D'Onofrio's Rita
For those who do not belong to my webcomm, there is more than one D'Onofrio on the planet!LOL
It was a very pleasant dream...I awakened with a smile on my face. In my dream, I finally make it to one of EDO's Workshops (ELIZABETH D'Onofrio). I do a cold reading that captures her attention; we bond and talk for hours- my girl-crush fed to gluttony! We keep in touch through her busy schedule and travels...she even reads my blog on a regular basis! She invites me over to her coast on one of those rare occasions I have returned to Florida to visit Mommie. We stay up all night as though at a teen slumber party, albeit one with two of the brainest and creative girls in school! Somehow, we get on the subject of my crush on Orson Welles. EDO- my Indie Goddess with her girlie ways- tries to withhold her laughter. She has a lengthy chuckle at my expense then remembers something on the topic of Orson Welles's Haitian Macbeth production. "Wasn't he labelled a racist because of his focus on voodoo and Blacks?" she asks unusually timid. I explain that "I don't believe he was being racist. I believe- from what I have read about his paternal grandmother- that poor, not quite twenty, Orson was attempting to exorcise a childhood memory...His grandmother practiced satanic witchery" I reveal to her. I add more details of my crush's bio: "Did you know he wrote a critique of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' when he was ten?" "Who hasn't critiqued Nietzsche by puberty!" she chides. Then I remember something that blows her aforementioned racecard-wavers' theory out the window, "He once wrote an article dogmatically condemning racism!" We run over to the computer and I find the article from Race World July 1944, titled 'Race Hate Must Be Outlawed'. The quote I recalled as being most profound I read aloud:
'Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature. But this is true: we hate whom we hurt and we mistrust whom we betray. There are minority problems simply because minority races are often wronged. Race hate, distilled from the suspicions of ignorance, takes its welcome from the impotent and the Godless, comforting those with hellish parodies of what they've lost...'
"With every crush there is a catalyst memory that gets stuck in the subconscious and returns as nostalgia of the first time you remember looking at your crush and giving that romantic sigh.." I tell her as she eyes me suspiciously. "Not GIRL-crushes, silly!" I assure her. "Mine is finding out from my grandmother that young Mr. Welles carried on an affair with the sadly lovely Ms. Holiday-" "THE BILLIE HOLIDAY!" "THE one and only!" I confirm.
As a writer/director/producer/actress, I imagine EDO is fond of brain-picking. In my dream this takes the form of her asking me to describe my debut in (my) fantasy production. I look up at the ceiling as though it is all unfolding on a screen...
"You, my dear Elizabeth, cease to be cautious- you are as cavalier as my Orson! You do a multi-culti remake of 'Gilda' casting ME as your Rita! Johnnie's love/hate is actually explained by us hinting at his forsaking his family and friends for his interracial love, only to have me run away...not so dedicated to the cause...and we both wind up in Argentina, now a land of incognitos..." my pause tests her patience, "Go on!-" "We let in a little of the present politics of the country...NO! We give it a sci-fi, futurist vibe by mentioning NAFTA, MERCOSUR, the EU...maybe an impending Eastern Asian Alliance and African-Central Asian Alliance? All the organized crime/gangster stuff has been done to DEATH! Elizabeth- let's be political!!"
In my dream our creative musings become reality; it is not long before our brain-child is in production and we are 'the buzz'. EDO and I do a pic for Vanity Fair taken by Leibowitz (who could glam us up like her?) where she's sitting behind a camera in couture with notes and scripts that have been marked out in red at her feet, as I lounge on top of them with a spotlight on me in that dress from "Covergirl"(1946)- you know, the one Rita wears when he makes her the theatre offer and she dances on a stage larger than her dreams? But I'm wearing a man-eating gaze like Rita as Gilda (1944). I begin 'channeling Rita' and soon marry my version of Orson- only this time Hollywood is bested by both of us being determined to break the curse on Rita and Orson's first marriage!
Don't judge the goddess's fantasy too harshly...what about the one YOU had in which you were Snoopy?
