‘Oldboy’ and the Art of Preparing Your Audience for the Unexpected

I TRY TO GO TO MOVIES basking in complete ignorance. Unless I’ve seen the previews of coming attractions, I know nothing. I don’t look at reviews, I don’t Google, I avoid chatter on what I’m about to see. As much as possible, I like to come into a theater fresh, with no expectations. So when a friend convinced me to go to a late-night screening of a twentieth-anniversary rerelease of Oldboy (2003), I took her up on it solely because she has great taste in movies. I didn’t even know it was Korean. As we sat down in our plush, cushy movie seats, my friend said, “Buckle up, Zandy.”

Before the movie began, there was a special introduction by Park Chan-wook, the co-writer/director, to mark its anniversary. Park had this to say to the audience:

“I would like to give some advice to those who are watching Oldboy. First, there are scenes of extreme violence. Brace yourselves. The movie grapples with themes such as revenge, betrayal and sadness. There’s no avoiding any of this. Second, be prepared for extreme nudity, but not the kind of nudity you’d expect. Things are not always as they seem. There are many funny and ironic moments in this film. Don’t hesitate to laugh. If there are people who love octopi, this film may not be for you. Whether you have seen Oldboy before or if this is your first time watching it, I hope you all enjoy the film.”

How does Park Chan-wook’s prescreen trigger warning compare to this screenshot that The Bulwark’s Sonny Bunch posted on Twitter?

Well, the latter is asinine. It insults the audience’s intelligence and perhaps if you’re so easily perturbed, you should avoid horror movies altogether. It is perfunctory and pro forma, neither informing the audience of what’s to come nor preparing them for the context of what they’re about to see. This sort of infantilization feels like something a corporate drone dreamed up somewhere in the bowels of Amazon to make it look as though they’re proactively trying to avoid needless controversy on social media. Contrast that to Park’s caveat, which ultimately increased and deepened my appreciation for and admiration of Oldboy.

Because it was my first time seeing Oldboy and I knew nothing, I laughed at his warning, thinking this avuncular gentleman in his sixties with a kind, intelligent face was being satirical. “Extreme nudity”? “Octopi death”?? How random. Maybe this is a comedy? He told us to laugh, after all.

But when I witnessed a wild, unkempt, and desperate Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) say to the angelic-looking sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), “I said I want to eat something alive,” and then proceed to devour a large, wriggling, very much living octopus, I realized, “Oh my god. The director was being literal!” Immediately afterwards, my perception of the movie shifted in a way that was shocking, even vertiginous. And amazingly, Oldboy continued to stun and disquiet, one-upping itself until the cataclysmic penultimate scene when Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae) reveals Dae-su has unwittingly taken his own daughter as his lover, Dae-su then cuts off his own tongue, and, satiated in his vengeance, Woo-jin shoots himself in the head.

But something else that Park Chan-wook said was also true: Oldboy IS funny. When Oh Dae-su finds an extra chopstick with his daily prison rations, the one he uses as a tool to try to escape his fifteen-year confinement, he says, “All I could think about in that moment was the guy in the next room was eating with only one chopstick.” The ease with which the movie slid from humor to horror is unsettling, rolling beneath me like an earthquake. It is both playful and raw: about love and affection but also incest, retribution, and violence. A film about a flawed, unremarkable man who because of circumstances beyond his control transforms over fifteen years into a beast whose sole purpose is his epic quest of revenge. As I left the movie late at night, I wasn’t even sure I liked it. It was brutal and unforgiving, and it used the women in the film more as plot devices and symbols than as full-fledged human beings. But after I found my car in the nearly empty parking lot and drove home on deserted streets, I felt like I was in a different state than when I entered the theater.

It was very similar to what I felt after my first time seeing Mulholland Drive: suddenly everything around me seemed sinister. None of us was due a happy ending. A dark, mysterious force that controlled our collective destinies was lurking in the shadows. Both movies infected me, and the more I thought about them, the more they deepened and revealed their brilliance and audaciousness. I had a hard time sleeping. Underneath the brutality, there was a deceptive delicacy and a grace to both Park Chan-wook’s and David Lynch’s direction. These writer-directors have a similar deep understanding of humanity and our angelic and demonic sides: our lyricism and our ugliness, our curiosity and our brittleness, our strength and our fragility. And both men use humor in an off-kilter way to destabilize their audience and keep them on their toes. Their cameras thrive in the darkness.

In retrospect, I saw Park Chan-wook’s intro as less of a warning and more of a compassionate preparation for Oldboy. Rather than the movie being violent and prurient to shock (which I found Spike Lee’s 2013 remake to be), Park lets us know that the brutality is for a grander purpose: to dissociate the viewers from our normal lives outside the theater and take us to a heightened, more mythic and animalistic world. The extreme violence and the ultimate taboo of incest, along with the saturated, stylized cinematography, make the story biblical, so that it stands for something awesome: the savagery that lies underneath our manufactured, daily civility. How gossip—something we all do—can curse a man for life. As Oh Dea-su’s tormenter says, “Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink the same.” The ordinary can have extraordinary consequences. I’m glad Park Chan-wook primed me for his movie. After my initial bewilderment, I woke up the next morning remembering what he said and realized that it actually was an act of generosity and empathy. Things are not always as they seem.

Ryan Gosling: A Professional

MY MOM BELIEVED THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENT she could give when she saw me onstage or on film was to call me “professional.” Granted, she was British and not given to florid praise, but her definition of professional didn’t mean “competent.” It meant you were a worker. You knew your lines, you knew your marks, you showed up on time, you were respectful to your director, writer, cast, and crew, and you were tirelessly devoted to your craft. So when you performed in front of an audience, you made all that effort look effortless.

When I watch Ryan Gosling, that’s what I see: a professional.

He began his career in show business at age 12 as a dancer. Dancers have to rehearse laboriously in order to memorize the choreography and not hurt themselves or their partners, but in performance they have to let all the work go and feel the emotion flow through their body. Ryan Gosling inhabits his roles as if he were dancing, not acting. There’s a freedom and grace to him that I know comes from intense study and discipline, but I cannot see that work at all on screen.

“Crazy Stupid Love”

He is serious about his rehearsal process. Gosling studied piano three hours a day for three months in preparation to play a jazz pianist in La La Land (2016). He and Michelle Williams lived together in Pennsylvania on a tight household budget filming Blue Valentine (2010) so they could authentically play a young, struggling couple. During the filming of Drive (2011), Gosling took apart and then put back together the 1973 Chevy Malibu he drove in the movie. He got his broker’s license before filming The Big Short (2015). For The Believer (2001), Mormon-raised Gosling studied Hebrew and the Torah for months in order to play an Orthodox Jew who rejected his faith and became a Nazi. Yet despite this level of intensity, there are no stories about him of prima donna behavior during filming. He has his process but is never showy or demanding. None of his performances scream, “Look at me! Look at how hard I’m working! I’m IMPRESSIVE, aren’t I? Where’s my Oscar?” There is no fanfare, no drama, no attention-seeking, and no toxic on-set, “genius-at-work” behavior. He puts his head down, studies, collaborates, and does his job.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in his comedic roles, particularly The Nice Guys (2016). His “buddy-buddy” cop dynamic with Russell Crowe is easy and delightful. Their relaxed repartee is inspired, rivaling Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin’s in Midnight Run. They are two masters of their craft, collaborating generously and enjoying the hell out of each other, working off their opposing rhythms to perfection. Gosling is light and loose, and Crowe is muscular and heavy—a greyhound accidentally paired with a grizzly bear. Gosling plays self-destructive, alcoholic Holland March with breezy, nihilistic irony. He spends most of the movie hurting himself or getting hurt but miraculously not dying, his alcoholism literally and figuratively filling his body with liquid looseness that makes him virtually indestructible. Crowe’s Jackson Healy, even though he beats up people for a living, is more ethical, trudging through his violent assignments with heavy, grim determination. Their diametrically opposed physicality but similarly bleak outlook on life are what give The Nice Guys its congenial and gratifying flow. Together, they perform a kind of jazz-tinged funk, much like the music of Earth, Wind & Fire, which is featured prominently in the movie.

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in “The Nice Guys”

Gosling even brings a sense of humor to his most intensely dramatic roles. In Blue Valentine’s early courtship scenes, Dean makes Cindy (Michelle Williams) dance while he accompanies her on his ukulele and sings “You Always Hurt the One You Love” in a goofy Elvis voice, showing the playful nature that originally attracted her to him. In Half Nelson (2006), a movie about a teacher ravaged by a self-destructive drug addiction, Gosling makes sure we see the devotion and respect he has for his inner-city students by the delicate way he teases and relates to them, joking around in class and gently mocking himself as their designated white authority figure. Even in a sentimental movie like The Notebook (2004)—at which, despite my best efforts, I did weep like a baby—Gosling imbues his character, Noah, with humor and pathos that in a lesser actor’s hands could cross the line into hokum. He and Rachel McAdams have such beautiful, high-spirited chemistry that they lift the movie far above treacly, tearjerker status and make it into something with earned emotional heft.

“Half Nelson”

It’s rare that an actor who is as good-looking as Ryan Gosling has such humility. Despite the effort he obviously puts into maintaining his Apollonian physique, there is no vanity to him. In Blue Valentine, he morphs from an optimistic, Brooklyn free spirit into a lost alcoholic with thinning hair and a slight paunch. In Lars and the Real Girl (2007), he taps into Lars’s trauma from his mother’s death and his father’s subsequent emotional abandonment, becoming a young man who despite being nice-looking, hardly speaks, is full of ticks, and who hides his body in layers of clothes so nobody, particularly non-rubber women, will touch him. In Half Nelson, he loses all the brawn he had in The Notebook to play a skinny, pale addict. He even makes fun of his physical perfection and heartthrob status in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), when Emma Stone’s character, on her quest to be seduced by “the hot guy that hit on me at the bar,” tells him to take off his shirt and he squirms as she ogles him: “Seriously?? It’s like you’re photoshopped!”

WHICH BRINGS US to Gosling as “Ken” in the mega-hit Barbie. For my money (sorry fellow feminists), Ken is the fount of humor in this cultural phenomenon. Through Gosling’s grace, charm, and comedic gifts, he manages to transform an almost two-dimensional character into the heartbeat of the movie. He is willing to be self-deprecating and use his physical perfection to play a doll whose sole concern is surface looks, and is plagued by insecurity when he doesn’t get the attention and adoration he thinks he deserves. He is a cautionary tale for dim, aggrieved men who believe they are owed respect by their mere existence. And he plays this entitled incel himbo to the hilt and wrings every drop of humor he can out of the part. In this female-dominated, explicitly feminist (some might say didactic, but that’s for another article) movie, he is happy to make himself the butt of the joke. And although he is game to play second-fiddle to Margot Robbie, America Ferrara, and of course, the director, Greta Gerwig, he has such verve and generosity of spirit that he ends up being the movie’s most memorable character.

“Barbie”

His compelling choice of projects, his willingness to invest himself fully, his lack of ego, his listening ability, his sense of humor, his work ethic, and his interest in, above all, serving the script dramaturgically (tip of the hat to Jeremy Strong), are what set Ryan Gosling apart from most of his fellow male actors. For thirty years, through intense discipline, he has focused on being an actor rather than being a movie star, which is why he can meld and disappear into whatever role he takes on. The range of his talent is extraordinary. And, like a true pro, he makes it all look so easy.

‘Risky Business’ Forty Years Later: The Movie That Made Tom Cruise "Tom Cruise."

I WAS OBSESSED WITH RISKY BUSINESS in the summer of 1983; I even bought a pair of Ray-Bans after my third viewing. Rewatching it forty years later, however, I’m struck by what a clever, dark, strange, and quietly subversive movie it is, a cut above other sex comedies of that era. And I found it fascinating to revisit Tom Cruise at the beginning of his career: to see the intimations of his meteoric rise to superstar status, yes, but also to see him acting a role I’m not sure he’d sign up for now.

Cruise plays Joel Goodsen, a regular, all-American high school senior from a wealthy Chicago suburb. He is neither a standout student nor a rebellious misfit. He is the dutiful, only son to his chilly and exacting parents. They expect him to excel, matriculate at an Ivy (preferably Princeton, where Joel’s dad is an alumnus), get a job in finance, marry an acceptable woman, and eventually become exactly like them. His life is mapped out for him.

My favorite Tom Cruise performances have been in roles where he had directors whom he admired and submitted to—auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Cameron Crowe, and Paul Thomas Anderson. With these directors, he relaxed his tight grip on his image and allowed them to take him on a dark journey of self-discovery. As wonderfully entertaining and technically impressive as Tom Cruise’s action-adventure movies are, those parts aren’t exactly complex character studies. Risky Business was Cruise’s first starring role in that brief period before he became “Tom Cruise.” And Paul Brickman, its writer and director, pushed him into tricky emotional territory. He brings out both Cruise’s vulnerability and maybe unearths a bit of his innate insanity. He pushes him to lose control. He gets Tom Cruise to have sex on a train and lip sync and dance with abandon in his tighty-whities, for God’s sake. (And manically bounce up and down on his parents’ overstuffed couch, foreshadowing his meltdown on Oprah twenty-two years later.)

rehearsing for his future Oprah Winfrey interview

Cruise plays Joel as a distinctly average kid. He is good-looking, but has no idea how to take advantage of it. He has recurring dreams where potential sexual encounters with imaginary girls are thwarted by missed tests, parental disappointment, and public embarrassment. He joins the school’s Future Enterprisers club to please his father and to look good on paper for college applications even though he struggles to find a product he has any passion for and can market successfully. He has a goofy laugh, he walks stiffly, and awkwardly stuffs his hands in his pockets. Joel isn’t comfortable in his own skin and doesn’t have a clue who he is or who he wants to be.

The current, carefully curated Tom Cruise would never take on a movie whose most quoted line is, “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the fuck?’” Watching Risky Business back when I was a teenager, I was thrilled by its sensuality. However, now I realize it is less about sex and more about the seductive, dark allure of capitalism, made flesh in the form of Lana (a perfectly calibrated and mysterious Rebecca De Mornay), a call girl Joel hires for the night. Lana deliberately makes herself into a symbol. We don’t know her last name, we barely know a thing about her private life, which is the way she wants to keep it. She wakes Joel up from a deep sleep and they have sex in the middle of a sudden windstorm. Is she real or just another one of his fantasies? As Jackie, the transgender prostitute Joel’s friend originally hired for him says of Lana, “It’s what you want. It’s what every boy off the Lake wants.” She looks like the girl next door, if the girl next door were a sex doll.

But she’s also a brilliant businessperson. Lana convinces Joel to turn his parents’ house into a one-night brothel servicing the other sad, little rich boys from Glencoe. Out of financial desperation, Joel agrees, but he takes to the part of a pimp with a heart of gold like a duck to the waters of Lake Michigan. He’s actually great at it. Lana has unearthed the entrepreneurial spirit he’d been missing in the classroom. In one weekend, Joel metamorphizes from a law-abiding, “good” son into a stone-cold movie star, sunglasses covering his eyes and thousands of dollars in his pocket.

Risky Business dabbles in the tropes of the classic 1980s teenage sex comedy, but it is far more complex, nuanced, and slippery in its morals and in its tone. It has more in common with The Graduate than Porky’s. Most of the movie takes place at night and the cinematography reflects that darkness. The haunting soundtrack by Tangerine Dream adds a vaguely ominous, moody undercurrent. When Joel is waiting for Jackie and then Lana to arrive at his house, Brickman amps up the tension so high, we almost feel like we’re watching a horror movie. None of Joel’s buddies is particularly appealing or good friends to him. And his parents are rigid and unloving. His mom seems to care more about her Steuben glass egg than her son. Joel is very much on his own until Lana comes into his life.

Unlike the female roles in most 1980s comedies, Lana is never a passive figure there to serve the male lead. She may not have the advantages and education Joel has, but she’s miles ahead of him in every respect except wealth. When Joel unintentionally condescends toward her in an effort to get to know her better, Lana lets him know he’s a hypocrite for judging her and what she does to survive when, after all, he’s benefiting from it and lives off his parents’ largesse. And when it suits her, Lana lets Joel believe he’s her knight in shining armor, but she is always running the show. And even though she robs him blind, Joel ends up respecting Lana’s hustle and drive. She’s made “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the fuck?’” come to life for him.

Joel gets into Princeton not because of his grades or his legacy advantages, but because the admissions officer has had the time of his life at Lana and Joel’s pop-up brothel. While other students at the Future Enterprisers Club are presenting their paper towel holders and decorative planters that earned them $800 in sales, Lana has shown Joel how to make $8,000 in one night ($25,000 in 2023 dollars). In the penultimate scene, Lana and Joel have dinner together in a tony restaurant downtown, entirely populated—except for them—by rich, old, white men. When Joel asks her if what they had was just a setup, she tells him no, and then asks, “You don’t trust me, do you?” He doesn’t answer.

The last scene is them walking in the dark by the lake. Lana is dressed in a prim, white dress with a bow tied around her neck. Except she’s braless and her breasts are clearly visible under the dress. Joel doesn’t care. He not only accepts her, he revels in her daring. No judgments this time. They are on equal footing. She has given him confidence and purpose in a way his sheltered life at home and at school never could have accomplished. Will their romance continue? We don’t know, but for right now they both have profited from their pragmatic and symbiotic relationship. What an elegantly cynical ending.

Poker Face takes viewers back to the 1970s, temperamentally, every Thursday.

