Does Desiree Akhavan prefer rat tails or soul-patches? And other important questions...
*my (old) interview with the talented polymath
Photo credit: Channel 4/Tereza Cervenova.
Dear Reader,
hello there! I was excited to recently spot that Desiree Akhavan actor, director, writer, film and TV show creator, has now added memoirist to her already rather full bow. Her memoir is titled You’re Embarrassing Yourself, stories of love, lust and movies.
With this in mind I wanted to re-post an interview I had with Akhavan back in 2015 for digital newspaper The London Economic. I was then interviewing her about her (highly recommended) film Appropriate Behaviour but we actually chatted about all sorts of things, she was an excellent interviewee and in fact I developed a fantasy that we would soon become good friends! (We were both living in East London at the time and I’d occasionally see her out running, a friend of mine also did briefly befriend her one night in a bar so my fantasy had some grounding in reality.) We haven't become firm friends as of yet but who knows….
Do enjoy!
Love,
Emma
x o x o
p.s. other film and TV show reviews can be found here and here. For something entirely different here’s an essay about money struggles and pawn shops.
THE INTERVIEW. . .
Aware that Desiree had been doing a lot of interviews recently, what with the UK DVD release of Appropriate Behaviour looming at the end of June (2015) I began with a selection of random one word/one sentence-demanding questions, officially known as The ThornKim Questionnaire.
(The seed of the ThornKim Questionnaire was planted in 2011 during a strange weekend spent with a good friend in Montauk, New York. These questions were created to offer insight into the minds of the artists and writers we then featured in our annual literary arts magazine The Liner. Note: The Thornkim Q was inspired by the much more famous Proust Questionnaire.)
OK over to Desiree.
ThornKim….
What is the first thing you think of in the morning?
Sex.
What do you write with?
My computer.
Favorite scent?
I really love this Hermes perfume, I forget the name, Toit something.
Favourite sound?
I was going to say children laughing, my neighbours children are always laughing where I live. But no. I really love rain when it’s outside your window. That’s really nice. And scissors snipping.
Drink of choice?
Old Fashioned.
Favourite childhood food?
I really love tadig which is like the crunchy, burnt bit on Persian rice. You should got to a Persian restaurant tonight and get some. My mom does it really well.
When do you become boisterous?
Boisterous. After a few drinks. Whenever I’m dancing I become boisterous.
When do you recede?
When I’m tired and when I’ve been out in public too much. I work a really weird non-schedule but the last few days I’ve been in the centre of the city taking meetings, doing interviews and wasting time in coffee shops and right now I don’t want to be around people at all.
What were you in a past life?
Um wow. I wonder if a past life as a concept is something you’re rebelling against or something you aspire to. I think I might have been a dog, like a golden retriever. A big, hairy, loyal dog.
High school experience in one word.
Oh man. Traumatising. But necessary, I don’t mean that in a negative way, the good kind of traumatising, I think it ended up being triumphant.
Person you would most like to reconnect with?
An old mentor of mine from High School actually.
City where you feel most at home, other than the one you live in?
New York. (Desiree is currently living in London. We agreed that Dalston was the equivalent of Bushwick in London but that Lower Clapton had no Brooklyn equivalent which is one of the reason Desiree likes it.)
Photo credit: Desiree Akhavan’s new book. Can be purchased here.
Stand or sit at a concert?
The better concerts going to be stand but then you get tired. No stand, stand.
Eggs runny or well done?
Well done. Oh, but it depends on what they’re with if there’s bread underneath then runny. Ah see this is a really good lesson in how I micromanage, I’m incapable of just letting go of like tiny inconsequential things. I wont just let it go. I want to know more about the eggs though, tell me more about them!
Stripes or gingham?
Stripes.
Bath or shower?
Bath
Rattail or soulpatch?
Rattail ‘cos at least you can hide that fucker.
What do you have faith in?
I have faith that things work out for the right reason, how they’re meant to.
What song would you like to be played at you funeral?
I’m thinking something really cheerful. What song would make people want to get up and dance. Sorry I just need to think about this.
We can come back to this one at the end.
OK.
With you living in London now, do you notice any substancial differences between the British and American sense of humour? I know there’s the irony cliche, about Americans not getting it.
I feel like my sense of humour does better in the U.K. than it does in the States. And that here it feels like people really love self-deprecating humour. And it'sa little more nuanced, you have to think about it a bit. Where as in the States to appeal to a wide audience it has to be really obvious. I like jokes that are laced in despair and that where there’s many different ways to interpret them. This is also partly why I’ve moved here, for the humour in this country.
Do you have a favourite British writer at the moment, a contemporary?
Andrea Arnold (editor note: known for films American Honey, Fish Tank and Red Road).
I was watching the DVD extras and really enjoyed your BFI interview, it was really funny, have you ever considered doing stand up?
That was in there! I really think it would be fantastic and if I one day gained the courage to do that…but no it’s not on my radar at the moment.
I liked a point you made about ‘coming out’ films often lacking a sense of joy and I’d agree with this so what would be your favourite ‘coming out’ film that does have a joyful vibe?
I don’t know if it would be categorised as a coming out film but I really love Co-dependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same. It’s a film that was shot in New York, it went to Sundance a few years ago and it’s a campy, B-movie and it’s not a coming out film, it’s an absurd film, it has a gleeful joy and lack of apology that I really admire.
I also liked your description of Appropriate Behaviour as personal as opposed to autobiographical…
Yeah, it’s not a diary page and it’s going to sound douche-y but [calling it autobiographical] ignores the artistry that shaping a narrative involves. My ex is nothing like that, and the break up was nothing like that, my coming out was not like that and even if say it were, the minute you write something down it really gains a life of its own and you start making decisions for the convenience of the narrative versus telling the truth.
So you were always going to play Shirin (the main character)?
I always wanted to play Shirin, I knew I’d play Shirin, I wrote it for myself.
You talk about this multi-hyphenate way of working do you feel like it’s an especially good time for this particular way of working?
Yeah, ‘cos it’s been proven, it’s working I think it’s just going to get better and better, it’s happening. Before there were no examples of this.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a Paris Review interview that he wrote to make one person laugh, his sister, do you have an equivalent?
I do that all that time, I write to make my best friend Cecilia laugh. I write for her ‘cos she reads all my work-I’m working with her now-and I write to make my brother laugh. I feel like he really shaped my sense of humour. Cecilia was the first person who thought I was funny and made me feel like I could say things out loud. And my brother is the person who I’ve shaped myself in his image, you know I think he’s so funny and I just wanted to make him laugh…
Is he a writer?
No, he’s a doctor. So very different. But he’s incredibly witty and a hard guy to please.
Finally, where are you at with the bisexual dating show you’re working on?
I’m working on it, right now I’m waiting to hear back on some U.K. production companies and I’m really excited and I think people will like it here. (note: the show The Bisexual can be viewed on channel 4 here.)
SO looking forward to that. OK have you decided your funeral song?
I have, I’ve been thinking about it. Perfect Day.
P.S. Thanks for reading to the bottom please do Subscribe, Like, Comment and Share it helps this thing grow. X