Ruth Gordon/Andy Warhol: Temporary Beauty Problem
Question: How did you deal with not working? Not getting calls returned?
Ruth Gordon: I didn’t sit around wondering what was wrong with me. There was a glitch, a little lull that would pass. If I could afford it, I would head out of town. You know, I’m not unemployed and being ignored. I’m on vacation! That’s a position of strength. I was lucky, because I could write, so I wrote plays and books. I kept active.
Did you read Andy Warhol’s Philosophy? He took an attitude like mine. A bit different, but it works. I think he wrote that if he broke out, and he had a zit, he wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of pointing it out to him. No. He would announce that he was suffering from a temporary beauty problem. You see, he knew it, and he was on top of it. You now can’t lord the zit over him. Or if you’ve put on five pounds from holiday treats—you walk in and say, As you may have noticed, I’ve put on some weight, but I’m on a diet right now. It’ll pass.
I was that way. I had temporary employment problems. I never had a temporary attitude problem or an anger problem, and I used to scold people who would moan about how idle they were. Why remind everyone? Why give everyone a chance to wonder why you can’t get a job. If you whine about the theatre, people will think, Let’s not get her in a room or in a play: She’s a drag. Now, I choose to believe that my problems were temporary because I announced that they were temporary, but who knows? It doesn’t matter. You keep busy. You stay positive. You wake up every day like it’s the one where they’re going to call, and you are going to be ready.
From 1984