My dad liked company on the couch while he watched his favorite television shows, so at a very early age I was watching Kojak, The Rockford Files, and, if we were lucky, Columbo. In fact, my dad got in trouble with my first grade teacher, Miss Roberts, when she found out the reason I was falling asleep on my school desk was because I was staying up until 11 p.m. to watch these rather-inappropriate-for-a-six-year-old TV shows with my father. Naturally, he charmed his way out of the doghouse, and he and Miss Roberts ended up becoming friends.

The point of this story is that those wonderful ’70s procedurals—with their charismatic, ironical lead actors, and their brilliant guest stars and masterful writing and direction—bathe me in a warm, nostalgic glow. And as I viewed the first six episodes of Poker Face(streaming on Peacock), I experienced the same feelings of delight and enchantment.

I am certainly not the first to say how much Poker Face reminds me of Columbo. Both shows spend the first third of their episodes without their leads, showing the audience exactly who the murderer is and how they did it; a “howcatchem” rather than a “whodunit.” When Peter Falk, as the titular lead of Columbo, and Natasha Lyonne, as Charlie Cale in Poker Face, finally do appear, they are disheveled and distracted, lulling the suspects into a false sense of complacency. All the criminals think they’re different and special and can outsmart Columbo and Charlie, but their hubris is always their fatal flaw. And it’s a pleasure to watch the clever cat-and-mouse game play out every time.

Also similar to ’70s procedurals is the stellar quality of Poker Face’s guest stars: Adrian Brody, Benjamin Bratt, Judith Light, S. Epatha Merkerson, Ellen Barkin, Tim Blake Nelson, Tim Meadows and Chloé Sevigny, just to name a few. I made sure I knew nothing about each episode before I saw them, so I let out a joyful, surprised yelp as these actors popped up on screen, each one doing a spectacular star turn. Even though Natasha Lyonne is both the star and one of the producers (along with creator, Rian Johnson), she is magnanimous about letting her guest stars shine in their own right. Her chemistry with them, as well as with the wonderful lesser-known actors who populate each episode, is authentic and dazzling.

Even the graphics in the beginning credits and the jangly theme music for Poker Face are evocative of ’70s murder-of-the-week shows. As is the direction. The choice to let the action in the beginning of the episodes take its time to play out in long shots, with a relaxed pace, gives the audience a chance to savor the ambience, the setting and the subtle shift in various characters’ thoughts. This is particularly true in the appropriately titled episode, “The Stall.”

The premiere episode (“Dead Man’s Hand”) establishes why Charlie is on the run, and why in each subsequent episode Charlie takes low-level jobs in various small, lonely towns across America. Aside from the same pursuer trailing Charlie, so far each episode is a discrete story unto itself, and the audience could watch them in any order. Unlike virtually every other modern series, character development isn’t as important as the plot. Even though Charlie is the star, she is often not the focal point. In “Exit Stage Death,” she isn’t even the person who solves the murder. Poker Face is less about its lead, and more about the weirdos she meets along the way.

Which is not to say that Charlie is a nondescript wallflower. Natasha Lyonne crafts a unique, strong-willed, brave, and indelible character. Unlike Lieutenant Columbo, Charlie has no power. She has no authority and no weapons to protect herself other than her preternatural ability to know when people are lying. Also unlike Columbo, she has no artifice. She’s not pretending to be messy and discombobulated, she just is. She drinks too much, she smokes, she’s flustered, she’s a misfit. She’s friendly but doesn’t stick around anywhere long enough to make friends. She calls the murderers on their lies as soon as she hears them, and spends the rest of the episode doggedly determined to make sure the criminals are brought to justice. There is no, “Oh, just one more thing…” turnaround. With Charlie, as soon as she hears the killers lying, she blurts out, “BULLSHIT!” Which puts her in significantly more danger than Columbo, as many of the murderers then want to get rid of Charlie, as well. If Charlie weren’t such a decent person, she’d mind her own business and ignore the injustice of relative strangers dropping like flies around her. Then she’d only have to worry about one person, Cliff LeGrand (Benjamin Bratt), a hired assassin tracking her down and trying to kill her. No biggie.

Another pleasure of Poker Face is its lightness of spirit. Other than her life being in constant peril, Charlie Cale is not an unhappy person. She has no money, but she has style and moxie. Despite the hard knocks fate has thrown her way, she maintains an indomitable sense of humor and has an ironic, adaptable, and unexpectedly upbeat perspective. She seems to enjoy her life and her adventures meeting other eccentrics while she criss-crosses the country. Which feels like an enormous relief when seemingly every other TV show is about its protagonists’ relentless, heavy Sturm und Drang.

The writing is clever, funny, and always surprising. Every time I think I know where the plot or a new character is heading, I am almost always wrong. I have laughed out loud, watching all by myself, several times. If you’ve seen the episode with the MAGA dog, you know what I mean. The highly saturated colors in its cinematography add literal and figurative brightness to the show.

There is plenty of darkness in Poker Face. I mean, it’s a show about murder, after all. But there is also the sheer delight of watching superlative, beloved actors as various ne’er-do-wells strut their stuff with finesse in their guest-starring roles. Judith Light and Adrian Brody, for example, are absolute wonders.

Poker Face is both lighthearted and complex. The right balance of sun and shadow: enough to make you think, but not enough to drag you down. And I now look forward to Thursdays—when Peacock releases new episodes—the same way I looked forward to watching those ’70s murder-of-the-week shows with my dad as appointment TV those many years ago. God, I’m old.

Ubu Roy

Logan Roy’s fatal heart attack in the third episode of Succession’s fourth and final season, is a shocking feat of daring by its creator, Jesse Armstrong. It’s like mounting a production of King Lear where Lear dies one third of the way through the play.  And yet it's completely in keeping with the show’s ability to defy its audience’s expectations. And like Logan Roy’s children, we the viewers are now left stunned, confused and wondering what we will do without him.

From the very beginning of the series, Armstrong explicitly shows that Logan Roy isn’t well. The first episode has him disoriented, wandering in the dark of his opulent brownstone and pissing in his walk-in closet, confusing it with his toilet. Later in that episode, he has a stroke in his helicopter. The title, “Succession,” makes it clear that the entire show is about all of Logan Roy’s friends and family desperately (but enthusiastically) positioning themselves to inherit his legacy (and money) after he dies. And yet, when he finally does, we are completely bereft and shocked, and like Roman, almost in denial. 

As in real life, each child and loved-one—and “loved-one” is doing a lot of heavy lifting as a descriptor—has a singular variation on grief. Shiv is devastated by guilt that her last conversation with her father the night before was bitter and vengeful. Kendall’s reaction is more stoic, as he gains gravitas and finally becomes the elder statesman of the family. Connor is resigned: he never had his father’s love to begin with, so he really had nothing left to lose. And Roman is in complete disbelief: how is it possible that his Übermensch dad could cease to exist? And earlier that day, Logan forced Roman to fire maybe his only friend, Gerri, in a signature “divide and conquer” strategy to break up potentially perilous alliances, and as a way of testing Roman’s absolute devotion to him. Becauset he gave into his father’s demand, Roman has alienated Gerri irreparably and has no true shoulder to cry on. He is completely emotionally adrift.

Tom is genuinely crestfallen and shows sincere compassion for his estranged wife, but everyone else on the plane with Logan when he died is all business immediately afterward, trying to spin his death to save their asses. 

Except for Logan’s paramour, Kerry, who reacts with inappropriate giggles at his death, so much so that Karl calls her “Chuckles the Clown,” a reference to the famous Mary Tyler Moore Show episode, “Chuckles Bites the Dust.” It’s her manic response to the whole world she has ruthlessly constructed through her alliance with Logan against his kids that she now realizes was just a house of cards that cannot support her weight. Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall.

Both Logan’s stroke and his eventual heart attack are bookended by birthdays: the first episode, “The Celebration,” takes place on his eightieth birthday, and his death happens on Connor’s wedding (the title of the episode) day, the day after Logan’s eighty-fourth birthday. As with every party and wedding that the Roys attend and throw, joy and togetherness are not meal choices on the dinner menu. 

Everything about “Connor’s Wedding” is potent and yet subtle. Shiv, Roman and Kendall are all wearing black, somewhat inappropriate for a springtime celebration of love, but clairvoyant for an unexpected funeral. Logan's roaring, fiery speech standing on a box in the middle of the ATN newsroom to rally his troops, like a perverse, expletive-laden soliloquy out of Henry V, makes his imminent, sudden death even more improbable and stark. And the fact that we never actually see the heart attack, and that we hardly see Logan while he’s dying or even after his death is significant: this ferocious, merciless, brilliant, seemingly omnipotent father and titan of industry is reduced to an out-of-focus, partially naked body under a sheet on his private plane, flying in the liminal space over International waters, far from home. All his billions of dollars, and his political, societal and financial influence over friends, family and foes alike cannot save him from the human body’s fragility and the indignity of death—the great leveler of us all. 

Despite Logan’s cruelty, disloyalty and inability to feel and express love, we cannot help having sympathy for this mostly despicable man who dies not with his children—who love him in their own deficient, deeply compromised way—but with people who were bought and paid for with blood money to serve him and his corrupt businesses. And once he is merely a body, he has no more power over them. Their loyalty to him was based solely on fear, and when he’s dead, their fear dissipates instantly into cold calculation and self-preservation. 

How will the rest of the final season play out? We, Kendall, Connor, Shiv and Roman have no idea. How will we exist without the terrible, awesome father figure who dominated their lives and this show, about whom we care despite knowing better? We all have lost a worthy adversary: the man whose massive, tyrannical, back loomed center stage during the opening credits of each episode. We, like in the flashbacks of the Roy siblings as children, will always be turning our heads and looking for the epic, Shakespearean figure of Logan Roy, whose face we will never see again. 

Portrait of Postpartum Depression in ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ from The Bulwark 1/11/23

I was worried Fleishman Is in Trouble would not translate to television, that the FX/Hulu production would not match the 2019 novel’s humor, insight and compassion. But Taffy Brodesser-Akner has done a masterful job adapting her own book, and the TV series actually increased the story’s power for me. What struck me—after the brilliance of the acting, writing and direction—was how acutely I felt the depiction of Rachel Fleishman’s postpartum breakdown.

Because its portrayal was eerily similar to mine.

Rachel (Claire Danes) was raised by her remote, austere grandmother in Baltimore after her mother died when Rachel was almost too young to remember her. Although her mother had been Jewish, her grandmother sent Rachel to an all-girl, Catholic prep school where she felt excluded and friendless. Not just because of her religion, but because she was surrounded by girls who were born to wealth and privilege. Rachel bootstraps herself out of her humble circumstances, but the price she pays is that she depends only on herself and is very much alone. When she meets Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) and then his effusive, tight-knit, observant Jewish family, she thinks she’s finally found the antidote to the gaping hole in her heart.

But pregnancy has other plans for her. Rachel is used to being in charge. She is independent and is unapologetically dominant in her job. Despite her intense desire for a family of her own, the lack of control inherent in lending your body to a creature growing inside you unsettles her. So is her new status as a sort of symbol rather than a person in her own right. She is passed over for a promotion, she’s tired all the time, and she can’t wear the stylish work clothes she’s used to. Even her beloved Toby treats her differently. Her formerly accepting, non-patriarchal husband acts as if she were a personal science experiment, telling her what she can and can’t eat for the health of their baby.

These first intimations of disorder in Rachel’s controlled adult life mutate into utter chaos after her daughter’s needlessly traumatic birth. While Toby is out of the delivery room for a moment dealing with coworkers, an unfamiliar and unconscionable OB-GYN breaks Rachel’s amniotic sac without her consent. In agony and feeling completely violated, she is forced to give birth sedated—strapped to and splayed on a gurney—by C-section. Suffering from PTSD and in so much psychic and physical pain, she has nothing left to give her new baby. Every day, she wears the same sweatpants, sweatshirt, and Uggs she wore when she left the hospital. She has no one to talk to during the day. Toby is doing rounds at his hospital. Her colleagues at work seem like they’re in a past life. The moms in her prenatal yoga group treat her depression as if it were contagious. She waits for the baby to sleep to have the freedom to weep uncontrollably on the floor of her bedroom, what she mordantly calls her “Me Time,” which is also the name of the episode.

Their pediatrician tells Rachel and Toby that their daughter might not be smiling yet because “Smiling is an imitative behavior,” implying Rachel’s turmoil is to blame. Toby suggests psychotherapy and Rachel responds, “I don’t need therapy! I need help with this baby!” So, they hire a nanny, Mona, and as soon as Mona takes their crying daughter out of Rachel’s arms and into hers, the baby starts cooing peacefully. “I have a calm energy,” Mona says.

After I watched both “Free Pass” and “Me Time”—the first of which tells the story from Toby’s perspective, the second Rachel’s—I was chilled. I felt my own experience with postpartum anxiety and depression mirrored back at me.

Like Rachel, I had a parent who died before I reached adulthood and my other parent was frequently remote and emotionally unavailable. I am Jewish but went to an all-girls prep school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that was decidedly not. The Preppy Handbook was my Torah. I used my creativity and adaptation skills to blend in as best I could, but on a socio-economic level, I couldn’t compete. In Fleishman Is in Trouble, a friend describing Rachel says, “the lack of money and proximity created an outsider’s desperation in her. But also, sophistication is a language; you’re either born speaking it, or you’ll always speak it with an accent.” I had to pause and rewind twice.

Like Rachel, I experienced traumatic things at the beginning of my pregnancy. Though, unlike Rachel, I had a wonderful OB-GYN who was actually there for my delivery. She advised me because of my history I was likely to have some kind of postpartum reaction, but I felt so healthy, strong and happy during my second trimester that I willfully ignored her warning. I do remember saying to her as the due date approached, “It almost never happens you 100 percent know in advance that your life is going to change completely in a day, but having a baby is I guess the exception.”

And it was true, but not in the way I’d expected and hoped for. Like Rachel, I had a C-section, though mine was planned. My baby was upside-down and backwards. My doctors were skilled and sensitive, but I was still drugged up and arms akimbo on the operating table like Jesus on the cross. All I wanted to do was sleep. I felt a vague tugging and pressure, but giving birth was literally and figuratively an out-of-body experience for me. I heard my baby cry and my partner was crying also from happiness and I played along because I knew that’s what I should do. I felt no joy, I felt no excitement, I felt no curiosity, I just wanted to keep sleeping.

I was in so much pain. I wasn’t able to get my baby to latch properly for feedings and my son was losing weight. My partner was at work all day and even though I had a baby nurse, I always felt tired, lonely and scared. I couldn’t believe the hospital had let me leave when I was clearly incapable of taking care of this new life. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I had wanted this baby. Desperately. I had always wanted one, but I wasn’t even sure I could get pregnant until I did accidentally.

So why wasn’t I happy? “You must be blissful,” well-meaning friends would say, and I’d nod and smile but inside I wanted to crumple up and disappear. I didn’t deserve this miracle. I could see he was cute, and he was an “easy” baby. He slept and ate well. His caregivers told me what a good boy he was. But other than going through the motions and doing my duty by him, I felt no real affection for the child I’d previously craved. I felt immensely guilty and ungrateful. I could hear my relatives’ thoughts: “But she has so much help! She can sleep whenever she wants. She can go take a walk, go have lunch with friends. What’s her problem?”

Worse than their judgments were my own. Anything they might criticize me for, I would multiply internally by five. Because every time I nursed my baby or held him, I looked into his eyes and thought the same thing Rachel Fleishman thought: “Rachel looked down and knew that the baby knew what she was thinking. She knew and would never forgive her.” I was single-handedly ruining my child with my total lack of maternal instinct. In my mind, this newborn was already smarter and more intuitive than I was in my late 30s. My grandmother, my mom, and now I had no idea how to be a Good Mother. And other than pining for my boyfriend to come home from work and relying heavily upon my baby nurse and then nanny, I told no one because of my deep shame. Who would be interested in the complaints of a selfish, unloving, and unlovable upper-middle class woman?

Thank goodness, another mom—who was just an acquaintance then but is a dear friend of mine now—recognized the signs of postpartum depression in my face and my disposition from her own experience, and told me where to go for help. With a lot of excellent therapy and the right medications, I got through the first difficult year somewhat intact. But Claire Danes’s portrayal of Rachel’s first breakdown was stunningly real and potent. Her past, her helplessness in the face of trauma, her inarticulate grief and pain she interprets as innate, generational brokenness, and Toby, who just wishes someone else would help “fix” Rachel and make her the woman she was before she had his baby, who is resentful of Rachel handing the kids off to the nanny so she can feel somewhat herself again, all rang painfully true for me.

Brodesser-Akner’s brilliance in portraying this experience from both sides, Toby’s and Rachel’s, is superlative. As much as Toby wants to be helpful, Rachel’s trauma is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t gone through it themselves, and it makes her feel like she is stranded on an unknown island with no rescue in sight. My greatest hope is that the show will help other mothers struggling from this awful syndrome understand that they are not alone and that there is help out there for them. Things do indeed get better. And much, much better, at that.

Fifteen years later, that baby I thought I had failed, the one I knew I’d ruined, is now a bright, funny, well-adjusted and well-loved teenager. He’s even happy, as far as teenagers can admit to being happy. Babies are much more flexible and resilient than we are led to believe in the “What to Expect” books. Despite their parents’ plentiful missteps, anxieties, and fumbling, my children, like the Fleishman children, are good, thoughtful, solid individuals well on their way to becoming (I hope) even more fully realized adults than the ones who are raising them.

The Case for ‘The Family Stone’ from The Bulwark, 12/23/2022

There is one egregious absence from nearly every “Best Christmas Movie” list I’ve seen: The Family Stone (2005). It’s everything anyone would want in a Christmas movie—warm, funny, and entertaining—but there is a subtle core of sadness that never crosses into being maudlin. The Family Stone does what it needs to do to qualify as a holiday movie, but it then transforms into something much more profound and satisfying.

