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What are you doing this weekend?
Not a bad time to hit the Film Forum.
In her review, Manohla Dargis writes: “Every Man for Himself” is more approachable than much of Mr. Godard’s recent work, with its dense layers of sound and image, epigrams and allusions. Organized into sections, “Every Man” includes one segment titled “The Imaginary” which largely involves Denise (Ms. Baye), a young woman who labors in television but has moved to the countryside to work on a new project, perhaps a novel. In doing so, she has pulled away from her lover, the pointedly named Paul Godard (Mr. Dutronc), a filmmaker at the center of the subsequent section, “Fear.” The next, “Commerce,” in turn follows a prostitute, Isabelle (Ms. Huppert). The women meet when Isabelle responds to an ad that Denise has placed to rent her and Paul’s apartment.
I’ve always been poor and only recently has that started to really bother me. The summer after my Senior Year in High School, I moved home from Ohio to Keene, New Hampshire because my Dad had married one of his students and they wanted the apartment to themselves. I worked two jobs that summer, at Papa Gino’s and at Friendly’s. I wore polyester uniforms for both jobs, and rode a bicycle to work. I saved up almost 500 dollars to bring to college with me in New York City in the Fall, the bulk of which consisted of coins wrapped in paper rolls, and that seemed like a lot of money. So it’s hard for me when my rich friends talk about troubles and pain, I know I could be really happy if someone else blow-dried my hair for me every day. I just know it.
My Boss finally approached me at work about buying my Internet column to develop it into a television show. Because I talk in my Internet column about being a terrible negotiator, I have a feeling my Boss has the upper hand in this conversation. He talks about being on a limited budget, how it will be a cable show and those pay less, but since my life is R-Rated our options are limited. My eyes glaze over during talks of monetary reimbursement, as I’m convinced I will never be rich, but I’m at full attention when my Boss talks about his vision for the show, which is a kind of Mary Tyler Moore Show, set in Hollywood, except Mary sleeps with everyone. He says on my show it would be as if Mary hooked up with Lou Grant at a party and it’s awkward at work the next day, and I suddenly wonder if he knows I was sleeping with my dead ex-boss.
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D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
Back in my New York day, I always like to visit the 1963 established Cinema Village on West 12th. I remember that rainy day…a large tub of popcorn with a kiss of butter and Bunuel’s insanely fun Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I miss having access to projected film. I miss old theatres who play great films.
There’s nothing worse than regret, and all I can do with all of mine is hope that Sarah has some too, and regrets dumping me as a friend almost five years ago. She has her own company now, she is no longer 22 and living on a boat, so I assume she’s doing well out here in Hollywood, but I hope she thinks sometimes about the illustrious writing career of mine that she helped to launch, and that had she been able to stomach being my friend, she might have professionally reaped the benefits of my success. I would have, at the very least, dedicated my book to her. Now she’ll be lucky if she gets included within the Acknowledgements, a hasty recognition buried between the names of shallow industry bigwigs who helped me along the way. I’m sure all the loosely-veiled references to her drug use and rampant sexual exploits throughout my book will be thank-you enough, but I can’t resist the temptation to include a sarcastic nod to her on the crisp, new first pages of my novel. I’m aware she’s the one who encouraged me to write in the first place, but I think I would have been happier in obscurity than written about in a nationwide magazine only to implode and have nothing come of my brief success.
It occurs to me I don’t want friends who ask me to go out every night, because I’m starting to like staying home more and more and I was genetically programmed not to be able to say no, but I would like to have the option of friends to hang out with should I ever become bored or lonely. Because I’ve burnt out all the lovely people of Hollywood, I’ve recently begun importing friends from across the ocean. I had dinner last night with a girl I met in the airport on the way to London. She’s an actress, a real one, not a waitress avoiding life, and Spanish and unfairly beautiful. We went to Magnolia and while we were at dinner we ran into Joe, a well-educated, black, gay agent who at one point in time wanted to represent me as a writer, but was scared of alienating my then-manager who was a short man and extremely wealthy and powerful. My manager was Sarah’s boss, and had produced a wildly successful teen franchise, a couple of them actually, and had gotten rich solely off the instincts of his development people, including Sarah. I’m quite sure he never even read the scripts for his big franchises, and although his web site was the original home for my column, I’m positive he never read my writing, and signed me as a client off of Sarah’s behest. I heard a rumor he now operates an illegal casino out of his garage, I’m not sure what he does but I do know he is no longer Sarah’s boss or my manager, not that any of that mattered while we were running Hollywood.
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D-GIRL was a development girl in Hollywood and New York City for many years. While finding projects for actors, directors and producers to make into movies, she amassed a number of salacious tales of questionable morality that became an internet column entitled “D-Girl Diary.” She left show business to become a full-time writer in 2001. Apparently, she is back….
Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I don’t see what’s so great about new – I prefer old. Old friends, old jobs, old boyfriends; I like things that are worn and comfortable, places I have been a million times, so the better half of my two week vacation was my stop-over in New York City, my home since college where even the biting cold feels soothingly familiar. The first five days of my vacation I spent in London, which sounds fancier than it was. In actuality I slept through a Pinter play in the West End, dozed off on the London Eye, and felt on the whole that I was observing a great city from afar, it was probably too short a trip to fall in love with anything. I had the nagging feeling throughout my visit that I was a little inferior to the stylish lag-abouts who jaunted down Oxford Street as if on a cold and crowded runway. But then I flew to New York, where it was even colder but at least people have the decency to dress in bulky coats and hats until they get indoors. I can still taste the spicy sausage with rice cakes I ate at Momofoku, which falls under the category of new to me, but I went to other old haunts like Blue Ribbon Bakery and I realized I’ve been living in Los Angeles for a year and I still feel like a current New Yorker, enraged about higher taxi fares and annoyed by the onslaught of Borough hoppers on the New Year. And then it’s back to Los Angeles, where there aren’t any Dunkin’ Donuts and the food all tastes the same, and I have a new job and new job-friends but at least I don’t have to think of things to talk about, because all my old stories are new to them.
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D-GIRL was a development girl in Hollywood and New York City for many years. While finding projects for actors, directors and producers to make into movies, she amassed a number of salacious tales of questionable morality that became an internet column entitled “D-Girl Diary.” She left show business to become a full-time writer in 2001. Apparently, she is back….
She’s baaaaack…most excellent. Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
On 12.8/2009: I sadly reported the Pink Tea Cup was closing (see: here.) Much to my suprise, the New York Times reports the following:Lawrence Page, a filmmaker, said he has bought the name of this Greenwich Village soul food institution, now closed, and plans to reopen it soon nearby with its staff members.
For the first time since moving back to Los Angeles from NYC, I feel like a real Development Girl again. With Lorna McSlutchen breathing down my neck, I suddenly feel tremendous pressure to be successful. This week I scheduled drinks with agents and writers, tracked spec scripts and read until my eyes bled. And with my freakish ability to whip through a script in twenty minutes or less, I feel I’m finally caught up on the time I missed when I was checking into Mental Hospitals and gallivanting around New York with the gorgeous but broken East Coast Sarah. My boss the quirky Director is not as impressed with my recent efforts though, and calls me into his office during one of his rare visits to our bungalow, and wants to have a talk.
He’s strumming a guitar as he talks to me, which is mildly aggravating. “You have two sides to your personality,” he says, “the outgoing life-of-the-party who knows everyone in town, and the serious intellectual who writes amazing notes.” He pauses for effect and I’m feeling less chastised than complimented. “I don’t like the party girl side,” he says bluntly, and our meeting is over. I’m not going to clear my calendar, my boss clearly doesn’t know how this town works; it’s not just my ability to recognize good material, its obtaining the material before anyone else, and that only comes from lots and lots of scheduled drinks.
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Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
The worst thing about moving back to L.A. from N.Y.C is running into old nemeses at the Coffee Bean. I was anonymous in New York, and now today I’m standing three people behind Lorna McSlutchen, whose boobs are so big she’s taking up more than her allotted room in this crowded coffee shop. At first she doesn’t recognize me, I’m disguised by my Sarah Palin black glasses and faux-snakeskin Uggs that take up half my little legs, but then she catches my eye and hollers out a phony “Hey there! I know YOU…” and I’m instantly transported back to the day she asked me to lunch on the studio lot just to tell me she was dating my two-night stand. Her hair is darker, but I would know those humungous boobs anywhere, and she wants to know where I’m working, and where I went for a few years, and it takes her 3.5 seconds to bring up the guy who looks like an Alien who she thinks she stole from me. They aren’t dating anymore, apparently they dated for two years but he dumped her after she made the trek to Alaska to meet his family. I never met his family, I barely met him, I slept with him twice and he met Lorna at a party we went to and I never heard from him again. Her voice is too loud for this early morning coffee run and its giving me a headache. I express fake concern over her breakup and drop the Famous Actress’ name in her lap where it lands with a thump – “So that’s what I’ve been doing… just kind of hanging with her…” It’s half true and I think it conveys to her that I have not, contrary to her belief, spent the last two years pining over her short Alien-looking boyfriend who I slept with twice. I have become far too cool for that.
