Special Extended Interview with Famesick Author Lena Dunham

Dropping on YouTube Friday, April 17^th

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Photo Credit: The Drew Barrymore Show/Ash Bean

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Videos: 

Drew & Lena Dunham on Being "Famesick"

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/fOgVpzc5zPF5

Lena: The thing that I came to was that if I, I could only control what I put on the page, that it was the most sort of, it had the most self-examination, that it was, you know, even though it will only ever be my perspective that it was the least one-sided version. And then what people do with that I can't control and part of the book is about realizing I could never control it.

Drew: The irony is when you're reading this book, it is about perspective, it is about how it feels. I'm wondering if you feel, I do strongly that fame sick through this book will actually become a very helpful and important and prominent word in the vernacular...because now with social media everyone has the opportunity to get fame sick and might actually. I think your book is so educational.

Lena: That means so much to me because you are one of the people who I thought when I found out I was gonna get to come and be with you.

Drew: Oh my God, I've been waiting for months.

Lena: But I felt, you know, I don't know everything. Thing about I only know the parts of your life that you've shared with us, but what you have shared is like you went through that and you went through that at an age where you're already adolescent sick confused, don't know how to exist with other kids, much less adults and so it's and I think one of the things that I hope that the book would say is that like people, especially women who are put in this position are so set up to fail because you're kind of you're not, it's not even just thrown to the wolves, you're thrown into a situation where you're the sort of your highest value is your likability and your ability to generate attention. A lot of that is male attention, and if you're not getting male attention, what you do with that, and then no matter who you are inside, the most important things about you become your worst moments and what you look like, and those are the two things that none of us should really be defined by.

Drew: I realized watching the sickness of the vanity of this particular industry, which again has all the bearings in the world now of the world at large.

Lena: Totally, and at one point it was like, it was like, you know, there were all those songs, like, I feel like every Red Hot Chili Peppers song was like she went to Hollywood and she changed, and it used to be this, this place that you went and sort of you went down the rabbit hole, but now everyone's living room can be the rabbit hole. Everyone's high school can be the rabbit hole.

 

Drew & Lena on the Beauty Standard in Hollywood

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/pVfO08JWxtJK

Lena: And it used to also be that the sort of all the machinations of beauty that were available to celebrities were not available to people at home, so there wasn't an expectation that a girl who was working in a store in the Midwest would look like a woman that you saw on television, but all of that's been collapsed.

Drew: It's go to your local med spa and you too can get direction of how to truly alter yourself and that was the messages being given to every woman I was around and even in my own house, yeah, of this job requires looking a certain way.

Lena: Well, I remember sort of what all of the, I mean, I felt it, but I know that the other girls on ‘Girls’ felt it too, which is it was all of our first jobs and so, you know, at first we were showing up like in whatever party dress that we had at home and we couldn't believe that someone was professionally doing our makeup and by the second season you're thinking about parts of your body that it never occurred to you to even contemplate because we've made the mistake of, you know, excitedly going to our comments because we want to know what people think of the work that we're doing. And what we find out is what they think about the crinkle in our armpit or I remember people saying Lena certainly has enough money to fix her teeth, so like what is she doing?... But I remember thinking, OK, so the assumption is that if you have the money to fix your teeth, you should, or if you have the money. I remember someone saying something to me a few years ago when I was going through some health stuff and my body was changing about sort of it's not like you can't afford to go on GLP1s like the assumption is that you can, if you can afford it, you should do it, not that you're like, I cherish this because it's a part of who I am and I don't judge anyone who does something, I mean, who does something that they want to do because it makes them feel better in their body.

Drew: Life is short, more power to you.

Lena: It's we got to figure out how to walk in some peace on this earthly plane, but that being said, I don't think any of us can distinguish whether we're doing it. People say I did this for myself, but how do we know anymore?

Drew: Oh my God, that question's gonna haunt me for a while. I did this for myself ellipses.

Lena: But it's like you did it for yourself after seeing 10 number of women who did it and got the response that we all think we're supposed to have.

 

Lena on Why She Won’t Rewatch “Girls”

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/9KpycWRiwfQa

Drew: When I got pregnant, I was in, like a, a gentle pre-production if you will, to direct a film and because I.

Lena: I love your first movie Whip It.

Drew: I can't believe you've even taken the time to see it.

Lena: Of course I watched it in the theater.

Drew: How do you ever feel about, like I am dying to do like a new cut of it because I have perspective now?

