Girl Walks into a Bar Girl Walks into a Bar by RACHEL DRATCH I Hello. Welcome to my memoir. My essay collection? My celebrity autobiography with a really loose definition of the word celebrity ? Which one sounds the least pretentious and navel-gaze-y? Let's call it that. You might be concerned that you are going to invest time in reading this book and it won't give you what you want. I want you to know that I have your back, because I am also a voracious reader of these types of books. I have read literally hundreds of books by actors about their lives. For real. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds . Most of the books I have read are by actresses of a certain age. I am a middle-aged homosexual, after all, it's what we do. There is only so much fighting it before you just have to lean in and admit that you can't get enough of Candice Bergen talking about her life. And trust me, I cannot get enough. I have read not one but two full-length memoirs by Ms. Bergen. And she isn't the only actor whose multiple volumes I have consumed. I've also conquered two volumes each from Anjelica Huston, Brooke Shields, and Alan Cumming. I listened to Barbra Streisand's book--which is technically just one volume, but at forty-eight hours and fifteen minutes, it does a lot to illustrate my commitment to the genre. I possess all sorts of intimate knowledge about these celebrities. For instance, did you know that Blanche made love to Benson? Yes! Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche on The Golden Girls , had an affair with Robert Guillaume, who played Benson on Benson (and on Soap, 'cause Benson was a spin-off). She rated his lovemaking skill a 10 and referred to him as "Mr. Guillaume"! This fact has absolutely nothing to do with my life or this book. Please don't expect me to have stories about sex with other actors on sitcoms. I'm just telling you this because I need to mention this sexy real-life crossover episode to as many people as possible. You want to hear some other fun facts I have gleaned? Rosie Perez was fired from Soul Train for throwing a piece of chicken at Don Cornelius; Rita Moreno was on the cover of Time magazine before any movie role made her famous because she looked like a Latina Liz Taylor; and Blake Edwards referred to the genitalia of his wife, Julie Andrews, as a lilac bush. I have read so many books that I know the tricks and pitfalls. I assure you that I am aware of the clichés in celebrity memoirs. Which is not to say I am necessarily going to avoid these clichés. I like some of them. One of my favorites is the Buried Importance cliché, where the celebrity mentions something as if it's an innocuous fact and then gives you the full details in a tone that suggests Can you even believe that was what I was talking about? Yeah. Here are a couple of extreme (and fictional) examples: I received a script in the mail and read it. It was garbage, but what could I do? I needed the money and they were willing to pay. And so I agreed to be in a movie called... Titanic ! And: I loved the play and knew it would be a huge hit once we opened on Broadway on March 12, 2020! See? You think the movie is crap, but then it's one of the highest-grossing films of all time! You think the play will be a hit, but then it turns out it opened during a global pandemic. It's a fun cliché that I hope to employ at least once in this book. Another one I love is the Body Electric cliché, which is when a celebrity addresses a random part of their body for which they are very well known. Jennifer Grey opens her book discussing her ever-changing nose. Kathleen Turner spends an entire chapter on her voice. Not her metaphorical voice--her literal vocal cords. And Linda Gray--wait, what? You don't know who Linda Gray is? Linda Gray played Sue Ellen on the hit prime-time soap Dallas in the 1980s. I guess that is the extent of her résumé. See? I told you I've read a lot of these books. Anyway, Linda Gray devotes a full chapter to her sexy legs and how they got her lots of jobs in commercials. So maybe I will devote a chapter to something on my body, like the space between my bottom teeth or how I don't have eyebrows. Oh! A cliché I will use in almost every chapter is the You Have to Remember cliché. This is when you have to give the context of the time a story occurred in order to explain your actions in said story. It can be as innocuous as "You have to remember that in the nineties, there was no GPS system in anyone's car" or as dark as "You have to remember that in the nineties, sexual harassment was a normal part of life in Hollywood." Now, let me tell you a cliché I will not employ. I promise not to do the Good Ol' Days cliché. There will be no romanticizing about how great my life was before I was popular enough to get a book deal. It is exceptionally common in celebrity memoirs for an actor to describe their big break after "years" of struggling. They describe the play that was a Broadway sensation, the film role that won them their first Oscar, or the TV show that made them a household name. "That was when it all changed," they say, meaning they were no longer a regular person but instead a celebrity plagued by the misery that is fame, riches, and career satisfaction. When I read these sentences, I get out my calculator to find out exactly how old they were when they got this break and compare it to the age I am when reading their book. The math equation is never consoling. Years in memoir time usually translates to months in actual human time. I feel no sympathy for the person describing how it was a "decade-long slog to success" when the decade