Look Ma, I'm in the Hollywood Reporter
Hello friends! Today's newsletter is brought to you by a strong cup of coffee with coconut cashew milk and very large dose of adrenaline. I will do my best to keep the exclamation points to a minimum, but I'm not making any promises.
I have a rad piece of news I've been sitting on for a while and am finally authorized to share, so I figure I'd better just blurt out this thing out and SEND IT before another two months go by.
I've been chosen to participate in Through Her Lens, a quite high profile workshop for women in film run by The Tribeca Film Institute and Chanel. You may read about it in the Hollywood Reporter, if you like. I'm tickled to be mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter.
You can also watch a few short video clips of me over here, talking about my process and wearing slightly more mascara than I'm comfortable with. Two weeks ago I was on Denman Island, visiting my dad, when the PR person from Tribeca emailed to say, we realize this is a lot to ask, but would I be willing to cut my vacation short and fly to NYC for a day to shoot a promo? Hell yes I would be willing. Chanel put me up in Vancouver for a night, and paid what I suspect was a lot of money for a last-minute ticket to Newark (Would I mind terribly flying to Newark? It's the best direct flight. No I would not mind.) and sent a car to meet me and put me up in an uber-hip hotel in Williamsburg where a passel of skaters doing a Thrasher shoot were also staying. I have never felt so fancy. I even actually had fun on the shoot. It was bizarre to be in front of the camera, but I knew what to say, they all tricked me into thinking I looked great, and it was frankly a lot easier than being behind the camera. Who knew! Here's hoping I don't have to do it again anytime soon.
I will have to be prepared for more cameras during the three-day workshop. There will be cameras everywhere. Sooooo much social media. On the schedule for day one is a casual pitch followed by a star-studded luncheon, which is baffling me on the what-to-wear front. Last year, Olivia Wilde wore a simple white t-shirt under a beautiful cream tweed jacket. I think I'll go in the t-shirt + jacket direction. Err on the side of casual. I just don't want to, like, offend Chanel. Are they all wearing Chanel?? I just realized that's why all the tweedy jackets. Fuck. Not like I could pull off tweed.
Anyhoo. Why am I talking about this instead of about LIFE ON sMARS?
I've been knee-deep in my pitch, pulling images, making a "deck." I guess I just needed a minute. There will be plenty of time to tell you about the project as we move closer to production...!
*****
This month in movies: Debra Granik's Leave No Trace is gorgeous. I watched it on the plane, and it cracked me wide open. The performances. The daughter-father relationship. That woodsy, Pacific Northwest landscape I'd just left behind. Also, my DP and I have been pulling stills from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of my all-time favorites, and I feel it's my duty to tell you it's streaming on Netflix.
This month in print: Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever, a novel told in short, stream-of consciousness chapters, such as, "One thing to do in this grotesque hotel room is prop up on the bed pillows in the middle of the night and yam down a hundred stick donuts." Is that not a perfect sentence/chapter? It's basically, if Eloise was all grown up and had become a Hollywood script doctor with a Ritalin prescription, three ex-husbands, and two troubled grown-up children. I liked it so much I didn't want to return it to the library. When I logged in to try to renew it, I notice it was catalogued under "Middle-aged women, Fiction," which for some reason pleased me immensely. (Shout out to Helen McLaughlin who recommended it to me more than a year ago.)
This month in tacos: My friend L was in town with her family, and I used them as an excuse to go to Taco Maria, a joint that not only made Jonathan Gold's (sadly, last) 101 Best Restaurants, but also LA Times Restaurant of the Year. I feel like a douchebag for mentioning all that to L, like maybe more than once. I think I felt sheepish that I'd dragged her to an (admittedly very pleasant) mall in Orange County to have tacos. The best thing we ate was the scallop appetizer. The corn was good too. The tacos were... fine. The pork belly was tender. The beef, I don't remember the beef. I remember it came with a slice of bacon on top, which could have worked, but didn't. I'd go back there for the tasting menu, maybe, but did I mention it's in Orange County?
Speaking of Orange County, I recently donated $50 to Katie Porter, one of four Orange County Democrats trying to unseat a Republican incumbent in Congress. It made me feel like I was at least doing something. I also gave $50 to Beto. Let's turn this fucking ship around.
*****
Yours in Not-Tweed,
Laramie
If you like this newsletter, please forward it to someone. Or, um, share it on social media? Sarah C mentioned the last one in an Instagram story, which I missed, but there was this lovely, mysterious trickle of new subscribers (👋).
