The Virtues of Thank You Notes

December was always my month.  There was my birthday and a mere two weeks later, Christmas.  Additionally, my mother celebrated Three Kings Day so my brother and I would get an extra little bonus gift on January 6.  As a kid ( and even today ) December was one of my favorite months with its festivities and gifts galore.  Shortly after New Years though, my mother would sit us down at the dining room table.  In front of our groaning faces, she'd set down a box of notecards and a couple of pens and hand us a list of items we'd received and who'd sent them.  There, we'd have to sit, sometimes for hours, until we'd completed all our thank you notes.  

We hated, HATED writing those thank you notes.  Why, why write a thank you note?  It took too much time when we could be doing so many other things.  Childhood wasn't going to last forever and we wanted to be able to enjoy the gifts we'd just gotten before we outgrew them in the months ahead.  

My mother had established the thank you writing ritual early on.  My brother and I glared at each other each and every year, knowing full well that we had no way of getting out of writing those damn thank you notes.  

Today, things have changed dramatically.  I love giving gifts (often more than receiving them.) And now, as an adult, I'm become a stickler for thank you notes. Yes, it still takes time, which I now have even less of, but I eventually get around to it.  It's been so ingrained into my being at this point in my life that I can't imagine abandoning it.  

I absolutely believe that in a digital, fast-paced world, people appreciate a handwritten thank you note even more than in years past.  So, if you're way too busy to handwrite something, phone a friend a thank you, e-mail them your thoughts, let them know you appreciate what they've done.  People notice and you'll feel good about giving back-- even if your gift is merely your words of appreciation.  As I grow older, I've learned that words of appreciation are worth just as much ( if not more than ) those tangible gifts we all enjoy unwrapping on Christmas.

In the coming weeks, I'll sit myself down at my own dining room table and write my thank you notes.  The first one will be written to my mom-- who started the thank you note ritual we'd always hated and the same one we now embrace. 

Copyright 2008 KLiedle

From The Mouths Of Movie-goers...

As a writer, I often observe and listen.  Secretly, I've always wanted to be a spy.  If I were a true spy, however,  I wouldn't be able to tell anyone that I was a spy and what fun is there in that?[unless I get to play-act in my own rendition of Burn After Reading.] So, instead I'm an eavesdropper, sometimes a sleuth, and a writer.  

Quite often, I get to listen and observe moviegoers.  Here in L.A., there are people with clipboards that watch audience reactions to previews and movies and then they jot down little notes-- where the laughs were, what sequences fell flat, if a preview worked or flopped, and the demographics of the people sitting in the seats: age, race, gender.... In a sense, they're movie spies and [not surprisingly]  they're employed by the studios.  

I also enjoy watching several audiences and noting how they react to the same movie.  What I've learned is that it's true what they say: Every single audience is different.  A movie like Four Christmases that makes one woman howl with laughter may be only mildly amusing to the couple sitting in the next showing.

When it comes to a movie being a success or a flop, moviegoers have more clout than they get credit for-- [sorry critics.]  

Here are a few reactions and/or things I've overheard about some of the biggest films this year:

On Rachel Getting Married:

" It's too shaky... I can't take it.  How can they even call that a movie?"

(From a forty-something who needed a glass of ice water to get over her Rachel-induced motion sickness)

"Now, that's the kind of wedding I'd like to have!"

(One twenty-something girl to another upon exiting the theatre.)

On Towelhead:

Upon exiting the theatre:  Silence.

On Synedoche, New York

"What's with that burning house?"

( A question posed to Charlie Kaufman at a Q&A at Arclight Hollywood.  Kaufman skirted the question brilliantly and answered exactly: Nothing.)

"It's so depressing... I want to shoot myself."

(A thirty-something guy talking to his buddy.)

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

(not released yet)

"I think it'll capture peoples' attention with its sentimentality... and it'll garner award noms, no doubt.  Brad Pitt's a shoe-in.

( An unidentified Nielsen employee)

"THIS is a job..."