On the surface, The Family Stone is a typical “golden child comes back to their hometown and to their loving but kooky family with inappropriate significant other and hijinks ensue” plotline, á la Meet the Parents. Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) brings his high-strung, high-achieving girlfriend, Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) to meet his family with the intention of asking his mother, Sybil Stone (Diane Keaton) for her heirloom engagement ring so he can propose.

Meredith’s introduction to the Stone family is an utter disaster: she yells when she tries communicating with Everett’s deaf brother, Thad (Tyrone Giordano), even though he reads lips; during a game of charades, she unconsciously points to Thad’s husband Patrick (Brian J. White) when she is searching for the word “black”; and, trying to be helpful, she prepares a special Morton holiday dish with mushrooms, unaware that her intended fiancé is allergic to them. And, as the coup de grace, the more traditional Meredith attempts to discuss sexual politics with the decidedly bohemian Stones and steps directly onto a landmine, blowing up the cheer and goodwill of the Christmas Eve meal. She alienates herself entirely from everyone in the family.Except Ben (Luke Wilson), Everett’s older brother. For some reason, Ben—the free spirit foil to Everett’s controlled, bottled up businessman—is smitten with Meredith. He is her only ally against Sybil and his sister Amy (Rachel McAdams), who is Meredith’s ultimate mean girl. And when Meredith begs her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to come help reduce the tension, Julie’s presence does the exact opposite because Julie (literally and secretly) falls head over heels in love with Everett the moment he picks her up at the bus, and he with her. As does the rest of the Stone family, much to Meredith’s horror. Shakespearean misunderstandings and misadventures ensue, and—technically—in the end, it’s Happily Ever After.

disastrous charades

Ben to the rescue

Or is it? As the story progresses, we, and the rest of the family, learn that Sybil has what is likely terminal cancer. She was determined to keep it a secret from her family so they could have one, last, uncomplicated Christmas together, but one by one, they find out. Somehow, despite the heaviness of the topic, writer-director Thomas Bezucha handles it with enormous grace and delicacy. Sybil’s uncertain future fills his movie with depth, meaning, and longing that are entirely absent in other treacly Christmas movies. (I’m looking directly at you, Love Actually.) We genuinely feel the family’s love for their eccentric, strong, sometimes difficult matriarch, and the love returned to them by her. We admire her wish to handle her illness with dignity and privacy, and to have her wishes observed with respect.

There is a beautiful montage midway through the movie. It’s almost Christmas. Most of the Stone house is in bed or has fled the house to look for an errant Meredith or, in Meredith and Ben’s case, in search of distraction. Kelly Stone (Craig T. Nelson) kisses his pregnant eldest daughter, Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) goodnight. Meet Me in St. Louis is muted on TV as she talks to her husband on the phone. Amy is sleeping peacefully on her lap. After her dad goes upstairs, Susannah unmutes the movie in time for Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which is one of the most beautiful, bittersweet songs and scenes in movie history. It’s full of yearning, sadness, love, hope, and an acknowledgement that nothing stays the same, as much as we wish it could.

Upstairs, Kelly puts his head on Sybil’s chest and they have a brief conversation about Everett marrying Meredith:

Sybil: “You know, honey, It’s not her. I feel sorry for her. I do. It’s just that he’s making this mistake. . . . And I won’t be here. I only want him to be happy.”

Kelly looks her deep in the eyes and says, “He’ll be fine. . . . We all will . . . no matter what. You’ll see.”

And then Sybil finally lets her brave and stoic façade crumble: “Kelly, Kelly, I’m scared.”

As the song swells, Susannah watches the TV and her eyes well up with tears, and we know without it having been said explicitly that she is aware of her mom’s fate. Patrick and Thad take a walk through a snow-covered, silent town. Lying in bed at the inn, Julie tries to read but is distracted, thinking about Everett. Everett looks at his engagement ring and tries to call Meredith, while Meredith and Ben are asleep in each other’s arms in his car. And Kelly and Sybil make love. She opens her blouse to reveal her mastectomy scar, and Kelly caresses it.

This isn’t usual Christmas Movie fare. And I fear I’m making it sound much more heavy-handed than it actually is. Bezucha directs all of this with the lightest hand possible and the fact that he pulls it off is a minor miracle. The Family Stone is neither a confection nor a leaden Christmas pudding. It’s a delicious, savory soufflé that needs to be baked at the perfect temperature and taken out of the oven at the exact time or it will fall flat. There are fewer tears and hugs than there are laughs and fun misadventures. It is clever, lighthearted, and human, above all. Even though The Family Stone came out in 2005, it feels timeless (save for all the flip phones).

The cast is perfection. They all, from starring parts to featured players, are at their best. For example, Elizabeth Reaser, who has a relatively small part (and what, in lesser hands, could be a thankless one as the “nice” sister), is subtle and warm and an absolute wonder. She makes me well up in tears just like she does every time I watch her watch Judy Garland in that pivotal scene, without her saying a word.

Bezucha has a delicate, tasteful, and compassionate touch. There are plenty of true laugh-out-loud slapstick moments in The Family Stone, but he also tackles sexual acceptance, non-religious spirituality, equality, love, and death head on. All wrapped up in a shiny red bow for Christmas.

The Renewed Relevance of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ from The Bulwark, 10/31/2022

Even though Rosemary’s Baby premiered in 1968, Roman Polanski’s masterpiece is frighteningly relevant today following the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade this year. Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow)’s fate—like many pregnant women then, before, and presently—is at the mercy of those who see her womb solely as a vessel for their own ambitions. And as much as she fights for her bodily autonomy, she is ultimately powerless against the dark forces that want to control her and the baby inside her.

The first time we see Rosemary, she and her actor husband are meeting a real estate agent outside “The Bramford,” an imposing gothic building on Central park West in New York City. She wears a pristine white dress and is full of guileless, childlike wonder about the vast, tenebrous apartment. She is enraptured by the myriad improvements she would make, like a little girl peering into a store window at a beautiful dollhouse, despite the fact that the woman who previously owned the apartment died suddenly under highly suspicious circumstances.

Her husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), is decidedly less effusive. In contrast to Rosemary’s openness and innocence, Polanski establishes who Guy is immediately: cynical, selfish, and aggrieved. In other words, a typical actor. When the real estate agent asks Guy what he might have seen him in, Guy’s response makes clear that although he’s doing TV and commercials he’s not where he wants to be in his career; these jobs, in his opinion, are far beneath him.

Cassevetes and Polanski have no interest in making Guy likable. Guy is charming, but he’s also crude and egotistical, cracking inappropriate jokes and slapping Rosemary on the ass when the real estate agent isn’t looking. He dominates her, and there is little tenderness between them. He treats her as if she’s a pretty thing he owns—a pampered and silly kid. Rosemary laughs off and plays into his treatment of her. She wears babydoll dresses with Peter Pan collars and even walks with the gait of a child. She is perceptive, capable, and organized, but she subsumes herself into Guy’s moods and needs, sublimating her own.

When Guy walks through the door, dejected and sulky because he lost a lead theater role to another actor, Rosemary runs into the kitchen to make him a sandwich and pour him a beer. She tells him their elderly neighbors, the Castevets —whose young houseguest, Terry, jumped out their window and killed herself directly outside the Bramford two days earlier—invited them to dinner that night and she accepted because they’re grieving. Guy sulks but eventually agrees to accompany her.

Guy’s mood improves significantly when dinner conversation turns to him and his career. Over a meal Rosemary can barely eat, Roman compliments Guy’s acting: “You have a most interesting inner quality, Guy. It should take you a long way indeed, provided of course that you get those initial breaks.” Guy is flattered and energized by Roman’s praise. Other than pointedly insulting the Pope and her religion, Guy, Roman, and Minnie leave Rosemary out of the conversation entirely. The only thing Minnie seems to care about is how many kids she wants to have.The next day, Guy is offered the dream job he lost out on—the original actor who booked it has suddenly gone blind. Later, Rosemary tells her friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) that Guy has been inundated with other job offers after the play’s run. She makes excuses for his inattention and self-absorption but is clearly upset and lonely.

When she returns home, her apartment is filled with red roses. Guy apologizes profusely for his self-absorption and then abruptly says, “Let’s have a baby. Alright?” He’s even circled the dates to try on a calendar. Rosemary is overjoyed at his sudden attention. In the background, we hear the slow drip, drip, drip of a leaky kitchen faucet.

The newlyweds settle in for a romantic first night of baby-making. “Here goes nothing!” Guy declares. Rosemary is wearing a long, blood-red pantsuit as they sit by a fire. Minnie rings their doorbell but to Rosemary’s great relief Guy intercepts her and she doesn’t interrupt their evening. He comes back into the living room with chocolate mousse Minnie has prepared for them. Rosemary dislikes its chalky undertaste. Guy orders her to finish it. Rosemary is baffled by Guy’s anger but she gives in and has a few more bites.

Minutes later, she feels violently dizzy. She falls over and Guy carries her into the bedroom.

Rosemary has a nightmare. She is floating on a mattress in the ocean. Then she’s on a yacht, a cocktail party in progress but the other people on the boat aren’t in focus. The captain is charting a mysterious course. The captain turns into Hutch, looking at Rosemary with concern and sadness. He’s kicked off the boat with his maps and charts, warning of a typhoon. Guy strips Rosemary of her clothes, leaving her naked. She is below deck on a bare mattress. Covered in scaffolding is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A ram’s skull replaces her vision of The Hand of God. Her elderly neighbors and Guy, who are also naked, gather round the bed in shadows. Guy insists that Rosemary is conscious and Minnie, in a deeper and sterner voice than we’ve previously heard, admonishes Guy that the chocolate mousse has rendered Rosemary “practically dead.” They chant, they mark Rosemary’s stomach with lines and numbers in blood and we see a black talon run its long, pointed fingers down her belly. Rosemary sees its red, burning eyes staring into hers. She screams, “This is no dream! This is really happening!”

A month later, Rosemary is pregnant.

Roman Polanski, despite his extremely complicated relationship with women in his personal life, advocates for women in Rosemary’s Baby. Every man in Rosemary’s orbit, save the unfortunate Hutch, betrays her. “Guy” seems to be deliberately a generic name representing all men. It may be 2022, but we might as well be in 1968. The male authority figures use her and her body as a pawn. Her uterus is not her own, it is merely a receptacle. When Rosemary worries the intense pains she’s having might be an ectopic pregnancy, Dr. Sapperstein admonishes her: “‘Ectopic?’ I thought I told you not to read books, Rosemary.” Everyone dismisses her first-trimester agony. They tell her it’s perfectly normal to feel and look like you’re dying.

The only man in her life who cares about her—the avuncular Hutch—is disposed of efficiently by Guy and Roman as soon as they realize he is undermining their dark plans for Rosemary.

Even Dr. Hill, the doctor Rosemary’s friend suggested, fails her in the end, writing off her desperation to save herself and her baby as prepartum hysteria and delivering her back into the clutches of the coven. In fact, both the good and evil doctors are brusque and condescending. As if women’s concerns are an annoyance, rather than fundamental to their job.

And most egregiously, Guy, the man who should love and care about Rosemary the most, literally sells her body and his soul to the Devil for a job. Yes, Minnie and Roman Castavet are the conduits to Satan, but without Guy’s enthusiastic help their Satanic plot would never come to fruition. Minnie can smell vulnerability, and she sees Rosemary’s trusting nature as pliable and Guy’s fragile ego as his fatal flaw: They are the perfect marks. In a sublime indictment of Hollywood, Guy’s initial dream of living at The Bramford so he can be walking distance to the theater transforms at the end of the movie into booking a TV or film job and moving to a mansion in Beverly Hills. Honestly, I know some actors who would make the same deal with the Devil if given the choice.

Having been pregnant twice, I can tell you that it is a bizarre experience. I was not carrying Satan’s spawn—although with my now teenage son, it sometimes feels that way—and I was overjoyed both times. But my body was not my own. I was exhausted, my body stretched to seemingly impossible limits, I was literally weighted down with the enormous responsibility. Everything I did had the potential to harm my babies. Don’t eat soft cheese! No deli meat! Eat fish to grow the baby’s brain, but not too much fish or you’ll poison the baby! Do exercises but too much exercise or you’ll go into premature labor! Don’t drink anything or your baby might have fetal alcohol syndrome!

As an actor, being pregnant meant I was unemployable, as if I had a disability. It was impossible to separate myself as a person from my identity as a pregnant woman. It was like my pre-pregnant self was invisible. Strangers all of a sudden had the right to comment on my growing belly and to touch it without asking permission. My in-laws treated me with more reverence once they knew I had male babies who would carry on their family name. I felt guilty about having any doubts about my future duties and how I would be expected to behave once the baby was outside of my body. Even when I went to an Animal Collective concert, some attendees looked at me like I was a buzzkill, a sober reminder of maturity and duty they were trying to stave off for a few hours. I was still me, but in other people’s eyes, I had disappeared into my role as a symbol.

And I had the benefit of advanced medical technology. Imagine being pregnant in 1968 before amniocentesis, before ultrasound, before sonogram photos! Even with those advantages, carrying a baby was vaguely ominous. How did I know I was going to love this stranger inside me? The one who was waking me up at night, making me nauseous, kicking me and rolling around my belly like a ghostly anaconda. The idea of this creature emerging from my body, then people demanding, “Here is a complete stranger. You are now expected to love it more than anything in the world and utterly devote yourself to it for the rest of your life,” was overwhelming.

And even more importantly, imagine not having the choice of whether you wanted/were able to have this baby? The overturning of Roe v. Wade has grabbed one of the most important decisions out of the hands of women and put it into the hands of politicians, usually male. Rosemary’s peril in 1968 is now many of ours. We viscerally feel her terror and legitimate paranoia that dark forces are out to get her. Throughout Rosemary’s Baby,Rosemary is in suffocating locations. We rarely see her outside. The Castevet’s apartment and both doctors’ offices are windowless. The Bramford itself (except for Rosemary’s apartment that she renovated herself in cheerful yellows and whites) is claustrophobic. Having spent some time in the real “Bramford” (the Dakota) as a child, I can tell you that its foreboding depiction is accurate. Even when Rosemary attempts to run away from the coven, she encases herself in a telephone booth while an imposing figure of a man who may or may not be malevolent waits for her outside.

Rosemary’s baby is a graphic, symbolic depiction of what women again face regarding their unwanted or dangerous pregnancies: Her baby is the product of rape, supernatural though it may be, and she is reduced to a symbol, a dark and twisted Madonna. The life of the mother is devalued to the point of inconsequence. As is the baby once it comes out of her womb. We are just a token to the people who want to control our bodies and make us pawns in their political and societal plans. It doesn’t matter if we can afford to raise a kid properly, or if our life is in peril. In fact, that is the point: to keep us disenfranchised, to make us powerless. Just like Rosemary. The disembodied lullaby Rosemary sings throughout the movie is ominous, mournful and discordant, and actually ushers in a terrifying nightmare.

‘Belle de Jour,’ an Un-Erotic Masterpiece, from The Bulwark, 03/30/2022

One of the only productive things I did over the last couple years of isolation was watching movies—specifically older, influential, “important” ones I am intimidated by (a truly silly notion since they’re not going to insult my children or say my house is messy). I consumed multiple Godard, Truffaut, Kubrick, and Fellini movies in HBO Max’s wonderful film catalog with gusto. Which is how the algorithm delivered me to Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour.

I’d heard that Belle de Jour (1967) was an erotic masterpiece. After watching it three times, I only halfway agree. It is absolutely a masterpiece, but it is not erotic. Belle de Jour’s producers, Raymond and Robert Hakim, were famous for making sexually suggestive films. They approached Luis Buñuel to adapt and direct the movie based on the novel by Joseph Kessel, but Buñuel agreed only if he were given complete creative control. The result is a sublime tragi-comedy and an indictment of the bourgeoisie. But it is definitely not titillating.

Belle de Jour is about a beautiful, aristocratic young woman, Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) who won’t consummate her marriage to her impossibly handsome doctor husband, Pierre (Jean Sorel). Instead, she has dreams of total sexual degradation at the hands of Pierre and other men. After hearing about another wife in her social circle who is secretly working as a prostitute, Séverine becomes obsessed with the idea for herself. Husson (Michel Piccoli), a distasteful and mysterious acquaintance, drops the name and address of a brothel he used to frequent. Séverine leaves her tony eighth arrondissementapartment to search for the brothel in a distinctly proletariat section of Paris. After a tentative start, she begins working there in the afternoons. The madam, Anaïs (Geneviève Page) gives her the alias “Belle de Jour” (“beauty of the day”) since she can only work afternoons while her husband is at the hospital. Thus begins her double life: the perfect, if chilly, bourgeois wife to Pierre at night; the blooming, liberated woman Séverine becomes during the day at Madame Anaïs’s whorehouse.

There is no actual sex in Belle de Jour. There isn’t even any real nudity. Séverine’s fantasies aren’t alluring. They’re unsettling and repellent, revealing a woman with an unhealthy, bifurcated spirit: horrifying daydreams that nonetheless thrill her (and that she doesn’t fully disclose to her husband), contrast with her waking life of idle, meaningless beauty and boring consumerism.

The undercurrent of absurdist—and sometimes even slapstick—humor further keeps audiences off balance. Madame Anaïs’s client, “the Professor,” dresses up like a bellhop and becomes angry Séverine doesn’t immediately understand the masochistic roleplay he desires. The butler of a mysterious (and no doubt imaginary) duke wears sunglasses even though he’s indoors and has a querulous relationship with the nobleman, as if they were an old married couple rather than servant and master. Both the Professor and the butler seem like characters out of a sex farce rather than an erotic drama.

