I stumbled over Richard Armitage at 92Y [guest post]

Remember the fan who accidentally stumbled over Richard Armitage on the aisle at the 92nd St Y? Here are her further reflections on the evening!

[ETA: You can tweet the author of this post here.]

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I am always running late. Always, and always for different, valid reasons. I had planned to go see the Di Trevis talk before the Pinter/Proust staged reading at 92Y. I know it takes an hour door-to-door from my home in Brooklyn. I should have left enough time. But as is always the case, something came up to make me late. In this case, it was a pretty amazing something.

I started and run an all-volunteer, non-profit dog rescue called Badass Brooklyn Animal Rescue. I have always named the dogs I rescue after celebrities, writers, artists, historical figures. My own dog is named after Existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. I recently named a dog after Richard Armitage, and shared the picture around the internet with other RA fans (some of whom were kind enough to retweet the link to his adoption profile). One of my rescue partners named a dog after Brandon Stanton, the photographer behind the beautiful Humans of New York blog. HONY has 2.3 million fans on Facebook. As I was getting ready to leave, with all intention of being on time, my email and facebook blew up. Brandon had shared our canine Brandon Stanton on his page, driving hundreds of new fans to ours. For a struggling, unfunded rescue group, this is huge.

So I was running late, as usual, but with good reason. Quietly entering the auditorium a few minutes after the talk had begun, I scanned the room to find my way to a seat with the least disturbance. Why does everyone always sit on the aisle when there are many seats on the interior of a row? I do it myself, all the time, and then I have to get up and let people in who come late, but I never learn. I spot the very last row by the left wall, just in front of where I am standing. One man is seated in the aisle seat and except for a woman at the other end, by the wall, the rest of the row is almost empty.  Trying to be as discreet as possible, I step over and ask “Do you mind?” and he looks up and says something, I can’t remember what, to the effect of “sure” or “no problem.”

I can’t remember what he said, because when he looked up at me I realized it was Richard Armitage.

He stood up to let me through and I walked two seats down, leaving an empty seat between us, because as much as I would love to sit right next to Richard Armitage, I thought if I were he, I would want some personal space.

My heart was pounding so powerfully, I thought it was audible. I didn’t dare look. People were still streaming in. My friend who was meeting me came a few minutes later and yes, he also had to disturb poor Richard during the talk to get to a seat by me. Why was this so exciting? I couldn’t look over at him, certainly couldn’t talk with him.

This moment encapsulated what my life in New York has been like since I moved here 20 years ago: Proximity to the highest levels of power, wealth, success, beauty. Proximity — but not access.

Years ago I was an integral part of a small team that produced a documentary that got nominated for an Oscar. It had been my dream since I was a little girl to go to the Oscars, but there were not enough tickets, so I watched on television like everyone else. While I work in film, tv and commercials, I am not anything close to an insider. I am still tangential.

So as I sat two seats over from the movie star who was about to perform on the stage in front of me, I thought about the fan/celebrity dynamic, about the invisible glass wall always between us, as if we can see them, but they can’t see us. I think we all want to be acknowledged in life, to have our worth recognized by those we appreciate. But the very nature of how we consume movies, tv and even theatrical plays makes mutual recognition nearly impossible. For those of us who don’t work directly with movie stars, what chance will we ever have to be on the same side of the glass wall?

And that is why I was so overwhelmed to be seated next to Richard Armitage in the auditorium at 92Y. What are the chances that he would be sitting in the audience, and that I would happen to have picked that row as the least rude option after being late? I have been through some hard times lately, and I think maybe the universe was sending me some completely unbelievable and unexpected reward. For those 45 minutes we were equals, both New York artists, audience members, focused on the same two people talking on stage, learning, and laughing (I think) at the same jokes.  It almost felt like I had touched the glass wall and it had disappeared, just for a moment.

I have been a fan of Richard Armitage since seeing North & South on PBS. I remember being really excited when he joined the cast of Spooks, as I had enjoyed watching the show from the first season. A few years ago when my English former boyfriend was going home for Christmas, I asked him to bring back the UK DVDs of Strike Back, since the show was not available in the U.S. I know he thought I was a bit silly, but being the dutiful English boyfriend he was, he brought them back. (Are all English boyfriends dutiful? A question for another time.)

