Jess lanai

I don’t date girls. I’m very strictly attracted to men.

What about men is attractive?

The smirk they get on their face that means they’re pretending to listen but really they’re totally tuning everything out and doing whatever the hell they want.

How men don’t amplify emotion. When something is hard, men don’t make it harder by talking about it. They just help. Instead of feeding emotions men look for the solutions to them.

Men are direct. They’re so direct they don’t even need words. They make themselves clear with their actions and their body language.

The traits I’m attracted to in men are opposite in women.

Women don’t tune out. They argue.

Women amplify every emotion. Something that’s funny becomes so hilarious we can’t get off the floor. Men will be like, ‘what is so funny about a cup falling on the floor’ and we’ll start crying from laughter unable to stop for the next five minutes. (True story)

It becomes dangerous when you realize women amplify the negative emotions as well.

Women are not direct. Their body language and actions are very hard to read. They care about people’s feelings and will try to make you feel accepted even if they don’t much like you. Not hate you but not really think much of you. They will still be open, engaged and warm.

I’ve been on the receiving end a few times of being excited over my new girlfriend only to find out she’s making fun of me and doesn’t actually like me.

It always makes me very grateful that I’m not attracted to women and I just get to be friends with them.

But I do think I feel just as alive as men do when talking to a beautiful woman that I think wants to bond with me.

Because women make me feel like I can relax. Retire the part of me that has been perfectly tailored to please the general public and let out the parts of me that have learned to hide.

Sometimes that’s really true and incredible friendships are born.

My very favorite thing about the Mektoub films is that there are three of them when there was only supposed to be one.

The three films in sequence have an incredible rhythm that unfortunately will never be experienced by anyone that hasn’t already seen them because intermezzo was buried.

Most of intermezzo’s footage is tied up in music.

In the rights to the music they can’t get to be able to use the music and the music that can’t be edited out.

Even if they manage to disentangle intermezzo enough to release it, it won’t be the same.

Because the other issue with intermezzo is the controversy of it. If it’s ever released the controversy will have been removed.

The controversy of intermezzo is the main reason most people would even care to see intermezzo.

The scene was not planned. I know because I was there waiting to film my scenes. I got extra vacation time because of it.

It was the spontaneous decision of the actors, I’m fairly certain it happened in their own improvisation. But I’m not completely certain.

For me personally I think the controversy of intermezzo is essential to it.

Subtract the offense taken to it. Subtract the drama surrounding it. Pretend people reacted to it like they would any other sex scene.

It was pretty fucking epic.

Expertly paced.

A perfectly timed crescendo.

The ultimate bass drop.

A lovely build before the boom.

Abdellatif Kechiche has a sense of rhythm.

Canto uno is a slower film with a few intense moments. Intermezzo really stretches a viewers patience where nothing much happens until that brutal sex scene wakes you up.

Then there is Canto due. That for a while pretends it’s going to be like the other two films then bass drops you into an entirely different song.

From the canto uno, to intermezzo, to canto due was a beautifully executed sequence.

For me personally, the films of Mektoub rank as the best of all time.

I have a few best of all times on my list.

The tv show ‘The Wire’

The novel ‘The Remains of the day’ (not the film. Didn’t much care for the film)

The song ‘I want you (she’s so heavy)’

These are all brilliantly paced to me. Where the anticipation, the timing of the anticipation, and the results of all that anticipation are so unexpected and yet so chaotically predictable that it almost matches the chaos of real life.

It took talking to the producer that hired me around ten years ago to remember that Abdellatif originally hired me to play Marilyn Chambers.

If you don’t know who that is, I don’t either. She was porn actress famous for something.

I’ve never bothered to find out because Abdellatif changed his mind pretty quickly. He fired everyone and dropped Marylin Chambers and started on this film about a nun.

A horny nun. He wanted me to play a horny nun called Marguerite Porete who wrote a book called ‘The mirror of simple souls’

To help me get a feel for his films Kechiche organized a private theater screening for me of ‘La vie d’Adele’

Known in America by the title of its source material ‘Blue is the warmest color’

Watching an Abdellatif Kechiche film for the first time was an experience.

Partially because when I first saw an Abdellatif Kechiche film I was not only still in porn I was still trapped in Porn psychology. Just watching an Abdellatif Kechiche film poked holes in that way of thinking.

It gave strength to the other ways I was thinking.

Because watching Kechiche films are quite like talking to a beautiful woman. The parts of myself that spend most of their time hiding get coaxed out.

It’s a momentary disruption from the glob of consciousness that we spend most of our time trying to fit into.

Abdellatif Kechiche does not try to fit in. He does not try to translate himself to life. He tries to translate life to himself. And love him or hate him, that takes a lot of balls.

What I like most about writing is that it is a bridge.

It’s a way to get to the back of my brain and translate those deeper and darker instincts to my cognitive mind.

I can’t control my instincts. But I do have a slight bit of control over what they associate with.

With enough skill the bridge goes all the way to other people and there’s some translation between perspectives.

But the translation isn’t done with words anymore than music is.

It’s done with rhythm.

The rhythm that shows the journey so the emotions of it can be understood.

People feel before they think. You can’t lecture them into anything.

They’ll feel what they feel and just hide it if it seems unfavorable.

I can only imagine what Abdellatif Kechiche went through since intermezzo.

I talked to him a few times while he was editing Canto Due and he was certainly low.

I’ve been very low too in life. I call those periods of depression the intermission.

The time between. Where most confidence has been lost but theres still some hope because things aren’t quite over.