Séverine’s fantasies typically involve cats. When rough-looking footmen have their way with her at Pierre’s insistence, she screams, “Don’t let the cats out!” There are the cows with cowbells “named after cats,” whose cow pies Pierre and Husson throw at her as she is tied to a stake. The Duke, before he proposes their tryst, tells Séverine, “I had a cat named Belle de l’Ombre (beauty of the shadows),” a play on her professional name and allusion to his particular morbid kink. As she lies naked but for a black veil in the coffin, The sounds of fighting cats—or, possibly, cats having sex—screech in the background. The butler asks, “Shall I let in the cats?” and the Duke hisses back, “To hell with your damn cats!” Even after majoring in English in college, I cannot figure out the symbolism of invisible wailing cats. The only thing I feel certain about is that Buñuel intends the juxtaposition to be darkly funny.

one of Sévérine’s “fantasies”

I’m going to change tone dramatically: In the many articles and reviews I’ve read in preparation to write about Belle de Jour, none mentioned Séverine was molested as a child. Well, one male writer did, but he said it was “a distraction.” Her sexual assault is intrinsic to the film and it is yet another reason I cannot think of this movie as erotic. It’s common for those who have experienced sexual trauma as children to repress and disassociate from their sexuality. This is why Séverine cannot be intimate with her husband except in fantasies where he is punishing and degrading her. She has been frozen in time psychologically to the age when the molestation occurred.

After her friend tells her in a taxi ride about someone they both know who is turning tricks, Séverine is in a daze. She looks lost as she climbs out of a taxi, her arms full of luxury items from a shopping spree. Back in her apartment, she breaks a vase of red roses Husson had sent to her. In her boudoir, she accidentally knocks over an expensive bottle of perfume and it smashes to the floor. “What’s the matter with me today?” she asks in distress. Immediately afterward we see a middle-aged man encircling and kissing a young girl in a refined parlor room. He looks much like the taxi driver who has just told Séverine about his experience driving men to secret Parisian whorehouses. Her mother’s voice offscreen yells, “Séverine! Come quickly! Are you coming or not?” The scene is brief, but it is indelible and disturbing. Young Séverine is in knee socks and a school beret. She can’t be more than 12, the age when a girl is beginning to discover her sexuality. The man in dirty blue work coveralls is working class in her parents’ employ. Her eyes are closed. We don’t know if this scene has happened many times or just once, and we also don’t know if Séverine is scared, confused or excited. And how can she know? She’s just a little girl.

Wrestling with whether to work for Anaïs or not, Séverine sits on a bench in an elegant park and watches schoolgirls happily and innocently jump rope. In a later scene, one of her Johns comes on to the teenage daughter of the brothel’s housekeeper—in knee socks and school beret—echoing Séverine’s adolescent trauma. The duke, as she cosplays his dead daughter, says, “I hope you have pardoned me. It wasn’t my fault. I loved you too much.” Séverine is beholden to her dark scars. And she thinks the abuse is her fault. She represses her feelings except in salacious daydreams. It is why she is both attracted and repulsed by Husson’s lasciviousness, why she wants to be dominated by anonymous strangers, men who are frequently repellant and not of her social milieu.

The tension between her bourgeois upbringing and her secret desires are what attract her to the dangerous, reckless criminal, Marcel (Pierre Clémenti, in an incredible performance). Marcel is all animal instinct. Feral, in fact. He is tall and rail thin, has fake gold teeth, and is a flamboyant dandy: long, leather coat, velvet suit, hip-slung belt, shiny buckled boots and a walking stick. As if Lord Byron were a petty thief. He has cheekbones that could cut glass and a stare that sees right through Séverine’s fake placidity. He stalks around her, examining her up and down as if she were a prize breeding mare. He is cruel on purpose, testing to see how she will react. There is a strange, savage elegance to him. He moves like a dancer. He is undeniably alluring. And his arrogance is a front for his vast insecurity and vulnerability, a feeling of being alone and adrift in the world.

Again, we never see Marcel and Séverine have sex, but Buñuel does have a closeup of his legs on top of hers. Her patent leather, Yves St. Laurent shoes beneath his feet as he pushes off his patent leather boots and reveals dirty socks with holes underneath.

Buñuel and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carrière, paint Séverine and Marcel’s daytime trysts as more than just sexual. They are oddly romantic. He loves her in his own treacherous way. And she refuses to charge him for sex even before they’ve had it; afterwards, her hands tremble. “You scare me,” she says. Marcel is the antithesis of selfless, harmless, Ken-doll-good-looking Pierre, and that’s what Séverine can’t resist. Marcel is the dark, lowlife Romeo to her Juliet. We understand why they are tragically drawn to each other. They have genuine chemistry. But Séverine knows their pairing is unhealthy and unholy. She says to Husson, when he discovers her at the brothel, “I’m lost. I know I’ll have to answer for it one day. But I couldn’t live without it.”

Pierre Clémanti and Catherine Deneuve

And of course, Séverine is right. Marcel’s obsession with her culminates in the attempted assassination of Pierre, paralyzing him, blinding him, and rendering him mute. The police then kill Marcel. Cut off from both her light and dark lovers, she becomes a chaste, dutiful wife again. In her black A-line dress and pious white collar (dressed like a “precocious schoolgirl,” as Husson taunts), she feeds her husband medicine while he sits immobile in a wheelchair, dark sunglasses covering his unseeing eyes. She finally feels whole. She’s expiating her guilt by serving him for the rest of their sexless lives. “Ever since your accident, my dreams have stopped,” she tells him. This is her warped version of Happily Ever After.

Until, that is, Husson comes to see Pierre to tell him about Séverine’s double life. He claims it’s so Pierre doesn’t feel like a burden to the perfect wife he assumed he had married. But it’s truly to punish Séverine. Husson is merely a sadist. He has become the real life torturer he was in her fantasy when he threw cow shit on her and called her a slut.

As the clock chimes five—the hour she used to return home from the brothel—she re-enters the living room where Pierre sits in helpless misery, tears running down his cheeks. She sinks back into the couch. All of a sudden she hears the cow bells again. Pierre takes off his glasses, smiles at her, and rises out of his wheelchair. The cats screech. He and Séverine toast each other, they hug, they chat about where they might go on vacation. And then we hear the horse-bells. Séverine walks out onto her Parisian balcony, and all of a sudden she is back in the country where the first scene took place, the black horse and carriage with the gangster-footmen riding beneath her.

What is real and what is fantasy? Has she divided once again? At what point do Séverine’s masochistic daydreams become her real life? Was the whole movie in her head? Did any of it really happen? Is Séverine a living person or is she a symbol? Is she a victim, a heroine, or a villain? Rather than a tale of eroticism, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière intend Belle de Jour to be a fable without a moral, a dark fairy tale, a pitch-black Cinderella: Anaïs (or maybe Husson) as a perverse fairy godmother, two handsome princes and even a horse-drawn carriage. Depending on which interpretation we want to cling to, either Pierre’s tears release him from an evil spell or Séverine escapes the misery of her guilt by falling deep into fantasy (and maybe madness) once again.

And so we end as we began: the horse and carriage and footmen driving in the countryside, either a new beginning, or an endless loop of a nightmare.

‘The Sentinel’ at 45: Terribly scary, with emphasis on "Terribly," Bulwark, 1/11/2022

Okay, I’m not going to pretend that The Sentinel (1977) is one of my favorite horror movies. The Sentinel, which was released 45 years ago this week, is actually pretty bad. Some might argue that it’s terrible. But what I will say is that it’s definitely not boring. And when I was a kid, the commercial for it scared the shitout of me so it holds a special horrific fondness in my heart.

Written and directed by Michael Winner, The Sentinel is about a beautiful but troubled model, Alison (Cristina Raines), who moves into a massive brownstone apartment in Brooklyn Heights so she can have some independence from her controlling boyfriend, Michael (Chris Sarandon), as she’s deciding whether to marry him. The building itself is in perfect condition with grand paintings hanging in the hallways, and the gigantic apartment comes fully furnished and decorated like an upscale funeral parlor. While I would be completely creeped out by its design, Alison is charmed. Her chilly, busybody realtor, Ava Gardner, tells Alison the rent is $500. Alison says “Oh I’m afraid that’s a bit too much.” (!) So Gardner immediately lowers it to $400. Find me a New Yorker who wouldn’t live in a mausoleum for $400.

The only issue that gives Alison pause is that on the top floor there is a man in religious robes constantly staring out the window. “There’s someone staring at me from the fifth floor,” Alison says. “That’s Father Halliran,” Gardner explains. “He’s a priest. He’s kind of senile. He sits by the window. He’s blind.” Alison responds, “Blind? Well then what does he look at?” A very valid question, in my opinion.

Of course, according to the classic trope of horror movies, strange occurrences begin happening immediately after Alison moves in. She meets her eccentric—to say the least—neighbors (including Burgess Meredith and Sylvia Miles, among other cinematic luminaries) who are suffocatingly and relentlessly friendly and enthusiastic. She hears heavy footsteps walking above her at night. Lights flicker and chandeliers swing as she tries to sleep in her sexy lingerie. She experiences migraines, insomnia, and fainting spells, and it starts affecting her supermodel career. (Relatable.)

When Alison contacts the real estate broker, she tells her nobody has lived in the building save Alison and the blind priest for at least three years. (Dum, dum, DUMMM!) Too-long-story-short, this priest, (John Carradine) guards over the gates of Hell, the bizarre neighbors are ghosts of deceased homicidal maniacs who are also Satan’s minions (impressive multitasking), and Alison is a damsel in distress and is in for a devil of a time. As one might expect from a film by the director of Death Wish, New York City is a rough place and it ain’t for everyone.

It’s hard being a supermodel with a Devil of a migraine

There are a few things that make this truly demented movie remarkable. The lineup of famous 1970s faces is bonkers: Josê Ferrer, Martin Balsam, Arthur Kennedy, and Eli Wallach costar; Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, and Jeff Goldblum have bit parts. Uncredited actors include Charles Kimborough (“hospital doctor”), Richard Dreyfuss (“man on the street”), and Tom Berenger (“man at the end”). Notably, Beverly D’Angelo plays a mute reanimated murderer, but who dresses solely in red leotards and makes her presence known by simulating masturbation in front of Alison when Sylvia Miles invites her over for some neighborly tea (again, relatable).

Most remarkably, Michael Winner cast the other denizens of Hell with people who were sideshow performers (or from hospitals) who had significant physical deformities. According to Edgar Wright in “Trailers from Hell,” Winner instructed the crew to eat with them at lunch, “because they were ‘real people too,’ but he himself decided not to eat with them because he found them to be disgusting.” (If this essay can’t convince you to watch The Sentinel, available for rental on the VOD platform of your choice, Wright’s amused enthusiasm for this “rather unpleasant, in parts” film that “has gotta be seen to be believed” will likely do the trick.)

An aside: a personal nostalgic joy for me about this movie is that one of my father’s best friends, Hank Garrett, plays an unscrupulous PI hired by Michael to investigate Alison’s claims of evil, supernatural occurrences. Hank has had a fascinating life. His birth name was Henry Greenberg Cohen Sandler Weinblatt (can you believe he’s a fellow member of the Tribe?). In order to defend himself growing up in a tough Harlem neighborhood, he started lifting weights and actually won the 1958 Junior Olympic Powerlifting competition. Then he became a professional wrestler under the moniker “The Minnesota Farm Boy,” a natural name for a Jew from Harlem who most likely had never even stepped foot in the Midwest. He then segued to being a Borscht Belt comedian and then an actor in TV and films, most notably playing cops and heavies (sometimes hard to tell the difference) in Columbo, Kojak, Dragnet, Serpico, Death Wish, and Three Days of the Condor. While he played tough guys on screen, Hank was a delightful and upbeat presence whenever he came over to our apartment with his wife, Aggie. He kibitzed with my dad and they told stories and old Jewish jokes to each other, and he was absolutely wonderful with me and my sister. I had no idea he was in The Sentinel until I watched it last year. When I was little and not allowed to see his film work (and I would have been horribly bored if I had been), I wouldn’t have believed the sweet and funny guy cracking jokes and playing Connect Four with us at our dining table was also the murderer who tried to kill Robert Redford in an epic and brutal fight on film.

None of the actors in The Sentinel are at the top of their game and poor, beautiful Cristina Raines is in completely over her head. The cinematography is lackluster and sometimes even amateurish. The sound is subpar. There are a preponderance of orgies. The movie seems like a poor man’s version of The Exorcist meets Rosemary’s Baby. The script is laughably bad in parts. For example, Winner clearly tried to channel Bette Davis’s banter in All About Eve for Ava Gardner except the dialogue comes out as camp rather than witty. When Gardner asks Alison where she’s from and Alison says “Baltimore”—although her accent seems more like Baltimore by way of Tampa—Ava Gardner practically growls at her, “from Baltimore…how…nice.” If you are confused as to why being from Baltimore is of any significance to the realtor, you have something in common with me. And Winner makes Ava Gardner utter what I consider to be an instant classic: “I find New Yorkers have no sense for anything except sex and money.” Once again, as someone born and bred in New York City: relatable.

However, there is a grittiness and a daring that pays off. Christina Raines’s acting inability actually makes her more sympathetic and vulnerable. She genuinely looks confused and lost. Michael Winner’s utter lack of taste and decorum create some genuinely frightening scenes. The unrelenting Catholic guilt mixed with truly demonic sexual perversion is disorienting and nightmarish. The ’70s camera angles and zoom shots are also discombobulating and give us a glimpse into Alison’s personal hell, so to speak. Freaks must have been a seminal movie for Michael Winner, except he made no attempt to portray his own physically challenged cast sympathetically. They are meant to be seen as grotesque and evil. Imagine the outrage if this movie were made now.

It is vulgar and sadistic, but it is also effective. The final scenes are ghastly and terrifying. Maybe that’s what I sensed when I was little and was scared stiff by the commercial. It infected me even without seeing the movie itself. And even though it was poorly received when it premiered, The Sentinel has now become a cult classic, hence the adoration from auteurs like Edgar Wright.

Let’s not forget that this movie does something all great pictures do: it provides a little bit of wish fulfillment. Four hundred dollars a month for a floor-through brownstone apartment on Montague Street right off the Brooklyn Promenade is an absolute steal even if it is the gateway to Hell.

The 1970s: A Down and Dirty Decade of Horror Filmmaking - from The Bulwark, 10/30/2021

I’ve been watching independent 1970s horror movies for professional reasons—and as fortune would have it after viewing many, for personal reasons as well. Being terrified is a good distraction from other, more reality-based anxieties: Switching off the ever-depressing cable news channels following the 2016 election and switching on Danny Boyle’s zombie opus 28 Days Later was oddly relieving. That flick was a throwback to the strange, gritty horror flicks of the 1970s, a number of which I’ve had to watch more than once given that my hands instinctively fly to my eyes when the scary stuff starts. But they’re a pleasure to watch: Compared to many modern horror movies, they are both more daring and inventive because of their directors’ vision and their lack of technological innovations that we now take for granted.

To be clear—my scope is narrow. I’m not going to talk about massive, popular blockbusters like The Exorcist, Jaws, or Carrie. I’m also not going to talk about the slasher films that also emerged during the ’70s, mostly because I have seen few and, frankly, don’t enjoy them. What I will be talking about are films we might today describe as “elevated” horror, a term unknown in that more innocent era. I am drawn to ’70s horror movies because of their deceptive simplicity and rawness.
et’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), directed by John Hancock, begins with three hippies driving a hearse with a “love” sticker on its side onto a ferry in a rural town. The older locals are distinctly unfriendly to them. Jessica (Zohra Lampert), her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman), and their friend Woody (Kevin O’Connor), dismiss their inhospitality as small-town conservatism. While moving into the old Victorian house Duncan and Jessica have bought as a respite from life in New York City (where Jessica has just finished a stint in a mental hospital), they come upon a beautiful squatter, Emily (Mariclare Costello). Frightened at first, after proper introductions Jessica very kindly asks her to stay. Everything is kumbaya heaven: there is a sing-along, a seance, good food and good company. Soon afterward, however, things start to unravel in a terrifying way. The ethereally beautiful Emily might actually be a vampire.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’s cast is wonderful, particularly Zohra Lampert. It was director John Hancock’s first movie, and he gathered most of the cast from theater productions he had directed. This helps explain why it feels a bit like a play: There are only four main characters, and the he dialogue is focused and psychologically astute, exploring the stress between the status quo (in the form of past generations of vampires) and the era’s counterculture (our heroes) in this seemingly idyllic spot.

The budget was just $250,000, but its financial limitations make it special. There is one set: the house. For all I know, a friend lent John Hancock their country house for a month. I had never heard of anyone in the cast except for Zohra Lampert. The special effects are not that special: dummies floating in the lake; no fangs or that much blood, just slashes on townspeople’s necks and pallor on their transformed faces. At one point Jessica catches a “mole” and in a close-up we see it’s clearly a brown mouse. The actors look like they supplied their own wardrobe. Most of the lighting is ambient. With no air-conditioning in the old house, the cast’s faces often look sweaty. Zohra Lampert is gap-toothed and maybe a little too old to play a hippie. Barton Heyman is short and balding—not your typical leading man.

But the actors seem real. Duncan looks like a struggling musician. Woody looks like a handy, free-spirit. And Zohra Lampert glows with an inner goodness that makes you root for her. Her performance radiates nuance, empathy, and kindness, which makes it particularly tragic to see her optimism crumble in terror around her. In most of her scenes she is smiling through her pain and confusion. She tries to see the best in people, even if they turn out to be supernatural murderers.