While I have been a fan for a long time, only lately have I discovered the expansive and expanding universe of his fandom. Over the past few months, I have spent a fair amount of time reading fan blogs, twitter pages, and even recently overcame my aversion to technology to join a forum.

In reading many of the diverse and thoughtful personal stories found in these places, I started thinking about how interesting Armitage fans are, how we all have a story. I have always been interested in the idea of fandom and the sense of community it engenders. I used to be a big baseball fan and for years I went to Yankees games at least twice a month. I remember once sitting in Yankee Stadium and looking around thinking, here are 56,000 people who all might have nothing else in common, they come from different races, religions, educational, professional and socioeconomic backgrounds, but they all love the Yankees, and for this moment in time, they are a community. One thing that crossed my mind as I sat two seats down from Richard was how fun it would be to share the story later with fellow fans.

Back on stage, Di Trevis was speaking about the theme of memory that is so integral to the play and brought up the question of “how fictional is memory?”

This question is one that comes up quite a bit in documentary filmmaking. Not only do we who call ourselves documentary filmmakers grapple with the gray area between truth and fiction when portraying things that happened in the past, we think a great deal about how as storytellers we are representing the “reality” of things happening in the present. Our very presence with a camera changes the dynamic of the situation, though we work to become as invisible as possible. Like good journalists, we strive to make sure we have our facts straight, to reflect some level of objective truth.

At the same time, what we shoot and do not shoot, sometimes by choice, sometimes by chance, determines the material we have to work with. How we edit the footage determines how the story will be told. Often 95 percent of what we have shot is cut out, reminding us as filmmakers that the “reality” could have gone in many different directions. When we have a point of story or character that we need to illustrate but don’t have the vérité footage to do it, we get creative. We include animation, moody shots of unrelated material, or re-enactment, all of which are completely fabricated in order to further illustrate a “truth.” Like all artists, we strive to make our work inspire feeling and thought and touch on some universal truth. For social issue films, the filmmaker further hopes to inspire action (often political or social).

Listening to Di Trevis talk about working with Pinter to adapt Proust, I immediately thought of one of the best documentaries of the year, which just missed an Oscar nomination — Sarah Polley’s genre-bending Stories We Tell, a study of memory and just how fictional, or put more kindly, subjective, memory is. The film treats the collective, sometimes conflicting memories of the filmmaker’s deceased mother and her relationships with her husband and lover (sparked by a question over the actual identity of Polley’s biological father). What really happened? How could the same situations be remembered so differently by different people? Who is telling the “truth”? How fictional is memory? There was a lot of talk this year about Stories We Tell and how its method of storytelling bends the genre toward narrative.

I have never read Proust. I have a basic wikipedia-level knowledge of his life and work. So how do I approach understanding a staged reading of a play directed and adapted by Di Trevis from a screenplay by Pinter, which was in turn derived from Proust’s novels? Subjectively, of course. That is, I, like every other audience member, bring my own unique life experience to understand the thing that is happening in front of me. Part of my unique life experience is being a documentary filmmaker, my interest in storytelling as a means to reach some kind of universal truth. To learn from something new, particularly something as dense and difficult to penetrate as Remembrance of Things Past, I turn to a recent documentary film that touches on similar subject matter. Understanding that work of art enabled me to open the window to understanding the work of art I was about to see.

As the interview drew to a close, Richard quietly slipped out the back.

One of the things I was most excited about was meeting up with a few other RA fans after the show. I am not a big fan of twitter but I had tweeted a few people whom I follow, asking for a meetup afterwards. My ancient Blackberry had run out of battery so during the break, I found an outlet in the library and planted myself there to charge. I was particularly looking forward to meeting @AwkwardCeleb because I love her cartoons and can so identify, having had many awkward celebrity encounters myself. Just as I was texting with Awkward about my previous “awkward” encounter (stepping over Richard Armitage), I stepped into another one.

A few feet away, looking at some art on the wall, stood Anson Mount. Years ago I was taking an editing class and we used a film he had starred in as our class material. I think we had a couple of mutual facebook friends, so I emailed him on fb and told him how much I liked his work. He wrote back and we became facebook friends. Later he switched his page so that he was a public figure, and instead of a “friends,” I was now a follower. I actually enjoy following his page, I like his posts, and I have never contacted him again, so the barrier between celebrity and fan is preserved. But here of course he was, standing three feet away, a fellow audience member at the same show, so I went over.

