Sarah Polley, RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

[2:00]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, the creator and host of the award winning podcast that you're listening to right now, thank you so much, called Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. It is a daily podcast three hundred and sixty five days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all the things related to their career, their book, their life, and more in thirty minutes or less because who has time? I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature wherever books are sold starting July 1, and my children's book, Princess Charming. You can learn more about me at zibbyowens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors, and that is what we're going to do. Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the ZCast Podcast Network. You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com, and definitely check out those shows as well.

[3:09]Zibby Owens: and Best Picture by the Academy Awards for her film Women Talking. So exciting. I'm so happy for her. And in honor of that, we're re releasing this episode, which we rarely do, but we're doing it. So now you can listen and feel like you know her when you watch the awards. Sarah Polly is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter, director, and actor. After making short films, Polly made her feature length directorial debut with the drama film Away From Her in 2006. She received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, which she adapted from the Alice Munro story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain. Her other projects include the documentary film Stories We Tell, which won the New York Film Critics Circle Prize and the National Board of Review Award for Best Documentary. The miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel, Alias Grace, and the romantic comedy Take This Waltz. Polly began her acting career as a child, starring in many productions for film and television. Her book was so good, Run Towards the Danger. Enjoy this episode. Welcome, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's No Time to Read Books to discuss Run Towards the Danger, confrontations with the body of memory. Thank you for having me. I love your podcast. Thank you. I appreciate that. Wow. Your book. So good. So literary. So beautifully written. So much to discuss everything from your Alice in Wonderland themed sort of stage fright moment at the beginning, all the way to having your own children at the end, your family. Like, there was child acting, your me too moment, so to speak, and, like, the whole like, the way you dug into everything so deeply and, like, I I feel like it's like you're doing, like, a cat's cradle. Like, you were, like, peeling back and, like, into every little detail of everything. It was really, really well done. Thank you. I love that image. That's what it felt like. It felt like a really complicated game with string that I could easily get tangled up in. It's a good metaphor. Yes. Oh, good. Thank you. Okay. I kind of summarized some of it, but how would you describe it? Let's say somebody's, you know, wondering what your book is about. How would you describe this and and why write it? Particularly, one of the essays which although I could hardly call it essay because it's so meaty, but that you are open about the fact that you've been writing it and kind of rewriting it and not just being able to decide if you should tell it or not. Why now? I mean, if I was to describe the book to

[5:33]Sarah Polley: someone, I would say it's a collection of six personal essays that are all through the lens of or a meditation on memory and how memories filter through us and the relationship between our past and our present selves and the way that pivotal moments, traumatic moments, momentous moments in our life, in our lives from the past can kind of find these echoes in our present life. And when they go a different and better way in the present, it can actually change our relationship and on a molecular level, what those memories are and mean. So I think I've always been aware that my past experiences have informed who I am now. I've certainly been enough psychotherapy and psychonellosis to understand that. But I think for me, what became really interesting to explore and to discover was that my present life was also impacting my past life, that it was as reciprocal relationship that the past and the present were in, and they could kind of push on and move each other. And that felt like a big difference between how I used to think about memory and what it meant and and what I and how I sort of view it and experience it now. Interesting.

[6:42]Zibby Owens: And then, of course, in one of the final scenes, you have a fire extinguisher fall on your head. And your whole relationship with your with the brain, like, organ of memory itself becomes physically sort of impaired, and then you have this awakening at the end. And now we have the book. It's like it's it, like, comes full circle.

[7:02]Sarah Polley: Yeah. I mean, I think that the whole process of diving in and deciding this would be a book really came out of that experience. I I had a serious concussion for three and a half years. There were times in there where I was functioning better than others, but I wasn't myself for three and a half years in terms of my ability to process things and function. And I ended up finally recovering completely from the concussion through this amazing program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where the treatment was basically not the opposite of everything I'd been told before, but certainly the opposite of a lot of what I'd been told and very different in tone from what I'd experienced in terms of various treatments I'd been through before, which was I had to, for the specific kind of concussion I had, which I don't want to give this as prescription for everyone because I think he treats everybody differently, I had to sort of charge towards the activities that were hurting my brain the most. So the things that gave me headaches, the things I was avoiding because I knew I couldn't handle them. So loud noises, a lot of activity, multitasking, the things that made me feel like I was gonna have to go to bed for three days, had to just keep doing. And it was supported by a lot of specific physical and vestibular treatments and exercises to support charging in to that kind of stimulus that was so aggravating for me. But the whole idea that to get better, I had to do the things that were the hardest really did become this way of being in the world for me. And it really sort of shifted a paradigm in terms of how I'd been relating to my life. And what came to mind for me as part of that process was, I have a lot of stories that I've half told or wanted to tell or written three quarters of or written a page of that I have feel this burning urge to tell at some point in my life, but I've been too scared. And there must be, you know, if we're talking about the brain responding well to running towards the danger, which is a quote run towards the danger is a quote from Doctor. Mickey Collins at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, you know, then why would that not apply to a whole bunch of other things as well? And so I sort of went back to my computer and dug up these essays that I buried and decided to finish telling these stories that I was too scared to tell. And I did find that it it did alleviate a lot to do this. It was also excruciatingly hard and but really transformative.