Today, executives would recast Lampert with someone younger who has perfectly straight, dazzlingly white teeth. Duncan would be tall and handsome and have a full head of hair. Jessica’s matronly nightgown would be revealing lingerie. There would be jump-scares and gore and CGI. Lots, and lots, and lots of CGI. That brown mouse would’ve been a CGI mole, for sure.

It is tight and human and intimate. It’s a very simple story told in a straightforward, unfussy way. The editing by today’s standards is slow, Hancock lingering without cutting so the viewer can see each character’s body language in long shots. The sight of Emily’s lengthy fingernails sent a slight shiver down my spine. There are “day for night” scenes, and the sound is spotty. After Duncan becomes a vampire, the only difference is in his emotional stiffness and his pallor created solely by face powder.

But this lack of cinematic artifice isn’t distracting. In fact, it enhances the intimacy and pathos. These are real characters experiencing something extraordinary and horrific. Did vampires kill all her friends or did Jessica descend into madness and murder the people she loved the most? Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’s simplicity is its gift.

David Cronenberg’s THE BROOD

In David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979), Frank (Art Hindle) has divorced his wife Nola (Samantha Eggar), who is under the care of a controversial psychiatrist, Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). Hal practices “psychoplasmics,” a process that creates bizarre physical transformations but is supposed to affect some kind of catharsis in his patients. Frank believes his ex-wife has physically abused their daughter Candice during her visitations. Meanwhile inhuman, dwarf-like creatures terrorize and slaughter people close to Candice and Frank, like Candice’s grandmother, grandfather, and teacher. The murders seem to coincide with Nola’s therapy sessions. And there is a reason for that: These relentless killer-dwarves are literal outgrowths of Nola’s rage at the people in her life she considers her tormentors. The Brood is a terrifying meditation on parenthood, divorce, generational trauma and what happens when what used to be love transforms into hate.

Again, this isn’t a sumptuous, beautiful movie. It’s full of ’70s rawness. The Canadian winter light is harsh and flat with suffocating, endless snow. Every day is overcast. The picture quality is grainy. People don’t look their best in that angle of light and they’re not supposed to. Makeup is minimal. The only person who looks beautiful is Nola and this is used against her in the end, as if her beauty were another aspect of her sickness.

The warmth of Hal Raglan’s 1970s post-and-beam house in the middle of the woods is a huge contrast in style and feeling from the rest of the movie: all variations of brown and orange inside compared to the vast, sterile whiteness outside. When Hal lets Frank into his house dressed in a short robe and Oomphies slippers, the glow inside highlights the chill outside.

Several of the cast’s performances are clunky and stiff; Art Hindle is blandly and forgettably handsome, like a guest star on an episode of a B-list 1970s detective show, and his reaction to the inconceivable horror unfolding around him is almost nonplussed. But I feel it is on purpose. “Frank” is supposed to be a blank slate, a non-actor, someone who could be a stand-in for anyone. He is absorbed into the action, he doesn’t affect it. And Candice is supposed to be a lonely, strange child with a flat aspect. It’s not entirely surprising that the mom responsible for half of her DNA generates horrific creatures who resemble her.

If this movie were made now, those in charge would demand a more appealing child actor who would tug at our heartstrings. But sympathy isn’t the point. In fact, it’s theopposite of the point. Cronenberg’s genius is to present this movie “objectively,” with as few flourishes and the least warmth possible so that the grotesque horror of the situation stands out.

All the horrific dwarf-like creatures were real people underneath practical makeup by genius Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London, folks), adding a little extra creepy verisimilitude to the setting. Again, one can only imagine how lame the modern CGI iterations of these beings would be today.he most effective way I can differentiate 1970s independent horror movies from today’s is to compare the 1977 Suspiria with the 2018 Suspiria. Although I think both are engrossing, they couldn’t be more different in style, tone, pace, and story.

Dario Argento said Suspiria (1977) was his twisted version of Snow White, itself a pretty twisted story. Argento’s take concerns a young woman, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), who comes to Germany (although the whole movie looks distinctly Italian) to study with the prestigious Tanz dance company. She arrives in a downpour to see one of the dance students running in terror away from the school; that student subsequently dies in the most mysterious and horrific way. Suzy is delighted and honored to be given free room and board until strange occurrences happen to her and her friends. She soon discovers that this company is run by a coven of witches, and her demise is part of their devious plan.

Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), other than being set at a German dance company (really in Germany) with the same character names (and a cameo appearance by Jessica Harper), is an entirely different sort of movie. Suzy Bannion arrives at Tanz with an already broken spirit, haunted by the dying breaths of her mother who called her “my curse.” She begs for a chance and is accepted into the company by the lead dance teacher, Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) even though she has no formal training. She soon becomes Blanc’s prize student: she chooses Suzy to be the lead dancer in a piece (that is really a ceremonial incantation) they will perform in public after the former lead, unbeknownst to the other dancers, dies gruesomely as the result of a spell.

As with most 1970s horror films, the original Suspiria is down and dirty at one and a half hours. Even though the 2018 version has more frenetic pacing, it is an hour longer than its predecessor. The editing in the modern version doesn’t linger on shots like the original—for example, the very odd and seemingly random scene in which Suzy and Sarah float in Tanz’s giant Roman indoor pool. It is “slow”; bizarre and unique.The original is almost entirely from Suzy’s perspective, just like Snow White is the main protagonist in her story. However, in the latter version, we shift perspectives between four main characters: Suzy; Madame Blanc; Suzy’s best friend, Sara; and an elderly psychiatrist who treated one of the dancers who disappeared. Because of this, the 2018 version is a psychologically richer film. But it’s also less fun.

Sometimes Argento’s Suspiria feels not just like Snow White, but also Alice in Wonderland. The bright primary colors, especially the geometric stained-glass dome that impales one of the dancer’s friends, remind me of playing cards. Argento’s DP used “imbibition Technicolor” to amp up the colors to unnatural brightness. He also used a special lens to stretch out the image to widescreen and then shrink the image vertically, which gives the interior shots a nightmarish, claustrophobic feel. To add to the artifice, he dubbed the actor’s voices or used ADR for the English-speaking cast so the dialogue sounds a little off. Suzy walks innocently into this coven of witches and we as the audience are discombobulated as well. The exterior of the Tanz building feels like a fake wooden facade because it was. The synthesizer music by Goblin repeats like a hypnotic spell throughout Suzy’s journey. It’s like an exaggerated heartbeat and is both spooky and absurd. Everything about this movie looks a bit off-kilter and ersatz; even the blood looks like bright, red paint. And of course, other than the choice of lenses and the film development process, almost every other nightmarish vision is made with practical effects and makeup. Most of the performances are almost camp. It is deliberately garish. The cinematography is stunning but also vulgar. The various dreadful ways the witches kill their victims are more like turning the pages of a brilliant and grotesque pop-up book than watching a film, but this story is more about style than pathos. We don’t know enough about the inner workings of anyone’s psyches to care too much about them. We go along on this fever dream of a journey. After killing the head witch, Elena Markos, which in turn kills the rest of the coven, Suzy runs from the imploding dance school into a downpour with a smile on her face, like all heroines in fairy tales, unscathed and untraumatized.

Although the 2018 Suspiria has its terrifying moments as well, it is mainly a feminist interpretation about guilt, trauma, politics, loss and destiny. Instead of being an innocent victim, Suzy is complicit. Madame Blanc is complex and conflicted, both a tormentor and a surrogate mother to the seemingly lost Suzy. She also ends up being a martyr. The elderly psychiatrist, also played by an uncredited Swinton, is torn apart by guilt. 1977 Berlin is similarly torn apart politically, East and West. Suzy’s best friend at the company, beautifully acted by Mia Goth, is entirely well-rounded and sympathetic so we actually care when the witches kill her. Death and loss loom over every moment, giving the movie a weight that doesn’t exist in the original. Thom Yorke’s score is a bit heavy-handed and doesn’t have the same bizarre hypnotic effect as Goblin’s. The drab colors (until the final dance performance and climax, which of course indulges in CGI effects aplenty) only add to the gloominess. And this version has absolutely no sense of humor. It’s a seriousmovie, doncha know! I thoroughly enjoyed it but it didn’t worm its way inside me like Argento’s did. It felt more like a psychodrama than a nightmare, and in that way it takes fewer chances and is actually more conservative than the 1977 picture. Dario Argento isn’t a fan of the modern version. Even though I think it’s accomplished and complex, I can understand his feelings: while Luca Guadagnino considers it a love letter to Dario Argento, Argento probably feels it’s a love letter to someone else sent to him by accident.

And now I will be a typical myopic actor. If I were lucky enough to have been offered a chance to be in either production, which would I prefer? And I will again engage in a typically actorish hedge by answering “both.” The 2018 Suspiria offers up more actual emotional depth, and I’d have the opportunity to work with great actors like Tilda Swinton. I mean, how could I possibly say no?

But being in the original 1977 Suspiria would be an absolute blast. Insane, but a blast. When I was younger I acted in many bizarre experimental theater productions off-off-off (etc.) Broadway. Three were in a rundown theater in SoHo (which has been renovated and is now a fancy theater in SoHo) that at the time had many seats cordoned off because they were broken. I didn’t even understand what I was saying most of the time, but acting in these plays was an adventure. The productions were absurdly low budget, and because of this we were forced to be extra tricky and inventive. And we were! Our director’s imagination and visual sense were extraordinary and once we were in front of an audience, no matter how small, they were enraptured and actually taught me the nonsense we were performing made sense. There was one scene where I played an angel teaching the Devil the hokey pokey and at the end I jumped on his back and rode offstage. I thought it was absurd and funny, which it was.

But over and over, the audience found it moving—I heard them react. And I realized that my angel was soothing that Devil. She was undaunted by his ferocity. He softened and let her love and help him. I was so grateful to that audience for teaching me that we were all in this experience together. And I think I would have a similar experience acting in the 1970s Suspiria. I’d have no idea what I was doing or what effect I’d have on the audience until I saw it together with them in a movie theater. They would instruct me about what I had done by their reactions. My job would be to submit to a mad-genius director like Dario Argento and trust his instincts. His bold, raw and surreal 1970s sensibilities would make his nightmare fairy tale my dream job.

Oaxaca

Going up was fine, but going down the mountain—the bus driver’s heavy foot on the tortuous, narrow roads—was miserable.

My companion told him to slow down, that we’d prefer to live than try to get to the beach fifteen minutes early and tumble down the mountain. But the driver was unmoved. He told my friend he had a headache and wanted to get to Pochutla quickly so he could buy some medicine. Why he was playing godawful techno music in the bus was a mystery.

So instead of taking pictures of us sinking through the clouds, I was trying not to throw up,

I missed pretending we were coming down from Heaven while the sun set behind the mountains casting them as silhouettes. Rather, I worried about the sweet bread I’d eaten an hour earlier ending up on the floor of the bus. I asked my friend if it was going to get better. He’s an honest person and told me, ‘No.”

When I feel like I’m going to vomit ,all my other concerns fly out the window. I clung to the handle on the seat in front of me, closed my eyes, and wrote this poem in my head.

I let go of myself and listened to the old women joking around with each other and the driver, only recognizing a few words here and there.

***

It’s dangerous making strangers into symbols for me and my life. I know everyone has problems.

But I couldn’t help thinking this bus ride that was my singular six-hour hell was a normal commute for them.

The women had gone to the city and were coming back to their towns with supplies that would probably last a few weeks.

They had offered us beer when we climbed into the bus. Even feeling nauseous, I wished I’d accepted their generosity.

One woman had brought her eighty-five year old mother to the city to see a doctor.

She told her mom to have faith.

She would be okay.

I have so much.

But they seemed happier, or at least more content.

More solid.

Jostled only by the bus.

Fire Island

I’m certain my mom pushed the idea of spending our summers in Fire Island on my dad. He was not a beach person. He hated the feel of sand on his feet. I’m not sure I ever saw him swim. He’d spend ten excruciating minutes slathering sunscreen on the front of his body and legs, make our mom rub it into his back and sit miserably for five minutes until he and his floppy hat trudged over to the water. He’d gingerly wade in mid-calf, scoop the Atlantic Ocean into his cupped hands and pat it, grimacing, on his knees and chest. He’d never submerge his head. Ever. 

My dad was vain about his hair. There wasn’t all that much of it and he spent a significant amount of his time worrying about it. He’d count how many black hairs were in the sink every morning and give us an unsolicited report on their demise. He’d slick his hair back and poof it up to make it look thicker and fuller. My sister and I (and probably my mom) weren’t allowed to touch it. He always had a comb in his shirt pocket at the ready. In the mid-seventies he even splurged for hair-plugs. The procedure was fairly crude at that time and the recovery was arduous and painful.  He wore a bandage like a mummy the first few days back from the doctor’s office and when my mom unwrapped him, the top of his head looked like pepperoni pizza. My sister and I were revolted but fascinated. When the plugs finally healed his hair looked exactly the same.

Dad in his blue shirt and me

***

Five minutes after touching the salt water, my dad was done. He’d throw on his blue button down shirt, pick up his book and hop over the burning hot sand to the boardwalk where he’d rinse his feet with a hose so he could slip on his shoes and get back to our house as soon as humanly possible. Although he was distraught that we had no air-conditioning.

On the contrary, my mom became her full, happy self at the beach. She would rub Bain de Soleil into her skin and read her book, smoking exactly one Gitane. She threw herself under the crest of the waves and when she was just past them, floated on her back or swam in an unorthodox crawl. She had spent many happy summer holidays on the French coast as a girl, and she taught me and my sister to love the ocean too, one of the best gifts she could have given us. 

Mom and my sister, Meg

I also feel whole when I’m by the sea. It both calms and excites me, looking at the line where the sky meets the water, imagining another woman who maybe looks like me but who has a completely different life on the other side of the ocean. Maybe she’s wondering about me too.

***

My mom discovered Fire Island through her friend, Phyllis. Phyllis had two sons who had been in the same playgroup as Meg and me. She and my mom had seen a spark in each other and frequently went out for coffee and talked while their kids, as her son, my friend Tommy Dog said, “ran toy cars through paint, or whatever.” Phyllis was quirky and sophisticated. On the surface, ethereal and fluttery, but underneath, smart, determined and savvy. Petite, with dark ringlets often peeking out from under a big hat, red lips and kohled eyes, she had a sense for what was hot. She created an iconic Pop Art ‘80s New York company called “Think Big,” which blew up common everyday objects like yellow pencils and tennis balls to giant sculptural size. John McEnroe posed with the tennis ball in a Think Big’s print ad.  The objects were whimsical, fun, eye-catching and strangely moving seeing them from that different, larger perspective. Phyllis brought out my mom’s adventurous and rebellious side. She encouraged Mom to be up for anything. She was warm, real and non-judgmental, and she made my mom open up in ways that might not come naturally to her polite, British self. 

Think Big NYC

Fire Island was the place to vacation in the 70s. We rented in Dunewood, a sleepy town where many other of our fellow Rodeph Sholom parents stayed. If you were a comfortably-off, Liberal, Upper West Sider, Fire Island was where you went for the summer.  Or if you were gay, but that was on the other, less sedate side of the island, “The Pines.” Fire Island is only nine miles long, but the two groups were good at sharing. As my sister, Meg, and I were building what we called “drip-drop” sandcastles —we’d build a normal castle first and then take wet sand in a bucket and drip over it to give our structure an old, melted look, like mini Gaudi's—men walking in couples would pass us in tiny bathing suits completely unlike the unremarkable one our dad would wear. Meg and I had a sense of what being gay was even though no one had explained it to us. We were slightly curious but not shocked. Their foreignness merited only a glance up, no stares.

Meg and me at the ocean

***

My dad had voice-over auditions during the week and came out reluctantly on the weekends. He made a good living. City life wasn’t as expensive back then, but paying for two girls in private school, a two bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive and a month-long rental on Fire Island wasn’t cheap. Since there was no air-conditioning and no movie theaters (with air-conditioning), he had to look for obsessions where he could find them. His was poison ivy. With poison ivy, he was Van Helsing if Van Helsing had run away screaming from Dracula instead of driving a stake through his heart. 

To be fair, poison ivy and mosquitoes were two of the Fire Island secular Jews’ greatest tormentors. Nazi shrubs and insects, feasting voraciously on our bodies. 

We had pocket-sized books about birds and mammals and plants. The only dog-eared page was the one describing the evil, red-tinged plant. My dad perpetually assumed he was on the verge of breaking out in an incurable rash. He saturated countless cotton balls with calamine lotion and spotched his body with the pink liquid. “Jenny, put some on my back. I can’t reach it. I feel it coming.” And the same with mosquitoes. He constantly worried about being bitten although he hardly ever was.

I’m not sure of the exact circumstance because it certainly seems out of character, but my mom told me Dad had decided to clear some brush in front of the house. A kid came by and yelled something to him. My dad couldn’t hear him because it was windy. The kid kept yelling. Annoyed, my father finally went toward him down the wooden-planked path: 

“What is it?”

“Mister, did you know the stuff you’re cutting is poison ivy?” 

I have no idea how a man as obsessed as Ishmael was with his whale couldn’t have realized what he was pruning. He ran into the house and jumped in the shower hyperventilating. He washed himself three times and spent the rest of the day and night inspecting his arms and legs for raised, angry welts to appear. They never did and he seemed almost sad. 

***

One stormy, weekday night when my mom was by herself with me and Meg, I was rocking back and forth on a barstool next to the kitchen counter as Mom prepared dinner for us. She asked me to stop. She wasn’t usually a mother who was anxious about looming dangers, so I should have listened to her but of course I didn’t. I even felt a tinge of pleasure that I was annoying her. Attention is better than no attention. It was easy to get it from my dad, but my mom was more of a challenge.