I was already completely discombobulated and tongue-tied (HELLO, I had just been sitting next to Richard Armitage for 45 minutes!). I tripped over my words (trying to explain that I didn’t actually “work” on the film but it was used in a class I took and then couldn’t remember the name of the film and just told him “it took place on a farm”). He was very nice, very lovely, and when I said completely nervously “I know it’s weird, but I thought I would come over and say hello,” he said, “I’m glad you did.” He smiled genuinely, but it was still extremely awkward (for me). I am many things, but smooth is not one of them. Later, I found out that one of my friends actually went to grad school with him. Too bad she wasn’t with me.

Contrast that awkward celebrity encounter with one that seemed like a perfectly normal interaction. I have loved Colin Firth since, well, forever. A few years ago, I produced a documentary that premiered at Sundance. And even though Sundance has become a magnet for every press-hungry starlet, filmmakers themselves (particularly on the documentary side) don’t really cross paths with the famous people. One night at one of the private parties for doc filmmakers, I was contemplating the buffet table when Colin Firth appeared next to me. We had a very nice brief chat, which started by discussing the food options and continued to touch on the films we each had at the festival (he had executive produced a documentary). It was a totally natural experience, as if I had been talking to any person who happened to be at the same party. He never would have known that I had seen as many of his movies as I could get my hands on and had watched the BBC’s Pride & Prejudice so many times that my VHS tapes started hissing. I couldn’t have had that kind of chat with Firth had I run into him standing in line at a coffee shop or over a barricade on the red carpet. The whole experience was only possible because for that moment, in that environment, we were invited into the same room for the same reason. The glass wall was down. It was one of the few times in my life when I felt like I was on the “inside,” however briefly.

I didn’t grow up in New York. I came here for college and have been somewhat stuck here ever since. I often think about leaving, but am not sure where else I would go. Aggravations make living in New York not always pleasant. But then, I have an opportunity so rare that it makes all the hassle worthwhile. There is nothing like sitting in a live audience watching a group of incredibly talented actors perform on stage. It’s electric. The whole cast was fantastic. Richard was amazing. He has the kind of innate stage presence that cannot be taught, combined with skills he developed over years of study and work. I know we all already know that he is a very good actor, but something about seeing him on stage, where there is no second take, where even the back row has to hear his “whisper,” just made it clear how great he really is. I hope he does more theater.

After the show ended I was able to meet some of the other RA fans and it was great fun to encounter people in real life whom I follow online (another layer of fandom; I am a fan of the fans). All the ladies were open and welcoming, happy to meet like-minded new friends. I was disappointed that what I thought would be a meet and greet was actually an invitation only party. I thought about talking my way in, which I thought I might be able to do if I had acted fast enough. Now I am kind of sorry I didn’t even try. I wonder if in the environment of a closed party I might have felt more empowered to say hello to Richard. I could have mentioned to him that if he hasn’t seen Stories We Tell, he should check it out, as well as 20 Feet From Stardom and Cutie and the Boxer, two documentaries just nominated for Oscars that explore the lives of artists. I think every creative person should see them and I imagine he would appreciate them.  Or maybe I would have been completely tongue-tied and discombobulated and awkward – actually, that’s a more likely scenario.

Quite a crowd had gathered in the lobby outside the library and pretty soon Richard came out to greet the fans. The glass wall was back up. He was on one side of a velvet rope (with a guard standing near), and we, the crowd, were on the other. I stood in the back and watched as he graciously signed autographs and took pictures with many fans. He is absolutely every bit a movie star in the classic sense. Besides fulfilling the Aristotelian ideal of male beauty, he exudes gracefulness and intelligence. I thought about going up and getting a picture taken. I thought about pulling out my self-deprecating humor and saying “sorry I had to climb over you tonight.” But I didn’t. I didn’t engage in the scene; I watched. I am still an observer. Maybe next time.

After quite a while and after people from inside the party had come out to get him and not until all of the fans who waited had gotten pictures and autographs, Richard disappeared, back into the private party.

~ by Servetus on January 18, 2014.