It was a very pleasant dream...I awakened with a smile on my face. In my dream, I finally make it to one of EDO's Workshops (ELIZABETH D'Onofrio). I do a cold reading that captures her attention; we bond and talk for hours- my girl-crush fed to gluttony! We keep in touch through her busy schedule and travels...she even reads my blog on a regular basis! She invites me over to her coast on one of those rare occasions I have returned to Florida to visit Mommie. We stay up all night as though at a teen slumber party, albeit one with two of the brainest and creative girls in school! Somehow, we get on the subject of my crush on Orson Welles. EDO- my Indie Goddess with her girlie ways- tries to withhold her laughter. She has a lengthy chuckle at my expense then remembers something on the topic of Orson Welles's Haitian Macbeth production. "Wasn't he labelled a racist because of his focus on voodoo and Blacks?" she asks unusually timid. I explain that "I don't believe he was being racist. I believe- from what I have read about his paternal grandmother- that poor, not quite twenty, Orson was attempting to exorcise a childhood memory...His grandmother practiced satanic witchery" I reveal to her. I add more details of my crush's bio: "Did you know he wrote a critique of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' when he was ten?" "Who hasn't critiqued Nietzsche by puberty!" she chides. Then I remember something that blows her aforementioned racecard-wavers' theory out the window, "He once wrote an article dogmatically condemning racism!" We run over to the computer and I find the article from Race World July 1944, titled 'Race Hate Must Be Outlawed'. The quote I recalled as being most profound I read aloud:
'Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature. But this is true: we hate whom we hurt and we mistrust whom we betray. There are minority problems simply because minority races are often wronged. Race hate, distilled from the suspicions of ignorance, takes its welcome from the impotent and the Godless, comforting those with hellish parodies of what they've lost...'
"With every crush there is a catalyst memory that gets stuck in the subconscious and returns as nostalgia of the first time you remember looking at your crush and giving that romantic sigh.." I tell her as she eyes me suspiciously. "Not GIRL-crushes, silly!" I assure her. "Mine is finding out from my grandmother that young Mr. Welles carried on an affair with the sadly lovely Ms. Holiday-" "THE BILLIE HOLIDAY!" "THE one and only!" I confirm.
As a writer/director/producer/actress, I imagine EDO is fond of brain-picking. In my dream this takes the form of her asking me to describe my debut in (my) fantasy production. I look up at the ceiling as though it is all unfolding on a screen...
"You, my dear Elizabeth, cease to be cautious- you are as cavalier as my Orson! You do a multi-culti remake of 'Gilda' casting ME as your Rita! Johnnie's love/hate is actually explained by us hinting at his forsaking his family and friends for his interracial love, only to have me run away...not so dedicated to the cause...and we both wind up in Argentina, now a land of incognitos..." my pause tests her patience, "Go on!-" "We let in a little of the present politics of the country...NO! We give it a sci-fi, futurist vibe by mentioning NAFTA, MERCOSUR, the EU...maybe an impending Eastern Asian Alliance and African-Central Asian Alliance? All the organized crime/gangster stuff has been done to DEATH! Elizabeth- let's be political!!"
In my dream our creative musings become reality; it is not long before our brain-child is in production and we are 'the buzz'. EDO and I do a pic for Vanity Fair taken by Leibowitz (who could glam us up like her?) where she's sitting behind a camera in couture with notes and scripts that have been marked out in red at her feet, as I lounge on top of them with a spotlight on me in that dress from "Covergirl"(1946)- you know, the one Rita wears when he makes her the theatre offer and she dances on a stage larger than her dreams? But I'm wearing a man-eating gaze like Rita as Gilda (1944). I begin 'channeling Rita' and soon marry my version of Orson- only this time Hollywood is bested by both of us being determined to break the curse on Rita and Orson's first marriage!
Don't judge the goddess's fantasy too harshly...what about the one YOU had in which you were Snoopy?
Labels: Acting, EDO, Elizabeth D'Onofrio, fantasy
posted by ScreenGoddessComplex at 2:19 AM
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