What Jennifer Sees

Posted on Advocate.com March 24, 2010

Having been an ’80s pop culture idol and a lesbian icon, Jennifer Beals can now add historian to her résumé with the release of The L Word Book, a collection of photos and memories she says she made for her L Word "family." by Tracy E. Gilchrist

For six seasons on the benchmark series The L Word, Jennifer Beals was virtually synonymous with her character — the erudite power lesbian and aesthete Bette Porter. Now the touchstone of ’80s pop culture and international icon for lesbians can add accidental historian to her résumé with The L Word Book, a photographic journal by Beals that takes you behind the scenes of the groundbreaking Showtime series and acts as a vibrant document of the show that forever changed lesbian representation in Hollywood.

A photographer with a knack for capturing actors in private moments between takes, Beals saw her work featured prominently in the 2001 insiders’ glimpse into Hollywood, The Anniversary Party. And while she’s photographically chronicled other film-set experiences, including 1994’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, shooting the actresses on the L Word became a six-year-plus passion project, originally intended for her cast mates but then also for the audience that ardently supported the show throughout its run.

Beyond the by turns jubilant and arresting photos of L Word favorites including Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Mia Kirshner, and Kate Moennig, Beals’s book includes transcripts of interviews with the actresses conducted as she took each one on a photographic trip down L Word memory lane. The book, destined to become a collectors’ bonanza and an integral piece of L Word ephemera, can be ordered online with the option of personalizing a dedication page, with proceeds going to charities dear to Beals, including the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Kirshner’s I Live Here Projects, and the Pablove Foundation.

The Advocate caught up with Beals to discuss her inspiration for creating the book, her editing process, her predilection for holding on to memorabilia, and exactly just what happened to that Flashdance sweatshirt.

The Advocate: Congratulations on The L Word Book. I can’t wait to get my hands on one. I’ve only been privy to looking online.
Jennifer Beals: Thanks. I'm so thrilled to be done with it. You have no idea. It was really such a long process. You know, you’re sitting around and you think, Oh, yeah, I'll make a little book and make it available to the fans, and you know ... a year later.

Why was the process so arduous?
In retrospect, it wasn't that arduous. I didn’t count all the steps it took to get from A to Z. I didn’t even count the ones in between. And also, it's been an interesting process not doing it working with a traditional publisher and using an online publishing house, which I think is the way of the future, frankly. It’s a new modality. It’s interesting; I don't even know how to think of it because it's so new.

I think that’s a common response to new modes of communication ... What aspects of publishing the book in this manner, as opposed to traditionally, are different?
People can type in a dedication page if they want to give it as a gift to a friend. They don’t have to have it sent to their house and write in the front and then send it out again. They can have it put in the very front of the book, and then in a couple of weeks, hopefully, upload their own images into the book so they can have their own version of it. People can feel that, and rightly so, this is also part of their story in many ways, because the fans were so important to our journey.

I love the dedication page piece of it. Is that something you realized needed to happen from the onset of the project?
Someone had introduced me to this company called ColorCentric, someone who made an inaugural book for the Obama campaign. In the back of that book you were able to upload your own images, because so many people worked so hard for the campaign and really felt that it was theirs. So instead of just having all sorts of presidential pictures and people in presidential clothes and first lady clothes, you could also have pictures of yourself or family or friends or people you campaigned with. I thought, That’s interesting, and that it was something that should be part of my book because it’s a similar notion. The show was so much about not just storytelling but about representation, and it should be reflected some way in the book.

You wrote on the L Word Book site that this was an era of your life you wanted to preserve. How did you know that going in to working on the show?
You've got a show with all women, first of all. And you've got a show, the likes of which has never happened before. Also, with all those young women who were just starting out in their careers, there was part of me that wanted to preserve that time for them because I know how delicious that beginning time is, and they wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as being so precious. So there was part of me that wanted to archive that history for them. I have a tendency to do that. I save so much stuff. My storage room is a joke.

Will we see you on the next episode of Hoarders?
I didn’t know there was such a thing, but no. I’m not quite that bad. I do have some ability to discern things. I don’t save every tiny little thing, but I do save a lot of memos that resonate for me. That sounds crazy — a memo that would resonate with you. Like — a call sheet, to me, is just kind of amazing. This group of people on this day are being called to work these scenes and this is what transpires.

And so the call sheet is, to me, a spectacular, historical document. It may not be particularly interesting to anybody else, but to the people on that call sheet, in 10 years it’ll be fascinating. Even as just a remembrance of "Oh, yes, I did this at that time and this is what I was doing. There is no unwasted effort, and all those things we did at that time have now led me to where I am right now at age 75." So it's sort of archived.

Did you realize what a part of history The L Word would become when you began? It sounds like you look at your life as though all of the pieces are a part of your personal history.
Well, I don't know if I look at my whole life that way. I know that going to the grocery store isn’t history ... but certain things. I really believe that there is no unwasted effort, and when a group of people comes together to work on a project, regardless of the project, something good can come of it. There’s something you can learn from it, something you can learn from one another. I really believe that, and sometimes it’s difficult to have that learning experience when you’re with people you don’t necessarily want to be with all day on certain projects.

And on this one, we became a family. We became friends and then we became family to one another, so I don’t know if I look at my whole life that way but I do treasure certain moments. And I treasure, not as an attempt to go back in time, but in appreciation of how that time led me to where I am now.

Years from now The L Word will be in the annals of pop culture history, right up there with Ellen coming out. Your book is a piece of that lesbian history. Had you thought of it that way?
Uh, no. That’s terrifying! Hey, no pressure! Really, the book was originally just for the cast. There will probably be things in there that only the cast will understand, but I tried to make everything available to the fans as well because there might be some fans who understand it on another level, or it may resonate with them.

I had the photographs, and at first it was going to just be a book of photography ... Then I thought it would be fun while I was showing the cast the photographs ... I wanted them to be happy with the photos I chose. I wanted it to be a positive experience for everybody. I thought, Wouldn’t it be fun to tape-record the conversations? because years later things come up, memories come up. I thought that might be fun to put in the book for people to remember, and for fans if it’s at all interesting to them. I don’t know if they want to hear about Frye boots, but you know, for us it was fascinating.

What girl doesn’t want to hear about Frye boots?
We talked about everything from mundane things like Frye boots and fashion to what the sixth season felt like to how grateful we were to be on the show and to be able to represent in the way that we did — to have come to know one another. It was all these things that came up.

This is not the first time you created a cast book for your projects. What was the genesis of the Jennifer Beals’s cast photo essay?
After Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, because it was one of those experiences where you have all the cast members together and it’s just such a fascinating experience — to have that many people interacting. Teaching one another, laughing, telling jokes, irritating one another. It was a real learning experience for me because I was so shy, it was difficult at times to integrate myself into the group.

And that was a pretty heavy-hitting cast with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lili Taylor, Campbell Scott ...
Definitely. And they were all really lovely. Also, part of making a book is for me to organize the experience for myself. I made another one for The Anniversary Party.

Your photos were actually used in The Anniversary Party. That was a large part of the film.
That was an interesting project just because I had so much material. Jennifer Jason Leigh just kept giving me film and asking me to shoot all the time. So they just kept giving me film and giving me film. It was nice, but in some ways it was more challenging to put the book together because it was more editing, but really satisfying because I had several images that I actually really liked.

You’ve done these books before for films, but you began this latest project at the start of a series that ended up running six seasons. Did cast members start to hide after a while, saying, "Oh, no, here comes Jennifer with a camera again"?
[Laughs] I don’t know. When I was working on The L Word I had no intention of making a book. It didn’t occur to me ... I think because I had just had my daughter, so all my energy had gone toward my family. If it wasn’t at work, it was going to my family, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy to make a book. So it didn’t really occur to me. Certainly my sleep cycle was saying, "Don’t do the book, don’t do the book."

But then I realized I had to do it. I thought I kind of have to, and then I told myself it wouldn’t be bad, it would all be online. I won’t even have to go to the darkroom. It won’t take that long ... one year later So, I didn’t shoot as much. Maybe if Jennifer Jason Leigh had been around shoving film at me, I would have taken a lot more pictures. There were some times I took more than others. But there were a couple of seasons really clearly I didn’t because I was pregnant, or my daughter was just born and all I wanted to do was stare at her and take pictures of her.

Were you surprised by any memories evoked when editing the book?
That surprised me? Hmm.

A memory of your time on the show that came back or was particularly resonant ...
Well, you know what was really sweet actually was, I showed Mia [Kirshner] a picture of her and Rose Rollins, and Mia started talking about, by her definition, her unlikely friendship with Rose Rollins and how much Rose meant to her. And it was so sweet and so heartfelt that it was very moving to me to hear somebody talk about their friend in that way ... so openly, and wanting to share that with other people, because she signed off on it and it’s in the book.

What was interesting too was, as difficult the six seasons was, every single cast member realized how amazing the experience was and how amazing [creator] Ilene [Chaiken] had been with all of us and how lucky we were to have this on Showtime as opposed to a network. Not that it would have been possible with a network, but you know, in the fantasy land. And people were immensely grateful for their time on the show.

We’ve talked about all these things that are of particular interest to the lesbian audience, but I do need to get a question in for the gay men.
For the boys ...

Yes! Were you aware when you made Flashdance that you were inspiring a generation of gay boys to sport an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt?
[Laughs] No, not at all. You are the first person to bring that up.

I’m sure there’s Flashdance drag out there. I just haven’t seen it.
I’m honored.

Do you still have the sweatshirt? Where do you keep it?
It’s in storage with the rest of the stuff. And the red band jacket too.