After the author falls in love with a lesbian while still married, the two enthusiastically make a short comedy about female ejaculation. The Topple crew pitched in, building a giant vagina and helping with costumes. Mx. Soloway calls the film, inevitably, “If You Build It, She Will Come.”
Pronoun play: Though Mx. Soloway now prefers the third-person plural pronoun, first-person singular is used in the title of their new book.
When Mx. Soloway imagined a scenario in which Ali, the youngest Pfefferman, would fall in love with a women’s studies professor, they had the fleeting notion to cast Eileen Myles, the queer essayist and poet (Cherry Jones ended up with the role; Myles, who eschews honorifics altogether, was an extra). Nonetheless, Mx. Soloway found themself on a panel with the poet, and the ended up falling in love. When Eileen invited Jill back to their hotel room, Mx. Soloway demurred, worried about wearing the wrong bra. On a trip to Paris, the couple channeled Jacques Lacan. They watched heterosexual porn, marveled at the tired plots and were moved to write a manifesto declaring that men must be banned from the porn business for 100 years. Instructing an assistant to buy the domain name, topplethepatriarchy.com, and post the manifesto, The couple was stunned when it didn’t explode on Twitter. Their breakup was presaged by an episode of “Transparent,” and then re-enacted in a “breakup processing session” at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Growing Up Soloway
Mx. Soloway describes dogged efforts to make it in Hollywood, and jealousy at the soaring careers of compatriots like Lena Dunham and Diablo Cody. It was, in part, their wry essay imagining the ignominies of being Courteney Cox’s assistant, which include making an appointment to bleach a certain area of the actor’s anatomy, that kick-started Mx. Soloway’s career as a television writer (on HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” among other series). But it took their parent’s phone call in 2011 to really change that trajectory. “Jilly, are you sitting down?” said Carrie.
Jill grew up in Chicago, in a racially integrated neighborhood and ’60s era social experiment called South Commons. Her mother, Elaine, a writer and activist, had been a press aide for Mayor Jane Byrne. Harry, born in London, was a psychiatrist. The marriage, a love match, turned stormy: Harry was moody and rageful, at the same time that his wife was finding her own way as a feminist, and also having affairs. His unhappiness, and her energetic ambition, marked the Soloway home. Their two daughters were so close, Mx. Soloway writes, they were “the only happy couple in sight.” Not that their parents weren’t proud. At age 60, Elaine had her daughters’ names tattooed on her arm, though as Mx. Soloway writes, that led to some confusion among those who were fans of the country star, Faith Hill.
