Glynnis likes this. “I’m seeing some partnership going on right now. You two have worked together for over ten years, correct? Do you want to tell us how you collaborate?”
I scowl at Mel. Maybe I should just be honest and tell everyone that me cleaning up from the night before has become our truest form of collaboration. Me getting Mel out of bed. Holding her hair back while she pukes with the height and depth of a longshoreman. Keeping her from brawling with anyone before noon. Making sure she doesn’t fall out of a chair in front of an audience or drop equipment that cost me so much I’ll have to forfeit my firstborn should I actually meet a man who’s not chased off by my stink lines. And pretending she doesn’t reek of gin and the tang of last night’s waitress, lured into her hotel room with promises of Jell-O shots and Full House reruns.
I clear my throat, trying for a sort of professional “erm,” and pluck at the waistband of my pantsuit. “We do it all as a team,” I manage. “From the first storyboards to editing.”
“I’m interested in hearing about what your storyboards look like. You’re clearly art school grads, but with a taste for candy, it would seem—obvious cartoon fans, with that sense of fun and danger coming through in your work. I see Ren and Stimpy there. I see nineties-era Klasky Csupo there. I see Ralph Bakshi there. Can you fill us in on how this aesthetic influences the way you storyboard?”
She looks at me. My throat freezes right back up. Shit. Shit shit. I was prepared for this—the academic questions, the tech stuff. And now I can’t talk. Glynnis, Mel, the sound tech, they’re all watching me freak out.
And so she looks to Mel.
Mel kicks back, crosses her legs, adjusts her tie, and says, “Well, we wanted to do something more honest than those retrospective memoirs that make everything so saccharine, you know? And Sharon and I both watched ungodly amounts of television as kids. Just brain-slaying, vision-doubling hours of TV. Cartoons included. Drawing in that style was just the ghost that emerged when we started to dig. It didn’t feel like a conscious decision. I mean, childhood is pretty much ground zero for stories, right?”
“Yours in particular was very storied,” Glynnis says. “Can you tell us about the main players in Nashville Combat?”
“Uh, it was me, my mom, and a whole string of Mom’s boyfriends. It’s basically my upbringing until her arrest when I was thirteen.”
“Can you tell us why she was arrested?”
Mel rolls her eyes upward as she ticks off the list. “Bunch of stuff. Possession, intent to sell, intent to prostitute. That’s right. Only in Florida can you charge a woman with the intention to whore herself out.”
I press my lips together. It’s a slip, not a big one, but a slip just the same. This is where it all starts to come apart. I can feel it.
But Glynnis chuckles. “This is a very place-oriented film. Some have gone as far as to categorize it as regionalist. Would you agree with that assessment?”
Mel shrugs. “Nah. I mean, it is where it is because that’s the memory. I don’t think we really set out to tell about the place.”
“But you’ve clearly chosen to make it a focus,” Glynnis says. “We’re hearing the term ‘white trash noir’ thrown around here. We’re hearing a lot about ‘redneck pathos.’ How would you respond to the way in which this movie is being sold?”
Huh. Is it just my imagination, or was that a tone of displeasure in her voice? And what the hell does she mean, being sold.
I cough. She turns to me. “We won’t deny the setting,” I say, my voice shaking. “It makes sense. Mainstream America has a big fear of the rural. If this story isn’t rural, then it definitely takes place at the margins of the suburban. The line separating what’s developed and what’s still wild—that’s more interesting to us than the regional aspect, I think.”
I lean back and take a deep breath without looking at Mel. That actually felt okay. Thoughtful, precise. Not totally vapid.
Glynnis leans in, gazing at me. “You’re a bit of an enigma, aren’t you,” she says.
I laugh, startled. So does she, a stilted-reaction sound. “No, really,” she says. A smile creases her mouth, but her eyes remain still. “One wonders, upon watching, if Nashville Combat is the product of shared trauma, in a sense. Did you find some of your own experiences surfacing in the film as well? What kind of stake did you have in the making of something that was so personal for your partner?”
The rest of the room falls away. This was definitely not in the questions the producers sent. And her tone—it bears the unmistakable note of a throw-down. I thought she liked what we were doing. I was almost right. She likes what Mel is doing. She is challenging me to tell her what it is, exactly—if anything—that I do. I am being asked to explain myself. Glynnis is staring at me.