Last weekend I caught an afternoon screening of The September Issue, the Anna Wintour/Vogue documentary. The movie’s producers had to have been inspired by The Devil Wears Prada, thinking that if Meryl Streep’s version made money, then they should certainly make money with the real Wintour. But The September Issue is not a Prada retread. It has no Anne Hathaway and the younger members of Vogue are seen only as background actors. This movie is about the women on top.
Certainly, the leaders of Vogue chronicled in The September Issue all dress in fashionable, expensive clothes. But they are also women in their 40s and 50s and 60s shot in unflattering lights without movie makeup. For a movie about fashion, The September Issue is about real women…and a few gay men because someone had to inspire Stanley Tucci’s character from Prada.
The problem with the The September Issue is that it lacks movie drama. Officially it’s the story of Vogue’s titular 2007 fall fashion guide that defines a season, weighs over 5 pounds, and comes in at 840 pages. But as a documentary, it fails to create a compelling arch. We see only disconnected glimpses of planning and implementation. The stakes are ill-defined and the obstacles underwhelming.
The conflict is supposed to come from Grace Coddington, who seems the inspiration for Wendie Malick’s character from Just Shoot Me—a ‘60s model turned successful fashion editor. Coddington is a quite competent creative director, though. We see her personally wrangling models on a 1920s inspired photo shoot. But the movie doesn’t explain why that particular set of photos belongs in the September issue.
Wintour’s job is to say yes or no to each photo. Doing so, Wintour is not particularly cruel or overbearing or even brilliant, just in charge. Coddington’s job is to champion her work and to be disappointed when her stuff gets cut. The movie fails to make us believe this is any more important, or any different, from every other mundane workplace disagreement.
If we don’t see the September issue, we do see daily life at a fashion magazine. It is a world where Siena Miller drops by for a fitting and then later editors debate if her photo was too “toothy”. It is days when every other word is airbrush and the most valuable employee is the guy who runs the color printer. It is people like editor-at-large André Leon Talley who plays tennis to lose weight and for an excuse to wear his tennis bracelet…I mean, tennis watch.
Ironically, The September Issue arrives when the national job average climbed to 9.8% in September. I saw this movie while waiting to hear the results of a recent job interview. I watched it expecting a mixture of jealousy and relief. The relief is that I don’t have to report to a boss from hell and I don’t have to worry about back-stabbing co-workers. The jealousy is that these people have their dream jobs while I simply dream of a job.
Coddington explains in a moment of frustration that she stays at Vogue because she cares about the art. Every person, and every organization, goes to work with two goals: 1) make money and 2) fulfill a mission. The first one usually just pays for the second, but the first can be comfortingly objective when the second seems too fleeting.
Studies have shown that receiving a new job closer to one’s skills and interests is one of the few life events that increases a person’s baseline life satisfaction. Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to create job satisfaction outside of actual employment. But maybe we have to try. Because unemployment is reaching the point where, just like climate change, we should no longer talk about preventing it, but rather how to adapt to it.
I don’t want to speak on economic subjects too far outside my expertise, but a jobless recovery isn’t necessarily apocalyptic. I recently read that the best analogy for the Great Recession is neither the Great Depression nor Japan’s Lost Decade, but Europe in the 1980s. High unemployment and a large government imprint. But we should also remember that France has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. The people working may resent higher taxes used for unemployment checks but at least they have reason to take off the pajamas in the morning.
I wish The September Issue gave us better insight into fashion’s economic model. Early on, we do see a relationship building breakfast with a department store CEO. He asks for Wintour’s help to increases designers’ shipping frequency, and Wintour kind of blows him off. I think the problem with understanding fashion has always been that even the best dressed people in real life or the powerful people on TV never wear the clothes seen on the catwalks. Maybe it’s all a trickle down effect, like that discussion of the cerulean blue sweater in The Devil Wears Prada.
The Devil Wears Prada changed my life. It convinced me to choose the life of a demanding career because I wanted the financial and non-financial rewards. With the economy the way it is, a lot of us have to find rewards elsewhere. There is danger if we fail and waste skills and ambition because there is no accompanying paycheck. There is also danger if we succeed because a generation of us may come to think of offices as movie sets, something for people on screen. I’m reminded that the most important divisions are not between men and women, or black and white or gay and straight, but between success and failure. After seeing The September Issue, that line is just as stark and just as mysterious.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Kubrick Made a Good Sexy Movie
Since my initial blog entry, the first two chapters of “Long Red Nails” have appeared on the Erotic Mind Control Story Archive. I even received my first piece of fan mail and a couple favorable posting on the mcforum message boards; all very exciting and encouraging. I am currently editing Chapter Three but am taking a quick break to catch up on my Netflix Queue with three quick reviews.
At least that was my plan. But Eyes Wide Shut just demands its own posting.
