Cindy Sherman: Characters
Did you know they have press-on nails for pedicures? [LAUGHS]
I haven’t tried them yet, but I’m really dying to try them.
Isn’t that crazy? [LAUGHS]
I'm thinking of just wearing them myself just to...
...for a party, just as a joke, you know? I mean they just... [LAUGHS]
I mean, except these aren't as obvious.
These are maybe more obvious because they have little polka dots on them
and they just look like, "Who would wear little polka dots on their toes?"
My work is not about, kind of, fantasizing about characters or situations.
Some people, I think, have thought that the characters I do were...
...yeah, like, as if I've always fantasized about being a femme fatale or whatever,
you know, if... in my film stills.
I don't think of it as that literal to me.
When I'm doing the characters, I really don't feel like it's some sort of...
something that grows out of my fantasy--my own dreams.
In college, when I would do it,
I would, you know, become a character and then sort of think,
"Well, gee, here I am as Lucille Ball. What do I do now?"
So then it became sort of a thing and a little more like performance.
And I started to do it going to parties sometimes.
I remember once getting all in character and wanting to go to some opening,
and feeling like something was missing--
and then I put a pillow under the dress and went as a pregnant woman.
And when I moved to New York I did it a few times, but it suddenly wasn’t the same,
I think, because in the city I felt like I needed my own, sort of,
you know, street armor or whatever just to deal with the street,
and the people out in the street and the crazy people
and the real crazy people, who looked like some of the characters I was looking like
and I didn’t want to be confused, I guess, with them.
The advantage of being myself is I can just play around.
When I've experimented with other people in them, as models--
paid models, or friends or family--
I feel like I just...
I don't know what to tell them to do
because I don’t really know what it is I’m looking for until I see it,
so I tend to sort of rush them through the whole process.
And then I re-do it myself and it's, like, grueling, so...
I mean, even though I love to do it, its much more work because, you know,
I’m frustrated at trying to capture on film something that I can’t even articulate
because I don’t really know what it is I am looking for until I see it.