[9:33]Zibby Owens: So the essay in which you talk about your own sexual assault and you name the person and you you go through what we what we don't see a lot in the media, which is what goes into the calculus of whether or not to come forward. It's not as simple as like, I'm brave. I'm gonna do this, or I'm not brave or whatever. But, you know, in your case, you got all this different advice, which as a new mom and a woman, you have to weigh, right, your personal life versus what are you sacrificing. And the most powerful one was the advice you got that, you know, it can make you almost wanna take your own life at the end of it. And then you run into someone at the end who you were like, well, this is the advice I was given and why I didn't do it. And she was like, I wish I had been given that advice because I did come forward. And I don't know. This is such a I I don't wanna, like, monopolize the conversation with this because I bet this is, like, gonna draw the most a lot of attention. And I don't know if you feel like talking about it or not, but I found it incredibly sort of intellectually interesting the way you had to make that decision and all the inputs you got from all the lawyers and, you everybody, how you went through the process, but also then how your body had to sort of metabolize all of that and and then move forward in the world, especially with the outcome of what ended up happening in the case. So

[10:56]Sarah Polley: I don't know. Respond. Yeah. I mean I mean, for me, I felt like what I could contribute at this late date, having not come forward at the time to support those women, which obviously was a very, very complicated decision to make, and one which I was quite rigorous about. I consulted many, many lawyers. I talked to everyone I knew. I had a newborn baby. I had a two year old. And based on what I was told about how this would go down, I did not believe that I could handle it. So what I felt in writing this essay, felt I could contribute was to shine a really harsh light and go into forensic detail about how and why women don't come forward in these cases. And I'm sure there are many women listening to this right now who have made a similar decision. I think there are thousands and thousands and thousands of women, far more women don't come forward than do come forward. And I think I wanted to give that a voice and to look at what that looks like to weigh what kind of impact that can have on a life to make that decision. And also, the way that people behave after an experience like this, the kind of interactions they might have with the person who is responsible for an experience like this can be really confusing to the outside eye. They've certainly been confusing to judges and juries. And I kind of wanted to say everything. I wanted to cross examine myself and go, this is how we look on a stand. This is how we look when we speak and have all of the embarrassing parts thrown back at us. There's a lot of things that are really hard for people to process in terms of how people react after an experience like this. So I kind of just wanted to talk about what it means to stay silent, why someone might choose to do that, how it feels to have done that. And it's, you know, this was the one I least wanted to put out into the world. But it's felt like a burning ethical obligation for many, many years. And one that, you know, is, yeah, it'll be a complicated experience having it out in the world considering that I have kept it for many, many years. And I've considered publishing this for many, many years at many different junctures. So, yeah, so here it is, I guess. So here it is.

[13:37]Zibby Owens: Yeah. You know, it was interesting how you as you were just saying in your examination of your behavior in the aftermath, how you were like, you know what? No. Didn't make sense. Like, I don't know why I responded that way. I don't know why I sent this email. I don't know why I joked this way. But so many people do that. And you can't you can't predict necessarily the behavior. Like, when you when you take the course of anyone's dialogue, it's if you if you take it apart, you'd be like, what? Why did she that but normally, you don't have every piece of communication with another person under a microscope. But in this case, you have to. And sometimes you just wanna deflect. Right? And by deflecting, it makes it seem like maybe you don't care, but that's not the case. So Or people are trying to normalize things or people are behaving out of fear, and that can come across as ingratiating

[14:28]Sarah Polley: or even flirty. Like, I think that we can kind of interpret things through a lens that doesn't really fully understand trauma and the tremendous impact it has on behaviour and behaviour that doesn't make sense unless you understand trauma. So I spent years thinking about every single word of this essay and exactly how to phrase it and talk about it and what I wanted to say. So it is a hard one to talk about because I feel like I'd have one sentence could undo all of that. Won't even talk. Careful work. But yeah. But the but I also don't wanna avoid talking about it. So You're you know what? I have a lot of respect for you for putting it out there and knowing

