Archive for December, 2005
Excerpts from an Interview
Posted on December 8, 2005, by soph, under Celebrities.
Karl Lagerfeld’s Small World. By Marianne Mairesse. Taken from Marie Claire Dec 05.
MC: Do you like looking at people behind your glasses?
KL: I am not blind.
MC: No, but…
KL: My job is to see, not to be seen. I am scanning like a radar and I see very fast. It is easier to make a mistake when counting on others. I like to be with others, but I honestly don’t need it. I’m very fine with myself. It seems horrible to say, but that’s the truth.
MC: Do you guess who you are dealing with?
KL: Yes, I should have been an astrologer. Really, I tell you, it’s horrible. I know everything in advance. That’s the worst thing that can ever happen to you. Some people make it their job, but me, I hate astrologers. I can see people who are going to die young. It’s written on their face. Don’t worry: it’s not written on yours. (Laughs.) There is no justice. The social injustice is almost the only one that can be solved. When a girl is ugly, that she has a fat ass close to the floor, what do you want her to do? She will never be Claudia Schiffer. This is a real injustice. Same thing for boys. A man with a height of 1.5m will never forgive himself for being so short. I hate short men. They are the meanest, the most frustrated and the most grudge-bearing race that exists. I hope you don’t have a boyfriend whose height is 1.5m. Be warned.
MC: Who is your family today?
KL: I don’t have anyone. Family life has never been for me. I love others’ children but I never wanted to have one myself. First of all, I am irresponsible. Organising holidays, activities, this is not for me. I hate new fathers. I find them artificial. Women are far more gifted for this. I enjoy spending time with others’ children for a while, but then, I give them back to their parents. It’s like tidying them like trinkets. I am a very bad influence on children. I have a tendency to spoil them. But you know, what would have freaked me out the most comes from this sentence that I heard once: “The best moment of a father’s life is when he notices that his son is mediocre.” I wouldn’t have appreciated this. And what if he would have beena hundred times better than me, would I have liked it? A question to avoid. It would have been easier with a girl. But if she would have been an idiot, I wouldn’t have liked it neither. If I would have been a woman, I would have wanted lots of children.
MC: Do you have lots of friends?
KL: I don’t do any name dropping. I hate people who only quote famous people that they come into contact with once in a while. Me, I don’t know a soul.
MC: But without naming them, do you have many friends?
KL: It’s better not to have too many. It’s a very bad sign to be friends with everybody. I am not Massimo Gargia. I have some friends, boys and girls. Enough for what I need in life. Otherwise, it would awful. It’s fine to be a monster, but there are some limits.
MC: You seem to be very faithful.
KL: Yes, but it is inconvenient. If people don’t meet my expectations, my punishments are terrifying. I never attack, but I am a champion at throwing back the ball, in the right or wrong way. Mainly when they think that it’s forgotten. I didn’t have a Christian education; I don’t forgive easily.
MC: You often say that you are “self-fascist”. Is there anything that might be out of your control?
KL: No, what could it be?
MC: I am asking you…
KL: Health can be out of your control. You can control more or less the rest. When I wanted to lose weight, I had myself lose weight. I can do whatever I want with myself, whenever I want, as I want… If it’s worth it I’ll make the effort. People don’t dare to admit it but vanity is finally the best treatment to maintain good health. If you don’t fit in a Dior size 46, it’s totally depressing. But you have to be careful. People who base everything on their physical appearance are the ones suffering the most from depression. If you are pretty, it won’t last forever. But if you are an idiot, you’ll be one all your life.
MC: Something you can’t control is anguish…
KL: Yes, but you have to analyse and understand your anguish. Not all of them are real. It’s a very fashionable word. I am in a bad mood on Monday mornings. It’s not my day. There’s only abd news, and everything goes wrong. It’s not because it reminds me of Mondays at school because I didn’t go often. At the age of 5, I could read, write, speak English, French and German whereas my classmates were complete idiots. I thought I was the eighth wonder of the world. It went to my head so much that my mother slapped me on the head!
MC: How do you spend your evenings?
KL: A perfect evening for me is a dinner at a restaurant with friends or even a drink at the Flore. It depends, I am not hard to please. It can also be an evening at home, coming back, having lots of new books to look at, not too many phone calls, chilling out in the right meaning of the word, keeping myself informed, reading newspapers, drawing. An ideal evening is an evening where I don’t need to look at the time. Coming back home thinking, “I have to go out again in half an hour, so I have to get dressed” makes me feel like killing myself. Appointments made centuries in advance always end up spoiling my life. If someone calls me at 8.55pm to meet me at 9, I can get ready within five minutes. I feel horrified by preset lives: Tuesdays, it’s this, Wednesdays, it’s that… I really only can be friends with people who are able to improvise. I also don’t mind being ditched last minute! What good luck, at last a bit of tranquility.
MC: What is the last movie you liked?
