Saunterer is a word you rarely,
if ever, hear today. So when the interviewee tells you
she is a saunterer, you listen up.
Webster’s defines it as someone
who leisurely walks or strolls. American naturalist
and writer Henry David Thoreau considered himself a
saunterer as he strolled around 19th century Concord,
MA on a crusade of self-discovery, and who later with
pencil in hand, scribbled his insights for mankind to
ponder.
Jump cut. Interviewee Christy
Scott Cashman—producer, writer, actor, and president
of Saint Aire Productions in Boston, tells of reading
Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” first published in
the Atlantic Monthly in 1862, and distilling personal,
life-changing meaning, especially from one word—saunterer.
“That just touched me,”
Cashman says. “At that time in my life I felt very
comfortable. I was from North Carolina. I had lived in
LA. and New York and I was new to Boston. But all this
moving around made me realize the world is my home.”
In “Walking,” Thoreau
discusses the derivation of saunterer, dating its
meaning in reference to the people who roved about the
countryside in the Middle Ages and who “asked for
charity under the pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,
to the Holy Land.” Eventually, he writes, the
children, exclaimed: “There goes a Sainte-terrer, a
Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.” Thoreau continues to
explain that rather than referring to idle walkers or
vagabonds—which became a denotative meaning—he
agrees rather with the definition in the good sense,
derived from sans terre, literally without land or
home, and “having no particular home, but equally at
home everywhere.”
Cashman identifies with
Thoreau’s definition. “There is no one place,”
she continues. “This world is really my home, and
this is holy ground that we all walk on. If we really
look at it that way, then I think there is a real
letting go that is involved—letting go of material
things, letting go of the idea of attaching yourself
to some things and feeling that you’ve put roots
down and therefore feel you really can’t do
anything, or can’t go anywhere. It was something
that meant a lot to me.”
Passionate about her epiphany,
she cleverly coined her own derivation, Saint Aire,
when she formed the production company with Mike
Cerrone in 1998. Now, she’s considering a re-design
of the logo to reflect more graphically the concept of
at home in the world.
Before her revelation, Cashman,
who was born in Ohio but mostly raised in North
Carolina after a family relocation there, lived in Los
Angeles and in New York, each at two different times.
She modeled in New York and modeled, acted, and read
scripts for Paramount in Los Angeles. In time, she
found Hollywood to be a turn-off. “Creative people
met in coffeehouses and talked about their ideas but
never did anything about it. They were people with
ideas but didn’t know how to execute them. So many
were waiting for someone to discover them You can’t
sit around and wait for somebody to discover you.”
The script-reading job at
Paramount became Cashman’s classroom though she
didn’t fully realize it then. Understanding how
scripts work became the unintended consequence of her
active reading. She learned form, structure, and
character development. “When you read enough of them
and watch the script-to-screen process, you learn the
anatomy of a screenplay.”
After re-locating to New York a
second time, she faced-off with her muses and tried
her hand at screenwriting, resulting in a short film,
LITTLE THINGS, a miniature guy-girl on-again,
off-again, on-again love story. She worked with others
to develop a pilot for television. However, she did
not become a part of the indie film scene, rather
“more of the club scene,” she says breaking a wide
smile.
In time, she fell in love, got
married to Boston contractor Jay Cashman, and moved to
Boston. She became a mother, but continued to work on
projects. She had been mulling a story in her mind for
a while. Finally, she took up a pen and a legal pad
and started jotting ideas, which as she delved deeper,
convinced her she had a viable plot. She took the
creative leap and began the actual writing. “I
didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I
started writing a screenplay,” she says, reflecting
back on that time.
It was difficult, “a hard row
to hoe,” she remembers. “But it was very
worthwhile and a big learning experience and not
something I’m afraid to do the next time.”
