Cindy Sherman: Characters | Art21 "Extended Play"

(thoughtful music)

(drawers scraping)

- [Cindy] Did you know

they have press-on nails
for pedicures? (laughs)

- [Speaker] Wait a minute.

- I haven't tried them yet,

but I'm really dying to try them,

isn't that crazy? (chuckles)

I'm thinking of just wearing them myself

just for a party, just
as a joke, you know?

I mean, they just, I mean,
except these aren't as obvious.

These are maybe more obvious

because they have little
polka dots on them

and they just look like,

"Who would wear little
polka dots on your toes?"

My work is not about

kind of fantasizing about
characters or situations.

Some people, I think, have thought that

the characters I do were,

yeah, like as if I've always fantasized

about being a femme fatal
or whatever, you know,

if in my film stills.

Yeah, I don't think of
it as that literal to me.

When I'm doing the characters,

I really don't feel like
it's some sort of something

that grows out of my
fantasy, my own dreams.

In college when I would do it,

I would, you know, become a character

and then sort of think,

"Well, gee, here I am as Lucille Ball,

and what do I do now?"

So then it became sort of a thing

and a little more like performance

and I started to do it
going to parties sometimes

I remember once getting all in character

and wanting to go to some opening

and feeling like something was missing,

and then I put a pillow under the dress

and went as a pregnant woman.

When I moved to New York,
I did it a few times,

but it suddenly wasn't the same I think

because in the city I felt
like I needed my own sort of,

you know, street armor,

or whatever to just to
deal with the street

and people out on the
street and the crazy people

and the real crazy people who look

like some of the characters
I was looking like.

And I didn't wanna be
confused, I guess, with them.

That's the advantage
of being in them myself

is I can just play around.

When I've experimented with
other people in them as models,

paid models or friends or family,

I feel like I just, I don't
know what to tell them to do

because I don't really know

what it is I'm looking for until I see it.

So I tend to sort of rush
them through the whole process

and I redo it myself
and it's like grueling.

So, I mean, even though I love to do it,

it's much more work

because, you know, I'm
like frustrated at trying

to capture on film something
that I can't even articulate

because I don't really know
what it is I am looking for

until I see it.