( The courier lugging Benjamin Button's many, many reels after the theatre's elevator went out) 

Note: Benjamin Button has a run-time of 2 hours and 55 minutes and David Fincher is probably still working on his director's cut which could very well have a run time double that!

Slumdog Millionaire

"I've seen the ending so many times, but I'm gonna go watch it again..."

(A studio publicity person at a Q&A screening with Danny Boyle.)

"Where can I get the soundtrack to Slumdog?"

(An out-of-breath woman in the theatre gift shop.)

"That is how movies are supposed to be."

(An older gentleman to his friend after exiting a late-night screening.)

Observation:  Two Indian women in the middle of the theatre crying softly as Jamal and Latika reunite.  They stay for the entire credits and walk out of the theatre slowly... in utter silence.

"Slumdog's got a chance for Best Picture.  This is a good year for it..."

(Me)

On Milk

"I wasn't interested in the subject matter at first, but when I saw it, Sean Penn pulled me in.  His performance was outstanding.  It's easily one of the best films of the year..."

(An unidentified Nielsen employee at a test screening for an upcoming film.)

In Time, A Wrinkle... Or Two.

In that moment, I stared at my facial features in a full-length mirror.  My eyes were drawn to my lips. In close-up, newly formed 'smile lines' stood out like parentheses enveloping my mouth.  I reeled in horror... 

I was all of sixteen and it didn't take much to set me off on a dramatic tangent:

"I have wrinkles!" I shouted.

"What are you talking about?," asked my mother.

"Wrinkles!!! Look, look at my mouth! Aaagghhhh!!!!

"Oh, honey.  Relax.  Those are just smile lines."

I didn't relax-- I vowed never to smile again.  I couldn't bear to have those 'smile lines' reproduce.  

Yes, I do smile again and I've continued getting older--against my will.  However, as I progressed through adulthood, I've learned to be at peace with it.  I've learned to relax.  Another birthday just passed by the other day, but I was OK.  Honestly, those 'smile lines' really haven't changed that much since I first spotted them at sixteen.

I always thought it was so unfair that all of us have to get older (and watch the others around us get older) as each year goes by.  Wouldn't it be better for all of us if we got younger as the years progressed, instead of the other way around?  Way back when, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald thought the same thing.  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film based on a short story written by Fitzgerald is set to open in theatres this month.  Benjamin (Brad Pitt) is born into the world as an old man and each year, he appears to be getting younger.

"I'm not as old as I 

look..."

To my sixteen-year-old self, this would've been a dream.  Starting off older would allow me to 'end' my life with the good years of being young and vibrant.  Unfortunately for Benjamin, the others around him continue to get older in the traditional fashion.  

I recently got to see Benjamin Button and the number one thing that the story demonstrates is that no matter what we're handed in life, there are always complications.  We may be handed what others would consider a gift or a talent (like Benjamin) but there's always a trade-off.  

"Nothing lasts..."

As director David Fincher said: "What we wanted to show is that no matter what direction you're going, life is sti

ll complicated, life is still hard, life is still not a cakewalk..."

This week, I got older [again] but it was okay.  Life may not be a cakewalk, but my birthday was.  I chose to have fun with it-- to skip my way through the day-- and treat myself well.  At sixteen, I wish I'd known how important it is to be good to yourself.  People may come and go and time will pass, but you are with yourself always... for the long haul.  Relax, smile, and as my horoscope said, "Be kind to that face you see in the mirror." 

I'm still learning how... 

Copyright 2008 KLiedle

Photos: flickr/ban-den (balloons), flickr/mylaphotography (giggly girl), flickr/Ooh La La Photography (skipping girl)

You can change or stay the same.  There are no rules to this thing.  

You can make the best or the worst of it. 

(Benjamin Button/ 2008 Paramount Pictures)

December's Holiday Entertainment

December has arrived and it's a winter wonderland, even if it's only in my mind.  