KL: What I like the most in movies are the stars. Me, I need Nicole Kidman. I am very “Hollywood, 30s”. I don’t really feel like knowing about the not funny reality of 90 percent of people. Most of the time, I don’t watch a movie until the end in the cinema. I like buying tickets for all the screens and stay 10 minutes here, 5 minutes there… I don’t want to watch one whole movie, it’s too long and too talkative.
MC: Has your homosexuality once been hard to live?
KL: That’s what I chose.
MC: But others’ glance is sometimes stigmatising.
KL: These kind of things never really concerned me. When I was 11, I asked my mother what homosexuality was, she answered me: “It’s like hair colours. Some people are blond, others are brunette. Some people are like this.” It’s not a topic. It’s none of people’s business.
MC: Your perfect day?
KL: A whole day without looking at the time.
MC: There must be a lot then!
KL: Unfortunately no. It’s not obvious but I am making inhuman efforts. I am always late. This is the tragedy of my life. I am born three weeks after the due date. My mother said she went to the hospital every day because she didn’t want “the dirt” to arrive at home. I have never managed to catch-up with those three weeks.
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My Right
Posted on December 8, 2005, by soph, under It's a Girl's Life.
I hereby declare my birthright as an individual human being born with the XX chromosomes, to feel completely and utterly down in the dumps without quite knowing why; to want something without knowing what it is; to whine to, complain about and frustrate just about anything and anyone, and to blame all causes and consequences on the incomprehendables of being a woman in this world. And while I’m at it, I claim the right to be a walking contradiction.
- A Woman’s Right, 2005
I am feeling most odd. I want to do things, yet I don’t want to do them. I miss my girlfriends. I am restless yet I am not, because my life is not a monotony and I know it. I wanted to play badminton yesterday but the courts were booked full so I ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes instead (clap clap for me) because I wanted to sweat whatever it is out of my system. It didn’t work. I want to go out, yet I want to stay home. I want to eat, yet I don’t. God, it’s hard work being a woman.
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Quick One
Posted on December 7, 2005, by soph, under Uncategorized.
I realize I haven’t given my little dental update. The bottom line is: it looks like I’m pretty much headed for braces. Either that or I develop gingivitis due to my crooked teeth and lose them all by forty. The options are simple and thoroughly depressing, so I’m going to do what young people do best: sit on my hands and procrastinate. Oh and pretend nothing happened. It’s great, this forced ignorance.
Coming up soon…
Excerpts from an interview with Karl Lagerfeld - fashion designer and the man behind Chanel at the moment. I read it in the latest issue of Marie Claire and it was so good I just had to share. The man is so weird.
Gotta run.
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Sunday Morning
Posted on December 4, 2005, by soph, under Celebrities, It's a Girl's Life.
So I finally had my Perhaps Love press conference this morning.
I got there at 10am - which was supposed to be when it started, ignoring the 9.30am media registration time - to find that some journalists had arrived as early as 8.30am to get good seats. And you can bet it’s not because they were that eager to report the news.
To the organizers’ credit, they only started ten minutes late. And before I knew it, half the room had flowed towards a side door I didn’t even notice and cameras were snapping like crazy. They had arrived. By the time I realized what was happening, I couldn’t see a thing for all the heads and cameras, and I was supposed to take a couple of pics myself! (I know, I make a real sucky journalist). These were all I got.
To be honest, I got a bit of a shock. I really expected Takeshi to look a lot less gaunt and more err… good looking. They say the camera adds ten pounds (or is it five?) and this guy definitely needs those extra five or ten pounds, whichever it is. But you get used to it after a while.
Group shot.
Presenting the merry crew. The guy on the left is the producer, the guy on the right is the director Peter Chen, and the girl is Zhou Xun - who also stars in the film and who I’m liking more and more. To be honest, my attempt at pics turned out disastrous. For starters, I didn’t know the (real) photographers were so desperate for pics that they would rush the stage even though the host announced twice that there was to be no picture taking until the end of the session. Some of them kept snapping until some guy from Astro came along and threatened to make them leave, and in a terribly gentlemanly gesture, told other photographers who were talking to “shut up please”. I assure you they were Pissed.
At the end of the Q&A, before the host could even say “that’s the end of our Q&A…”, the photographers rushed the stage again so all I could do was stand on my tippy toes to the side and try to get a pic that didn’t have a head or a camera or both in it. I swear I’m not cut out to be a press photographer. They were jostling and pushing and some of them went onto the stage which made the Astro guy give orders to block the cameras of those who were on stage and make them get off.
As for me, I failed. Virtually every single pic of mine had varying parts of some other photographer’s head in it. Thank God for photoshop. I also deleted a heap of blurred pictures - the result of either being jostled or trying to keep steady hands while standing on tippy toes. Did I mention I’m not cut out to be a press photographer? I saw the throng and I didn’t even bother jostling for a front angle (yea, in case you haven’t noticed, all my pictures were taken from the side).
