Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a friend, and I said these words aloud, the same words I think every day … “I love where I live”.  My friend asked why, and that’s a really good question considering the traffic, considering how hard I’ve been fighting, but my answer was so simple, so easy.  Because it’s beautiful, that was my answer, said as I looked up at my navy blue night sky set against the relief of my hill with the houses, big and small, tucked into little pockets of land, all outlined by sparse white lights and the remains of a few strings of reluctant Christmas lights.  I’ve met people for whom everything, even the extraordinary, becomes ordinary, becomes expected.  It seems to be the norm for people of success.  But every now and then, I encounter a person who appreciates in that same way I think of my hill, in a way that tells me that person is genuine and thankful for everything, that nothing seems ordinary and expected, even if it could be.  So was my impression of Sandra Bullock.

Thursday, February 6, towards the end of the day, a newish friend of mine called and invited me to a screening of Gravity and the question and answer session to follow of the movie’s director Alfonso Cuaron and the principal star Sandra Bullock.  I knew I’d pay for this in tiredness, but it seemed like something to see.  The screening was held at the Writer’s Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, and was hosted by the Screen Actors’ Guild and Warner Brothers, the movie’s distributor, as a promotion for Academy Award votes.  So fighting traffic on a rainy day, I went home and put on something that seemed like what one wears to a rainy-night screening, not that I really know — black tights, a short black sweater dress and shortie-boots.  And I put on my diamond earrings.  Armed with my directions into the theater, I drove into the garage, and told the attendant what I was there for.  I said the words “SAG, short for Screen Actors’ Guild”, the name of my friend who was on the list, then “I’m here for the screening”.  Following each, he looked with a blank stare, but finally he said “what movie”?  I was getting worried I wasn’t going to pass this test, whatever it was, and that made me so nervous that I momentarily forgot the title Gravity, so I said “the Sandra Bullock movie”, whereupon he handed me a parking entrance ticket and a pink ticket that resembled a movie ticket from about 1978.  So there you have it.  Sandra Bullock is … a code word!  That is fun!  I got in, fearing there was going to be a rush on this place because my friend says they over-invite, but she was easy to find.  We grabbed our 3-D glasses and settled into seats on the isle at the almost-back of the theater.  The theater was rather small, very inviting, with a large screen and about three times the amount of speakers as normal.  The movie started, and I thought I was going to have to cover my ears the sound was so loud.  A movie theater with loud sound on a special effects-oriented movie?  That is fun!

The trick now is to tell you about the movie in a way that makes you want to see it, without telling you what happens.  Let’s see.  The movie depicts the story of one’s personal journey from about a two-hour period of extreme stress prompted by a life-threatening space accident, with that journey going from extreme tragedy and fear to triumph.  The story shows how someone with seemingly no reason to want to live, with nothing they find beautiful, with nobody to love or to love them, finds love from inside and consequently the will to live.  It is truly a story of rebirth of the soul, set against a scene of great beauty and bone-chilling danger.  And the sound, the music, is its own character, prompting every emotion, both of the audience and of the primary character, of course played by Sandra Bullock.  The story is hers, despite a credit to George Clooney, a fact I relish because it is a rare movie that depicts a strong female lead.  And she’s not 25.  And that too is … fun.

I suppose there is tie for me.  I feel like every day is a fight.  I’m surrounded by enormous amounts of beauty, but it’s expensive.  So I go from one job to the next, all the time, somewhere in my mind wondering if it will ever get easier.  I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread.  I feel an almost fleeting connection to people.  Sometimes I feel like people only want me because they want something from me.  I have no great love, at least not one that’s mine.  Yet I fight on.  There’s going to be something that works, something is out there.  I think.  And so the question and answer session began, with those thoughts in my mind.