If you're seeing The Laramie Report for the first time and you want mooooore, subscribe here to get it once a month(ish).
I have a rad piece of news I've been sitting on for a while and am finally authorized to share, so I figure I'd better just blurt out this thing out and SEND IT before another two months go by.
I've been chosen to participate in Through Her Lens, a quite high profile workshop for women in film run by The Tribeca Film Institute and Chanel. You may read about it in the Hollywood Reporter, if you like. I'm tickled to be mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter.
You can also watch a few short video clips of me over here, talking about my process and wearing slightly more mascara than I'm comfortable with. Two weeks ago I was on Denman Island, visiting my dad, when the PR person from Tribeca emailed to say, we realize this is a lot to ask, but would I be willing to cut my vacation short and fly to NYC for a day to shoot a promo? Hell yes I would be willing. Chanel put me up in Vancouver for a night, and paid what I suspect was a lot of money for a last-minute ticket to Newark (Would I mind terribly flying to Newark? It's the best direct flight. No I would not mind.) and sent a car to meet me and put me up in an uber-hip hotel in Williamsburg where a passel of skaters doing a Thrasher shoot were also staying. I have never felt so fancy. I even actually had fun on the shoot. It was bizarre to be in front of the camera, but I knew what to say, they all tricked me into thinking I looked great, and it was frankly a lot easier than being behind the camera. Who knew! Here's hoping I don't have to do it again anytime soon.
I will have to be prepared for more cameras during the three-day workshop. There will be cameras everywhere. Sooooo much social media. On the schedule for day one is a casual pitch followed by a star-studded luncheon, which is baffling me on the what-to-wear front. Last year, Olivia Wilde wore a simple white t-shirt under a beautiful cream tweed jacket. I think I'll go in the t-shirt + jacket direction. Err on the side of casual. I just don't want to, like, offend Chanel. Are they all wearing Chanel?? I just realized that's why all the tweedy jackets. Fuck. Not like I could pull off tweed.
Anyhoo. Why am I talking about this instead of about LIFE ON sMARS?
I've been knee-deep in my pitch, pulling images, making a "deck." I guess I just needed a minute. There will be plenty of time to tell you about the project as we move closer to production...!
*****
This month in movies: Debra Granik's Leave No Trace is gorgeous. I watched it on the plane, and it cracked me wide open. The performances. The daughter-father relationship. That woodsy, Pacific Northwest landscape I'd just left behind. Also, my DP and I have been pulling stills from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of my all-time favorites, and I feel it's my duty to tell you it's streaming on Netflix.
This month in print: Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever, a novel told in short, stream-of consciousness chapters, such as, "One thing to do in this grotesque hotel room is prop up on the bed pillows in the middle of the night and yam down a hundred stick donuts." Is that not a perfect sentence/chapter? It's basically, if Eloise was all grown up and had become a Hollywood script doctor with a Ritalin prescription, three ex-husbands, and two troubled grown-up children. I liked it so much I didn't want to return it to the library. When I logged in to try to renew it, I notice it was catalogued under "Middle-aged women, Fiction," which for some reason pleased me immensely. (Shout out to Helen McLaughlin who recommended it to me more than a year ago.)
This month in tacos: My friend L was in town with her family, and I used them as an excuse to go to Taco Maria, a joint that not only made Jonathan Gold's (sadly, last) 101 Best Restaurants, but also LA Times Restaurant of the Year. I feel like a douchebag for mentioning all that to L, like maybe more than once. I think I felt sheepish that I'd dragged her to an (admittedly very pleasant) mall in Orange County to have tacos. The best thing we ate was the scallop appetizer. The corn was good too. The tacos were... fine. The pork belly was tender. The beef, I don't remember the beef. I remember it came with a slice of bacon on top, which could have worked, but didn't. I'd go back there for the tasting menu, maybe, but did I mention it's in Orange County?
Speaking of Orange County, I recently donated $50 to Katie Porter, one of four Orange County Democrats trying to unseat a Republican incumbent in Congress. It made me feel like I was at least doing something. I also gave $50 to Beto. Let's turn this fucking ship around.
*****
Yours in Not-Tweed,
Laramie
If you like this newsletter, please forward it to someone. Or, um, share it on social media? Sarah C mentioned the last one in an Instagram story, which I missed, but there was this lovely, mysterious trickle of new subscribers (👋).
If you're seeing The Laramie Report for the first time and you want mooooore, subscribe here to get it once a month(ish).
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