were now scraping my hairline. “I just love all that stuff too. Let’s talk about it. Tell me all your favorites.”
Fifteen minutes had passed and I’d barely gotten a usable sentence out of her. I had to try harder. I had to get the story. I had to—for my promotion, for my career.
I continued with renewed enthusiasm: “Do kids make fun of you at school?”
“Yes.” Madeline again glanced downward.
“What do they say?” I was making headway.
“They”. . . sniff. . . “call”. . . sniff. . . “me”. . . sniff. . . “hip-po.”
Still barely audible.
“I’m sorry, Madeline. I can’t hear you. I know this is hard. Just please tell me, what do they say?” I forced a crooked smile.
“They”. . . sniff, sniff. . . “call”. . . sniff, sniff, swallow. . . “me”. . . sniff. . . “hip-po.” Swallow, sniff, sniff.
Even less audible this time, and now the tears had begun. My eyebrows dropped down into the folds of my eyelids. This was not fun. And this was certainly not what I’d thought I’d need to do to join the ranks of young, upwardly mobile (as in jet propelled) Hollywood producers. For some reason, that didn’t stop me.
“How do they say it? Are they mean? I don’t like them either. What words do they use?” Desperate for a decent sound-bite, the sub-human uber-producer in me had taken over my brain.
“They”. . . sniff, blubber, blubber, sniff, something totally unintelligible. . . “po.”
Madeline’s tears now came down in torrents—at least she (and I) had the crying part down. We stopped camera to get a box of tissues. As I reached forward to wipe her innocent face and chubby little cheeks, her sniffles got louder. Tiny white fragments of tissue stuck to her pretty little eyebrows. Being so close to her made it all too real. With her supple nose, her delicate chin, her sweet eyes with their curly lashes, she was beautiful, vulnerable, soft, and oh-so traumatized.
I suddenly felt this deep connection to her. What if she was my daughter? What if this had been me 20 years ago? Chubby little Jane forced to confront her food demons at age seven. Before I knew what a personal demon was. Before I knew that skinny trumped fat by a long mile, and that food was a girl’s one true enemy. Move over Taliban. Mr. Ice Cream’s in town! To think, all those years of Grandma telling me I was big-boned, of loving me for me, when, like Madeline, I could have been whipped into an eating disorder and joined the legions of trendily emaciated.
Don’t let this get to you! I told myself. Keep going. Do it for the job, the promotion. Do it for your career!
“Do you think your mommy loves you? Or does your mommy love your skinny cousin more?. . . What’s that? She thinks your skinny cousin is prettier. You can do it—your mom says people will like your cousin better because she’s skinny?. . . Wait. Don’t whisper. No, no, no, please don’t cry again. I can’t understand you. Just one more time, for the camera. Who does your mommy love better? Come on. Just say it clear. . . ly. . . in. . . to. . . the. . . cam. . . era!”
“Mommy loves—she likes—my cous—waaaaaah!”
Madeline could no longer speak.
And I didn’t get my clip. . . or my new best friend.
This isn’t how things had started out for me.
In the beginning, there was no production Gestapo—just me, a solitary new arrival on “the island.” I fancied myself the next great documentary producer, covering meaningful topics like “colony collapse disorder” or the “plastic vortex in the middle of the Pacific.” Hollywood was my ticket to greatness. First stop? Reality shows—to cut my chops. Next stop? The Oscars—ringside with Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore. Hello, beautiful golden statue!
I was the cliché Hollywood hopeful: ambitious, cute (but possibly forgettable), with a few extra pounds of baby flab that, at 28, could no longer be considered “baby” anything, transplanted from the great plains of Canada, armed with friendly pleases and thank-yous. It was a big ball of excitement back then. As far as I was concerned, I had won the lottery—my first real producer job in the big-time.
“Hey, don’t I know you from TV? Aren’t you someone famous?”
I was completely in the clouds, strolling the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Little Miss Fancy Pants bouncing through the crowd like Sofia Coppola, or some other