot at the bottom of the hill and hire a team of drivers for the evening.

  Did I mention that I spare no expense on my imaginary parties? Guests drop off their vehicles in the lot and get in one of a small fleet of town cars waiting to take them to my front door. Not only is preselected Christmas music playing in the car, but the interior is decorated to the nines. Lit garland along the windows, red velvet across the seats, tiny dishes of potpourri in the cup holders. The drivers will have a simple sprig of holly in their lapels. No Santa hats. A grown man in a Santa hat always looks like a dog in a sweater: they might put up with it, but you can tell they hate you for it.

  The outside of my house would put the Griswolds’ to shame. The very nature of light-up outdoor décor is garish, so I support going all out. I’ve even got a Santa on the roof and a bunch of those animatronic reindeer on the front lawn. Fuck the environment, it’s Christmas! To get through the door, guests have to sing their favorite Christmas carol—just the first line, I’m not a monster—and then they are presented with an assortment of holiday beverage options: wassail (a.k.a. hot cider with booze), mulled wine, or eggnog with spiced rum. Served on a silver filigree platter by an attractive waiter, natch.

  The inside of my place would be decked out. And not just the living room. Every inch of my ho
use would look like a Christmas-themed playland. I’ve always hated that moment at holiday parties when you catch a glimpse into some nautical-inspired guest room and remember that Christmas is a farce designed to distract us from the existential dread and monotony of our pathetic, meaningless lives and—Goooood King Wenceslas looked out! On the Feast of Stephen!

  But that won’t happen at my party! Anyone could walk into any room to “put down their coat” or “snoop through my shit” (Nice try, suckers! I buried everything embarrassing in the backyard in preparation for this party!) without breaking the holiday spirit.

  The food would be inspired by Game of Thrones. Did you know there are websites dedicated to creating recipes inspired by the dishes described in the books and on the show? Obviously, I’ve hired someone who runs a GoT food site to cater. I’m too busy sexually harassing the waiters to cook anything myself. (Don’t worry, they all find me charming, not lecherous and entitled. No, really! It’s like how every guy I know has told me a story about going to Hooters and how the waitress seemed “grateful” to finally have a customer who was “cool and fun.” Definitely not bullshit!)

  There’s a game of Yankee Swap with gag gifts once everyone is drunk enough to think a Shake Weight is hilarious. Then a Will Ferrell impersonator performs a scene from Elf once everyone is drunk enough to think it’s actually Will Ferrell. Even though it’s my fantasy, I don’t like the idea that the real Will Ferrell would be willing to come to some jerk’s Christmas party for money.

  Everyone gets sent home with a gift bag of candy, the Michael Bublé holiday album, and a very tasteful, very delicate gold necklace in a box buried at the bottom, so they won’t discover it until they get home and then they’ll think what a thoughtful, generous friend I am. Is it extravagant? Yes. But it’s my imaginary money and I’ll spend it how I please. Since everyone’s hammered, the drivers take the guests home safely and work in teams through the night to return their cars by morning. There’s a thank-you note on the windshield, because I have thought of EVERYTHING.