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