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(IMAGE BY Tashina Suzuki)
Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
I should have sold those pictures of the Famous Actress and her new boyfriend, she made me go to the photo shop and take them off the machine herself because the guy was married, and after a very public breakup, the tabloids were dying to see who she would date next. If I had sold them, I wouldn’t have to work and could just sit home all day contemplating life and pinning butterflies to cardboard. And since I ended up leaving her company under duress anyway, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But I didn’t sell them, so I sit in my little office on the Universal Lot, listening to the Studio Tour tram go by my window. At least this tour is in English, when I worked for the Comedy Director the tour that passed by my window was in Spanish so I had to listen to “Es la Cabesa de Mary Tyler Moore” every fifteen minutes because apparently my office was in Mary’s old dressing room.
This time I can hear the tour guide talking about Will Smith, whose company is next door, and it’s distractingly soothing. We are actually busy right now because my boss is prepping a new movie to direct, and he has assigned me the illustrious task of researching the main character, a chef. I know a little bit about chefs because my best friend the East Coast Sarah used to date a very famous and very hot chef; she was a waitress in his restaurant in NYC and they had an illicit and seedy affair, which culminated in East Coast Sarah getting drunk one night, dressing up like a schoolgirl for him, and passing out on Third Avenue in crotchless panties, much to the dismay of her family who had to pick her up from the Emergency Room that way. I only met the guy once, he was alarmingly attractive but it’s hard for a girl to get excited about a guy when he has to use a pseudonym to call your best friend.
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Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
and Jauretsi’s Polaroids…two very good things. I chose (the above) for their content post 9.11. I recall having dinner on september 10, 2001 before the sky fell and the world changed forever–at Cafe Habana— with Jauretsi before heading over to meet another friend, Scott at The Time is Always Now Gallery (the irony is thick). J’s always inspired me, she’s vintage New York, a downtown Bowery girl, fiercely independent, a DJ with mad collection of tracks. Most notably, she made the impossible POSSIBLE, a documentary (with fellow filmmaker Emilia Menocal) entitled East of Havana (2006).
My posting barely scratches the surface of J’s work. There is more to see here (although a note “a few peeks at the monster collection”). Although Dash Snow worked a more shock and awe method with twisted Polaroid documentation a la Vice style, personally, Jauresti’s work always made more sense to me.
I also dig her travel Polaroids, from her sojourns around the world. There’s water, fashion, beach, music and deep appreciation for underground culture, J has a lot to show for and more to come. Many acts, many layers.
Polaroids by Jauretsi.
the UN from Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" image CAU faculty.
Before I left New York, I went uptown (yes…I ventured about and above 14th Street). The United Nations (completed in 1952) where I visited with my family on my first trip to New York in the 1980′s (bad jeans shorts and bangs). I’ve always been struck by the sleek, modern design of (Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Sir Howard Robertson, et al. with Harrison and Abramovitz) which quietly lays along the urban East Riverfront. The inside remains the same. Times stands still.
It’s often been the backdrop of great film scenes from The Interpreter, Live and Let Die, U.S. Marshals, Batman: The Movie, The Glass Wall, The Second Renaissance, The Peacemaker, Thirteen Days and Disney’s 1975 animated film The Rescuers. Arguably the best of these comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest where Cary Grant is caught in a web of mistaken identity. A trip to the United Nations is a must.
Cary Grant exits cab infront of the UN.
Establishing shot; Cary Grant arrives inside the UN.
Guest Writer; Ilene Rosen.
If you’re looking for old school NYC, I’m happy to report it’s living happily on a quiet little section of Houston Street. Yes, there is actually a quiet part of Houston Street. Between 6th and Varick—on Houston— is a little slice of the real NYC – The Film Forum. The only non-profit cinema in NYC, The Film Forum is a mainstay for socially and politically relevant Indies, B&W classics, or acid tripped out flicks from the 70′s (thank you, i♥’d new york author for THAT experience).
Last night I went to see a film called The Yes Men Fix the World and the night ended with a talkback with The Yes Men and Women for Peace’s Code Pink. Then, the entire audience was asked to get out of our seats and go with them to a major fast food joint to distribute information to customers in protest of their health care policies. And of course after that, everyone was to meet at a bar in Alphabet City for a dance off. So, just when I thought NYC had lost its spirit, I was reminded last night it’s always going strong at this NYC cultural icon.
Thankfully it hasn’t changed a bit.
Ilene Rosen is a theatre guru extraodionaire with long stints at the Drama Department (sadly shuttered although a GREAT article in the New York Times here), Public Theater and currently as Director of Business Development Spotco, an entertainment advertising agency in New York. She’s already worked on Rent and Avenue Q. She was just hitched to a dynamite guy and Ilene herself is a 10 plus year loyal friend+ New Yorker.
