It took me a few days to leave the house after my dad died. I only left because I needed to get a dress for his funeral. Nobody at the Paramus Park Mall seemed to notice that my eyes were red and puffy, that the sleeves of my white sweatshirt were stained with snot. I walked among the living, scouring the store racks for a black dress. It was the end of the summer and everything was floral, pastel, or had shoulder holes. (Why, New Jersey, why?) I finally spotted an appropriate one on the sale rack, a size too […]
by Lynn Chen on Mar 12, 2020Actress, activist and blogger Lynn Chen has just wrapped production on her directorial debut, I Will Make You Mine. Below, she contributes this guest essay on the common but rarely discussed post-partum blues that directors can feel after wrapping any film, but particularly their first. To learn more and donate, visit the project’s Kickstarter page. — Editor The post-wrap blues. The first time I felt them, I was eight. I was in a production of Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges, a one-act opera where a bratty kid gets sent to his room, and a bunch of inanimate objects come […]
by Lynn Chen on Sep 18, 2018I first met actress Lynn Chen when executive producing Alice Wu’s feature film, Saving Face, and, since then, I’ve followed her work across film and TV — from Dave Boyle’s features to the premiere of Fear the Walking Dead — but also podcasting and social media. A body image activist as well as actress, Chen has the most varied social media footprint of anyone I know. She’s recently carved out a second career as food blogger through her website and podcast, The Actor’s Diet, as well as food videos for Buzzfeed, where she’s scored over one million views in a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 30, 2015