Lena: I think, I mean there's that whole thing of like, you know, a work of art is never finished, it's just handed to its next artist. Part of why I haven't rewatched ‘Girls’ even though my friends are rewatching or my family's rewatching is because all I would see are the mistakes of someone who's learning and it would, the things that they don't see would mortify me. Like I would notice every time I used a word wrong and that would be my perspective and would embarrass me.

 

Lena & Drew on Sexual Relationships

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/YAcmOlgURA9p

Drew: I love how you talk about the people that you gave your body to. I would do the same thing. I would just, it was like healing and fun. It was like a way to feel accepted. It was hedonistic and I enjoyed it.

Lena: It's a way that you can kind of like drinking or using drugs, it's a way to disappear. Like sexuality is sex and sexual experiences are something that you can just kind of fold into and roll into and for a little while you're not yourself.

Drew: And give away all your power, but like never feel more powerful at the same time.

Lena: Yep, and to feel affirmed for me, like there was a lot of that. Like I looked back and I was laughing because I was like, I think the uniting factor of pretty much every man I dated until I met my husband was, well, if he's attracted to me, that seems like it'll work. Like if he thinks that, and also especially once there was so much dialogue about what my body looked like and how sort of unacceptable it was, if someone was showing me like pure heterosexual attention, that to me was like the greatest drug of all.

Drew: And you have a healthy relationship with your dad.

Lena: We all have father things, but I know plenty of all, we all have the father, but we all have it, but I think we put too much stock in the idea that our romantic relationships are us sort of enact like it's very like kind of old and Freudian to be like my romantic relationships are me enacting stuff with my dad or me enacting stuff with the male authority figures. Yes, that's there. It's there for people, but it's also like what you've gotten from society, what you've gotten from other kids at school, what you've gotten in the workplace if you're a young person in the workplace, like for you it must have been a way to feel power because you had all these men bossing you around.

Drew: Oh my God, see this is why I'm so obsessed with your book. You're helping me realize things. Oh my God, I think for me having sex was also a way to feel like an adult.

Lena: How can it not be?

Drew: Because it didn't make sense that my life was so, that I'd experienced so many things and, you know, basically already been washed up by 13. You just go, OK, well this is it. And, and I, I didn't have sex till later. Of all the things I rushed, that wasn't one of them.

Lena: And I think that's beautiful. I didn't rush it. I didn't rush that either.

Drew: Oh, I know, and it's so interesting the way you, the way you spoke about sex was the most understandable female experience that I had read in as long as I can remember.

 

Lena on The Jack Antonoff Chapter of Her Book

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/u9oxsRaXIg5J

Drew: One of my favorite chapters where you discuss your relationship with Mr. Jack Antonoff is a chapter like every other chapter in your book where I couldn't say this chapter is about this. That chapter is about so many things.

Lena: I'm so glad that you liked that chapter because something that was so nice about writing that chapter was I, you know, I'd been in all these kind of naughty hedonistic relationships and I just met like a really sensitive, kind, smart person, and when you're, you know, 25, you don't know how young you are, so you think like this is it, we're gonna be together for the rest of our lives, like this is our shield against the storm. And then us two against the world.

Drew: It seemed like you two had that tone of you had found each other, two brilliant people.

Lena: He's really brilliant.

Drew: And so are you. And so it was like, oh, that's, yeah, that tracks that they like each other, that makes sense and that's so cool and it was really fun to watch from afar and then what I would see, you know, in images or moments that are just images and moments. It's not the whole picture, but it was, there was such a goodness in, in your tone that you guys had.

Lena: I’m so glad you felt that in writing the book was a really great reminder of that because sometimes then, you know, I think of course there are lots of factors that end a relationship and most people don't end up with the person that they is their first serious boyfriend. Like for me really was like my first true boyfriend.

Drew: Which reading your book I really understand now.

Lena: And there's, so when it sort of, and I think there were aspects of the public eye that really and also both of our careers that really sped up and changed, sped up the end, changed the dynamic and then when it was over, I was like, everyone breaks up with their boyfriend. Why am I the only, why am I the only person who can't get over this? Like I cannot seem to move and I write in the book about saying like, I, and I mean now I, it's hard for me to imagine the person who couldn't move past it, but I know that she was there and the thing that I realized was that not only was it my just my first love, but also having this person who was so smart and so bright and so shiny and sort of like, you know, the cool boy at the center of the room that everyone wanted to talk to think that I was OK, felt like no matter what anyone said about me, and I think so many women feel this way, whether they're in the public eye or not, which is that if a certain kind of man chooses them, it's validation.