This Will Only Hurt a Little(52)
At which point, Craig nodded at his brother and Jeff produced, seemingly out of nowhere, a pile of printed-out papers, which were a detailed outline for the entire movie. I closed my eyes and tried to suck back tears. Was I just kicked out of something that was my idea? Something that was supposed to be fun and something we were all going to do together? I took the pages and looked over the outline. It was fine, but obviously, I had my own ideas about what I thought should be in the movie and how to break the story. Much of what Craig and I had discussed in Vancouver was in there, but still, I hadn’t been a part of this outline at all. It was so offensive. I guess why would I think that I was talented enough to be involved? WHY would I possibly have thought that something that was MY IDEA should remain MINE? Obviously, the boys knew better what to do with it. They’d seen every Coen brothers movie. Jeff had an UNDERGRAD DEGREE FROM NYU IN WRITING. Ugh. Such a dumb girl. You can’t be a part of THIS.
I felt gaslit. I threw a fit. I was so fucking angry. It got really tense, with Craig telling me to stop being so fucking dramatic and to stop overreacting. Jeff tried to backpedal and say it was just a jumping-off point, but it was too late.
“Jumping-off point?! What are you talking about?! You guys worked out an entire outline without me!”
Why was I always being left out of everything? Because I had a job? We were supposed to do it together, that was clearly the deal. Why couldn’t they have just WAITED A WEEK and done it with me? Because they were selfish and desperate and mad that they didn’t have their own careers. But I didn’t see that. All I saw was that they didn’t wait because they didn’t think I was worth waiting for. My ideas, my input, weren’t worth it. I was crushed. At the end of our drinks, we went home, all of us angry.
The next day, Craig and Jeff called me to tell me that maybe we should put it on hold for a bit and not discuss it and just all go back to Arizona for Christmas. I agreed, but my feelings were still so hurt. While we were in Arizona, Craig and I were walking his dog around his dad’s neighborhood one night so I could smoke a cigarette. He said he was sorry about the fact that they’d gotten so excited and that they still really wanted to write the script with me. I said that was fine but that I thought we should start over with a new outline that we wrote together, and that they would have to wait until I was wrapped on the movie to do it. Everyone agreed on the new plan.
In late January, the three of us started working on the movie together, meeting in Craig and Jeff’s apartment and coming up with dumb ideas about why the two male skaters would have to skate together for gold. We wrote a love interest part, that obviously I would play in the movie. We were trying to figure out how the coach gets the idea for them to skate, when I suggested that he sees them on TV fighting and it looks like balletic ice-skating moves. I was proud of breaking that part, since the whole dumb movie hinges on getting them to skate together. But more often than not, it was difficult working with the boys. They had their own shared sensibility and I always felt like—you guessed it—a third wheel. It wasn’t the fun bonding project I’d thought it would be for me and Craig. Also, I had to start auditioning for pilots again, and that meant a lot of time when I wasn’t available to work with them, so we agreed that they could write pages without me and I would go over them and make suggestions. It worked okay, but my relationship with Craig continued to be strained as the months went on.
In early spring, I was up for an NBC pilot called Foster Hall that I was really excited about. I loved it. I would be playing Macaulay Culkin’s twin sister. I always thought when I was a kid that I looked exactly like Kevin McCallister from Home Alone. Mac had done an arc on Will & Grace, and NBC seemed invested in the pilot, which was being produced by Conan O’Brien’s company. I went in for my network test and read with Mac, and afterward, the casting agents came out and asked the other actresses to leave, but said they’d like me to stay. They led me back into the office where the auditions had been, and the room erupted in applause. I had gotten the part. That was the one and only time that’s ever happened to me—to get the part in the room is rare, mostly because the executives need to talk about things and make sure everyone is on the same page. I drove home, so excited. Craig came over and we went out to dinner to celebrate.
The celebration was somewhat short-lived, however. The next day I got a call from my manager: “Biz! Everyone is so excited! We just got off the phone with NBC and I think the hope is that maybe you can lose some weight before they shoot the pilot.”
My heart sank. Of course there had been the costumer on Dawson’s who always made me feel terrible about my body. And I knew that technically I’d been cast as the overweight friend in White Chicks. But really?
“How much weight do they want me to lose?”
“I think the feeling is THEY JUST WANT YOU TO FEEL YOUR BEST.”
What a bunch of bullshit. My best feeling is when I’m not depriving my body of the food I want to eat, BUT THAT’S JUST ME!
“I need a number. Of how much to lose. And I think they should pay for a trainer.”
Mark hooked me up with trainer to the stars Gunnar Peterson, who was famous at the time for J.Lo’s booty. When I say I had never worked out before that, I really hadn’t. I’d attempted to run every once in a while, and Emily and I went to cardio boxing for like two months, but I was definitely not in the habit of working out. Gunnar was very sweet and patient with me. He sent me to a spin class in West Hollywood he thought I would like, which I did. He told me what to stay away from (no more key lime pie at CPK). I started a diet meal–delivery service. I didn’t think the weight was coming off very fast, probably because my body was like, “FUCK YOU! I’M FINE!” I only had about four weeks, and in the end I think I dropped like ten to twelve pounds. It felt all-consuming, though. The taping of the pilot was super fun. I felt as skinny as I could, and one of the writers bought me an entire CPK key lime pie for after the shoot. When the show didn’t get picked up, I was so bummed, but I also knew that White Chicks would be coming out soon and hopefully be a huge hit.