Jenny Lewis


I was thinking of Jenny Lewis today. You may remember her from an older movie she starred in when she was really young called Troup Beverly Hills. She also starred in Foxfire as Angelina Jolies love interest, Sweet Temptation(a Lifetime Original Movie) with Beverly DeAngelo and many more movies. In Sweet Temptation she is a frantic teenager who ends up sleeping with her moms (Beverly DeAngelo) fiance (some guy from Melrose Place). There is this one scene where she freaks out cause she does not want to tell her mother who this older man is she lost her virginity to. It is a really good movie. She is a cute little redhead who was a great child and adolescent actress. I did not really know or care who she was at the time she was acting even though she played a girl scout in the television show The Golden Girls, which I love. I did not really know who she was until I saw this band Rilo Kiley. (then later I came to find out she was the same girl) Lewis gave up her acting career to sing and play keyboards for this amazing band. Lewis also plays from time to time for The Postal Service which fronts the singer of Death Cab for Cutie. She helps out a lot. I even saw her play with the singer for Bright Eyes when they opened up for Belle and Sebastian at the Greek Theater.


Now I watch the movies and television shows she was in and I love her and I like the movies that much more. I love her not for being an actress but for being a musician, a great one and also (even more so) for being the beautiful person she is. When you look back, you can tell she was going to be a singer because in Sweet Temptation, she drives a delivery truck for her mother who is a caterer and has a couple scenes where she does the singing-while-driving thing.


The first time I saw Jenny live she came out on stage crying at the Elliott Smith tribute show after he died. The show was at the Henry Fonda Theater. She sang an Elliott Smith song(it was their first song of the night) backed with no music at all. It was so beautiful it left everyone with an empty feeling in the pits of their stomach as if tearing out their insides and putting it in their heavy, yet weak knees, bringing hundreds of people down to the ground with the grave sadness of their loss. The loss of a legend. Rilo Kiley did two or three more songs after that, some their own, some written by Smith but each one more beautiful than the last. Her words when she came out on stage before they played were "If anyone wants to sing along, please do. I am really sad and nervous." She said it in such a way it showed she was a true, genuine soul.


Anyway, I am really excited to see them play the Troubadour in January. "Jenny, Jenny, I've got your picture on the wall."