​Knocking on Doors

About three years ago, I took a mysterious job. It involved a two-week training period in Washington, D.C., a confidentiality agreement, and knocking on doors of the homes of perfect strangers in Los Angeles and asking them to submit to an interview on social science issues. The interview involved a computer-driven slide show -- need I say more?

 

I was forty and an actress/writer/dog walker/contributor to an obscure dance blog. I was scared about the future and scared how to pay my rent now. Basically, I was just scared. Scared and resentful. I wanted to be acting and writing, not doing some weird job that called for sitting in my car waiting for a stranger to get home and then pouncing on said stranger like a process server handing over divorce papers. But I needed the job. And oddly and over time, I also started to warm to it – because there was something about looking at people’s lives through the window of my car and searching for clues as to their whereabouts that played into every private detective fantasy I’d ever had.

 

The contrast between my fantasy life and the harsh reality on the other side of the door paved the way for my web series KNOCKING ON DOORS.

 

LOUISE BICE works as a social science field interviewer and is forced to go into strangers’ homes and execute a standardized interview but instead gets drawn into the dramas of these lives and somehow, through it all, learns something about herself. 

​

Enough said. Enjoy.