they're talking about was from ages fifteen to twenty-five. I will not spend time referring to my life before I was a full-time actor as "the good ol' days" because the good ol' days of struggling are romantic only when they are actually days rather than decades. Waiting tables while hustling for an acting job is not fun unless it's a novelty . I will never say I miss that time because (and I cannot stress this enough) I do not miss that time. It is one thing to rest on your laurels as you age, but it is a very different thing to be searching for laurels when you are on the wrong side of forty. I will not spin a folksy yarn about my pre-TV-show days walking around New York City, eating at greasy spoons, and stuffing the daily papers in my shoes. (For the record, I never had to put newspapers in my shoes. In fact, print media was dying by the time I arrived in New York. I just really love Sondheim lyrics.) I've heard only one star refuse to glamorize their pre-fame days and that star is Edie Falco. Edie gets it. Edie's my sister. (To be clear: I have never met Edie Falco, and she does not think of me as her sister. Or at all.) She was on Ellen once and spoke about being a waitress for a long time and how happy she was that she could describe herself as an actor rather than a struggling actor. I loved her for saying this. For putting it out there that it sucks to be someone with a dream who isn't living that dream. Ellen said something like "But isn't it great that you were a waiter? So that you know how hard it is to be a waiter?" but Edie wasn't having it. She said that awards were nice but not being a waiter anymore was better. When she said that, I hooted and pumped my fists! Probably because I was watching that episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show while putting on a marinara-stained white shirt to wait tables at Olive Garden. I feel the same way today, though. Don't get me wrong, I really want to win an award (I'd place it on top of the toilet to keep me humble), but the truth is, I am just happy to be an actor who gets to act and who doesn't have to grate mounds of Parmesan onto someone's pasta in hopes of a large tip. Also, I have health insurance now! Did you know that you have to earn a certain amount of money from acting to get health insurance from SAG-AFTRA, the TV and film actors' union? So if (when) you are out of work, you are not only stressed about not getting paid and not getting to do the thing you know you are meant to do but also petrified that you will get a sinus infection and CityMD will haunt you for ten years because you can't pay the bill for that Z-Pak they prescribed. And that isn't even pointing out the greatest irony--you get mental-health benefits only if you are working, but it's the not working that makes you depressed, so that's when you need the mental-health benefits! I feel like the proper thing for me to do would be to turn this book into a screed about the need for universal health care, but I have lots of humiliating stories about farting in auditions that need to be told, so that other book will have to wait. I refuse to sigh wistfully about life before I got a TV show on HBO. Not to say that my life was horrible, but life is a lot easier when you have money and health insurance and don't live with roommates. This is a book about what it is like to be an actor who isn't famous. An actor who clawed, scraped, and fought their way to the lower-middle rung of the ladder. I will tell you stories about the humiliations of auditioning for jobs, the humiliations of networking for jobs, and the humiliations of the jobs I actually got. I will try to describe the dream I had (and have) of being a professional performer even though I started off as a way-too-gay little boy in 1980s Texas with zero connections to Hollywood and looks that can kindly be described as "unconventional." I will tell you about the hustle to live a dream even when the world tells you (repeatedly) that you are not destined for that dream. And I will also tell you three stories about assholes. These are not stories about metaphorical assholes, like rude people. No. These are stories about anatomical assholes. The bussy. The stink wrinkle. The leather Cheerio. I have three stories about literal human buttholes and not one of them leads to sex, which is both impressive and a little embarrassing. These stories are my gift to you, dear reader. Three assholes are a traditional gift for honored guests in gay male culture, and I want to honor you. I have read so many celebrity memoirs that I think I know the difference between the good stuff (famous people they knew before they were famous) and the boring stuff (stories about how their great-grandparents met). I will try to give you a Buried Importance cliché and a Body Electric cliché, and I will be saying "You have to remember" hundreds of times because a lot of my life happened before the internet existed. I will not be giving you wistful memories of the great times I had temping before people felt the need to treat me with dignity. I mean, I will absolutely be sharing those pitful stories because they are a fun read. I just won't wax nostalgic about them. I hope the clichés are fun and even enlightening, because, after all, cliché is really just another word for truth . Thank you for reading this book; I hope you enjoy it and also the asshole stories. I . Rachel Dratch was thirty-three years old when she was cast on Saturday Night Live. Excerpted from Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success by Jeff Hiller All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