Today was HOT and sunny [again] in L.A. but I can close my eyes and recall the light, fluffy snowflakes and the beauty of the first snowfall of the season.  Don't get me wrong though... I certainly don't miss my ice scraper or having to "warm up" my car in the dead of winter.  However, as a SoCal girl, I do have to try harder to drum up my holiday spirit when the weather her thinks it's still summertime.

Holiday entertainment does wonders for that.  It's only a matter of time before the rush of Christmas specials hit-- including all my classic favorites: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph and Frosty. During Christmastime, I always feel the excitement.  It's like I'm seven again-- the only trouble being that I have a December birthday so my *new* real age never ventures too far from my mind.  Every year though, I drag out my most favorite holiday movies: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, A Christmas Story [of course], and Elf.  I also spend many evenings hunkered down wrapping holiday gifts and curling ribbon.  For me, a good holiday movie is the best backdrop to my holiday preparations.

December is  also a time for Hollywood to host a jingle bell serenade of their Christmas, but [mostly] Oscar fare. 

Four Christmases (starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn) is the first, strictly holiday movie to hit a screen near all of us.  It opened here in L.A. late last week.  I haven't seen it yet, but I only expect a fun, little holiday movie and not much more.  I don't expect amazing performances or an Oscar caliber script.  If it brings cheer and a few laughs and makes me feel all warm and gooey like a marshmallow inside, then it's good for me.  I feel the same way about Yes Man (Jim Carrey) and Bedtime Stories (Adam Sandler), both being released later this month.  We're not talking award movies there, but fun, popcorn flicks... and like a really good, sugary Christmas cookie, we all need movies like that during this time of year.

But for the serious cinephile, it's also never too early to gauge Oscar buzz.  During this holiday season, we can sample from leading contenders in films such as: Milk, Australia, and Slumdog Millionaire (all now playing.)  

I also look forward to other top contenders such as Doubt (Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Che (Benicio Del Toro,) The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke), and Last Chance Harvey (Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.)  With all the goodness of the holidays, take time out from shopping, from stress, from work, and from the world to sample all that Hollywood has to offer before 2008 comes to a close.  I know I will !

Copyright 2008

Kliedle

Turkey For A Lab

Thanksgiving is just a few days away and I'm thankful already.  I'm thankful that I won't be standing in security at LAX airport or shivering in temperatures not meant for human life as I wait for my mother to pick me up in a place best known for snow days this time of year.  I'm thankful that I won't turn into a snowcone. Instead,  I'm nice and toasty here just a few miles from the fire place (read: wildfires) where the scent of burning leaves has finally dissipated.

I'm thankful that never again will I have to wear a pastel, rainbow-striped, full-body snowsuit or witness my grandmother "oohing and aahing" over my mother's homemade stuffing sludge, the likes of which no one, and I truly mean, no one but my grandmother (i.e. her mother) liked.  Several vintage bags of stuffing still sit in my mother's basement freezer with the dates of much too long ago... as the ice crystals can attest.  If stuffing sludge ag

ed like wine, we'd be selling it off the back porch by now.  

We were always a small family, but my mother ignored that little detail.  She always prepared enough for an army-- something that's still just as true as ever.  There was the Thanksgiving when potato peelings forced the garbage disposal to EXPLODE.  Gushing water...potato peelings... big blobs of bleached imprints on the floor-- one for every waterlogged potato peeling that landed on our linoleum.  Then, there was the Thanksgiving in which our 28 pound turkey refused to defrost even after two days in the bathtub.  

However, my favorite, favorite Thanksgiving involved not the meal or the desserts or quirky family episodes.  It involved leftovers, or shall I say, the one year that we didn't have any.  

See, if you

 live in the midwestern United States and your mother overcooks Thanksgiving (like mine always does, ) there's never enough room in the fridge or freezer for the leftovers that are sure to come.  But you nearly always have subzero midwest temperatures working in your favor.  Slide open that back porch door and voila!  It's like having a G I G A N T I C, industrial-sized freezer the size of your deck... literally! 

That year, as in every year prior, we marched outside to the back patio with platters and tupperware in hand.  Sweet potatoes... mashed potatoes... dark turkey... white turkey... brown-and-serve rolls, mounds and mounds of stuffing sludge, and slices of chocolate chip pecan pie (since pecan pie is just not rich enough on its own.)  