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[18:00]Zibby Owens: Thank you. I mean, there really were so many things that happened to your body. I mean, you know, not just the physical choking in that chapter, but your your spine and, you know, how you had to correct that in the horrific surgery. Oh my gosh. It sounded like really difficult to straighten out your back. And then your endometriosis and your placenta previa and, like, all you've had so much. And then the and then the and then the concussion too. I mean, your body has gone through a lot. Like, I'm wondering now as I'm looking, is this supposed to be, like, the spine? Is that what the cover is? Yeah. Is. Yeah. Yes. That's so cool. Like, you're you're running towards the danger and and trying to get it all out. And even your subtitle, like, maybe that's why you talk about it as a body of memory. Right? Because you are maybe I'm so this is not some really astute observation as I see it in the subtitle, but it is. Like, all the things your personal body has gone through and here they come in the written word, like, that must feel like this whole movement of your body keeps the score and all of that. It's like, this is very of the moment. How do you feel you've like, does your body internal like, I don't know. Talk to me about the relationship between your body and all of these traumas in many different ways and how you see it now.

[19:19]Sarah Polley: Well, again, I do think this treatment I went through for my concussion recovery was so pivotal for me because I feel really strong now and I feel like there's a lot of energy moving through my body. I haven't always felt like that. I have not felt like I've sort of been always kind of waiting for what is the next thing because I had really debilitating endometriosis for years and years. There was my spine. And so I've never felt like part of my body. Felt like there's been my head and my brain, which is where I live. And then there's this thing that hopefully won't inconvenience me again too soon. And we've been very separate. And I feel much more now like, again, in order to get my brain better, I had to move my body and I had to develop a connection with my body that I hadn't had as much in the past. And that's a really kind of exciting turning point for me that we're friends now. And yes, I've been through all of these things, but I do feel quite strong. But I do think that any amount of pain that you have in your life is an opening and an invitation to and potentially a lesson in empathy. And I think physical pain, maybe even more so. I do tend to find the more empathetic people I meet are the ones who've been through the most. So it also feels like a bit of a gift. I've been softened by these things. I've been strengthened by them, but I've also been softened by them. And I think empathy is always a work in progress with all of us. But I do feel like the point of life is connection with other people. And I do think that the things that have happened, we have been portals to that. That's a beautiful way to say that. Strengthened and softened.

[21:00]Zibby Owens: That's cool. You also wrote about being a child actor and how many parents you had some quote. Let me see if I can find it. How they're so quick to say, oh, no. But, like, my son wants to do that, And then they don't think about some of the ramifications of that. Oh my gosh. And your mother too. Oh, wait. Hold on. Let me find it. I've he said, I've often been approached for advice by the parents of child actors as someone who came out of the experience successfully and therefore evidence that it may be a good direction for their own child. As soon as I begin to imply that the reason I came out of the experience without major addiction issues was sheer luck and privilege, and that waiting until adulthood might be advisable for any profession or begin to recount some of the more damaging experiences I had as a child, I am met with combativeness, defensiveness, or a turning away. It has always given me a jolt to realize that most parents, that's better, of child actors really don't want to hear the truth from someone who has lived it. Only twice has this not been the case out of dozens of conversations with parents. The exchange usually goes something like this, but he loves it so much. He wants to do it. To which I reply something like, yes. And lots of kids want to be firefighters or doctors too, but they must wait until they are no longer children to assume the pressures and obligations of adult work. It's something our society made up its mind about a long time ago. Children shouldn't work. Why this principle doesn't apply to an industry known for its exploitation and self serving nature bewilders me.

