YOU'RE ON AN AIRPLANE

The “Queen of Indie Film” writes hilariously and thoughtfully about her life and the lives of Gracie, her dog, and other intriguing misfits she’s known.

Using the conceit that she’s relating stories about her life while sitting next to you on a flight—a possibility she laments is increasingly untenable since no one in America talks to strangers anymore—Posey is an amiable, zigzag raconteur. Probably best known for her inspired roles in Christopher Guest mockumentaries like Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, she now stars on Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot. The author was a determined daydreamer and performer from an early age; her father had to fasten jingle bells to her notepad in elementary school so she would remember to write down her homework assignments. Her tendency to choose meaningful projects such as Dazed and Confused or Personal Velocity rather than schlocky studio flicks hasn’t helped her finances, but her choices have endeared her to a generation of film buffs who were young enough in the 1990s and early 2000s to understand that independent American cinema at that time was a movement. (In one priceless scene, the author recounts her nauseous reaction to a misogynistic script a casting director gave her: “I...walked outside, where I immediately threw up in one of the enormous potted plants. And then three times more. It was the perfect height, and I paused and felt blessed.”) “I’m not great at being a movie star,” she writes. “It’s either too boring or too much work.” This book is one of the most atypical celebrity memoirs in recent memory. The narrative flow is occasionally whiplash-inducing as Posey marches through her life, but she is an irrepressible and appealingly eccentric guide throughout.

Resilient and fiercely observant, Posey is an unflinchingly honest and entertaining interpreter of her many stories.