Monday, December 15, 2008
The Ones I'd Like to Grow Into ...
Once upon a time, I wanted to be Nora Ephron when I grew up. I wanted to have screenwriters/producers for parents. Go to Wellesley. Be the youngest columnist for Esquire in the 1970s.
Then I wanted to be Ellen Willis. The socially conscious, against the grain, rock-the-fuck out writer and woman's leader founded the most awesome writing program I've ever read about. I would give my left arm to go there.
Then I thought, if I could somehow combine what I have learned from both women and become that, and be inspired and driven enough to do something really special like they've done, I would be exactly what and where I want to be.
They are two amazing American women, who wrote in the same time period about different things, who happened to fall on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to their strong beliefs. Both had integrity beyond definition.
Although a slight overlap connects the two surrounding women's issues, Ephron is more composed, more proper, more elitist. She exudes a certain confidence in her writing from those times, and has an amazing presence even today, in interviews I've seen since making films like When Harry Met Sally.
Willis, also Jewish, came from an upper-middle class family, and received an ivy league education, but I doubt she enjoyed maids and nice cars and schools growing up as Ephron did. I'm sure I relate to Willis on the class level: she has this angry edge marked with an admirable sensibility which Ephron lacks. Willis got to be a leading female rock writer, examining the greatest Beatles, Stones, and Dylan albums as they hit the airwaves, even beforehand, as a member of the press. She was also an activist, observing the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, 1968.
Willis is fiercely intelligent, and articulate in spite of her neurosis. She embodies a tight blend of masculine and feminine qualities. Her words can caress or bite you, whatever she requires, yet she is more fragile than Ephron, which I understand and adore. She is the rock star of the two, regardless of her closet geekdom, while Ephron, although time and time again has written about not being beautiful, is a princess -- if not, a frightful queen. She is royalty and will always be.
I decided a few months ago I need not be either. Their influence shapes me in undefinable ways, not to mention the woman slowly swimming in me: the one I will develop into over the next 10 years, whom I envision somewhere right on the center line between these powerful, smart, insightful women.
Only last night, I decided I wanted to be Cameron Crowe. Gah!
I finally saw Almost Famous. I know, right? Please don't ask me how I had not gotten around to that yet, because I will blame you for telling me I needed to watch it but then not wanting to rent it with me. Ha! True story.
Not only do I want to be Crowe from the film; I want to be the Crowe who made all those films and wrote those amazing articles. I looked him up, and didn't realize I own more than half the movies he directed. Several are at the top of my list.
I noticed certain things stylistically I really enjoyed about Famous, but still can't necessarily pinpoint what it is about his technique that makes him an auteur. I suppose it's some thematic element although I suspect it is more. I know the auteur lies in the soul beneath the aesthetic film, beneath the narrative. It's a filmic element, although something that could be described in words, because it is as intentional as much as it is an effect.
Whatever it is, neither subtle nor obvious, it is brilliant. I'm completely floored.
Once upon a time, I wanted to be Nora Ephron when I grew up. I wanted to have screenwriters/producers for parents. Go to Wellesley. Be the youngest columnist for Esquire in the 1970s.
Then I wanted to be Ellen Willis. The socially conscious, against the grain, rock-the-fuck out writer and woman's leader founded the most awesome writing program I've ever read about. I would give my left arm to go there.
Then I thought, if I could somehow combine what I have learned from both women and become that, and be inspired and driven enough to do something really special like they've done, I would be exactly what and where I want to be.
They are two amazing American women, who wrote in the same time period about different things, who happened to fall on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to their strong beliefs. Both had integrity beyond definition.
Although a slight overlap connects the two surrounding women's issues, Ephron is more composed, more proper, more elitist. She exudes a certain confidence in her writing from those times, and has an amazing presence even today, in interviews I've seen since making films like When Harry Met Sally.
Willis, also Jewish, came from an upper-middle class family, and received an ivy league education, but I doubt she enjoyed maids and nice cars and schools growing up as Ephron did. I'm sure I relate to Willis on the class level: she has this angry edge marked with an admirable sensibility which Ephron lacks. Willis got to be a leading female rock writer, examining the greatest Beatles, Stones, and Dylan albums as they hit the airwaves, even beforehand, as a member of the press. She was also an activist, observing the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, 1968.
