The Existential Hollywood Reporter

Chapter One: The Breakfast Plan

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I'd been given an assignment. I was "on the clock", so to speak.

I'd decided to wear my best, most sensible-looking (yet funky) attire, including my favorite pair of green Converse -- just to show I was perfectly comfortable, no problem, talking to a major Hollywood star. And I was, you know? I really was perfectly relaxed about the whole thing. Interviewed lots of actors, before. They're usually pretty nice, happy to talk about their latest project, their affinity for kale, and/or their creative influences - even if that's all they've talked about for six months.

Typically, interviews go like this: we sit, we eat, they talk, I listen, and then I go home and write it all down. No. Big. Whoop.

But, he sat down across from me, this actor: this actor who, people say, isn't actually that good looking, but who, through market saturation or incredible PR or something, had attained this status in the zeitgeist of being gorgeous...you know the one? Well, he sat down, and I froze. I'd prepared some questions, but they went right out the window. The professional, grown-up, business-like mindset I had going in was completely obliterated, the second he came into view. I was physically altered because he sat down across from me; his presence was overwhelming. It was like he had his own gravitational pull.

I may, or may not, have ordered anything. I don't recall speaking with a waiter or waitress, although one must have come over. This actor completely filled my line of vision, and I could not take in anything other than him. 

I do remember one thing, one line of questioning I've always longed to ask an actor such as this one, but had never before found the courage. Somehow, despite my completely overwhelmed, addled state, I'd managed to ask him what I wanted to know. What I really wanted to know:

1. "How do you get through each day without having an existential crisis?"
2. "How do you keep going for Truth when, deep down, you know you're giving people an essentially un-true story, this imposed structure, this storybook beginning, middle & end... all of which is completely false?"
and
3. "Why do you act?"

His answers were very, very interesting:

1. "Because I have to."
2. "Because I have to."
and
3. "Because I have to."

Everything else we said to one another, and I do mean everything else (except that I did make him laugh, more than a few times)... was a blur.

I'd forgotten to set up my phone to record the interview. Which is what I usually do in lieu of taking notes. So I'd also not taken any notes. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. So needless to say I was a bit upset later when I realized I didn't have anything to refer to while writing up my article. This meant that my piece would have to be about my impressions of this person, which ... meant my article was going to be a fluff piece, a piece of bullshit, a piece of Hollywood tripe, completely similar to every other reporter's impressions of this person.

I was so upset at myself about the whole debacle, and the fact that I spent two whole hours with him only to come back to the office with nothing...that I faked a headache and went home. I turned off my phone, got in the bathtub, smoked some pot, and cried. Not like a big, heavy, existential-crisis cry... but like just a good, little, feeling sorry for myself, rainy-day kind of cry. Brief, but relaxing.

I may, or may not, have fallen asleep in the tub for a little bit. Which I know sounds kinda dangerous, seeing as how I live alone. I mean, not even a cat or a goldfish? Alone. My mother will probably hate reading this, that I fell asleep in the tub, but there it is.