On Quitting and Making Things

It’s been quite a summer for me, and I still technically have a week left. Whew. So cutting right to the chase, two days after I wrapped principal photography (what) on my show (double what) Brains, I quit my job as assistant manager of a TriBeCa cafe, where I worked for almost a year and a half. It was scary and exhilarating and either the best or worst decision I ever made. Right now, I’m leaning on best. Let’s back up a bit.

On May 1st, I moved into the first apartment where my name was on the lease with three guys from my class who Quinn (WHO MOVES HERE IN LESS THAN A MONTH!) affectionately refers to as either my three children or my three other boyfriends. It has been fun. It has been terrible. It has been an honor. There have been a lot of empty Gatorade bottles left around.

Since quitting my job I got another job at a place called The Bagel Pub, which is opening a new location five blocks from this apartment in a month or two. I have savings that should last me until then, or until I find something else. I have also applied for a stupid amount of internships, and even went in for an interview for the show The New Yorker Presents. I didn’t get the internship because I don’t have any documentary experience, but the nice guy who interviewed me assured me that “otherwise, [my] credits were great.” This was sad but encouraging.

I didn’t drink between May 15th and August 28th of this summer. Not a sip of someone’s fancy cocktail, not a FIKA mackmyra (Swedish whiskey) truffle, nada. There are a lot of reasons for this. Some day I will probably blog about them, but it is not this day.

Late in May, I called 911 for the first time, to take a very close friend of mine to the hospital at 11:45pm. I spent 18 hours in the hospital with him and it was the only time I have ever called out of work. It was the scariest 18 hours of my life. He and I don’t talk much anymore. Some day I will probably blog about this too, but today is definitely not that day, and please respect that silence. Suffice it to say that I know a lot more about hospitals now and that no, my love of Scrubs has not faded since getting up close and personal with the less funny aspects of medical life.

Some of you know that I’ve had a rough cut of the full season of Brains for about two weeks now, which is kind of insane because we only finished shooting three weeks ago. A couple people have chalked this up to me being a bit crazy and anal about these sorts of things, which is definitely true. But honestly?

I want to start releasing the badass thing I filmed this summer because I want to validate all the incredible hard work and completely voluntary dedication my friends and classmates put into it. I want the entire world to see how stupid-talented these people are as soon as possible. I want Marshall (who I met on the internet two months ago and has since become someone I brag about to people who don’t know who either of us are) to get every role he ever auditions for. I want Connor to always have an audience for his infuriatingly hilarious writing and performances. I want Masha to write and perform to her heart’s content and to travel to China. I want Andrew and Alex by my side in some way on every production I’m lucky enough to be a part of.  I want every single person who ever had a hand in Brains to lead wildly successful and glamorous lives even if they forget all about me and I die alone, because it was an honor and a privilege working beside them.

This summer I had three crippling panic attacks, and four scary but not overwhelming ones. I know the exact cause of each of them, and I’m getting better at asking for help when I need it.

I quit my job for a lot of reasons, some of them piling up for months and some of them learned on the subway at 5:30am the day after we wrapped Brains. Later that day, I spent far too much money on my first haircut in over a year and chopped off about nine inches. Less than 24 hours later I pulled my manager aside to turn in my two weeks notice. It was an insane three days, and I don’t regret a since decision I made in that time.

A couple hours ago a film production company responded to a job application from me by saying that I had an “interesting resume” and asking if I had any screenwriting experience. I sent them the first three episodes of Brains and the first 58 pages of my Italian chef/lesbian vampire screenplay. We’ll see how that pans out.

My last two weeks at FIKA were strange. It was both incredibly validating and heartbreaking to tell all my regulars I was leaving. On my second to last day, one woman brought me a bottle of wine to say goodbye. On my very last day, two customers called me off my lunch break to wish me well, and two customers left me their emails so I could let them know when the next episode of Brains was coming out. Then a week later I ran into one of those customers at midnight at the 24 hour diner around the corner from my apartment. Rachel, my oldest friend, who I have almost known for 20 years (which is an insane thing that I get to say), had just flown into town to visit and she was hungry and there he was, my favorite customer, who I know for a fact lives in Manhattan and not Brooklyn, sitting in a booth at MY diner at midnight. The next day he went into FIKA and told my former coworkers about it. Life is funny and weird.

This summer I pulled three different all-nighters, and bragged about all of them. I learned that when I get stressed, especially due to emotional matters, I stop eating. For about a week in June, Andrew set several daily timers on his phone to remind him to ask me if I’d eaten that day. After one particularly long stint of fasting, I went with Andrew to our favorite Mexican place in our new neighborhood and ate a shredded chicken quesadilla and I swear to you that nothing in this world will ever taste that good again.

I also learned this summer that I say that I love a lot of people, but not because that word has lost its inherent value. It’s because, as my friend and roommate Chris once said, I am viscerally excited by other people. It is also because I have met some damn incredible people in my life, and there is no other word to describe how I feel about them. I love them. And some of them even love me back! In fact, out of the five men in my grad program, four have genuinely and without prompting told me they loved me. All in strictly platonic ways, of course. And each time a little part of me got lighter. Because loving and being loved by amazing people is the most liberating feeling in the world.

The best thing anyone said to me this summer came from Andrew, my dear friend, my roommate, and my director. I need to give a little context, though.

We had to last-minute recast the part of Damian, my love interest, in Brains, which on its own was an insane experience. Eventually, we settled on the mind-blowingly talented and  lovely Marshall Taylor Thurman. I want him to be more famous than me forever because he is amazing and he deserves it. I’m sure you all also noticed that he is, among other things, a very handsome young gentleman.

At first, I was concerned about this, because my character spends most of the show fairly aggressively stalking him and trying to convince him to fall in love with me. Intellectually this is a funny and weird premise, like most things I write, but I was worried that because I’m not traditionally attractive* (especially not as a female romantic lead), it would come off as desperate and pathetic. I don’t think I’m desperate and pathetic, and I don’t think Alison is either, but I have been a woman on the internet for a while now and I’m not blind to the way people respond to perceived desperation by “ugly” women.

This is when Andrew chimes in with the nicest and most kickass thing ever.

“Bri. First of all, you’re gorgeous and anyone who says otherwise is stupid and wrong. Second of all, Alison Sumner is not attractive because of how she looks. Alison Sumner is attractive through sheer force of will. This isn’t going to be a problem at all.”

Isn’t that incredible? Attractive through sheer force of will! How freaking cool is that?! It completely changed the way I was playing Alison, and then it started bleeding into my own life, as did the streak of red in my hair, and I will be forever grateful to Andrew for giving me that gift.

What this 1500 word blog is really coming down to is this: Three weeks ago I quit my first full-time adult job. I have no idea what I’m going to do. This is a little scary but mostly amazing. In a few more weeks, you’ll all get to see episodes 2 and beyond of Brains, the little zombie show that could. I hope you love it as much as I do. And on that note, I want to leave you with my favorite quote from Amy Poehler’s book Yes, Please!

“Do work that you are proud of with your talented friends.”

My name is Bri Castellini, and I like to make things. Most of the time, those things end up on the internet, and some day I hope I can pay rent with them. Thank you, and I love you.

 

 

*This is not me baiting people to tell me I’m pretty. If you leave a comment telling me I’m pretty, I will delete it, because this is not the point of this anecdote. Thank you.