After sixty pages, she felt
confident enough to show it to producer Laura Bernieri
(THE DARIEN GAP, NEXT STOP WONDERLAND), who mentored
her through the process. They met weekly; Bernieri
gave her homework assignments. “We would meet, and I
would go home inspired,” Cashman says. Eventually in
a year-and-a-half, she had a script, DIXIE STORMS, now
in development by Saint Aire. The film, according to
Cashman, was inspired by personal loss—the death of
her mother while Cashman was seventeen—and
thematically suggests how loss can be turned into
revelation, knowledge, and compassion. The setting is
the contemporary South, and plans are to shoot it in
Mississippi.
But weighing in Cashman’s mind
are other matters. IT’S UNDER MY SKIN, starring
Whoopi Goldberg, was wrapped last spring in Toronto.
Saint Aire served as the development entity in the
project, and she is executive producer. Her partner,
Mike Cerrone, a Farrelly brothers collaborator on ME,
MYSELF, AND IRENE (co-writer), THE THREE STOOGES
(co-writer) and SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (final polish),
among other films, was first-time director. As yet,
distribution has not been firmed-up.
Also, Vermont filmmaker Jay
Craven’s DISAPPEARANCES, starring Kris Kristofferson,
completed during early spring. Cashman served as
associate producer and played a cameo role, Yellow
Rose, in the film.
Near the top of her agenda,
though, is KETTLE OF FISH, a Michael Mailer film
written by Claudia Meyers, which stars Mathew Modine
and Gina Gerchon. Christy plays the role of Diana,
giving her the opportunity to walk barefoot on the
sidewalks of New York city, among other things, while
filming her scenes. The editing is complete and
marketing is underway.
Of the three hats she
wears—producer, writer, actor—Cashman admits that
writing presents the most satisfaction despite its
mind-grinding struggles. “I feel I take more risks
as a writer than I do as an actress. I need to learn
as an actress to be like that, to take my risks and
just go for it, and not be afraid of anything.” But
above all, she likes the certain freedom that goes
with the writing territory.
Unlike many writers who are bound
to their laptops in a room alone, Cashman the
saunterer can write in any locale. “I write wherever
I am. To me, writing is not necessarily pen to paper;
rather it’s finding yourself in a new place which
can inspire
an interesting thought. Usually new places do that.
“In your day-to-day routine,
you never
let yourself be inspired because you’re
too busy running from here to there.
But when you’re out of your routine, the environment
is inspiring.”
Books—fiction,
biographies—inspire
her also. “They generate thinking. The
more I read, the more I can write.”
As a producer, Cashman believes
the screenwriter is paramount to a successful film.
Even though in some quarters writers still don’t get
the respect they deserve, she holds them in high
esteem. “Good scripts are like gold and are the real
estate of the film business.”
Does she believe in luck, that
will-o’-the-wisp ingredient which can make or break
any piece of the filmmaking process? “I believe in
luck according to the saying, ‘When opportunity
meets preparation.’
You have to be prepared. You have
to
grow into yourself. We’re all like young horses with
these long awkward legs.
Some of us get up and run the day we
are born, and some of us have to grow
into ourselves.
“I’m one of those people who
will always be growing into myself. I hope I have that
attitude and perception of myself when I’m 80. I
hope that I pick up a pen and want to write a book
when I’m 80, or that I take up a new sport, or that
I decide I want to go back to school when I’m 90.
“Why in life do we decide one
day that we can’t learn anything anymore? I think
it’s really just changing your thinking.”
And what about Christy Scott
Cashman, IMAGINE Cover Girl? She’s flattered and
honored that she’s been chosen to grace this trade
publication’s New Year’s kick-off issue for the
last eight years. But she draws a grin, “I’m glad
I’m not naked. I can finally say I grew up and kept
my clothes on.”
Writer-photographer Robert
Pushkar’s features and photos regularly appear in
IMAGINE and in local, regional, and national
publications. Currently, he is marketing his romantic
comedy screenplay. He may be contacted at rgp@robertpushkar.com
