In Sell/Buy/Date, Sarah Jones Plays Her Most Difficult Role: Herself
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Sarah Jones might best be known for pretending to be other people. The writer and actress shot to fame in the early aughts when her solo show Bridge & Tunnel went from being an Off-Broadway hit to being an on Broadway hit and Tony Award winner.
In 2016, Jones—who has appeared in films and TV series including Marriage Story and Broad City—brought another solo show, Sell/Buy/Date, to the New York stage. In this piece, Jones played more than a dozen characters, all of whom were addressing different aspects and opinions on sex work.
On November 8, Jones’s new documentary—also called Sell/Buy/Date—begins streaming, but the film (written and directed by Jones and produced by a group including Abigail Disney, Agnes Gund, and Meryl Streep, among others) isn’t exactly what fans of the theatrical work might expect. “Jones,” the New York Times recently said, “doesn’t treat the tensions between exploitation and empowerment, personal agency, and systemic cruelties, as binaries. Instead, they are riveting, confounding and… personal.”
The film still dives into the modern world of sex work, taking Jones and some of her characters across the country and into the lives of real people to explore their experiences, but it also grapples with the real-life backlash Jones experienced when the film was first announced, allowing her to expose one character who hasn’t always been in the foreground of her work: Sarah Jones herself. Here, she discusses the film with T&C.
Anyone who saw Sell/Buy/Date on stage might be surprised that this isn’t an adaptation of that work.
It’s a particular experience to share space and air with fellow audience members amidst whatever’s going on on-stage. That’s no duplicable in my experience; there’s no substitute for a live performance in front of an audience. So, when I thought, I’ll just film it, it was like, no, this is missing everything. It’d look like a trick that’s easy, which isn’t the case on stage. The ideas in the play—questioning where we are as a society around women, sex, power, and commerce—can be depicted by finding human beings who deal with them. I used the medium as best I could by centering those folks on screen.
You also show yourself, not just the characters you play.
It’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever been as an artist; I question the decision daily, still. What I’ve realized is that as pat as this sounds, vulnerability is the new strength. By hiding, I’m missing the opportunity to expose something I share with many people. By divulging aspects of my life, I’ve never wanted to talk about, I’ve connected with people and am hearing about direct connections to this topic. There are lots of people with very tender places they might not be able to expose, but I can.
You feature a variety of real people in the film, from sex workers to family members and celebrities, and what comes across is that people have more common ground than they might assume.
I’ve heard the expressions “terminal uniqueness” to mean that feeling of having been the only person to experience something—but guess what, you’re probably not. We’re all bearing our souls on social media, so why not use that tide of willingness to speak out in order to look with compassion at our society and who’s vulnerable? If we care about feminism, racism, capitalism, or the environment, this is relevant. Sex workers are so often the canaries in the coal mine.
What I want to look at is where we have these colossal double standards and ridiculous moralizing. I remember Julia Roberts wearing those thigh-high boots in Pretty Woman; I thought it looked great, it’s now a Broadway show, it’s so wholesome. We don’t get to have it both ways, to romanticize abstract ideas to titillate ourselves and then have women in jail for sex work. I’m not arguing for legalization or decriminalization or against those things but I’m putting out a buffet and offering everyone a little nosh.
How did you decide how much of your own life you were comfortable sharing on camera?
I’ve decided that degrees of honesty don’t work for me. There’s discernment, but for me I have to be willing to accept the possibility that someone’s going to do the deepest Google dive ever and find everything I’m scared of. But if I’ve already said it, that takes the power away from that situation. I was willing to go to any lengths to tell this story because the women I sat with have been through hell; if they can go through what they’ve gone through to be public as sex workers or survivors, then I get to self-define beyond my fears that people won’t like me.
How did making this film differ for you from performing Sell/Buy/Date on stage?
I knew that performing Sell/Buy/Date one show at a time was unsustainable for me. It’s an endlessly demanding practice and I can only do it in small bursts. The hope is that this conversation might actually help people, so I’d love a lot more people who aren’t just well-heeled theatergoers to engage in this project. First I tried a television project, and I learned I could do it but that a mainstream TV network was not the place. The great news is that I know how to do the TV show and I have a plan to take the concept of Sell/Buy/Date and use it. I’ve been approached about a podcast and a TV show, and I want to do those things. My characters represent a Greek chorus of opinion; I like hearing my characters bicker. What I’m really saying is, instead of calling people out, can we call them in? We have to occupy this space together and what we’re doing now is unsustainable.
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