The Forties Flop.
“Repeat after me: My hair is my prop. I will never cut it again lest someone pays me handsomely to do so”. That was Rio’s closing line after the talking to he gave me for having shaved the side of my head, which I had not done in five months, but the awkward length of the new hair made it impossible to pass as a Forties woman for the new FX show Fosse/Verdon. As a committed thespian and having transcended a good bit of my vanity I gave him the green light to chop it all off. I left the fitting looking like an overage Ramona Quimby but the excitement of a costume bested the fact that this has never been my most flattering look. Maybe nobody’s. Except Keira Knightley. Or Marion Cotillard. I drove home daydreaming of the lovely vintage rust colored silk crepe dress I would wear for filming- the way it shimmered, the way it draped, the way the dolman sleeves pleated at the shoulder- it made me feel like a siren version of myself. I was thinking Atonement, El Tiempo Entre Costuras, Chicas del Cable. I could not wait.
On the day we were shooting I was an hour early to set. I wanted everything to go smoothly, to not be rushed. We were filming in Brooklyn at the old Prospect Hall on Prospect and 5th Avenue where the forties froze and are still standing still. I checked in, had breakfast and then it was time for my favorite part. HMU. That stands for Hair and Makeup. Hair first. I walked into the room set up as some sort of hair and make up refugee camp. Bakeshop vanities everywhere- every station equipped with hot rollers, all sorts of brushes and industrial amounts of cans hairspray. "If a fire starts here", I thought, "we will be the first to die". I spotted Rio and immediately made a bee line for his station. His rollers weren't hot enough yet and since time is of the essence he passed me on to someone he deemed comparable to himself- an average height, plump hairdresser with bleached named John. John made his best effort to be personable bit it wasn’t happening. He had a bad cold and understandably wasn't feeling chatty. He did, however, feel the need to comment on the side of my head with the awkward growth. an eyebrow was raised. I could see him internally shaking his head and thinking “idiot’. He got to work with these hot little roller things in pink and baby blue, twisting my hair onto them and wrapping them all over my head.After some minor skin burns and a helmet of setting spray he sent me off looking like a pastel colored medusa. “Come back when you are done with make up”, he instructed me.
Off to make up I went.I learned that in the forties eyebrows and bold lips were a thing. I grew up thinking red lips were tacky, and wondered at which point they had gotten that bad reputation. I’m glad I am a woman in an era of contouring and bronzer. The porcelain doll look seems somehow devoid of warmth and made us look like beautiful, perfectly put together, but soul less dolls. Time to go back to Jon.
Maybe the Alka Seltzer kicked in, maybe the girl before me was a total bitch, but John looked happier to see me the second time around. He even made an effort to make those typical comments in tv where everyone goes on about how perfect or fierce you look while you stare into the mirror and think to yourself you guys may just be in parallel universes. Or that they are big fat liars, taught to when in doubt, flatter. “Your hair takes such beautiful cur!!!! .It’s like it WANTS to be in this hairstyle. This period is perfect for you”. I'm sorry, my hair wants what? Ramona Quimby was now Ramona Quimby as a poodle. Flashbacks of the hairdo that earned me the nickname Boomer. Tight little curls that made my already short bob into a brillo pad nest. And then the damning realization that if this is what my hair goes for, that if it intuitively cooperates to look like this, and that if my individual body parts are making all these bad decisions for me, I, as a systematic whole, am fucked.
In the end, while shooting , they placed me in the front row of a seated cabaret show. We shot from than angle where my table was directly in from of the dancers, while across the room the actress playing young Gwen Verdon watched as well. Then they moved to the next shot using the big camera on the crane and said crane was placed where my table had stood before. So my table, my fake date and I were now displaced. In amazing vintage clothes, but displaced nonetheless. In the end all you will ever see, fruit of my fititng, Rio’s talking to, John burning my neck and my hair cooperating with this bullshit hairdo, is the back of a poodle’s head. Eso si, with a really nice bedazzled headpiece. If you look closely enough you might even be able to see the burns on my neck. And why would a sane person put herself through all this for beer money and an unwanted extreme makeover you ask? I don't know the answer to that. I guess you'd have to ask a sane person.