We built an altar of abandoned food right there on our porch, atop a dusting of freshly fallen snow.  Then, we scurried into the warmth of the living room and settled into couches where we could rest from the gluttony of Thanksgiving recreation and contemplate over a cup of hot cocoa.  

It was my brot

her who first saw the midnight flash of blackness.  No one listened to him; he was just a kid after all.  Then, I saw something-- a whoosh of black fur.  We heard a rattle and a crash.  Then a turkey carcass rolled across our front yard like a tumbleweed. At that point, everyone jumped to their feet and rushed to the back patio.  My mother witnessed the black shadow helping itself to our offering.  Not a split second later, her voice bellowed into the peaceful Thanksgiving night:

BO! GET OUTTA HERE!!! SCRAM!!! 

It was too late.  Bo, our neighbor's black labrador, had helped herself.  Freezer bags were mangled.  Mashed potatoes were smooshed into the snow. Turkey bones littered the yard.  "All our leftovers gone," my mother lamented.  We stood there, our heads held low-- even though the kid in me was secretly saying a prayer of thanks: no leftovers, f

or once!!! Hurray!

In the midst of destruction, as we stood in the darkness of that Thanksgiving night, my mother took a moment, then raised her head up high.  It was then that she reclaimed a bit of her Thanksgiving pride as she exclaimed victoriously-- 

"Well, look here.  The stuffing was left untouched!!!" 

Inside, she found a place in the freezer for the stuffing sludge-- where it still remains.

I don't get to visit my family or participate in any of the Thanksgiving Day family food rituals of years past, but I'm thankful for the mishaps and mistakes just as much as the triumphs.  And although I hate to admit it in print, I'm even thankful for that damn stuffing because it always triggers memories and has become, in a sense, family folklore.

Copyright 2008 Kliedle

Autograph Hounds of the Digital Age

Somewhere in my old bedroom there is a box scattered with TAB bottlecaps, E.T. collector cards, Viewmaster slide inserts, Little Golden Books, and my childhood autograph collection.  I treat each item like a relic, an invitation into my own past.  

Like very few kids today, I wrote letters-- letters to friends, letters to family far away, letters to pen pals across the globe, and letters to people I'd never met, people I admired.  

A segment of those letters spurred my childhood autograph collection.  I'd go to the public library and spend hours searching the gigantic celebrity address directory.  I wrote my "fan letters" in cursive, in bubble letters, in colored markers, in my very own handwriting. Sometimes I drew pictures on them and plastered them with stickers.  

I tossed each letter into the mail as if it were a wish I was sending off into the world beyond.  

I rarely asked for anything in return, but sometimes I politely asked for an autograph, if it really, really meant a lot to me.  Even if I never ever received a reply, the joy I felt in writing those letters was something I felt I could pass onto the recipient for the mere cost of a postal stamp.  I was always genuine and polite and very much a kid admirer.

I got replies -- thank yous from publicists stating that the celebrity no longer accepted fan letters (Jessica Tandy, at the time), signed glossy 8x10s (Cindy Crawford), thank yous with regrets (Shirley Temple--too many requests), and even my letter sent back to me (oddly) emblazoned in thin, purple magic marker (Bill Cosby.) 

Today, as I live in Los Angeles and work in entertainment, I see celebrities *not often* but much more often than the average person.  The magic is still there, like a sprinkling of pixie dust, but it's no longer a big deal.  They're just people, but part of me still wants to protect them.  As someone who came from the roots of being a genuine fan, I always honored the person I admired. That honor doesn't seem to exist much anymore in the age of Ebayers and paparazzi.  An autograph, a moment with a celeb, a splash of pixie

dust is nothing if it's not worth money-- lots and lots of money.  

Outsiders wanting in, people wanting a piece of the pie, folks thinking they can barge into the private life of a celebrity lunching at the table across the room just because they think they can, because they think that since celebrities have sold their souls to the public, they no longer deserve privacy.

