day74 - thinking about valerie
dear luci,
lately i have been thinking about a woman who died thirteen years before i was born. we don't have a ton in common, i think. she'd probably hate my guts, but she never really liked anyone.
valerie solanas was a writer. she wrote a play called "up your ass", and a manifesto called SCUM. she made her "living", if you could call it that, primarily through sex work. she was an asexual lesbian. she had a degree in psychology. she was funny, acerbic, and outrageous.
she also shot andy warhol, a crime which would earn her: little is known about the final years of her life. but she died of pneumonia, destitute and alone in a hospital in san francisco. she was 52. valerie's mother burned all of her belongings after she died.
- three years in prison,
- a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia,
- and a name that will never be forgotten.
so why am i thinking about her?
well, in 2023, i was fortunate enough to play valerie in a film called ships that bear. as far as i know, this makes me the third1 actress to portray her onscreen, preceded by lili taylor and LENA FUCKING DUNHAM.
and i might be about to reprise the role.
so i've been thinking about her life and how she is remembered. as individual as she was, her role in history is as an antagonist. her spirit haunts the shadows cast by the man she tried to kill. misunderstood in life and death. consigned to a fate of non-personhood. her obituary was published by the new york times in 2020. 32 years after her death.
she lived on the fringes of society and now lives on the fringes of history.
i have a lot of affection for this woman. i want to give her a soul again. i want to free her, at least in one piece of fiction, from the shackles of bad faith.
so i've been thinking about valerie, because it is important to me that i get this right. if not historically, then spiritually. she was a walking contradiction whose work is frequently, even today, decried as hysterical, schizo ramblings.
i want my performance to reach across time and tell her i love her.
i can anticipate her response, drawled out in her thick new york accent.
"screw you."
Citation MASSIVELY needed.↩