Eyes Wide Shit is the best NC-17 movie ever made, even if the film was technically rated R because after director Stanley Kubrick’s death additional figures were digitally added to the famous orgy scene to block out some of the juicy parts.
Most NC-17 films lack sex. Instead, they earn their rating with a few a nude scenes that are barely plot related. Eyes Wide Shut is a film where challenges to conventional sexuality morality appear out of every character and ever scene.
Eyes Wide Shut grabbed headlines from its inception because it stared then Hollywood golden couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They play Dr. William and Alice Harford, a married couple with a posh NYC apartment, a charming young daughter, and a healthy sex life. They movie begins as they prepare to attend a Christmas party hosted by Bill’s uber-rich patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) and his wife.
At the party, both of the Harfords face temptation. Alice flirts and dances with a Hungarian playboy played by a poor man’s Jeremy Irons. Bill also flirts with a pair of models who seem to offer every male’s fantasy in the film’s first 20 minutes. The Harfords confront these dalliances the next night in bed. Alice vacillates between being jealous of Bill’s flirting and accusing Bill of underestimating her own sexuality. Cruise plays Bill as full of false calm. He parries all of her attacks until she blows him away by confessing to having lusted after a naval officer the family encountered during their last vacation. The argument ends when Bill receives a call that an elderly patient of his has passed away.
Part of what makes the film dream like is that there’s always a phone call or other coincidence to interrupt when things get to heavy. The call about the patient takes Bill out of his bedroom and his boxer shorts and puts him in a suit on the dark nighttime streets of New York City. Along the way, he has visions of Alice making love to a man in full navy whites. These images continue throughout the film and by the end both Alice and the imaginary sailor are fully nude and intertwined.
Kubrick loves ambiguity and I love that Bill’s reaction doesn’t have to be all about jealousy. I like to think he’s even a little excited. His reactions during the rest of the film are not simply revenge at Alice’s revelation but instead an attempt to do what no man can really do: compete equally with a fully sexualized woman.
Bill walks the streets of New York City and sex seeps every ounce of celluloid in a series of bizarre encounters. Eventually, Bill wanders passes the jazz club where his old medical school buddy, Nick Nightingale, is playing piano. Nightingale is played devilishly by director Todd Field. In character, Field actually challenges Hugh Jackman to the title of “the one threat to my heterosexuality”. Nick lets Bill pull out the details of Nick’s after-hours gig: playing piano blindfold at an orgy.
Bill is ridiculous through a lot of these scenes. He keeps passing around his medical license like a badge, bribing people for the tiniest favors and ordering beverages he doesn’t really want.
Finally, Bill arrives at the Long Island mansion hosting the party and the movie’s famous orgy scene begins. A group of Ventian mask wearing clocked figures observe a ceremony featuring about a dozen servant women in masks, g-strings, and tasteful black heels. And sure enough, Nick is in the corner playing a keyboard blindfolded. Even in the edited version, Bill’s wondering through the house is well, an orgy. Participants are grouped in twos and threes while more people watch. There is probably one example of each sex position, both intercourse and oral, and plenty of women with other women.
Most Kubrick defenders champion this film as being devoid of sexuality. That always makes me ask, which orgy were they watching? I think Kubrick did deliver an art-house porn film. It also interesting to note as a mind-control fetishist, how much of the film portrays a mind control fantasy. The servant women at the orgy move very much like hypnotized sex slaves.
I think the critics expected a supposedly steamy but ultimately safe scene over a ceramics wheel or a grand piano. But true fantasies are scarier because they are about freedom, control and power, and not some celluloid cliché. Eyes Wide Shut exposes the truth that we can never share our true sexual fantasies with our lovers because what makes them fantasies is that they involve other people. Of course, Bill does eventually share everything with Alice in the end and her reaction is probably the film’s most ambiguous moment.
The final third of the film is Bill trying to figure out how sinister the cult was and who paid the price for his crashing the party. The film never reaches the full heights of the orgy again, but there are plenty of sexual set pieces, including Bill’s various trips to a costume shop where his rents his orgy disguise. Eventually, Bill is summoned back to Ziegler’s house. Harvey Keitel was originally supposed to play Ziegler but this is the perfect Sydney Pollack part. He makes his explanation that what Bill saw was merely a mock sex cult for rich people’s role playing enjoyment and not an actual sinister, murderous sex cult sound like a discussion on shady business ethics. Personally, I want to believe Ziegler, but then I always want to believe the best of sex cults.
Ask most men who see Eyes Wide Shut if they found the movie sexy and they will answer a resounding yes. Given the chance, they would crash that orgy as quickly as Bill did. And that’s Kubrick’s point. Like Bill, most of us live with our fantasies just out of reach and with the fear they are occurring behind closed doors in opulent mansions.
To me, that provides some hope because it means the affordable, accessible middle class orgy is still available to be invented.
At least that was my plan. But Eyes Wide Shut just demands its own posting.
