Cindy Guidry: The Hollywood Interview

Author Cindy Guidry.



ALONE AGAIN, NOT-SO NATURALLY:
CINDY GUIDRY AND THE LAMENT OF
THE LAST SINGLE WOMAN IN AMERICA
By
Alex Simon

In her mid-30s, Cindy Guidry, who seemed to have it all one minute, suddenly found herself fired from her prestigious job as a development executive at a major studio, split from her boyfriend whom she thought she was going to marry, and with nary a clue as to how, or where, to travel on the very wide-open road that seemed to lay before her. Through all this, the New Orleans native had only one lament: why was she suddenly so goddamned happy?

After writing assiduously in journals about her feelings and experiences both in show business and in the minefield-like milieu of being single in Los Angeles, Cindy Guidry compiled her thoughts into a memoir entitled The Last Single Woman in America (Dutton, $24.95), a volume of stinging humor, stunning insight, and moments of emotional epiphany. Think if Dorothy Parker and Anais Nin had collaborated on a book (or had a love child), and you get the idea of the tone of Ms. Guidry’s tome.

In addition to garnering much praise from fans and critics alilke, The Last Single Woman was recently purchased by HBO as a series in development. Cindy Guidry, now 43, sat down in a Hancock Park café recently to discuss her remarkable freshman writing effort. Here’s what transpired:

THE HOLLYWOOD INTERVIEW: Tell us how this book was born.
Cindy Guidry: When I started working at (the studio) in 1990, it was the first time I had ever had a computer. I had a lot of strange people around me, and a computer at my disposal so I just started writing. So for the last eighteen years, I’ve just written essays for myself.

So you were a blogger before blogging existed?
(laughs) Yeah, I guess, although blogging sort of wigs me out. The idea that it’s instantly going to be seen by someone. I don’t think I could have written the things I originally did if I’d known anyone else was going to see it. So I was just writing for myself for a long time, and I was really frustrated with the film business. The summer of 2006 I decided that I’d had it with “the biz,” and I had all these essays, so why not send them out and see if anyone was interested?

So the book is a compilation of writings over a series of years?
Yeah, it goes from about 2001-2006. There’s some flashback stuff in there also that takes you back further in time.

I loved the anecdotes about your family. I think everyone will be able to relate to them.
Yeah, my crazy family. (laughs) I love my family and my parents, and we’re all so different, but I think I’m maybe a bit of an extremist because of my parents. My mom who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and my dad, who did everything! I feel like I’m constantly going from one end to the other. My dad’s a sportsman, my mom likes opera and dancing. No middle ground there, at all.

Growing up in New Orleans, did you always love the movies?
It¹s funny, I always loved movies, but I never really was looking to get into the movie business. It just kind of happened. I dropped out of University of New Orleans, and moved to San Diego in '87 to expand my horizons. I had two friends who were going to there for the summer, and decided to go with them. I figured they were going to stay for three months, and that would give me time to figure something out. They left at the end of the summer, and I stayed. Then my boyfriend from New Orleans ended up coming out to visit, and never left. It wasn't a very good situation. I escaped in '90. So I wasn¹t coming to Los Angeles, as much as I was leaving San Diego...It’s so strange how things work out: I was working at a bar at Pacific Beach, McCormick & Schmick’s, and this guy had come in and we were talking about movies, and debating about what made a good movie and what made a bad one. At the end of the conversation he said “Well why are you down here tending bar when you know so much about film. You should be in Hollywood, working in the film business.” And honestly, it was just that one thing that pointed me in a direction when I knew I needed a new direction. So I arrived here with $80 to my name, and a place to stay for one month. I didn’t know anyone. I opened up the trades and there was an ad for a receptionist at the studio, and I was hired.

So upon arriving in L.A. you got doused in the baptism by fire of dating in L.A.?
Dating? Yeah, I suppose. I started falling in love with people, mostly. (laughs)

Was dating in L.A. different than in New Orleans and San Diego?
Well here’s the thing: I never dated in those other cities. I always had a boyfriend. In New Orleans, I lived with someone for years, and the same in San Diego. So it was a new experience for me. I’d someone who was interesting to me, we’d go out, and it always seemed that they were my boyfriend within a week. (laughs) It wasn’t like typical “dating.” That’s how it is with me: I don’t really date people: there’s just that magical moment and I’m together with someone for four years, until this book begins! That’s when everything changed.

What changed?
Everybody got married. I got older. I was disillusioned and after the disappointment of losing those guys in the beginning, I think I was terrified of being in a committed relationship.

I think we’re all starry-eyed about relationships in our 20s, then as we get older we get, I don’t want to say more cynical, but maybe more realistic about the frailty of human relationships, and other things for that matter.
Yeah, but you see I don’t want to lose innocence.