So I rocked, hands on the counter to make sure I got the maximum amount of sway. I felt the stool tip. I landed on the ground, the leg of the stool inside me.

My mom dropped everything and ran to my side. I was shrieking and bloody. Meg, who was five, started screaming in solidarity. My mom was shaking. I strangely felt no pain but my mom thought I might be in shock. There was no hospital on Fire Island, so Mom had to call the fire station to send an ambulance and take us to the mainland, thunder, lightning and rain raging all around us.

Now that I’m a mom I can imagine what was going through my own mother’s head. The combination of anger at her child and desperate worry that she hadn’t been paying sufficient attention to keep her safe. The fear of being singly responsible for your childrens’ fate, knowing that she would be blamed by her husband, acquaintences and strangers if her daughter had been injured because of her *negligence*. Her British stoicism served her well in this instance; her emotions must have been roiling inside her but she made sure to mask them with deliberate calmness so my sister and I wouldn’t be even more scared than we already were. I try to follow her lead now with my own children when they are hurt or in distress. She was a good teacher.  

The Bay Shore ER doctor examined me. I had stopped bleeding. I was holding my mom’s hand. Meg was curled up asleep on another examining table.

“Mrs. Hartig. Everything is fine. There’s no real injury.”

“But she was bleeding so much. How is that possible?”

The leg of the stool had broken my hymen. Apparently this sometimes happens when girls start riding horses but I did it in my own, typically dramatic way. I lost my virginity to a stool. I don’t remember my mom’s reaction at the time, but I hope she laughed and at least she got a good story out of our ordeal.

***

Meg and I loved Amy. Mom hired her to be our babysitter so she could sometimes have an actual summer break away from her kids. Believe me, now I completely understand. 

Amy seemed like an adult to me, but she was probably just eighteen or nineteen. She was pretty, blonde and good-natured. She was from Long Island and, like us, she came out to Fire Island during the summers because her friends did also.

There wasn’t much to do at night save the occasional casual dinner party, so Amy mostly took care of us during the day a few times a week. She made us lunch, brought us to our activities or found us things to do on rainy days so Meg and I didn’t go stir crazy. She was good at Connect 4 and braiding my hair.

What what my Mom didn’t know, because Amy told us not to tell her, was that sometimes Amy would take us to her friends’ houses to hang out. Well, more like to watch Amy and her friends hang out. She didn’t ignore us. She’d let us stay in the living room with them, but the focus was definitely more on teenagers than it was on a five and seven-year-old. Their modus operandi was benign neglect and Meg and I didn’t mind. I had always liked loitering at the grownups’ table so being allowed to eavesdrop and try to understand what Amy and her friends were talking about was my cup of tea.

Amy’s boyfriend slung his arm around her tanned shoulder, his hand loosely dangling over it. Amy smiled, not looking at him. It might be the first time I grasped the concept of a boyfriend. They seemed to like each other because they kissed a lot. It was like practicing for marriage, I guessed. But my parents didn’t ever do that. I wondered why.

I don’t know where her friends’ parents were. Maybe her boyfriend and his friends were older and rented this house on their own. I remember the living room was dark and it had laminate wood paneling. There were wicker lounge chairs and all the furnishings were in various shades of brown. 

Amy installed us on the couch while her boyfriend and about five friends would drink, play records and laugh and talk. It was the first time I ever heard the Rolling Stones. On the inside of one of Amy’s favorite albums, all of the band members were draped over a Medieval castle wall in what looked like jesters’ clothing. They looked pretty silly to me, like clowns or the non-scary monsters on Sesame Street. Amy thought the lead singer was handsome, but I had no idea why. 

They smoked cigarettes. My mom loved her occasional Gitane, but these cigarettes smelled unfamiliar and they passed one around at a time, which I had never seen Mom do. I thought it was really generous of them to share them with each other. 

Meg and I kept our word and didn’t tell my parents. But Amy overplayed her hand. One of her friends had a speedboat, and one day she took us on it. She put life-jackets on us, but the water was choppy and the boat bumped up and down and spray went all over us. I was scared, but Meg wasn’t and we both had fun being bounced around the boat cutting through the waves at rapid speed.

The day after, my mom noticed forming bruises on our bodies when she was giving us our baths. We told her that it was probably from the boat bouncing us.

“What boat?”

“The one that Amy took us on.”

Amy had forgotten to tell us not to say anything.

My mother was terrifying when she was angry. My father was a yeller but I wasn’t as scared of him. He was emotional, I was used to it. My mother, on the other hand, was like a cobra—all that English reserve coiled up and deadly, ready to strike. When our dad spanked us, he almost cried. When mom spanked us, it stung.

I saw that switch flip in Mom’s eyes and I was sick with worry for Amy..

She called Amy’s house and told her to come over immediately. Amy arrived. She had a giant bruise on her legs as well. It hadn’t even gotten to the purple stage; it was still red and angry, but it didn’t compare to my mom. She took Amy into her bedroom and screamed at her through gritted teeth. Meg and I stood in the living room, frozen. We couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, but we heard Amy wailing, confessing everything and begging for mercy. Amy soon ran out of our house, unable to look at us.

That was the end of Amy.

***

the bay

Jeff was a lifeguard and my swimming teacher. He was eighteen and lean, and his brown curls were tinged with blonde from being in the sun and seawater all summer. He wore a puka shell necklace that glowed white against his honey-colored skin. He looked like Apollo. Most of the moms had secret crushes on him but mine was blatantly obvious. I was a child who fell hard and often for boys, but my feelings for Jeff were true and deep. I would crawl into his lap and hug him at the end of each lesson. I wasn’t special; all the kids he taught were drawn to him.

For a teenage boy, he was preternaturally patient, gentle and kind. It was impossible not to be at least a little enamored of him. He radiated beauty and beneficence. 

I was not an adventurous kid. I was pretty much scared of everything and learning how to swim was no exception. Jaws had just opened that June, and even though I wasn’t allowed to see the movie, I was nonetheless terrified of Great White sharks eating me. Never mind that sharks don’t swim in the bay where we had lessons, and that Meg and I would cast out rods at the end of the dock for two hours and only catch a couple of small snappers. I was sure that I was destined to become Bruce chum. I could convince myself that he would get me in the bathtub. 

I was fine while I was in arm’s reach of Jeff, but when he told all the kids to jump off the edge of the dock and swim back to where he was wading in the bay, I refused. 

“Come on, Zandy. I know you can do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I don’t want to hear you say ‘can’t.’”

“I cannot.”

“Zandy, if you do it, you’ll be so proud of yourself. I’ll be so proud of you. Don’t be scared.”

I wanted him to be proud of me, but I weighed it in the balance with being eaten alive and it didn’t tip the scale.

He paused. He strategized. He sized me up. All the kids were staring, waiting for me.

“Zandy, if you jump off the dock and swim over to me, I’ll give you a kiss.”

When I was little, no matter what story I started to write, it always ended up being Cinderella. Cinderella was blonde, I was blonde. She liked dogs and horses and mice, I liked dogs and horses and mice. She loved her Handsome Prince, I loved Jeff. If I made it to shore without being swallowed by the mythical shark, he would kiss me and we would live happily ever after.

I jumped. My head went under. I swam fast, directly to Jeff, my lodestar. As I brought my head above water, I saw him beaming at me. I started to smile too. He held his arms out to me, picked me up, pulled me in and kissed me on the cheek. I didn’t stop holding his hand until after he brought me back to my mom and told her how proud he was of me for overcoming my fears and swimming to shore. I was proud of myself too. It’s amazing what the power of love can make a person do.

Judged by present times, I can see how a seventeen-year-old boy telling a seven-year-old girl he’d give her a kiss as a reward might seem suspect. This would not fly now. Jeff would be disciplined or fired. But in that moment back then I knew in my heart that his request and promise was purely strategic and loving. 

One week that summer I came down with the flu. I had a fever and couldn’t do anything but sleep. Everything ached. I was hot and uncomfortable. I was too exhausted to take a bath and my hair was so dirty it hurt. I missed swimming lessons for over a week which of course was the saddest thing of all.

Jeff asked my mom where I was when he ran into her at the grocery store in Saltaire. Mom told him I was sick and wanted to make sure I was healthy before she put me back in class. He asked if it was okay for him to come over later to say hi. Mom was charmed and knew how happy it would make me so she told him yes.

I was overjoyed. I had mom wash my hair with Johnson & Johnson’s No More Tears three times to make sure it clean and smelled good. I put on a fresh nightgown. 

Before dinner, Jeff came over with a couple of his mom’s fashion magazines he thought I’d like. I was in heaven but also very shy. My mom was right there in the kitchen but I still felt I had him all to myself. I didn’t know how to handle my happiness. I could barely look at him. We sat on the couch with Meg although I hardly noticed her there. I just remember hearing jazz on the radio in the kitchen and knowing that Jeff was sitting next to me.

I felt vulnerable and exposed. I usually had a lot to say to him but I was tongue-tied. I think he sensed my discomfort and placed the burden of conversation on himself. 

I had a noticeable gap between my two front teeth, which I called my “rabbit teeth” because they were so big. I became especially aware of my imperfections now that Jeff was so close. I felt like I had to come clean to him.

my rabbit teeth

“I hate my teeth and also the space between my teeth. It looks so weird. I can stick spaghetti through it. I really, really hate them.”

Jeff looked at me and said, “Sometimes the little things you hate about yourself might be something that other people think are special. Like, the stuff that makes you ‘you.’”

He opened one of his mom’s magazines.

“Let me see if I can find something in here.”

He flipped through the ads in the front and found what he wanted.

“You see this woman? Her name is Lauren Hutton. She’s really famous. She has a gap in between her teeth like you do! And she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Jeff was right. She was beautiful. But more than that, she was special. Vibrant, stylish, bright, fun and unique. Something to work towards. I started smiling wide to show him I had understood his lessons both in and out of the water.

Jeff gave me his puka shell necklace, like the Prince gave Cinderella her glass slipper. His sweetness to me has lasted my whole life so far in my memory, so in a sense, we did live happily ever after. 

***

Fire Island was and still is one of the safest places a kid could spend a summer. A tiny, narrow island where no cars are allowed and people know and look out for each other. There were lifeguards on the ocean, and the bay was calm. Deer, piping plovers, seagulls and butterflies were our neighbors. The worst thing that could happen to you was getting stung by a jellyfish or falling off your bike on the boardwalk path and getting a splinter and/or the aforementioned poison ivy rash. Meg and I would have hermit crab races we found in the bay. Parents would tell their kids, “Be back for lunch,” let them out the screen doors in the morning and not worry that any real harm would come to them. We spent all day going back and forth from the ocean to the bay. On rainy days, the volunteer firehouse would screen movies for the kids. Every summer Meg and I would look forward to going to Kismet, where the lighthouse was, and eating soft-shell crabs. Fire Island was both a few hours and a lifetime away from Manhattan. Its freedom and simplicity was a wonderful gift to give us as children. Thank you so much, Mom.

me and Meg in Fire Island in the 70s

my son and his friend in Fire Island a few years ago

at the Saltaire grocery store

on the ferry

Goodbye, My Brother

One of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)’s tenets is not drawing attention to yourself, so as I write this piece I hear my school friends’ parents voices in my head saying, “Oh for heaven’s sake! Why do this? It’s so tacky.”

WASP culture can trace itself in a direct line back to the Puritans who disembarked, bewildered, from the Mayflower. They clutched their British civility to their chests in New England, a foreign, savage and chaotic land, and clung to their motherland’s habits: modesty, manners, lawfulness and stoicism. Of course they deviated somewhat by slaughtering Native Americans and burning and drowning women they thought were witches, but it was their fault for being so noisy and sticking out like a sore thumb.

If you’ve ever spent time in a WASP’s home, you will notice that they generally buy cheap toilet paper. Why spend money on something so basic and frankly distasteful to talk about? Charmin is for arrivistes. Utter nonsense to waste income on something you’re just going to throw away.

Similarly with food. Why be fancy about it? Maybe if one is taking a business client out to dinner or celebrating after Opening Night at the opera, but on a day-to-day basis food is just for sustenance and there’s no point in lingering and making a fuss about it.

WASP food is another holdover from old-school British culture: bland, over-cooked and monochromatic. WASP sex is generally similar:  bland, overcooked and monochromatic.

***

There are so many unwritten rules to being a WASP that until they are ingrained in your heart, soul and brain, they seem as ornate as those at Louis IVth’s court:

Fold towels in thirds so the monogram will be displayed when one hangs them in the bathroom.

Use pretty but useless linen hand towels for guests. Not paper napkins. In the kitchen one’s housekeeper should give one’s children paper napkins (never paper towel) to use but adults should always use cloth napkins in the dining room.

No one sits in the living room unless one throws a cocktail party. Use the den instead.

Please don’t be a showoff about one’s body. Womens’ chest should be small but shapely. A size 36B is perfect. A large chest is too distracting and doesn’t look good in a Lilly dress.

Be thin but don’t talk about it or diets. If one must, one can make oneself throw up, but please keep that quiet and make sure one’s breath doesn’t reek.

Women do not wear miniskirts unless they’re playing golf or tennis. Wear a bathing suit only in the water or by the pool. Also if one is on the swim team. One piece is the right suit. Bikinis are somewhat scandalous. They’re for divorcées going through a tough period. Ladies, keep an eye on your husbands.

Also please don’t talk about sex unless we’ve had a few and then mercifully no one will remember.

Men should never wear form fitting clothes unless they’re in a tuxedo or about to dive off the side of a yacht. Even then, none of those tasteless bathing suits that look like something one would wear under tennis shorts. Good god, no. have you no shame?

Eccentricity is allowed up to a point. One may cultivate an outré character. For example, if one is in the closet. One should not speak about it, but we know and tolerate it within limits. Men are allowed to love the ballet, women are allowed to play sports at an semi-expert level. We do not acknowledge you if you’re transgender. We do not know what to do with that and so those people, in our minds do not exist.

Also, one is allowed to be outrageous when one is drunk, even be more outrageous in the bedroom. We will look the other way unless it is a semi-constant state and then we will speak in hushed tones behind closed doors.

In New York City, the best address is Fifth, Madison or Park Avenue. Ideal streets are 66 through 92th. Higher and lower than that and it gets a bit iffy. Lexington and Third are close, but no cigar. One must live on a higher, rather than lower floor unless one lives in a townhouse. Then one must own the whole townhouse. Central Park West is fine, I suppose.

Do not walk and smoke at the same time. It’s unbecoming. Especially for ladies.

One may have money, but one should never boast about it. Don’t be like that horrible man, Trump, with all that fake gold furniture and that awful Queens accent of his. He got his daughter into Chapin, but it’s not as easy as that. He thinks he can buy his way in with us but he’s vulgar and gauche and we wouldn’t even want him as our janitor. He’d probably let himself into our apartments and steal our china or something.

Children should be seen and not heard. They should be clean and well dressed and have delightful manners. At dinner parties, if they have to be there at all, they sit in the kitchen with the other children. The boys should look grownups in the eye, shake their hands and call them “Mr. and “Mrs.” Even when they grow up, they will still call them “Mr.” and “Mrs.” until they are told they may call their elders by their first names. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if little girls curtsied.

When one’s children develop into teenagers, they will want to be a little rebellious. We will let them be wild to a certain point. They will smoke and raid our liquor cabinet while we’re away in Europe and dilute our alcohol so we don’t notice. But we do.

Sometimes the cops will be called but we have taught them manners and they can probably talk their way out of it. As long as they’re not in such bad shape that they fail out of Deerfield or Middlesex, it will be tolerated. They should be able to play a set of tennis by 2pm the next day.

Speaking of tennis, play it at an almost professional level. In fact, do all sports at an almost professional level. But do not become professional because your father is planning for you to make partner at his firm four years after you go to Yale Law.

One doesn’t have to be good at chess, but it is helpful to be good at backgammon.

Show almost no warmth for one’s children, but lavish one’s large dog with affection. Accept the dog’s failings as “personality” See one’s children’s failures as a personal affront and an embarrassment to one’s family. One should be remote with them so their heads don’t get too big. When one has a nice buzz going, start a long-fulminating, quietly savage fight with someone close to you. It can devolve into screaming if you are in private, but always continue to caress the dog so he or she knows one loves them and he or she isn’t frightened.

Ship one’s children off to boarding school. It’s prestigious and then they’re someone else’s problem for four or more years.

Keep one’s figure trim unless one is a man. He’s allowed to go to seed a bit and develop gin blossoms because, well, he’s a man. And Brooks Brothers  jackets are cut generously to hide a paunch.

Drink rather than eat if one is upset. Alcohol can loosen one up and one can be delightful and witty at parties. Food just makes one fat.

Never use the word “classy” or “rich.” “Classy” and “rich” are tacky. Use the word “tacky” a lot. It can apply to so many things and people.

***

I have a tortured relationship with WASPs. I attended a school from first through twelfth grade that was the bastion of WASP culture. I was a Jewish kid from the Upper West Side air dropped into an entirely different country: The Upper East Side. Two miles apart but a world away. Not that my family was poor—we were very comfortably middle class—but I felt like a country mouse in comparison. Summers, we rented in the Springs (which now is prohibitively expensive and deluxe but then was considered the sticks). My friends had indoor and outdoor pools and sometimes horses at their houses in East Hampton, Watermill and Southampton. I had to learn to adapt, so I was watchful and I did.

I read the Preppy Handbook without irony. I bought Faire Isle sweaters even though wool makes me itch, Brooks Brothers striped button down oxfords and L.L. Bean duck boots. I was relieved that I at least had straight blonde hair and light eyes. When my friends came back from Spring Break with raw, peeling noses from being exposed to sun and wind on the slopes in Vail or Gstaad, I was filled with admiration and envy.