Willis is fiercely intelligent, and articulate in spite of her neurosis. She embodies a tight blend of masculine and feminine qualities. Her words can caress or bite you, whatever she requires, yet she is more fragile than Ephron, which I understand and adore. She is the rock star of the two, regardless of her closet geekdom, while Ephron, although time and time again has written about not being beautiful, is a princess -- if not, a frightful queen. She is royalty and will always be.
I decided a few months ago I need not be either. Their influence shapes me in undefinable ways, not to mention the woman slowly swimming in me: the one I will develop into over the next 10 years, whom I envision somewhere right on the center line between these powerful, smart, insightful women.
Only last night, I decided I wanted to be Cameron Crowe. Gah!
I finally saw Almost Famous. I know, right? Please don't ask me how I had not gotten around to that yet, because I will blame you for telling me I needed to watch it but then not wanting to rent it with me. Ha! True story.
Not only do I want to be Crowe from the film; I want to be the Crowe who made all those films and wrote those amazing articles. I looked him up, and didn't realize I own more than half the movies he directed. Several are at the top of my list.
I noticed certain things stylistically I really enjoyed about Famous, but still can't necessarily pinpoint what it is about his technique that makes him an auteur. I suppose it's some thematic element although I suspect it is more. I know the auteur lies in the soul beneath the aesthetic film, beneath the narrative. It's a filmic element, although something that could be described in words, because it is as intentional as much as it is an effect.
Whatever it is, neither subtle nor obvious, it is brilliant. I'm completely floored.
Labels: Cameron Crowe, Cancer, Dreams, Ellen Willis, Heroes, Movies, Nora Ephron
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Blogs I Want to Write
1. I want to write my personal credo. Someone told me to do that once. He said everybody should do it.
2. I want to share some of my recipes with you, and particularly, I would love to write a book for college students, or a cookbook about vegetarian recipes for the single person living below the poverty line. Thing is, the recipes aren't always the most nutritious, but they do get you more bang for your buck. Not sure who else would be interested, tho. The key is when you're poor you've got to at least take vitamins. If you can't always afford vegetables and fruit, that is.
3. I've been wanting to write an essay about what it is like to be a feminist in 2008: to participate in heated debates on women's work, the economy, pornography, sexuality, fashion, the portrayal of men and women in the media, the changing and stagnation of values in modern American society, and what it is like to come away from these arguments, or decades-old writings from Esquire, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice, and still feel much like you are trapped in the 60s or 70s, or tangled up in a backlash so many insist is over.
4. I would like to write a blog about some monumental lesson I've learned, except I always think of a) whom I will offend; b) how childish I could make myself out to be or c) what I am still learning, and d) that it would turn out trite, pointless, an oversimplification of a complex issue, or a combination of these.
5. I want to write a poem or a song or a story again.
6. I want to write something about reunions: either the ones I've had on Facebook; or this night out I had with an old friend weeks ago; or the wedding reception I went to last night after a friend I've known for 10 years got married, and seeing how much so many of us changed; or how an old classmate sent me an email off our reunion web site. I hadn't seen her in forever; all it said was, "You're beautiful."
7. I want to write something about music and relationships: like how I listened to this CD someone burned me several years ago after seeing this local Dallas band in concert, and how I hadn't listened to it much since then. How it's this relic from another point in time. Same for mixtapes. I want to write something about the song and the feeling and mixtapes. And write about what it would be like to see a track listing where someone had put one of your favorite songs on a mixtape he made for someone else, and how on the same CD he had put a song that someone had put on a CD for you several years ago as well, and how you then realized you even put one of the songs on a tape that even you had once made for someone else. Because that happened to me recently, and it stung as much as the music ever did on its own.
8. I want to write about what it's like to be equal parts determined as well as terrified about the future. To be shaking in your boots while smiling on the outside and making a laundry list of goals and feeling overwhelmed yet empowered, and asking yourself if you bite off more than you can chew, and then replying in wonder that you've ever been able to live any other way.
