Guest Contributor #2: Sharon Gissy

One of my favorite people on this planet contributes to this here SS project with her answers regarding questions about film, food and music!

1. What is a movie that you think people should know about that speaks to you in some way?

I'm going to go with Synecdoche NY because it's a film that's continued to resonate with me and evolve in meaning over the years. When I first started watching the movie on DVD, I had to turn it off because I couldn't handle it. My partner at the time asked how it was and I told him the main character is sick, his wife leaves him, his father dies, and it was just too depressing for me to finish. Shortly after that I heard him from the other room watching and laughing at the movie. I couldn't believe it. I credit him with helping me realize it was a dark comedy.

 My ex had recently buried his own father, so I found it baffling that he was laughing in particular at the scene where main character Caden Cotard receives a phone call saying his father's death was long, drawn-out, violent, and painful---pretty much the opposite of the comforting assurances you're supposed to hear about your father's death. He also found it funny that there was so little of the body left to bury from the violent death they had to weigh the coffin down with golf balls. This is the pitch-black humor of how the world looks and sounds to a perpetually catastrophizing miserabilist like Caden, embodied with a crushing sense of defeat by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I have a theory that if you're in the same mind state as Caden at the time you watch it---profoundly depressed and pessimistic--his world in the film will look and hear the way you already perceive it to be. If you are in a better place or simply more observant you will probably notice Caden's bleak perspective is so elevated and exaggerated at times it has a magical or comical effect. 

Once I began re-watching the film through that lens I began to notice some of its more nuanced surreal details---time rapidly progressing in the beginning so that the newspaper and radio change dates within the same scene; Tom Noonan who later plays the role of Caden in his own theater production making multiple background appearances from early on; hints about an upcoming identity fugue with another character near the ending. It's hard to believe that one man wrote this movie, and I can't even imagine the process. He must have jumped backward and forward in time to foreshadow and predict events in much the same way Caden Cotard lays out Post-It notes for his elaborate theatrical production in the film's last act.

Out of the many movies I could answer this question with, I'd pick Synecdoche NY just because it's so chock-full of detail and tonally inconsistent that it's never boring and truly seems like a different movie almost every time I watch it, especially as I view it with more age and life experience. It's so multi-faceted and about so many aspects of life that I'll find something different stands out to me each time, whether it's the idea of our impending mortality, miscommunication, the slippage of time, or the transient nature of art and ego. One thing that's stood out to me more recently with the world being the way it is is the totally unexplained apocalypse that appears to be consuming the crumbling world in the end, with a zeppelin hovering mysteriously in the evening air and people with gas masks boarding colorful buses to a place called "Funland"--something happening in the background I never even paid much attention to before. 

I used to find the movie messy and overly complicated. but the more you watch it the more you realize that so many little rich details do end up re-surfacing and connecting in some way, with the parts truly representing the whole. I'd argue there's no way you could even begin to fully comprehend the movie unless you watch it at least a few times because of how many things in the beginning tie into what happens later, and even after multiple viewings it presents almost endless mysteries about what is real or mis-heard or imagined and what it's all about.

The movie speaks to me because I live now with that exaggerated miserabilism paired with a more heightened awareness and ability to realize I'm catastrophizing. At the same time I realize the world is often cartoonishly nightmarish and a sense of humor and creativity is sometimes the only way to survive and make sense of it. That's what Synecdoche NY says to me. 

2. What is a favorite song that made you excited to explore a band / artist's career further?

When I was in film school we were showing our final short films for a class. One of my classmates had made a wistful short about a vampire and she set it to "I Don't Believe In The Sun" by the Magnetic Fields. I was instantly hooked on the melancholy tone, poetic lyrics, the sort of vintage sound of it, and that deep baritone voice that sounded so full of sadness. It was one of those almost starstruck movie moments where I sidelined her after class and desperately said "I have to know what that song was!" 

After she told me, I was amused to find out it was part of a collection called 69 Love Songs. I'm gonna love this band, I thought to myself. The very next day I went to the record store and picked up the three-CD set. I listened to "I Don't Believe In The Sun" several times, and then I listened to every other song, and then I listened to all of them again and again. Not every song was great, but the great ones were some of the most ridiculously clever, catchy, and expressive love songs I had ever heard. There were love songs for everything: falling out of love, not wanting to get over love, obsessive love, years-long unrequited love. There were different styles and genres and different singers and instrumentation, but what permeated all of it was the wit and melodic ear-candy of songwriter and mastermind Stephin Merritt, who marries the ABBA gift of turning three-chord pop structure into bubblegum for the brain with rhymes and wordplay that showcase a classic lyrical genius on the level of Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hart (which he slyly references in his music). I was smitten.

I returned to the record store the next day for all the precious stock I could buy, which I strongly remember included Charm of the Highway Strip, the dark country synth album which is my favorite record of theirs today. 69 Love Songs has some of my favorite songs of theirs (and of all time) but it's as uneven as you would expect a project that ambitious to be. Charm of the Highway Strip is one of those rare note-for-note perfect records. Even though the Magnetic Fields are a much bigger touchstone (and sometimes punchline) of twee indie-pop culture than they were at the time I discovered them, they remain one of my favorite bands to this day and there are still certain songs of theirs that I have an intense emotional reaction to hearing, to the point where I still get chills up my spine whenever I hear the opening strains of "Born on a Train," and that's rare. 

3. What does your perfect comfort meal consist of?

Definitely breakfast food, which is somewhat ironic in the fact that "I'm not a morning person" is the biggest understatement of the century---I'm pretty useless the first couple of hours of the morning until I've had enough black coffee and struggle to wake up before noon on my days off. I'm a big fan of IHOP, could probably live off takeout from there and have at times. Just simple things like eggs, bacon, and pancakes, and lots of black coffee because otherwise I want to destroy everything in the morning. I get really excited about pretty much any breakfast diner food, even though the thought of waking up and trudging through another day is often incredibly exhausting to me. It's a reason for waking up and I love it any time of day.

4. What is something that moves you to tears (film, song, book, anything)?

I get really sensitive about pretty much anything to do with cats. It's so bad that I can't spend too long doing things like getting cat food in the grocery store. When I start looking at the flavors and ingredients, I have to pick something really quickly before I start tearing up. Yes, I am a typical librarian spinster who is way too attached to my cats, but this is something hard for me to explain. It's more than feeling lonely and estranged from people and doting on your pets, which is sad, and it's more than the fact that their lives are so brief, and I want to fill them with simple joys like healthy food and catnip, which is also sad. It's something about the whole human-animal bond that is deeply moving to me. They really are just so innocent and unconditionally loving and expect so little in return. Things like Cat Fancy magazine, where people read about all the ways to make their cats happier, and stories about adult-pet relationships like the Mr. Putter and Tabby books strike that same sensitive chord in me where I can't even handle reading them. Maybe they kind of remind me uncomfortably of how much I dote on my cats, and how I often feel lonely in other social situations, and how someday they're going to die which is something I'll probably never be able to come to terms with.

Sharon Gissy is a librarian, law student, vintage collector, and artist. She lives with bipolar disorder and organizes Mental Filmness, a Chicago-based film festival about mental health, which has featured films of many different genres about many different aspects of mental health from all around the world. You can find the festival at mentalfilmness.com and facebook.com/mentalfilmness and twitter.com/mentalfilmess. She paints animals and creatures of all sorts under the name Fur, Feather & Scale Art at furfeatherscale.com and can be found in Studio 202 of the historic Flat Iron Arts Building every first Friday of the month. She is way too into her cats. 

All guest contributions available here: https://5years.substack.com/t/guest