These aren’t crystal clear but you can’t really tell cos the pic’s too small - which works out fine for both of us I suppose. Anyway, here’re the rest:
Another group shot.
Takeshi’s a real moody dude. But then I suppose I can’t blame him. If I’ve been traveling around for weeks answering the same questions over and over I suppose I would be pretty bored myself. He spent much of the time sullenly staring into space, but the other three were great. He has a reputation for keeping to himself, staying very low profile and totally secretive when it comes to his personal life. He refused all interviews except one by a male (total waste I know) Astro mag editor - which I suspect he was forced to give because Astro is part sponsor of Perhaps Love. And no personal questions were allowed during the press conference. A brave attempt was made by this Malay lady journalist who speaks Mandarin (and who impressed me greatly when I first heard her) and the host merely said “next question please” like she hadn’t said a thing. I thought it was kind rude. But then again, so was “shut up please”.
Takeshi and Zhou Xun autographing a promo poster of the movie.
This isn’t the best pic of Takeshi but I thought Zhou Xun looked good and like I said, she really is starting to grow on me. We were given the soundtrack of the film and I am now officially in love with the movie. I always was a sucker for musicals. But in my defense, a couple others heard one of the tracks off the soundtrack and they thought it was surprisingly, really, good too. So there.
***
And for a quick tag-on, I flopped my casting majorly. I was never one for acting, and I totally froze when I had to do it on video. It was an extremely self-conscious experience. They take pictures, ask you to say your name, age and height at a camera (I felt a little like I was in jail), take video footage of you standing facing forward and either side, then get you to do a little twirl. The only thing I did passably well was posing for pics. At least that I can do. But yes, there was my one shot at tv commercial roles.
I highly doubt I’m getting another, which I kinda want cos after I left the casting, I thought of a thousand ways I could have acted properly - ain’t that always the case? And while a part of me wants a second chance, another part of me doesn’t think I’ll be able to pull off a dozen chances. It does always seem a whole lot better when it’s in your head. I reckon I can only act to save a life, and unfortunately or thankfully, whichever way you look at it, no one’s life is at stake right now. Oh well. It was a cool experience, though it did involve a lot of waiting, and believe it or not, I actually managed to do me own makeup for it. Ha! Mascara and all. But no eyeliner, I still don’t get that stuff.
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Of Dentists, Castings, Zits and Ulcers
Posted on December 3, 2005, by soph, under It's a Girl's Life.
It’s the blessed weekend again and I’m wide awake at 9. He’s still asleep and he probably isn’t going to wake up until 11. And that only because we have a dental appointment at 11.30am. I can’t believe I might end up with braces after all. At twenty-freaking-three! I thought I’d escaped once I hit 15.
But apparently, my two crooked teeth on my lower front might cause problems later on cos they’re set back a little from the rest and therefore, don’t have any upper teeth to chew against. The alleged result is these teeth keep growing higher and higher until you look like a mutated dracula. Or I will anyway, cos mine are right in front. And so it’s off to see the dentist, both of us (because he’s got the same problem, only at the side so he can argue that at least it’s not aesthetically displeasing like yours truly), to put an end to pretend-we’re-dentists and countless discussions on who needs braces more. Keep you posted. If he says I have to wear braces AND pull out teeth, I’m going to be most Displeased.
On a separate note, I got a call at midnight asking me to go for a TV ad casting today. I didn’t sign up with any agency, but the sister of Y’s colleague works at one and they must really need people desperately to be calling only at 12. I’m up for it, but I don’t know they will be when they see me. For perhaps the first time in my entire life, I have three zits on my face at one time - and two on my nose at that! Zits make it a point to ruin my existence I swear - when I had to do my bridal photoshoot, I got a giant on my cheek for the first time in my lifet too. Plus, it’s a TV ad and anyone who has seen me try will know that I cannot act unless it is to save my life. This is going to be terribly funny. Tell you more when it’s over. For now, I think I better start tampering with my concealers and tinted moisturizers (thank God I actually own them!) to see if I can’t look a little more normal for later.
Arrgh!
p/s: I forgot to mention, I also have twin ulcers on the inside of my lower lip who have been making life hell the past couple days. I have some anaesthetic drops which numb the entire area so I can’t feel a thing, but I don’t know that it’ll be such a good idea for the casting. I might not be able to feel my lip properly and end up looking retarded.
Voila! The drama of a Saturday morning.
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Lil’ Pearl of Wisdom
Posted on December 1, 2005, by soph, under Learning Curve.
“Popcorn and coke, even if it’s a small set, isn’t a good idea first thing in the morning. But if you eat a generous Breadstory bun before starting on the popcorn, you’ll be alright.”
By the way, if anyone is interested, Takeshi Kaneshiro is coming to KL this weekend. And Perhaps Love is a must-see.
