An Obsession

Lately I've been obsessed with this book. As a New Yorker who watched the Twin Towers burn and collapse from the Brooklyn Promenade, I am sensitive and critical about the use of it in fiction. To my ear, many attempts fall flat, including my own. I was one of the writers commissioned by Brave New World to write a short piece for the first anniversary of 9/11. It premiered with many others at Town Hall in 2002. I sat in the audience, driven insane by anxiety, surrounded by hundreds of people, as the curtain rose. I was so sure I had gotten the right amount of anguish, of humor. But I didn't. The plays that were the most successful dealt tangentally with the tragedy. Those that dealt directly sounded melodramatic. There just wasn't enough distance.

Cut to six years later and Ms. Messud's story of five New Yorkers rings true and poignant, funny and profound. The narrative swirls around a well known journalist and his coterie of daughter, wife, friend and nephew. The time is late spring, early summer 2001. The characters are drawn sharply, incisively. This is Sex and the City, but with a vengeance. I know these people or variations of them. They are confident, ridiculous, and insecure. They are ambitious, brilliant conversationalists, and well educated. The town is its usual chaotic, gorgeous hot stinking mess. The characters are almost adolescent in their desire for renown, to have fun, to make their mark on the world, have great sex.

I've read this book five times in the last year (it was published in 2007), and I've finally figured out why---in the specificity of the characters' transformation after 9/11, Messud brilliantly illuminates the universal. Before and after: irreducible, trite, cliched, yet nonetheless, powerful. It's hard to put into words. It's very easy to map the singularity of my own neurosis from the days that immediately followed; the nightmares--- I dreamt that people were standing outside my bedroom window, discussing how they were going to poison the water supply. Or, simply, a plane crashing into my building. I wasn't the only person dreaming these dreams.

What wasn't so easy to catalogue or articulate was the inchoate sense that nothing would ever be the same again. That we, as individuals, would never be the same again. That New York City would never be the same again. And every time a film or a book would attempt to parse this, put it into words, it fell flat, sounded forced. Until I read The Emperor's Children. I know that people in other cities, other towns, other states were horrified and saddened. But this was outside my bedroom window. This was my backyard. Messud translates this and its mysterious repercussions into a story that is neither exploitative or mawkish, just very, very true and very, very wise.

Angelina Reviews the Movies

Check out http://www.angelinasreviews.blogspot.com

She's the go-to girl for all things cinematic. She is also my niece. And a very good writer. She joins her father, Mark Leon, my brother, in the blogosphere http://www.leonslugocki.blogspot.com/. Soon, we shall rule over the digital world with our incisive writing, our perceptive analysis and our good looks.

Watch out!

Signed LA Slugocki

Woman Jumps Out of Burning Building

I love the profile I wrote about a photographic celebration of women at The Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Musuem of Art. This exhibit was curated by Donna Henes and Daile Kaplan, from their own collection. The presentation began with a speech by Ms. Sackler. It was a fantastic historical tour de force of not only the women but the art of photography as well.

In particular, I find this image very provocative. Its undated, and unattributed, but Ms. Kaplan, VP of Swann Galleries estimates the 1940's. She is forever suspended in the sky above black smoke, a look of sheer terror on her face. Why is she alone? My agent and friend, Deirdre Mullane, speculated, about the story beneath the story:

She's blonde, single, childless, she's jumping for her life alright, but will she be saved?

Read the post at http://www.examiner.com/x-4028-NY-Arts-Examiner

Oh Bernie What Have You Done?

Oh Bernie. Bernie, Bernie. I'm sorry but he's a likable guy. I've been reading lots of profiles including one today in New York Magazine, and he's our very own version of P. T. Barnum. Smoke and mirrors. Dancing Girls. Grand gestures. He sold and we bought. He's the emblematic patron saint of all the base and greedy instincts in all of us. I have a designer bag on a credit card that now has a 25% APR. He's the macrocosm and I'm the microcosm. As above, so below.

