METHOD DRESSING

I bought this suit to make a movie happen.

Not wardrobe.
Not a character.
A negotiation with reality.

About twelve years ago, I was convinced I was about to make a film set in Palm Springs, full of sunburned pools, regret in sunglasses, and conversations that only happen waist-deep in chlorine. The kind of movie where the hero owns a lot of linen and still has zero emotional stability.

So naturally, before financing, before casting, before a script anyone could legally call “done,” I bought the white suit.

Because if you want something to exist in Hollywood, you behave like it already does. You imagine the taste of the champagne at the premiere. You rehearse a thank-you to a crew you haven’t met. You describe scenes as memories from a movie that hasn’t been shot yet.

This is an industry practice known as Premature Nostalgia: remembering the good times from a project that hasn’t yet survived the schedule.

The suit was me telling the universe: Just so you know, this thing is happening.

For years, the project pinballed between hope and limbo. Emails: chain-started, chain-dropped. Actor on. Actor off. Budget up. Budget gone. Calls: “Great news.” Pause. “Actually, there’s a conflict.” Each time I felt momentum, an invisible hand yanked the tablecloth.

The movie now belongs to a company that has absolutely no interest in making it but tremendous interest in continuing to own it.

Sometimes Hollywood doesn’t kill things. It preserves them in amber so no one else can touch them. There they sit, preserved for future generations who will not make it either.

If you have time for a drink or five, I can list several other projects currently enjoying a quiet retirement in corporate memory.

A few years later, we ended up in Palm Springs for a wedding, no kids, two nights, the kind of trip where adults pretend they still make spontaneous decisions.

And without really discussing it, I packed the suit.

Not for the wedding. Because even I know that only the bride wears white to a wedding.

I finally had access to the casino my brain had been running around in for years, but I had never set foot in. So I stepped in, white suit and all.

One night, I put on the suit, and we went.

The moment the electric doors opened, we were hit with a wall of cigarette smoke, alcohol, manufactured oxygen, and despair. The kind of air that feels like it should only ever be exhaled.

I suddenly realized I was dressed like the most optimistic man in the saddest room.

I looked like I was there to buy the building.

In my head, the casino shimmered with neon confidence. In real life, the carpet stuck to my shoes, and a warped “Viva Las Vegas” leaked from a ceiling speaker. I expected glamorous strangers exchanging knowing glances; instead, retirees guarded watery gin-and-tonics while blinking at slot machines like they’d lost a long argument.

At the bar, my wife tried to order a rosé.

The bartender looked at her the way you’d look at someone asking to borrow a large amount of money in a place specifically designed to take it from you.

After a long pause, he asked, “Is that pink wine?”

She said yes.

He thought for a moment and said, “I can mix red and white wine. Will that work?”

No, that will not work.

She said yes anyway. It tasted like compromise.

And that was the moment I understood the movie I’d tried to manifest existed, just not the version where anyone looked good in linen.

We left with exactly the same number of movies produced: zero.

The suit, however, found steady employment.

It became my fallback personality anytime a costume was required.

Originally, it was Sony Bono (yes, that is my mustache in the photo above).
Then Don Johnson.
Then generic “guy from the 70s.”
Then generic “guy from the 80s.”
Then generic “guy who definitely owns a boat but nobody’s seen the boat.”

Clothing is personality you don’t have to explain.

Which turns out to be incredibly useful anytime life asks for effort but not commitment.

There is a moment before every party when I want to cancel, but I also don’t want to miss it.

The white suit lives for that moment.

I keep thinking one day I’ll outgrow the suit, emotionally & physically.

But every time I consider retiring it, another invitation appears that requires just enough participation to justify not caring too much.

The man with a mysterious backstory involving Palm Springs, a casino with a Nathan’s Hot Dog stand in the corner, and at least one lounge singer who definitely has a story about Sinatra but legally can’t tell it anymore.

And there it is.

My emergency personality.

Not quite an outfit.
Just specific enough that people assume you committed to something.

The suit has outlasted multiple phones, several apartments, and at least two belief systems.

If I search “white suit” in my camera roll, I can watch a decade of questionable decisions age in real time.