I wanted to be a debutante like many of my friends were. I asked my dad if I was going to “come out” and he replied, “No, you’re going back in.” I wish I found what he said then as funny as I do now. But I didn’t and felt underprivileged and misunderstood.

I am loathe to admit it, but I was embarrassed to be Jewish. It seemed to be a curse to be from the Upper West Side where so many of us lived. Back then, the Maidstone and the Meadow Club in East and Southampton didn’t allow Jews. Or people of color. Supposedly now they do, but why would we want to join where we’re not wanted? Unless you were me. When I was a teenager, that’s what I aspired to.

The Maidstone is a grand, imposing building lording over miles of pristine golf course, the beach on the other side. Civility and self-control battling the wildness of the Atlantic Ocean. The Maidstone is beautiful, but intimidating and unwelcoming. The Meadow Club hides its lush grass tennis courts behind tall privet hedges. You can only catch a glimpse of the deep green and hear the echo of balls hitting against racquets from a distance, so far away that it seems to be a dream. The allure of exclusivity and the knowledge that no matter how hard I tried I would never truly be allowed in other than as a day guest, overwhelmed me with longing.

A friend invited me to one of these clubs in Southampton one day during the summer. I was in the pool with friends and other kids. One girl I knew called out, “Raise your hand if you’re a member!” I didn’t. She looked at me and said “Oh, of course you’re not a member, Zandy. You’re Jewish.” Instead of telling her to fuck right off like I hope I’d do now, I was ashamed that I was, in fact, Jewish. I was a smart girl, but had no idea that there was something deeply corrupt about WASP Country Club life and because I was brainwashed into thinking I was less than.

I thought this exclusivity meant access to beauty, grace, civility and taste. In fact, in so many ways it’s the opposite.

Yes, the houses were grand and wondrous, with acres of land nobody used unless they were walking towards the pool, but inside many of them were rotten.

Some of the saddest kids I knew were from wealthy families. They wanted for nothing except ambition and the love of their parents. Loneliness, abandonment and neglect are traumatic, no matter if you’re a child of privilege or of poverty.

I saw many people who kept these homes running, treated terribly. Most often ignored, but sometimes spoken harshly to in front of me. And parents taught their kids by example to talk to “the help” the same way. Most of my friends were decent people, but I certainly witnessed this behavior and it was disturbing.

There is something relaxing and comforting about a culture that never really changes. WASPs have pretty much stayed the same. They dress the same, patronize the same restaurants, attend the same parties and charity events. Dutiful, yes, but fealty to charity is more often an excuse to see and be seen than it is to be generous.

I’ve seen “noblesse oblige” thrown around the past week in reference to George H.W. Bush. The term was used as a compliment, but it’s not. It implies you are nice to people beneath you. Literally that you are obliged as nobility to be gracious to the “little people.” This is very different from being generous to people who are less fortunate. The latter we should do because it’s right, and not because we think we’re nobler than the poor, nor should it be considered virtuous to help make people’s lives better.

WASP culture is a sedate form of capitalism. After all, the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies were once robber barons. WASPs’ homes aren’t tasteless like Trump’s, but their country estates are protected by hedges that whisper “Look but don’t touch” to the unwashed masses. Non-white people allowed inside are more often than not, staff.

There is also a low-level hum of misogyny running through WASP culture. At my all-girl school, we were expected to achieve and excel in every way, in academics and sports and socially, so we would be accepted to an Ivy League or at least an Ivy League adjacent college. But it wasn’t to become scientists or philosophers or teachers. It was really to meet a pedigreed, acceptable, eligible man who might later go into finance or corporate law or if he must, politics. It was still very much the way it had been forever—get pregnant, try to look nice and be supportive. Have a brief, illicit affair if you get too bored, but keep it quiet and don’t let it throw you too far off-track. You must keep up appearances. Your husband is probably having affairs too. Just remember to give generously back to your alma mater and write positive things about your life in the alumni newsletter.

Sometimes that hum is more like a scream. Even though he is Catholic, Bret Kavanaugh is the poster boy for entitled WASP misogyny. The Prep school culture, particularly on the East Coast, can be deeply toxic. Preparatory for college fraternities. This has been the gist: girls aren’t equals, they are conquests. If they won’t give into you, they’re bitches. If they do give in to you, they’re sluts. If they’re drunk or just vulnerable, they’re for the taking. And many of these schools, who have prided themselves on their civility and reputation, look the other way, because boys will be boys.

I was walking on the Upper East Side a few years back with a friend of mine who had gone to a prestigious all-male school in that neighborhood. We saw a group of boys in their prep school uniforms—khakis, button-down oxford, blazers and red ties—and my friend said, “Ah yes. Here are the date-rapists-in-training.” He went to that school. He knew the culture inside and out. After the Kavanaugh hearings, I heard his sentence over and over in my head. He’s right. And this culture has to end.

I am all for politeness and civility. I try not to curse and make sure my two young boys don’t either. I tell them they have to have good manners. I want them to dress with care —I even bought them navy blue blazers and fishermen sweaters— excel, and go to great colleges. And I hope they will be excellent tennis players. But I have no interest in them aspiring to be WASPs.

This summer I went back to same country club where I was told I couldn’t be a member. Nothing really had changed, except those kids in the pool had become middle aged, with kids of their own who were that same age we were that summer. These women were wearing the same things their mothers wore—Jack Rogers sandals, chunky gold seashell earring  and Indian print blouses—and were acting the same way,—polite, but chilly. Of course it was only one drink in and if I had stayed longer and had a few more G and T’s I would have relaxed and they would have been chummier. After all, I look the part.

But that evening, I finally realized the allure of WASP culture was slipping for me. The only people of color I saw were serving behind the grill line at the snack bar. I had brought my sons with me and my little one, who is has no shortage of joie de vivre, had started doing a dance on the patio where the grownups were drinking. I received several sharp looks and realized I’d rather be with my sons than banish them to the beach where the other kids at the club were so I could get tipsy with people who didn’t fascinate me anymore by their exclusiveness. They actually seemed quite boring.

There is a connection from the civility of George Herbert Walker Bush to the chaos of the Trump Presidency, as much as pundits the last couple of weeks are loathe to admit it. Jeb! was supposed to be successor to the throne, but much to the GOP’s surprise, nobody was falling for this thinned out bloodline anymore. So Republican voters chose Trump: the antithesis of a WASP.

Fortunately there seem to be more positive forces breaking up the WASP’s hegemony as well. The 2019 Congress will have more minorities than it ever has. And young people. Our House of Representatives will finally look something like the citizens it represents.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been tweeting out photos and videos during her freshman orientation. Her transparency and excitement is in direct contrast to WASP moderation and exclusivity. This is the exact vitality we need to inject into our bloodstream. To open the window and let fresh air into a stuffy, dark room. Hopefully this new sensibility will help make our Government work for us, rather than it act like stern fathers who tell us we’re unruly, uncivil and that we must respect our elders.   

Despite its surface charms and my nostalgic pull toward it, WASP culture should fade away. Evolutionary theory says only species willing to be flexible can adapt and survive. Flexibility is not in a WASPs’ repertoire. WASPs want to stay the same and not admit the world is changing around and moving ahead of them. In this way, they are a gentler, more subtle and polite form of MAGA, Their prosperity and longevity has been based on the work of those who have toiled beneath them. Their dominance isn’t because of ingenuity or strength of character, but because these elites have always protected each other and made sure no one “unfamiliar” is admitted into their private club. WASPs’ rigidity and airlessness might be the death of them, but maybe this is ok

I'm Sorry

It’s hard to say I’m sorry. It’s hard for everyone, but especially for men like me because we have been taught to think saying “I’m sorry” means we’re weak.

It’s even harder to say “I’m sorry” without adding “but.” Minus the qualification, that short sentence means I have to own my shame, to shoulder the apology all by myself. Why should you bear even the partial weight of my offense?

You were the wronged person, not me. It doesn’t matter what you were wearing or how late it was or how drunk we both were or how you initially seemed interested. The fact is I did something that you didn’t want to do. And now you are suffering and it’s awful and I’m ashamed.

So you’re not going to hear me say “I was brought up in a different era where this was acceptable,” because most men from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s didn’t insult, scream, grope and hit women.

You’re not going to hear me say, “I’m just a romantic. Men are scared to even flirt with a woman anymore!” Forcing myself on someone is the polar opposite of romance and flirting, and if I don’t know the difference, then I should be in solitary confinement.

You’re not going to hear me say, “I’ve always been a champion of women and women’s causes.” Throwing money at charities to assuage my guilty conscience isn’t the same as being nice to women on a daily basis.

You’re not going to hear me say, “What I did was bad, but I did ask if I could do it beforehand.’ I knew damn well women low on the totem pole would be too scared to say no.

You’re not going to hear me say, “Yeah, what I did was wrong, but I’m not as bad as Harvey Weinstein.” I should have higher standards for myself than being a rapist.

And you’re certainly not going to hear me say “The pendulum in the #MeToo movement has now swung too far in the opposite direction. How long am I supposed to wait before I can do what I love again? Six months, nine months, one year? It’s so unfair!” Well, I guess I should have thought about this before I abused you. I am not the victim. Before I felt my pain, I inflicted pain on you. My current exile is the repercussion. And It’s not for me to decide when the right time is to reappear. Before I think of my comeback, the first thing I have to do is to be sincerely sorry and express it to you in public and in private. If I’m saying any or all the excuses I listed above, I can assure you I’m not.

Our President stated, “I never apologize because I’ve never been wrong.” I don’t want to be like Trump. He’s a parody of a man. Despite his power and influence, he is a damaged, ignorant, angry and sad little boy. A bully, a coward, a tyrant, an abuser, a liar, and a fraud. I want to be better than that.

So please allow me to say I’m sorry. And then you can decide where I can take it from there.

You Can Judge a Book By Its Jacket

Fashion is stupid. It’s shallow. It’s both derivative and evanescent, which means you have to constantly spend money to stay up-to-date with clothes that are cycling rapidly through ideas from the past. Stylish clothes are a luxury, and luxury means exclusivity, and exclusivity means high fashion remains unattainable save for the wealthy few. It’s snobby, class-driven and one could say that fashion is capitalism at it ludicrous worst. Look at Karl Lagerfeld, for god’s sake.

But under fashion’s surface silliness deeper meaning exists: a longing for beauty, The cut of the fabric hinting at the unclothed body beneath, the way color and feel of fabrics evoke emotions and memories, how fine silk apes the touch of skin on skin. What one chooses to wear, as much as the openness or mystery in one’s face, is a form of self-expression. It part and parcel of a first impression.

And style really doesn’t have much to do with money. It’s about understanding yourself, understanding what looks good on you. Rather, what clothes make you look like you at any given moment and mood. Put two people side by side in a white t-shirt and jeans. I guarantee that the person who understands themselves better will look glamorous even though they might have spent $45 on their Levis and the other person may have spent $1,995 on Dolce and Gabbana distressed nightmares.

In 1996, Sharon Stone wore Gap to the Oscars. Sharon Stone looked stunning. Sharon Stone has style.

I’ve thought a lot about this paradox the last couple of days after seeing the flak jacket Melania Trump chose to wear when she flew to Texas to visit the children her husband has ripped away from their parents. As I’m sure you know by now, written on the back were the words “I really don’t care. Do u?”

The temperature was eight-six degrees on June twentieth in Washington DC. It was close to one hundred degrees at the Upbring New Hope—you can’t make this stuff up—Children’s Shelter in McAllen. The jacket wasn’t necessary. She wore it coming and going but changed into a tan fitted jacket once she entered the facility.

Leaders throughout history have known the power of fashion: Louis XIV, controlling his aristocracy by demanding they adhere to elaborate rituals of dress so they wouldn't have time or energy to plot against him. Queen Victoria's era of buttoned up primness, when the use of the word  "leg" was considered to be scandalous. Jackie Kennedy's classic, simple elegance, which helped transform a quintessential American family into monarchy. "Reagan Red," was not an accident. Nancy Reagan knew that blood-red color would make her diminutive frame seem larger than life and used it cleverly to intimidate everyone around her. Michelle Obama specifically chose approachable, unintimidating clothes like, J.Crew. She wanted to project that the Obamas were a normal family placed in an extraordinary circumstance. Her clothes were simple, casual  and slightly preppy. A whisper to white people: "See, we dress like you. We're not so scary, are we?" 

Melania Trump was a model. Her job was all about clothes or the lack thereof. She is a rich woman. I would guess most of what she wears on a daily basis costs thousands of dollars. Everything is form-fitting and sleek. But the day she went to visit these figuratively orphaned children, Mrs. Trump wore an ill-fitting, thirty-nine dollar jacket from Zara. I think even I have outgrown Zara. Stand too close to a radiator with Zara clothes and you’d better hope you’re standing next to a fire extinguisher as well.

People on twitter and on the news were outraged and stunned. The First Lady’s spokesperson scoffed at the criticism:

However, the next day Melania’s craven, idiot husband tweeted this:

So which is it, Melania? Is the dumbest hashtag ever actually correct? Or did you care to choose to wear that Zara jacket to show us how much you don’t care?

Just as our very sane and smart President always does, he blew up the carefully-crafted lie with his own sloppy lie. Uncovering the coverup of the cover-up.

I don’t know the exact reason why Melania wore that specific jacket, but I doubt it had anything to do with her husband’s rabid obsession with the Fake News. What I do know is that considering the context of her acting as her husband’s better half, choosing that particular jacket to visit parentless children was uncaring to the highest degree. One might say it was nihilistic  That jacket was ugly in every possible way.

So yes, that Zara jacket is very cheap and stupid.  But sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover. And Melania’s jacket reveals the Trump family’s psychological horrorshow that lies deep in the pages of their autobiography.

And I hope the bigotry, the cruelty, the sickness, the xenophobia, the tackiness and the pervasive nihilism of the Trump reign will be out of fashion sooner rather than later. I hope we fight. I hope we look back at this present cancerous era like we’re looking at old photos of ourselves in high school and screaming “What the hell was I wearing? Why did you let me go out like that?’

Moreover, I hope that we never stop caring about what we say, what we do and how we can help people who are hurting. So if Melania is asking us if we care, the answer is “We Do.”

There’s a brand new dance

But I don’t know its name

That people from bad homes

Do again and again

It’s big and it’s bland

Full of tension and fear

They do it over there but we don’t do it here.

—Fashion, by David Bowie

The Pickup Artist

James Toback stopped me on Broadway right in front of Ernie’s Restaurant where I worked at the time. I was wearing shorts and remembered I felt fat. My hair was dirty. He was wearing a big black shirt and was sweating profusely. “Can I talk to you for a second. I had to stop you because you have something really special. An energy or whatever you’d like to call it. I’ve been following you for a couple of blocks. I’m a director and I have a new movie I’m casting. You’d be perfect for a role. It’s for a tennis player and you’re perfect physically for that.” He was talking fast and I was tired and I listened.

***

I am an actress. A good one. But I was new to it at the time and I had a hit or miss success in auditions. I love acting, but I’m not competitive. Or maybe I’m very competitive and I feel guilty about it so I opt out so I don’t have to feel as bad about losing. I don’t know. I do know I had been accused of not being ambitious enough for my talents and shy about promoting myself. So his interest intrigued me.

I can’t write many more direct quotes because I was in my late twenties and I’m now in my late forties and any dialogue we had would be paraphrasing. But with the help of recollections from both my ex-boyfriend at the time and other women who had encounters with Toback, I remember much more than I thought I did. I certainly remember the feelings.

He kept on talking, not really letting me get a word in. He was imposing physically and above-average in repulsiveness. The speed of his patter, in retrospect, seemed like he wanted to get it over with to get to the meat of the matter, but at the time I interpreted it as excitement about me. I’m smart, but considering I grew up in New York City, I’m incredibly naïve.  And I trust my intellect will save me from bad decisions and bad people and that has proven not always to be the case.  

Hearing him say how compelling I was, was exactly what I wanted and needed, especially since I felt unattractive. From other women’s accounts, Toback also stopped them when they weren’t feeling at their best. Maybe he sensed their vulnerability and mine. Maybe he knew he’d have a better shot at making his mark when we at our most insecure. All of us were young and hungry and wanting to be special.

He dropped some names, told me the films he had done. I’d heard of some. He showed me a dogeared, yellowed paperback—Jim Brown’s autobiography (I knew next-to-nothing about football)—and said he was in it. That he used to go to wild parties with him where there were orgies. He wrote down his number for me and told me to call him after I had watched all his movies so I could get a sense of what he did. He begged me to get in contact.

So I watched his movies—Fingers, Black and White and Two Girls and A Guy—and they were very good. In fact excellent.  I was impressed. They were compelling and thought-provoking and disturbing. And well-acted. He was a legitimate talent. I weighed his creepiness against his technical skill and decided I would call him. My boyfriend gave me the go-ahead because he wanted me to have the chance to be in something great. I believe my mom gave me her blessings too.

Toback told me to meet him at the Harvard Club. Sophisticated me let him know I had many friends who went to Harvard. So suave. As I matured, I came to realize that many dumb and horrible people went/go to Harvard but at that point I was still unreasonably impressed. 

We met and talked some more. I’m not sure exactly what he said, but it was more name-dropping and compliments, and it started to go into a sexual direction. Vaguely. He made himself out to be a libertine. I was not, but I didn't want to betray my innocence so I just tried to look mature and worldly-wise.  