Honestly, it's funny.

I support the President. I helped elect him into office. And the moment I heard the words bail out --- I knew it was fait accompli. Even though instinct told me that we were letting white collar criminals run the show and get away with murder. Part of me, would like to see the whole thing crash. From a strictly theoretical point of view, it would be interesting, no, fascinating, to watch how the "free market" would recreate itself. I bet even Allen Greenspan would learn a few things.

I fear that we have merely put an old financial model on life support. The other analogy that comes to mind is a kind of economic cannibalism--- taxpayers support failing businesses and banks so that taxpayers can reap the benefits (employment, annuities, real estate 401K's, etc.) of said institutions. Am I the only person in the room who thinks this is crazy? CEO's, CFO's and their ilk fucked up and fucked us. Bernie is just the show dog in a performance of major hitters. Bernie will probably go to jail, but there are many who won't.

Instead we are giving them money.

This is why I like Bernie. This is why, when I am feeling cynical and tough, I laugh with him and at him.

Illustration by Darrow for New York Magazine

Flying Hair

photo: Marc Travanti

Look. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a beautiful woman.

Stories I'd Never Tell You

A friend of mine, CC, a woman, who wrote the original screenplay for Debbie Does Dallas--- agreed to let me interview her for a story. I thought it would make a great one. At the time, she was a young, Black, professional single mother, working at an ivy league university. A woman who hung with Nikki Giovanni, and other luminaries of the Black Arts Movement.

She was a nascent feminist who had gone to some of the meetings and marched in some of the marches. She had promised herself that one day she would tell her story. She would write about what it was like to have participated in the cultural pornographic zeitgeist of one of the highest grossing films ever. But thus far, 31 years later, she hasn't.

So I interviewed her and framed the narrative around the larger cultural issues of the day. One of the most significant is the democratization of pornography. Before the 1970's, porno existed in the shadows as stag films, and "French postcards." But movies like Deep Throat, DDD, Behind the Green Door, created porn for public consumption for the first time. Nothing has ever been the same. In addition, the 70's saw the first wave of feminism. Ironic, huh? Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and bra burning paved the way for ---- well, I think we're still arguing that. But yes improvements have been made.

Within that cultural historical framework, in 1978, CC not only wrote the screenplay but also served as AD on the set which included City Island and Pratt University. The shoot took place on the five day 4th of July weekend. I wrote this up and submitted it to Nerve.com. I thought it would be a perfect home for the story. Initially, the editor said, we like it, but--- could you reframe it, our readers already know the political and cultural backstory. Still though I was elated. It's a great online publication, sophisticated, sexy and literate. I lusted after publication.

CC didn't share my feelings. She has never really revealed her "secret." She knew I was liberal, after all an image of my bare ass is in the permanent collection of MOMA. She knew that I've written extensively and frankly about my own sexuality. I am unabashed when it comes to this. But for her--- 31 years later, she still carries a great deal of shame about her participation in DDD. The depth of this shame came crashing in on her. She changed her mind and pulled her rights. Told me that I couldn't publish a story I'd been working on for almost a year. It was a sticky situation.

On the one hand, I feel that women have far too many "secrets" regarding their sexual history and I include myself in that category. I think its time that we step out of the shadows and start telling these stories. The shame is acculturated. It's not real. It's an illusion. But we won't change this by keeping our mouths shut. On the other hand, the fear in her eyes was real. And morally I couldn't ignore that. It's a great disappointment to me. It would've been a great story. I had to tell a very prominent editor, sorry, I can't do this. I watched a pay check float away.

We had a face to face today. It was not pleasant. It's tough to go up against another woman. I felt partly that I was betraying the "sisterhood." She was brutally honest about her feelings. And I was brutally honest. I hope our friendship is able to endure despite this. As far as the story goes, I envision a book called Stories I'd Never Tell You. And it would be a collection of women finally letting go of their secrets. I doubt that CC would participate, but surely other women would.