Hello, Everybody, nice seeing you again.
On Thursday DJ Kelly and I had to go out to the station to be filmed for a documentary called “Guest of Cindy Sherman.” Maybe some of you heard “The Kelly Jones Show, Starring Bronwyn Carlton” last May 25 (it’s in the archives) when we answered Listener Paul H-O’s request for advice as to how to deal with his famous girlfriend. We guessed it was Cindy Sherman and that turned out to be right. Now he’s making a film about his problem, and he wanted us to be in it.
I used to think that people who wrote fiction were actually making up the stories, but then I met some fiction writers and found out that most of it is just thinly-veiled autobiography. That was a little disillusioning, although then I started writing fiction myself. Anyway, it turns out that documentaries are similar: When you watch them you think you’re seeing something just the way it happens, but actually it’s all pretty much staged. They wanted us to re-enact the show we did last May, and I was hoping it would be like Civil War re-enactors and we’d get cool uniforms and get to make our own bullets and stuff, but it wasn’t like that at all.
First, it was really hard to schedule the shoot, because Listener Paul H-O is working with real film crew guys who are all working on multiple projects, and I work at my weird dayjob where it’s hard to get a day off, and of course DJ Kelly is a delicate hothouse flower and must be scheduled for the exact day she is in bloom. Plus we needed to film in Studio A, so we had to pick a day when everyone could get there AND our engineer, John Fog, wasn’t doing maintenance AND the DJ whose show we would disrupt would agree to broadcast from Studio B. Thanks to DJ Diane Kamikaze for letting us have the studio during her regularly scheduled show, we were able to shoot for 3 hours on Thursday. DJ Volunteer Director Scott was invaluable, too—he spent hours helping the crew work out all the technical audio stuff. Program Director Brian helped a lot with scheduling, and Station Manager Ken peeked in the window, and I know DJ Special Events Director Mike did something, because he always does.
Anyway, it was sort of stressful. There were big lights everywhere and cameral guys and then, because one film crew wasn’t enough, Phil and Lauren came in to film the filming of the Paul H-O documentary for the WFMU documentary. DJ Kelly and I were sitting in the middle of the maelstrom, and they told us to relax and just do our show the way we normally do, except not with bed music and maybe the director was going to feed us lines through our headphones. I guess it went okay, though—they kept telling us it was good. Then we changed clothes and invented a completely made-up show where we had Listener Paul H-O into the studio and interviewed him. If you ever see the movie, you’ll know that part documents not a real show that we ever actually did but the show that we pretended in retrospect that we had done.
I liked all the film guys very much, and the only thing that bothered me about the whole experience was when we were doing the faux show and they had us introduce it by saying something like, “Now that we found out that Paul H-O’s girlfriend really is Cindy Sherman, we wanted him to come in and talk to us in person.” That made it sound like we were celebrity suck-ups, and it’s something I would never do—have someone come on a show just because they were famous or knew someone famous. We were genuinely interested in Listener Paul H-O’s problem, but it didn’t matter to us who his girlfriend really was.
Paul H-O is planning to have a screening of the film “Guest of Cindy Sherman” next summer, so keep an eye out for that. DJ Kelly and I plan to arrive at the screening as if it’s a big premiere and we’re huge stars. I want us to wear sparkly dresses and arrive in a white stretch VW Beetle.
When I got home on Thursday I opened my mail and found I’d been invited to Petra Nemcova’s tsunami disaster benefit at the club NA. Petra Nemcova is the Czech supermodel who got her pelvis shattered in the tsunami and held on to a palm tree for 8 hours while her photographer boyfriend was washed away. I have no idea how I got on the list for this event, which featured “special guest host supermodels Jessica Miller, Anne V., and actress Rashida Jones” and even listed the name of the celebrity doorperson who was going to be letting people inside—not a celebrity who was acting as doorperson, but somebody who does that for a living and is therefore a celebrity in and of themselves. Obviously someone made a big mistake. I am a middle-aged suburban housewife and not even a DJ any more, although I play one in documentaries. I hope they made a lot of money for the tsunami victims, though.
Thanks for reading my blog entry, and may God Bless.
-Bronwyn C.
Hey Ms. Bronwyn,
Great stuff, cool photo in the other blog! You're writing is quite entertaining, please keep it coming.
When you mention that you're not a DJ anymore, I hope the situation isn't permanent. Any chance that'll change come spring?
Take care.
Posted by: Listener Bob | February 09, 2005 at 04:39 AM
Hello Ms. Bronwyn,
Paul H-O and I did ART-TV many years ago. That was two years or so after I wrote an article about his and Jim Napierella's plywood sculptures – surfboards, wheel-footed towers, objets. Paul worked for another artworld woman then, Sherrie Levine, producing her "Malic Molds" based upon Duchamp's drawings.
ART-TV ran on public access TV in Manhattan. That morphed into Gallery Beat while I morphed into an ex-pat living in Paris writing and making art, and drinking great $10 bottles of wine. Typical stuff.
So... I just received the MYSPACE site invite with news of this film project, Guest of C S. and the link to this page. I like your take on it, especially the bit about the celebrity doorman. I think about how that celebrity doorman must feel if he goes on vacation, say to Paris, and he wants to get into a club, say the Bain Douches, and he has to wait in line with all the French "bridge and tunnel" types. He might feel an excitement, no? Or he might feel let down, not having his own door to open, and not allowed to glide in here because no one knows him. Famous is an odd word. Methinks celebrity and market segmentation are more related than people think.
Anyway, nice to visit here. When I was living in NY I would often listen to WFMU. I think I'll tune you in from my arrondisement.
Best,
Matthew Rose
Paris, France
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