One of the great perks of working in the modeling industry was having extraordinarily talented genius type roommates all the time. OK, not all the time, but occasionally. OK, at least once.
To escape the oppressive heat and an unimpressive model boyfriend, I moved from South Beach to New York one summer. I found an apartment near St. Mark’s Place for $1400 (which seemed like a fortune in 1997) and needed a roommate. An Australian model at my agency had a “comedian-actress-model friend” from home named Susanna who needed a place to stay. Sounded like an interesting prospect. That turned out to be an understatement. Susanna Brisk is the kind of person who makes a great character for a book. A few snippets from mine:
“Susanna was a tall girl with billowy lips, baby fat on her freckled cheeks, and a pile of long frizzy red ringlets that filled the narrow hall in my two-bedroom summer sublet. As she strode confidently around the East Village apartment, layers of diaphanous clothing flowing behind her, she reminded me of a twenty-three-year-old Pippi Longstocking with an Australian accent… She entertained me for hours with scenes from her childhood as a ‘stinky’ Estonian Jew growing up in Australia, where her parents pushed her to play piano and read Dostoyevsky when all she wanted to do was watch American TV and daydream about attending Sweet Valley High and owning a Hello Kitty notebook.”
She is also the kind of person who makes a great stand-up comedian, great actress, great writer and blogger, and great mom (as long as she’s medicated). Which brings me to my point, check out her blog and movies at: malibu-mama.com and www.youtube.com/mamafied
Also, if you know any bigwig Hollywood directors, clue them in too.
Praise for Susanna’s one-woman show, Mamafied:
“Brisk’s list making rivals George Carlin’s… She has the flexible body of a rubber doll, the physicality of an energizer bunny and the intellect of a stage Einstein… She is easily in the company of Robin Williams…”
–LA Splash