Eyes Wide Shit is the best NC-17 movie ever made, even if the film was technically rated R because after director Stanley Kubrick’s death additional figures were digitally added to the famous orgy scene to block out some of the juicy parts.
Most NC-17 films lack sex. Instead, they earn their rating with a few a nude scenes that are barely plot related. Eyes Wide Shut is a film where challenges to conventional sexuality morality appear out of every character and ever scene.
Eyes Wide Shut grabbed headlines from its inception because it stared then Hollywood golden couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They play Dr. William and Alice Harford, a married couple with a posh NYC apartment, a charming young daughter, and a healthy sex life. They movie begins as they prepare to attend a Christmas party hosted by Bill’s uber-rich patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) and his wife.
At the party, both of the Harfords face temptation. Alice flirts and dances with a Hungarian playboy played by a poor man’s Jeremy Irons. Bill also flirts with a pair of models who seem to offer every male’s fantasy in the film’s first 20 minutes. The Harfords confront these dalliances the next night in bed. Alice vacillates between being jealous of Bill’s flirting and accusing Bill of underestimating her own sexuality. Cruise plays Bill as full of false calm. He parries all of her attacks until she blows him away by confessing to having lusted after a naval officer the family encountered during their last vacation. The argument ends when Bill receives a call that an elderly patient of his has passed away.
Part of what makes the film dream like is that there’s always a phone call or other coincidence to interrupt when things get to heavy. The call about the patient takes Bill out of his bedroom and his boxer shorts and puts him in a suit on the dark nighttime streets of New York City. Along the way, he has visions of Alice making love to a man in full navy whites. These images continue throughout the film and by the end both Alice and the imaginary sailor are fully nude and intertwined.
Kubrick loves ambiguity and I love that Bill’s reaction doesn’t have to be all about jealousy. I like to think he’s even a little excited. His reactions during the rest of the film are not simply revenge at Alice’s revelation but instead an attempt to do what no man can really do: compete equally with a fully sexualized woman.
Bill walks the streets of New York City and sex seeps every ounce of celluloid in a series of bizarre encounters. Eventually, Bill wanders passes the jazz club where his old medical school buddy, Nick Nightingale, is playing piano. Nightingale is played devilishly by director Todd Field. In character, Field actually challenges Hugh Jackman to the title of “the one threat to my heterosexuality”. Nick lets Bill pull out the details of Nick’s after-hours gig: playing piano blindfold at an orgy.
Bill is ridiculous through a lot of these scenes. He keeps passing around his medical license like a badge, bribing people for the tiniest favors and ordering beverages he doesn’t really want.
Finally, Bill arrives at the Long Island mansion hosting the party and the movie’s famous orgy scene begins. A group of Ventian mask wearing clocked figures observe a ceremony featuring about a dozen servant women in masks, g-strings, and tasteful black heels. And sure enough, Nick is in the corner playing a keyboard blindfolded. Even in the edited version, Bill’s wondering through the house is well, an orgy. Participants are grouped in twos and threes while more people watch. There is probably one example of each sex position, both intercourse and oral, and plenty of women with other women.
Most Kubrick defenders champion this film as being devoid of sexuality. That always makes me ask, which orgy were they watching? I think Kubrick did deliver an art-house porn film. It also interesting to note as a mind-control fetishist, how much of the film portrays a mind control fantasy. The servant women at the orgy move very much like hypnotized sex slaves.
I think the critics expected a supposedly steamy but ultimately safe scene over a ceramics wheel or a grand piano. But true fantasies are scarier because they are about freedom, control and power, and not some celluloid cliché. Eyes Wide Shut exposes the truth that we can never share our true sexual fantasies with our lovers because what makes them fantasies is that they involve other people. Of course, Bill does eventually share everything with Alice in the end and her reaction is probably the film’s most ambiguous moment.
The final third of the film is Bill trying to figure out how sinister the cult was and who paid the price for his crashing the party. The film never reaches the full heights of the orgy again, but there are plenty of sexual set pieces, including Bill’s various trips to a costume shop where his rents his orgy disguise. Eventually, Bill is summoned back to Ziegler’s house. Harvey Keitel was originally supposed to play Ziegler but this is the perfect Sydney Pollack part. He makes his explanation that what Bill saw was merely a mock sex cult for rich people’s role playing enjoyment and not an actual sinister, murderous sex cult sound like a discussion on shady business ethics. Personally, I want to believe Ziegler, but then I always want to believe the best of sex cults.
Ask most men who see Eyes Wide Shut if they found the movie sexy and they will answer a resounding yes. Given the chance, they would crash that orgy as quickly as Bill did. And that’s Kubrick’s point. Like Bill, most of us live with our fantasies just out of reach and with the fear they are occurring behind closed doors in opulent mansions.
To me, that provides some hope because it means the affordable, accessible middle class orgy is still available to be invented.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
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