[22:24]Sarah Polley: You're really killing me softly by reading that back to me right now because I happen to have a child who's desperate to be a child. Oh, no. And last night, was like, how much longer can I withstand this pressure? Oh, no. I was like, okay, good. Thank you for reminding me. I have a lot more empathy for, you know, the parents of, you know, child actors that I used to because I know the pressure now feels like. But last night, was given an ultimatum, which was basically because we're resisting getting a dog as well. And Eve last night was like, You have a choice. We can get a dog or I can be a child actor. Which would you choose if you had to choose? Is it the dog or the child? I was like, I guess it's the dog. But yeah, I you know, yeah, I definitely feel in all seriousness that in general, this is not a great position to put a child in to give them the pressures and obligations of an adult professional life. And now that I've had these conversations with my own kids so much, I've had to articulate it even more than I did in the book. And you know, they were so determined to visit me on set this summer while I was making a film. And the only way we could with COVID rules was if they were background performers. So they kind of got their wish, which is to say they were suddenly on a set. And it was interesting for me because I did have a bunch of kids in the background and a tiny part on this. And I put every molecule of my being into making this a good experience for them. And I think for the most part, they would probably say it was. I haven't reconnected with all the kids yet, but I tried to make it as much of a summer camp as I could. But the truth is I could not control every aspect of that environment, even as the filmmaker. And so was it perfect? No. And I think they there probably were moments where they felt pressure. And that's someone who was traumatized by the impact of being a child actor, putting all of their energy into it. And I still couldn't make it what it probably should have been if it was designed around the experience of kids. And I just don't think it's not an environment that's designed for kids. It's an adult professional environment that's designed either to make something creative or to make a profit. And a kid's interests are never going to be the main interest in that environment. And so I don't know. I can't quite figure out why we would put kids in that position. And at its best, it's not great, I think. And at its worst, it's really, really harmful. And kids are exposed to all kinds of things that we would rather protect them from. And they're with adults all day long who have no training or maybe even particular interest in being around children. So it's just sort of a ticking time bomb, I think, before a kid has a really hard experience. And even just the pressure alone of 50 to 100 out standing around, making sure you get something right, otherwise you delay their workday. Again, that's at its best. I mean, the experience I had were extreme, but I think at its best, it's still an enormous load to put on a child.

[25:25]Zibby Owens: What was the movie this summer?

[25:28]Sarah Polley: Oh, I made a movie called Women Talking, which is an adaptation of Miriam Toews' novel.

[25:33]Zibby Owens: Awesome. And are you working on another movie now? I'm editing that one as we speak. Exciting. Wow. What do you like to read? Like, you're obviously a great writer, very articulate. You're so thoughtful. So I'm curious about your reading stack. Thank you.

[25:53]Sarah Polley: I think the book I've loved the most over the last five years, I came to it really late, was Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which I've read more times than probably any other book. I love Middlemarch. I've been loving Deborah Levy's essays recently. I think they're amazing. Let me think. What else have I loved lately? I'm loving Matrix so much by Lauren Groff. Yep. She was on this podcast. Was she? I didn't get that episode. How did I miss that episode? When was that? I

[26:26]Zibby Owens: have to look. Oh my god. She was amazing. Oh, she's just something else. I also love Florida. Like her I didn't read Florida. Just oh my god. I know. I have to hear. Good. It was on 09/08/2021. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Yeah. Not so long ago. But anyway, yes.

[26:48]Sarah Polley: Very cool. Where are you? What what part of the country are you in? I'm in New York. Okay. Where are you? Are you still in Canada? I'm in Toronto. Yeah. I'm in Toronto.

[26:57]Zibby Owens: Awesome. My kids have said for some reason, that's like the number one on the wish list. After after China and Japan because I was like, well, that's kinda far. That's funny. They were like, okay. How about Canada? That's where we should go. Let's go to Canada. I'm like, okay. Sure. So anyway. Okay. So with this book, what could happen that you're going to be like, it was all worth it? Or has it already happened at that moment? I

[27:24]Sarah Polley: love hearing other people's stories. So I think that if people feel that it resonates with some of their stories and I get to hear theirs back, that for me is all I could ever ask for. It happened with one film I made with Stories We Tell, like my whole release of that. And usually I don't like the release of things. I like doing the things. I don't like dealing with other people's responses, even if they're positive. But I remember the release of that film was like one of the best experiences of my life because people would just come up to me and tell me their family histories, and it was amazing. So I would love that. But also, think some of the things that I write about in this book are really intimate and vulnerable and difficult to talk about. And so I think if it makes anybody, if any of the essays make anyone feel a little bit like it's easier to articulate words around some of their own experiences that might resonate, would be a huge triumph, I think. And I just hope that it's of service in some way. That's so nice.

[28:25]Zibby Owens: Amazing. And by the way, I couldn't believe you were writing Little Women when this whole thing happened. Greta Gruy getting it up ready. I can't believe it. It's like, oh my gosh.

[28:35]Sarah Polley: Did such a great job, though. I have no regrets around it. She did such a good job. My kids love that movie. I do. Yes. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed it. And yeah, it's really well done. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. My pleasure.

[28:51]Zibby Owens: Good luck. Okay. You too. Bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.