9. I want to write something about Katrina or Iraq, two very real and ongoing stories that seem often shut off by the press, in the way that we try to tie things up in neat little packages and not talk about them, not use dirty negative words, not acknowledge the crisis we still face as a nation. I met a woman last night who had been born and raised there, had cleaned out the sludge as she described it from her own home and reclaimed it, but how she doesn't really have any new neighbors yet because so many who lost everything are still rebuilding, slowly.
10. I want to write an ode to Nora Ephron's movies, and many other romantic comedies in general, and how I love them not only for their happy endings; I love them for their subtlety and intelligent humor, for their scenery, for their "alone in your room scenes," for the amazing three-dimensional characters, for the fact that they are hidden jewels under the dusty blanket of the whole "chick flick" genre. Then again, maybe other than blood, guts, explosions, and beautiful women, there's a man out there who wants to write an ode to dick flicks as well. Maybe.
1. I want to write my personal credo. Someone told me to do that once. He said everybody should do it.
2. I want to share some of my recipes with you, and particularly, I would love to write a book for college students, or a cookbook about vegetarian recipes for the single person living below the poverty line. Thing is, the recipes aren't always the most nutritious, but they do get you more bang for your buck. Not sure who else would be interested, tho. The key is when you're poor you've got to at least take vitamins. If you can't always afford vegetables and fruit, that is.
3. I've been wanting to write an essay about what it is like to be a feminist in 2008: to participate in heated debates on women's work, the economy, pornography, sexuality, fashion, the portrayal of men and women in the media, the changing and stagnation of values in modern American society, and what it is like to come away from these arguments, or decades-old writings from Esquire, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice, and still feel much like you are trapped in the 60s or 70s, or tangled up in a backlash so many insist is over.
4. I would like to write a blog about some monumental lesson I've learned, except I always think of a) whom I will offend; b) how childish I could make myself out to be or c) what I am still learning, and d) that it would turn out trite, pointless, an oversimplification of a complex issue, or a combination of these.
5. I want to write a poem or a song or a story again.
6. I want to write something about reunions: either the ones I've had on Facebook; or this night out I had with an old friend weeks ago; or the wedding reception I went to last night after a friend I've known for 10 years got married, and seeing how much so many of us changed; or how an old classmate sent me an email off our reunion web site. I hadn't seen her in forever; all it said was, "You're beautiful."
7. I want to write something about music and relationships: like how I listened to this CD someone burned me several years ago after seeing this local Dallas band in concert, and how I hadn't listened to it much since then. How it's this relic from another point in time. Same for mixtapes. I want to write something about the song and the feeling and mixtapes. And write about what it would be like to see a track listing where someone had put one of your favorite songs on a mixtape he made for someone else, and how on the same CD he had put a song that someone had put on a CD for you several years ago as well, and how you then realized you even put one of the songs on a tape that even you had once made for someone else. Because that happened to me recently, and it stung as much as the music ever did on its own.
8. I want to write about what it's like to be equal parts determined as well as terrified about the future. To be shaking in your boots while smiling on the outside and making a laundry list of goals and feeling overwhelmed yet empowered, and asking yourself if you bite off more than you can chew, and then replying in wonder that you've ever been able to live any other way.
9. I want to write something about Katrina or Iraq, two very real and ongoing stories that seem often shut off by the press, in the way that we try to tie things up in neat little packages and not talk about them, not use dirty negative words, not acknowledge the crisis we still face as a nation. I met a woman last night who had been born and raised there, had cleaned out the sludge as she described it from her own home and reclaimed it, but how she doesn't really have any new neighbors yet because so many who lost everything are still rebuilding, slowly.
10. I want to write an ode to Nora Ephron's movies, and many other romantic comedies in general, and how I love them not only for their happy endings; I love them for their subtlety and intelligent humor, for their scenery, for their "alone in your room scenes," for the amazing three-dimensional characters, for the fact that they are hidden jewels under the dusty blanket of the whole "chick flick" genre. Then again, maybe other than blood, guts, explosions, and beautiful women, there's a man out there who wants to write an ode to dick flicks as well. Maybe.
Labels: Movies, Nora Ephron, Relationships, Writing
