didcan.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/pierce-brosnan-got-the-part/Pierce Brosnan got the part
AUGUST 18, 2015 ~ G.P.
So I just got back from this surreal and life-altering trip to Kaua’i, Hawai’i to visit my beloved and uber-generous aunt, and there were so many deep and wonderful non-movie-star related things that happened, and I have so much angst surrounding the celebrity-worship culture I hate, that I almost didn’t write about this small and remarkable part of my vacation, but then I reread the bit I wrote for myself in my Kaua’i journal and decided that, well, it just NEEDED to be told.
And besides, the monumental nature of welcoming the cinematic enjoyment of actor Pierce Brosnan back into my life after years of being led astray by a stupid inaccurate tabloid was something that just begged to be written.
A little backstory:
So my aunt and I went for a fabulous hour-long swim in the calm beautiful ocean outside the Hanalei rental house I was staying in on my visit, and we had some amazing, characteristic-to-only-us-female-“LASTNAMEHERE” talks while Brittany (Bethany? Something?) the one-armed surfer roamed the beach.
The surfer was the little coincidence that led me to say to my aunt, “You know, I heard Julia Roberts has a house on this beach!”
My sister — who came with my on my first trip to Kaua’i — and I spent the entire trip looking for her two years ago.
My aunt laughed. And then she reminded me about how she had earlier referred to the house I’m staying in as “Julia’s.” I thought it was the name of the non-megastar owner.
Turns out I was staring winsomely out of Julia’s window wondering where Julia’s house was.
“SHUT. THE FRONT. DOOR.”
I plunged floppily into the ocean like a five year old: much like, now that I think about it, Julia Robert’s character in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere offered her the week-long prostitute gig for $3,000.
So, um, YEAH, I felt this incredible kinship with the house in a way I haven’t felt kinship with a house in, well, forever, and it just happened to belong to JULIA FREAKIN’ ROBERTS, my childhood hero, the one I always imagined being friends with (because THAT’S a unique thought for an American girl).
ANYWHO, I showered in Julia Robert’s shower and dressed looking into Julia Robert’s mirror (which, oddly, I love and feel lovely in, which is the complete opposite from my last Kaua’i mirror experience when I was ten pounds lighter and built like a manic surfer), and my uncle arrived to meet us, and the three of us casually strolled down the beach to their friend’s barbecue.
Enter social anxiety and profuse sweating. But as I stood there initially worrying about being sweaty and awkward, a novel thought entered my mind: They don’t even notice. And they’re sweating too. And you are absolutely fine.
So we proceeded through the evening and had some GORGEOUS food including a pig in a Caja China, because, you know, of course my first freakin’ Kaua’i meal is crispy pig skin all Anthony Bourdain style, and my aunt and I are eating and deeply chatting and thoroughly enjoying ourselves on the front porch and suddenly she asks me:
“Do you like Pierce Brosnan?”
Random, I thought. Okay.
“Well, I was in love with him when I was a kid and watched Remington Steele, but I heard some bad things about him.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“An article,” I answered, feeling foolish the second the words left my mouth. Because yes, everything you read in tabloids is totally true.
“Well, turn around.”
So I did. And there he was. With his family.
Oh right, of course, there’s FREAKIN’ PIERCE BROSNAN strolling across the lawn about to eat pig skin.
I ate my words and the rest of my pig skin and, because, as a former journalist, I know how fickle the news can be, I let go of my unreasonable judgment and allowed myself to simply be entertained by the fact that a giant movie star I used to be in love with was eating pig skin with all of us.
So later I was sitting on the back stairs with may aunt and uncle, and a really cool woman who works for a nonprofit came up and we had a nice chat. My aunt wanted another piece of cake and I wanted water, so I grabbed her plate and hopped in the house and when I came back out, FREAKIN’ PIERCE BROSNAN had replaced nonprofit lady on the stairs.
I stood there for a while, eyebrows knit, with my cake, thinking, “How can I throw this over Pierce Brosnan’s head and into my aunt’s hands and run the hell back to the house without anyone questioning me or becoming seriously injured?”
Turns out I couldn’t ninja my way through that plan, so instead I took a deep, “My Life is Insane” breath, and walked around Pierce Brosnan to hand my aunt her piece of cake.
“This is my niece Gennarose.”
“OH, HELLO!” I screamed into Pierce Brosnan’s ears while shaking his hand.
“I’m Pierce,” he said.
“I KNOW.”
Dear lord kill me. I sat down and tried to be cool and he began the conversation posed on the staircase like a Shakespearean actor, like in the movies, and the surreal-ness of it had me plastered up against the stair railing sort of behind my aunt like a WTF puppy.
Eventually, I remembered the words of my therapist regarding the very unrelated process of dating as my brain tried to process listening to this person sitting in front of me on this gorgeous beach whom I’d stared at in movies for my whole life:
“You behave with people like you’re in an audition. Why do you do that? You are a wonderful person who is kind and generous and entertaining, and YOU should be auditioning THEM.”
Which, in the case of Pierce Brosnan, took on a previously absent level of irony.
So at some point soon after I decided to (humbly) audition Pierce Brosnan. And suddenly things turned around.
It was a really fun interaction after that. He thankfully morphed from the big-screen-idol of my childhood into a very funny, very kind and real-life human being. I was glad for that. I admired his candor and his openness despite him being, essentially, a pillar of modern film culture.
At one point, a gentleman at the party came over to the four of us with a bottle of white wine. I saw him sidling, and hesitating, and eventually, he broke right in, seeing that PB’s (I refuse to write only “Pierce” out of childhood reverence, and the whole name is getting tiresome) glass was empty (mine was, too, but he did not notice that. Understandably, I suppose).
Cue sycophantic talk and over-grandiose self-reference, and the candid, fun conversation came to a strange semi-hault (though PB made a clearly practiced effort to sail through it). Worshipful Gentleman began the conversation with a “You seem to be out of wine.”
PB had been drinking red. Having been a bar manager/bartender, I cringed at the thought of pouring white into anyone’s red glass. PB, however, was more than generous.
“Just put it right here,” he said, holding out his glass.
About ten minutes later, Worshipful Gentleman was still “trying” to open the bottle of white while advertising himself to PB for whatever reason one who doesn’t know him might have (none of which I can fathom).
Frustrated both by the ass-kissing and the fact that I, too, wanted a glass of wine, I grabbed the bottle from Worshipful Gentleman’s hands, popped the cork in under two seconds, and poured him a glass.
“But you should pour Mr. Brosnan his wine first!”
Sigh. So, I looked at his glass, with a bit of red in it. Coopted by Worshipful Gentleman’s worshipfulness and my years of bar management, I almost didn’t do what my instinct told me to do:
Grab PB’s wine glass. Toss remnants of red wine over my shoulder into the beach grass. Pour glass of red and hand it back.
Incipient laughing, thankfully, ensued, and took over my self doubt. Worshipful Gentleman eventually left after several more awkward flounderings, and more highly entertaining sarcasm, cursing, and fun followed.
During this albeit strange but super fun life experience, I happened to realize a few more things:
I am somewhat entertaining to someone like Pierce Brosnan, my childhood idol, even when being my awkward, geeky, true self.
Idols of any sort never live up to their stylized pedestals; and in rare instances, like with PB, they live thankfully beyond them, on the ground.
Deep down, I’ve always known things #1 and #2, and because of that, the night was possible, I believe.
Pierce Brosnan got the audition. And, turns out, so did I.