He asked me to come visit him at his editing studio on Leroy Street and see the movie he was cutting. And then I would audition for him. It sounded professional, but when I called my ex-boyfriend the other day to check with him about whether I had my facts straight, he told me that I left the apartment at around midnight, which is definitely a strange time to have an audition. I lived a short distance away, and as I walked over, I said under my breath, “Please let this be real. Please tell me I’m not being stupid.”

I went, I saw him editing the movie. He explained what he was doing at each step. It was interesting, he was good at it. We stayed there for about 10 minutes and then he said we should go to his office and see what I had.

We went upstairs. He told me he had done the most LSD anybody had ever consumed. I don’t know how to check the records on that but I’m sure Timothy Leary would disagree. He said it gave him insight into orgasms. He said he could just go back into his experiences and have an orgasm with his mind. He said I had to get in touch with my sexuality, I had to go to dangerous places in myself and scare myself in order to access what he was looking for in an actress. He saw it in me, but I had to be prepared and committed to doing this if he were to give me a role in one of his movies. Then he gossiped about actors. Really nasty things he shouldn’t have told a stranger. I won’t say what they were, but they weren’t nice and I doubt they were even true. I do know that he said he admired Mike Tyson because he was an animal, barely in control. That’s what he wanted to see from me.

I was fairly innocent. I hadn’t been with many men. And I’d only had long-term relationships. I didn’t know myself well in that way at all. I was shy and modest and I still don’t lead with my sexuality. Being ladylike was something that was drilled into me by school and my family and it was hard to abandon. I hardly talk about sex with anyone, even now. What he was asking me to do was something I struggled with in every acting class I’d ever had. It scared me. And so that stupid phrase “Do something every day that terrifies you” popped into me head. “Maybe this is exactly what I need to do. Force yourself.”

He asked me to sit on the couch and be sexual. Thank god I kind of froze. I just closed my eyes and tried to think sexy thoughts but it was impossible because Toback was sitting right in front of me and I found him to be disgusting. 

He told me it wasn’t working so we’d have to try something else. He said he was going to look into my eyes and try to see if I had something inside me that could make him orgasm. He said to watch his eyes and see if they dilate and then I’d know he was cumming. I couldn't move. He knelt down on one knee in between my own and pressed his erection into my thigh. He stared into my eyes and I saw them move back and forth rapidly as if he had R.E.M., but awake. He told me to pinch his nipples. I thought, "If this is all I have to do to end this, I'll do it." Then I heard him grunt loudly and it was over. It was probably a minute but it felt like forever. He told me his wife was very powerful and if I mentioned this experience to anyone, he’d ruin me. And then he said “I saw what I wanted to see. Thanks. I’ll let you know.” And I was dismissed.

***

I’ve had much more upsetting and traumatic experiences in my life. I’m not shattered by James Toback’s perversions. However, I remember the feelings right afterward, walking around the neighborhood, unable to go home right away where my boyfriend was probably waiting up, excited to hear about my meeting, hopeful it would lead to something big for me. I felt so stupid, so shaken, so mad at myself. I decided not to tell him about letting that vile, sweaty man have an orgasm by looking into my formerly starry eyes. What was I thinking?? Believing his praises, going up to his office alone. Not leaving when he started talking about my sexuality and asking me what kind of pubic hair I had. And relief that I managed to get out of there without being raped. My biggest fear. Every woman's, I'd wager. I had been molested as a six year old. It could have happened again, but worse. Now I was a grown women who should have been more responsible for my actions. I made a bad, bad decision and it was all my fault for not heading the warning signs.

What I had forgotten is that I didn’t have the uncontrolled impulses to sexually abuse young women. I came in there with good intentions. Toback did not. He targeted girls and plotted how to trap them and make them his victims, like all predators do. He was the bad guy, not me. I was young and inexperienced in the ways of the world and how men sometimes use their stature and physical presence to prey on vulnerable women. It was a sober reminder that most women are targets of abuse. Young, defenseless men too. I thought someone considered me special and it turned out he didn’t, I wasn’t, I was one of many. Hundreds, it seems. I never really trusted myself and and my specialness again. i’m sure I’m not alone.

***

One detail I forgot: when I talked to my ex to corroborate my story, he told me that a few years later as I was walking down the street, James Toback stopped me again and said the same things to me, demanding I meet with him and audition for a role in his movie. He didn't remember one of his victims. He wanted to take advantage of me again. I don’t recall my response. I hope I shut him down in a brutal way. But I don’t think I did. I am still too polite.

Emergency Style Tips for Men If They Ever Want to Have Sex with A Human Being

This is going to be a bullet point presentation because the urgency behind it overshadows my wish for lyrical prose.

GUYS, PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY:

• No sandals or flip flops on city streets. At the beach or pool or lakeside acceptable only if your feet are well groomed. Unless they have a vile form of foot fetish, the thought of a man’s calloused feet rubbing up against them in bed makes most people want to throw up.

• No Tevas EVER.

• No cargo shorts, unless you want people to think you're carrying poop in your bulging leg pockets.

• No tank tops. Maybe at the gym but even that is questionable.

• Flat front pants rule. 

• No bow ties unless you're Paul F. Tompkins or if you're Charlie McCarthy of Bergen and McCarthy. Or Pee-wee. Being a member of a Barbershop quartet also is a non-starter because, well, Barbershop quartets.

• No bracelets unless you're originally from a warm country. Men with brown skin can wear things white boys can't and you know this is the truth. They're exceptional.

• Sometimes necklaces are ok. You have to run it by me first.

• Rope bracelets are cool. Especially during hot weather.

• No school rings. School rings are an indication of assholery. Think Ted Cruz. Is that graphic enough?

• No American flag pins on lapels.

• Tattoos are fine as long as they aren't nazi symbols.

• I used to not like beards but now I love them. See? I'm a very flexible and tolerant person.

• There is nothing wrong with a suit occasionally. Los Angeles, listen up: don't let the only people who wear suits be agents and lawyers. You're better than that.

• Jeans are great, But I adhere to the Goldilocks Principle:  not too loose and not too tight, but just right. Tapered skinny jeans generally looks dumb. Very few men can get away with this. Neither can I by the way, so don't feel bad. Plain skinny jeans look good on skinny people, that's why they have the adjective "skinny" in them,  Last night I was told that I was old for not liking tapered skinny jeans on most men. So be it.  If the jeans fit, wear them. Boot cut jeans are really good. EXCEPTION: rock stars. Rock stars can wear tapered, skinny jeans, they can also wear tank tops and jewelry. Whatever they want—they're rock stars. Become a rock star and then we'll talk.

• For god’s sake NO CAPRI PANTS!!

• Mullets should be banned. I think you all know this already but it's worth repeating.

• No cologne unless you know what you're doing and have self-restraint and self-respect.

• And please god, smell good. Take regular showers and floss. Brush teeth a lot, at least. Try not to have too much garlic before you kiss someone. Think of us as vampires, if that helps remind you.

• Sorry to be repetitive, but just smell good. This is really so important.

• Linen and cotton are nice.

• Cool sneakers are a good thing.

• This might be just my thing, but Oxford shoes for dressing up are spiffy.

• Corduroy jackets with jeans look great.

• Corduroys in fall and winter are comforting too.

• Try to avoid looking like someone who loves golf.

• Cummerbunds are stupid.

• I like button downs.

• No baseball hats backwards. The kind of people who would be attracted to this are not people you want to sleep with.

• No fedoras. Or Trilbys. Or Floop-de-doo's or whatever the hell those hats are called. No berets unless you're Sartre.

• Absolutely NO FLIP FLOPS WITH ATHETIC SOCKS. IT LOOKS DUMB EVEN IF YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE.

• Message t-shirts suck unless you know what's funny and what's not. Most people do not.

• Go to the gym but don't go crazy. You should be able to get your arms to touch your rib cage and walk like you're not wearing a diaper full of pee.

Please, please, please, don't look like this. Or think and act like this. Just avoid this at all costs.

Twitter's own @shanenickerson added this following warning:

This is what I came up with off the top of my head. Please feel free to come up with your own. I'm sure this list is incomplete.

And guys, heed this list if you know what's good for you. God speed, and enjoy your vastly improved sex life.

Here are some helpful tips and comments from respected followers:

Yes, I agree with Stretch: I hate this. 

I forgot about square-toed dress shoes. Those are very bad. And white Stan Smiths are cool, but white New Balance are definitely not. I had no idea about statement socks. Good god.

Puppies vs. Trump

I adopted the puppy on Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day. I put in the application at 3 p.m. and brought her home the next Friday. I had been thinking about adopting or buying a dog for a while—my kids had been begging for at least two years—but I’d put it off.  

I already have two babies. The kids are too young to share responsibility. It’s not fair to bring a little life home when I’m not sure I can take of myself. I have enough poop in my life.

On that dark day, however, I found myself doing errands, driving around in a fugue state, which I'd been in since the election results started to turn away from sanity. Telling my kids—in particular my nine year old, who had come crying to me two months earlier, scared Trump would become President; I assured him he absolutely wouldn’t—that Trump had won was worse than when their dad and I told them we were getting divorced.

I could hold it together around them but it was harder to do when I was alone. I couldn’t work myself out of my funk. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking, and sometimes saying out loud, Oh my fucking god. Trump is going to be President of the United States.

***

You have to understand: I grew up in New York City in the 1980’s. It was a parent’s job to instill in their kids a profound disgust of Donald J. Trump. And my parents did their job well. We all could see he was a buffoon, a barbarian at the gate: arrogant, mendacious, tasteless, mean, petty, self-obsessed. A vengeful, fraudulent joke. The New York elites wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. They might be racist and acquisitive themselves, but they did it quietly. Being showy was déclassé. He was a pariah and he knew it. He wanted their approval, but also hated these discreet assholes for thinking they were better than him. This is a long way of saying that, like most sane people, New Yorkers couldn’t believe his national popularity. And we certainly couldn’t believe he bamboozled the Electoral College and won. Baffling to the point of vertigo.

These thoughts, coupled with burgeoning depression, raced through my mind as I drove north on La Cienega. That’s when I happened to see Spot Animal Rescue. I made the most dangerous U-turn of my driving life, parked illegally, and rushed inside.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY PUPPIES FOR ADOPTION??!” I said this with maybe too much desperation.

They had just received a new litter: five sisters, half chihuahua, half poodle. They looked like neither. They were adorable. In fact, they looked perfect, as most puppies do. I fell in love with all of them.

It took an hour of playing with them—not a painful job—to figure out which puppy would be mine: a sleek, black and white girl with white socks and a patch of white on her nose. She was funny, bright and playful, but calmed down immediately when I held her in my arms.

I filled out an application immediately. When I got in my car to go home, I felt a lightness and a sense of hope I didn’t have before I walked into that shelter. I had potentially good news and a video of the puppy to show to my kids. I was optimistic for the first time in months. Something to look forward to. One hour had vanquished a good measure of my depression.

***

After a week of waiting, I finally got the call. My application was accepted. It was like I’d booked a Coen Brothers movie. I was ecstatic. I picked her up and drove home with her on my lap. She was too scared to go in the carrier, so I held her with one hand and kept the other on the wheel.

I brought her to my ex-husband’s office. He hadn’t been a dog-lover, but I’d converted hin. I knew he’d want to meet her. He nearly cried. “Oh hello, my new daughter!” he said. One girl in the office actually did cry. The puppy got passed around from person to person and fell asleep in their arms. I got three offers-but-more-like-demands to babysit her.

Weeping

***

My six year old wanted to name her Gidget; we named her Susie. As he was brushing his teeth, my nine year old, who plays things close to the vest, said, “Mom, I’m really happy you got me a puppy.” I teared up because this is a kid who, even if he’d had the best time in the world, would say, “It was fine,” if I asked him about his day.

He is so tender and affectionate with Susie. She allows him to express himself in a way that would normally make a shy boy uncomfortable. He talks to her with nonsense love sentences like I do:

"Oh, Susie, you’re a good girl, aren’t you? Let’s talk about your paws and your ears and your tail. They are very nice and very silly."

Even though he’d pretend to die if he drank out of the same cup as his little brother, he picks up Susie’s poop without protest. Amazing.  I only wish he would be just as sweet to the six year old, but puppies, of course, outrank younger siblings.

***

When I told friends and acquaintances I’d decided to adopt a puppy as an antidote to Trump, I was surprised to find I wasn’t alone; Four different families at my sons’ school did, too. Sherry, one of my mom friends, told me, “The reason we wanted to get a dog was twofold: one of our dogs died and I liked the idea of growth and progress during a time when things seem grim and sad. It’s optimistic. It brings you joy. It’s a wonderful distraction. Literally picking up dog shit is a distraction from politics.”

Sherry knew ten different people who bought or adopted puppies She calls them “Resistance Pups,” which should be another category of service dog.

Michaela Watkins, a wonderful actor you should know already, said after Trump won the election, she too tumbled into a depression. She and her husband had a seventeen year old cat and had resisted getting a dog because they didn’t want “to destroy her golden years by moving a predator into the house.”  However, after the election, Michaela was so depressed she decided to stop looking at her phone, stop reading think pieces on how to survive the Trump Apocalypse, and instead adopt a dog:  “We needed someone who would depend on us for dear life,” she said. “Cats are low-maintenance. Dogs require your full attention.”

They went to a shelter where they found Jeff, a beautiful terrier-retriever mix with maybe some pitbull thrown in. The staff at the shelter told her adoptions had been up three hundred percent since the election.

“I felt an immediate change in my brain chemistry,” said Michaela. “Jeff was repairing some of my neural pathways instead of me spiraling into the hopelessness.” Walking Jeff and maintaining a set schedule to take care of the new dog gave Michaela and her husband the structure they also needed when they felt emotionally unmoored.

Jeff forced them to go outside and get some fresh air. They both became healthier. “Dogs hold a giant mirror up to us. Loving and being loved is everything,” she told me. Taking care of Jeff surprisingly was a form of self-care. She rescued Jeff and Jeff rescued her. As we ended the interview, Michaela observed, “Jeff just farted.”

***

You don’t have to be a new dog owner to experience the salubrious effect of canines. Amy Rice—a filmmaker who made By the People: The Election of Barack Obama—  told me, “ Right after the Inauguration, it was so depressing spending time on social media. But when you adopted Susie, all of a sudden there was this adorable puppy who would randomly pop up in my ‘world is ending’ Twitter feed, and seeing her always put a smile on my face.”

I’ve heard this many times over. I have many seemingly tough, sarcastic, hardened cynics who transform into melting ice cream when I post my dog-related content.  I’ve had a journalist friend say she and her boyfriend, who is also a journalist, scour my feed investigating my puppy tweets. I won’t reveal their names in order to protect their professional integrity. I’ve gained probably one hundred followers on Instagram since adopting Susie. One follower even made me a gorgeous drawing of her. I don’t flatter myself.  Many people have told me, “No offense, you seem very nice but I started following you because of your puppy.” I get it. It’s okay. I’m not nearly as pretty or soft.

After 9/11, I was at the Javitz Center apllying for FEMA relief because the restaurant where I worked had been six blocks away from the fallen Towers. Obviously, there were people there who were much worse of than I. Many were sitting in uncomfortable folding chairs staring into space as if comatose. Who knows what they experienced. They seemed traumatized. I realized my problems were minor.

All of a sudden, volunteers leading magnificent dogs with special harnesses—mostly Labradors and Golden Retrievers—approached us. “Would you like to pet the dogs?” It was as if a movie had switched from black and white to color. These formerly shell-shocked, ghostly people came to life. They pet the dogs, talked to them, smiled at them and the dogs smiled back. Goldens and Labs have great smiles. It was simple, instinctual and beautiful; a temporary but powerful antidote to the incomprehensible chaos and horror these people had probably experienced a week earlier. It reminded me that as soon as humans domesticated canines, our lives changed for the better. We wouldn’t have survived without their assistance and unconditional devotion. It was impossible to witness these therapy dogs’ service and not be moved.

***

I’ve had a hard time assimilating to Los Angeles. I find people to be remote and aloof, perhaps because traveling everywhere in cars and in immense traffic isolates people and prevents face-to-face interaction. However, ever since adopting Susie, a new world has opened up to me. I’ve found a whole new community of human dog parents.

She is much cuter and sweeter than I am and people want to say hi to her, so they actually engage with me. I now know most of the other dogs in the neighborhood. I don’t remember their owners’ names but I do remember theirs. Los Angeles has, to me, become exponentially friendlier. Human beings could learn a lot from dogs. The openness and trust they show to everyone is how we should act toward each other.

Me and baby Susie

Susie is helping me more than I helped her. I feel like she adopted me. She is so pure and sweet, smart and good. And gorgeous. I sit with her and I feel every bone in my body relax. She forces me to smile and laugh, no matter how bad my day has been. Sometimes I want to say, Why do you like me so much? Honestly, I’m not that great! But she doesn’t seem to notice my failings. The love is unconditional. I can’t think of another creature about whom one could say that. Dogs are natural antidepressants with no side effects, except pee and poop and the occasional fart. Totally manageable.

I went back to Spot Animal Rescue with my six-year old to buy more food for Susie. Some idiot had returned her sister because the puppy had been “too much work.” She looked like Susie—same size and markings, white socks included—but much fluffier, with mottled brown fur and a brown nose. My son said his older brother could have Susie “and I can have her sister!”

Belinda Carlisle

After thinking for three days about how absurd it would be to have two—the time, the expense, the inconvenience, the ruined rugs and furniture—I decided to adopt Belinda Carlisle. Belle-Linda is pretty times two, first in French and then in Spanish.

All things considered, we’re all doing just fine, Donald Trump be damned.

Sisters

Boys and girls

This piece was originally published by UPROXX

Puppygate

Here is maybe the best thing I have ever written: