The Enigmatic Jodie Foster
When James Lipton asked me what my favorite sound was, I replied simply: Jodie Foster's voice. The way she pronounces her R's. Let me take this time here to elaborate. Before I explain anything to an actor about how I want a character to be played, I show them the scene of Jodie Foster standing on a staircase in "The Hotel New Hampshire". She's the archetype of mysterious cool. Jodie is so natural the world curls around her in awkward silence. Maybe it was seeing her in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", and connecting it in a strange way to the place where I was born but had not seen or remembered. Was Jodie there? The attraction to Jodie is not like the attraction other more common Hollywood actresses. She is too authentic and ambiguous to be moronically labeled as "hot" for hot's sake, like Michelle Pfeiffer or someone like that. She's a tom boy. I don't care for how the media portrays her. They are always trying to make her some other actress, trying to cover her freckles in gloss. Part of me wonders if she even realizes. She seems the kind of girl that somehow is, but could not possibly be as mysterious as she appears. Who could really live up to that, in all fairness? Somehow, Jodie is all these things.
One always feels a profound sense of deviance in one's attraction to Jodie Foster. What does that say about me? For every creepy male in the 70's and 80's, of which there was an unlimited supply, that fell in love with Jodie Foster, the "nymphet"... you feel like maybe you have joined them. Why must that be so? Cannot one's fascination with Jodie be pure of heart? Or has a part of me become John Hinckley? Jodie, it isnt true! I'm not sure I feel this, but one could also have the wanting to save Jodie Foster, but that she is too strong to be saved. Or you could be honestly attracted to her but she would reject you out of modesty. Does being in love with Jodie Foster make me a homosexual? How twisted it all becomes! There is something non-threatening about her, she could easily be a lesbian icon if it were the case. Let her be herself! The media is so unfair. Don't you see she is challenging the shallowness of our sexuality? There is so much more to Jodie than her body. So much that is hidden and apparent that makes her an alien anomaly to our ridiculous world. If she is guarded about her sexuality, how do you think you would develop going through puberty as a rising star constantly being poked and prodded by journalists and psychopaths? It's a completely sensible response to keep those things out of the voyeur's eye. And I apologize for my own transgressions. But this is all in praise and defense of someone I consider a genius, and someone emblematic of something I find truly exciting and interesting in the holy pantheon of cinema. She is the nexus of so many contradictions, none of them out-rightly absurd, but a special case to this one actress.
It is unfortunate that one cannot make movies yet where you can take a single actress at specific periods of their lives and project them acting together. One of these days I'm going to direct a movie where everyone will be played by Jodie Foster. With the exception of a 50 ft. tall Claire Danes, perhaps. I know they tried that with Jon Malkovich once, but he is not as interesting as Jodie Foster. He made a remark once about Robert Fisk I didn't care for. But I understand that Ms. Foster has children now and only does pictures she is deeply interested in for her own reasons. I am the same way, about my films I mean. I'm a little young to be thinking about kids. I'm sure she would think it was just too strange and more honestly, too insignificant. But I imagine that if you were to know Jodie Foster intimately, she might even be strange too. Strange in the amazing and monolithic ways very normal people are strange. In a way that most people might say was simple, but to me has always seemed so other-worldly complex and bizarre and beautiful.
It is a shame such an actress had to be wasted on Hollywood. Do you know she speaks French? Her voice has entirely different quality in French. Ms. Foster, if you ever read this and it, I hope, has carried no offense, I humbly request that you produce a new film with a French director. It is only another shame that the greats of the Nouvelle Vague are all in their late periods. If it were up to me, I wish I could only write a good-enough script in French and that I could produce this said film. To do so, I would consider to be one of the very greatest achievements of my life.
With much holy reverence,
Oskar Vortanz
Tucson, AZ U.S.A.
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