Sandra Bullock walked down the theater isle right past me.  She was small, but not thin, delicate though, beautifully so.  To me she seems much more substantial on the screen.  She had her dark hair worn long and tucked behind her ears.  She was wearing the kind of clothes one wears to a rainy-night screening — black leggings, black flowing jacket the length of a short dress and black shortie boots.  And she had on large diamond earrings; I could see them from my chair.  The director Alfonso Cuaron entered from the side.  They sat in director’s chairs on the stage floor in front of the theater screen’s curtain, with a reporter (an editor from the Hollywood Reporter) to their right (far left from my vantage point).  I didn’t consider it possible to tape or photograph this question and answer session, so I left my phone in my bag.  Many of the questions were answered by Mr. Cuaron.  He discussed the creative process involved in writing the movie, how he and his son (a co-writer) wanted to make a situation piece about a short time-period with essentially one character.  He talked about how he thought about setting the story in a desert, and about how his son thought space would be a better venue.  He talked about how long it took to make the movie, about how he conceived of everything down to the music.  He talked about the importance of the music.  He was what I would want to be as a creative person.  He was extremely sure of himself, even so far as not caring about the criticisms the movie has received for depicting certain things that aren’t physically possible.  His response: it’s a movie not a documentary.  He was funny.  He was informative.  But he made me think I could never be him, that as much as I would want to tell a story — a complete story with music and venue and composition and everything this movie entailed — that I couldn’t do it.  I’m much, much too sensitive, much, much too … vulnerable.

Mixed in were answers by Sandra Bullock.  She talked about what it was for her to act in the movie, about her contributions.  About this time, I noticed two people were filming on their phones.  I thought if those two people could, then I could.  After all, I needed it for my website.  Incidentally, you’d be surprised what you can get away with using that excuse.  So in case one of those people for whom everything is ordinary and expected — even sitting in a room with an award-winning director and actor answering questions, asked me, a fan girl, not to film, then I’d have a really good excuse.  So film I did, for one question anyway.  You can judge that one for yourself; it is the link here and my equipment is so 2011, so it’s the best I could do.

If I had been planning, I would rather have had the answer before the answer I filmed because in that earlier answer Sandra talked about that part of movie where her character had nothing to live for.  Sandra’s answer itself followed an earlier answer of Cuaron’s where he said Bullock added that element to the movie.  Spoiler alert here, that element Sandra added is the backstory of her character having lost her child long before, having no great love in her life, having only herself, essentially no objective reasons to fight on, yet finding a way to do so.  The reporter followed up with Bullock about that theme.  Sandra’s answers seemed to match everything I thought when the movie ended, and it seemed personal to her in a way similar to the way it was for me.  Sandra’s exact words I don’t remember, but they were along the lines of what if the character had nothing to live for, no person that mattered to her, how could that character chose to live?  And that’s when I saw something really significant, at least to me.  At the start of the interview, the interviewer asked how the director came to cast Bullock.  She didn’t seem to remember if she had read the script first or if a meeting with the director happened first.  Cuaron said they met first.  Then she told the story.  The first substantive words she said were these: “I was in a really bad place”.  She said “I didn’t want to work anymore”.  No elaboration, but you know that was personal.  And it was real; you could tell it was because her voice had a vulnerability about it, this tone I fight from exhibiting on an almost constant basis.  Never let them see you hurting… but she did, she let us see her vulnerability.  Sandra told the story of a three-hour conversation with the director as the start of her involvement in the movie, of making the director wait four days before she called him back, literally citing “The Rules”.  That made everyone laugh, well a sort of female laugh that is.  Her answers tied together.  She made this movie because she felt vulnerable; she added the plot line because she felt vulnerable.  And that makes it all special — the movie, the story, her performance, her interview.  I could tell that for her nothing is ordinary, nothing is expected, and that surprised me.  I would have thought this woman with everything, with fame, with money, with a child even who she talked about having on set with her, would have been at least a tiny bit conceited and that ‘expectant of the extraordinary’ brought by extreme success, but she wasn’t.  She was vulnerable.  And she wasn’t afraid to say that’s where she was emotionally in her life.  I emphasize was because I still saw that vulnerability.

And somehow, all of that — this movie about fighting when one is alone and especially Sandra Bullock’s amazing creative contributions because of her vulnerability — made me feel a lot less alone, made me think it’s okay to be vulnerable, it’s okay to show it.  It made me recognize that I do see the beauty in my life, every day.  It made me thankful for my almost-love, my friends, my siblings, my dad, my work, my pets (I do love my pets), and even for this website.  It made me think that vulnerability can lead to good, that I’ll survive, I’ll get that special “something to live for”, something extraordinary that I’ll always think is special and never get used to, all of that just so long as I just keep fighting.  And I can keep fighting.  And it made me hope that when the academy people — these people I picture as viewing the extraordinary as ordinary, as expected — receive the envelope marked “For Your Consideration” that they check Sandra Bullock … just because she’s vulnerable.  Oh, and vulnerability?  That’s a good thing!