Nudity and Love In A Four Letter World

Cayle Chernin's Blog

I goggled myself to see if my blog was accessible. It's not, but the plethora of deviant websites featuring nude pictures of Glace Bay's own Cayle Chernin was mind-numbing.

At the same time as GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD was being shot in Toronto, I was commuting to Montreal do LOVE IN A FOUR LETTER WORLD, Cinepix' second s'exploitation movie after the successful VALERIE. My family was outraged because there were nude scenes, but Arthur Voronka was co-producing, Canadian actor Michael Kane, (Art Hindle's Uncle and respected Canadian actor) was starring, Baker Advertising exec John Sone was directing and it was in some way his story and the splendid MONIQUE MERCURE was in it, already a Quebequois actress of note - so I thought I'd hit the big time.

I was living with my acting teacher (of course) and Eli Rill being a New Yorker from the Actors Studio didn't think nudity was an issue for a professional actress, though he did have concerns about the script which were well founded. Voronka, who I love and still see, was furious at me when I was quoted in the Montreal Star as saying I didn't find the movie at all sexy inspite of its focus on sex. When I later became acquainted with Anais Nin and read her erotica and journals, I realized why I felt that way.

This online diary, this note to myself, this emotional journalizing is something I forsook some years ago as a predilection to avoid, because as Anais Nin discovered, it becomes a 'habit' a way of being in the world having a conversation essentially with yourself.. a way of retreating from life; avoiding being in the moment. But it is placing me in touch with what I am really thinking and feeling. I feel inspired to write truth because of the dangerous notion that there is a possibility that some others may be privy to these random thoughts. That at some future time I may really regret my big mouth. Or my big need to communicate my real self. Acting is a wonderful way to be myself while being someone else entirely and yet only that much more myself. To live many lives.

I used to think that the price I paid for each character I played or acting situation I was in was that I was impacted irrevocably. As an actor I have worked, studied, braved humiliation to be able to reach my spontaneous self on camera. In my 20ies I was terrified of being a phony conventional actor. There were many trials by fire, particularly Henry Jaglom's second film TRACKS, starring Dennis Hopper. Hopper called sexual encounters "scenes" the way you'd refer to an acting scene, but at that point he was straddling the fact/fiction line very precariously as I would find out.

Years later I attributed my casual sexuality with being in LOVE IN A FOUR LETTER WORLD and playing an itinerant Hippy Chicky who sleeps with musicians and prances about naked with ease since I considered it just another challenge for the actor. I was young and happy to respond to whatever the demands of the role were, but it did unlock a sexual freedom that had only existed in relation to my first lover til then.

While shooting 'LOVE IN A ...' I took the train back to Toronto to do a few of the GDTR shoots, Don Shebib had alluded to the possibility that we may try a scene where Pete (Doug McGrath) and Selina (Me) have sex and after she starts eating potato chips and talking too much so it kills what little attraction she has for him. We never shot that scene, instead I was running around naked with Andre Lawrence on the Montreal set, with wardrobe, makeup, an apartment on Crescent Street and 6 weeks work..The GDTR cast was a little envious but I knew that they were starring in a great movie in which I had a very small part though I got 4th billing and the movie I was starring in was notsogood and opened me up for a lot of flak in Toronto, because there I was barring it all before everybody and their Mother did so. IT was appropriately 1969. If I had done my nude scene in GDTR it would have been so much better than doing it in the context of an explotation genre film in every way. So there were regrets even at the time, but I did my job. I did a nude scene, well a love scene for TRACKS but it never made it into the film, and we even shot one for NOT A FISH STORY very recently but it didn't end up being used..so I figure it is LOVE IN A ....that has placed me in the celebrity nude sites - whether they actually have any material is another story, but it certainly exists and in a way who cares. I always liked the idea that I would be able to view my younger self from a distance and spent my early 20ies trying to get on film as much as possible. I wanted to be able to look back and I've been pretty good about not regretting some of the bad work that now exists and pops up on late night TV or video here and there..but all those internet pops are a little disconcerting. My legit hits dwarfed by their tawdry, lurid flashing come ons.

More important to me is that I didn't know what was troubling me this morning - put me into a real funk. When I realized the impact of those sites, as I was blogging away, I rose right out of said 'funk.' The Truth dissolved the emotionalism and took me to the heart of the matter:

Does how you see me affect how I am?
Or am I how I am whether you can see it or not?

These may seem like stupid questions but they defined my sexuality for many years, the fragmentation Anais Nin was talking about when she said: "Passion gives me moments of wholeness".....

and blogging right now is stimulating my connection to my truths.

I have also started to work on a scene from THE GLASS MENAGERIE for our Monday class. I've always wanted to play Amanda. Perhaps her tenuous position is infiltrating my situation. The creative safe place is not without its dangers, not to mention, those incipient a-ffects that linger on or pop up to spoil your morning coffee.