A couple of weeks ago, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson were at Arclight Hollywood promoting their new film, Last Chance Harvey.  As the studio cars waited for them, several "fans" approached Dustin and shoved laserdiscs and DVDs in his face. Security got him into his car, but these "fans" persisted.  Dustin signed from the backseat, just so he could go home.  

I knew, as did Emma and Dustin, that these weren't real fans.  They were organized Ebayers and those laserdiscs? Probably for sale online somewhere.  There's no respect or sentimentality behind those autographs.  There's no story to tell or human connection involved.  As in many things, it's all about the bottom line... how much is that celebrity worth in the marketplace? They're not people, they're A-listers or D-listers and like stocks, their worth is weighed depending on the "going rate" on Amazon.

For every childhood autograph I collected, there is a story... a meeting, a letter, a connection.  I know there are still real fans out there, but something has been lost as civilization has entered the fast-paced, money-hungry digital age.  Shove another DVD in their face, explode another flashbulb, bully your way into their kid's birthday party because there's a chance that you could get that money shot.  It saddens me that there are so many out there who look at a celebrity and see nothing but dollar signs -- Dirty, dollar signs at the expense of others. Yeah, that's sexy.  

Copyright 2008 KLiedle

Photos by Bob Willoughby "The Graduate" and secretleaves paperworks/flickr

P.S. I still write letters... sometimes in colored pencils, sometimes in marker.  I still draw on boxes and plaster glittery stickers on things.  I like scratch and sniff.  

A kid still exists in all of us...

A Diverse Majority: Hollywood And Politics

Like many people, I got up early on election day.  I waited in line to cast my ballot for a most historic election.  By the end of the night, I was tired but elated and moved by the events that had unfolded before my eyes.  

A few days ago, I called my grandmother to get her take on the election.  She'd voted for McCain, but in the same breath, she explained that she didn't feel as confident about her McCain vote.  Still a conservative, she didn't think McCain wanted it as badly.  Still a conservative, she acknowledged that one has to be a little bit liberal to get things done.

My grandmother was born two years before women were given the right to vote.  She grew up in a world where a womans' future was in the home.  She grew up in a world where African-Americans were maids or drivers and minstrel shows were as common as vaudeville.  She spent time in Alabama where they had an African-American maid that pressed and starched my grandfather's dress shirts for a paltry 25 cents.  When my grandparents moved back to Nebraska, my grandmother asked the woman to join them up North.  She responded that she couldn't.  She'd said that they're prejudice in the South and just as prejudice in the North, but they hide it." She'd rather live in the South than in a place where [she felt] people tried to hide their feelings toward her and her race. 

This was a year of change--not only in politics but in Hollywood.  The real America has begun to emerge.  This is no longer a country of a white majority, but a patchwork quilt of the fair-skinned, the dark-skinned, Native Americans, Latinos, Chinese, Gay and Lesbians, and a list of people too diverse to mention here.  They are no longer "minorities."  

Together, we are all a diverse majority.  

With success of shows such as Ugly Betty, The George Lopez Show, Grey's Anatomy, and others, Hollywood casting sought out diversity.  More and more, it's no longer about casting the "token" African-American or Asian.  Characters are cast in diverse ways because that's what the make-up of our reality in America has become.  There are more female writers--four of whom were nominated in screenwriting categories at last year's Academy Awards (Sarah Polley, Tamara Jenkins, Diablo Cody, and Nancy Oliver)

The white men who have traditionally written the stories for Hollywood now have to rewrite their own futures.  The white men who have traditionally made the rules in government have to make room for others who have a voice, too.  The seas of change are not to be feared, but embraced, for we all become better because of it.  

Hollywood and Politics have just begun to realize what those who have been paying attention have known all along.  Diversity is not a threat or a detriment to our lifestyle as a people, but something to uphold--something that sets the United States of America apart from many other nations around the world.  We are people living in an increasingly global world.

Photo by racole/flickr

(c) Copyright 2008 KLiedle