But you can’t be an adult unless you surrender your innocence to an extent.
I totally disagree. I think it’s just a conscious effort to open your heart. I don’t think people have to get hardened the way they do.

Then maybe we have different ideas of what innocence is: I don’t believe one has to have a hard heart in order to be a realist. You can be open, and be loving, but still be realistic about things, and make wise decisions, as opposed to idealizing them. Anytime you idealize something, you just set yourself up for disappointment and heartbreak.
I don’t agree. There’s a huge difference between the heart and the head, I think. I think that if you’re being wise, you’re never really going into anything with an open heart. I think that in order to go into something with an open heart, your brain has to sort of shut down. The brain will always get in the way. What’s different now is, I used to get into relationships and twist myself into a pretzel to be what someone wanted me to be. I’d never do that again.

You’d dive into the pool, and then look to see if there was water?
No, it was more like the idea of being in a relationship was so important to me that it didn’t matter what the cost was, and that’s just not the case anymore. So I think that has a lot to do with it. But also, the pool has shrunk: a lot of people have gotten married, or gotten really hardened, disillusioned, and skittish. So maybe the people I’m meeting at this point in my life aren’t as open to things as people were 20 years ago. What’s so comical to me is when my married friends try to give me advice, and it’s like “Hello! You haven’t dated for over 20 years!” (laughs)

Yeah, I get the same thing.
Okay, but here’s the question: do you male friends give you shit, or is it just their wives?

Both, but more often it’s their wives. It’s the “lower your standards” mantra, and it really makes me sick.
Thank you! (laughs) If you think this really unappealing person you’re trying to set me up with is so great, how come you never dated him? (laughs)

And the people in question are usually miserable in their own marriage.
Slightly ironic, isn’t it? (laughs)

Here’s the thing: if you’re a person who lives their life according to a certain standard, which you obviously are, the pool was always going to be small for someone like you to begin with.
Yeah, but for me, there’s a point where there’s just acceptance. I accept the fact now that there are very few people out there who are going to fulfill me or that I’m going to want to partner up with, and it’s not that I’m waiting for something better that might come along. It’s because I’d prefer to spend my time alone and doing the things that I want to do.

That’s the other thing: it’s not the worst thing in the world to fly solo.
Right! It’s like this article I just read by a woman in her 40s, who said that if you’re not worried about being single by the time you’re 35, you’re either lying or in denial. Is the answer really to run out, marry someone and have a baby?! I mean, how moronic is that? Women of my generation are a specific group of people. We came of age at a very precise moment in time: we all grew up with mothers who were at home while dad worked, meanwhile outside the women’s movement is happening, and we’re hearing that we can do it all, have it all. And the “do as I say, not as I do” saying completely fucks you up as a kid, and fucks up the message. So here we have a whole generation of women who felt that they were obligated to have it all: family, career, education. And to not have it all or even want to have it all was to betray all the women who fought for us to have those things. It wasn’t “Wow, now we have all these opportunities!” It was “Oh God, now I have to go and have it all and do it all, and if I don’t, I’m a traitor.” So that’s a massive amount of pressure on women of my generation, who not only had completely elevated expectations of men, but completely elevated expectations of themselves. And in the end, with that dynamic, nothing you can ever do will be good enough.

It seemed that at the book’s conclusion, you reached an epiphany of sorts.
Yeah, and I think that’s what gave me the courage to send my work out. I love writing so much and have written for so long, and have had friends who had been after me constantly “Why don’t you send this stuff out?” And my response was always the same: ‘That’s not the point. I get everything I possibly can out of writing just through the act of writing. I don’t need to send it out and make money from it.’ It’s cathartic. It’s therapeutic. I start to see things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I have so much fun. I sit there and I laugh my ass off. Sometimes when I finish writing, I go into the shower and burst into tears. So I’d rather be writing than doing anything else, certainly more than going to some bullshit Hollywood party. (laughs)

So when you finally did send your work out, what was it like?
I knew it was a crucial moment, regardless of whether anyone liked it or even bought it. The point was: I had to guts to send something out and put my work out there. I look at this book and it still looks like a fake book to me, like a mock-up that someone made for me as a gag gift. (laughs)

HBO has bought your book and is turning it into a series.
Yeah, and right now I’m trying to deliver them a kick-ass pilot script so it will get picked up and I can write more! (laughs) Life is funny.

Our last question is inevitable: Cindy, how's your love life?
(laughs) The same as it's always been! I don't think I'm going to be dating anybody for a while. I'm too busy now. A little part of me would die if I saw a man I was totally blown away by right now. I'd rather have that show up a couple years down the road.