Jean Paul Gaultier and French Vogue editor-in-chief, Carine Roitfeld. Photo by Glenn Belverio
Dear paint sniffers,
Carine's son Vladimir presented new paintings by emerging French artist Nicolas Pol a few nights ago on the Lower East Side. In attendance were: Sisley Restoin, Tom Sachs, Mary Kate Olsen, Larry Gagosian & Shala Monroque, Stavros Niarchos, Andres & Lauren Santo Domingo, Poppy De Villeneuve, Tatiana Santo Domingo, Stavros Merjos, Veronica Varekova, Eugenie Niarchos, Olympia Scarry, Neville Wakefield, Terence Koh, Richard Sachs, Douglas Friedman, Andres Serrano, Maria Niarchos, Fabiola Beracasa, Sante D'Orazio, Kelly Klein, Carlos De Souza, Alexander Acquavella, Alexander von Furstenberg, Genevieve Jones, Marjorie Gubelmann, Kelly Klein, Erin Wasson, Vito Schnabel, Veronica Varekova, Julio Santo Domingo, Antonio Versace, Cecile Winckler and Andre Balázs.
She also steals more than a few moves from Bollywood. Fashion queens are currently creaming their J Brand jeans worldwide in what may be the biggest Gagagasm yet.
I'm in Paris now, preparing for my lecture on my writing career at the Paris Fashion Institute. Last week I had the pleasure of attending another edition of 080 Barcelona Fashion in vibrant Catalonia. My coverage can be read here: A Shaded View on Fashion.
Au Revoir,
Glenn
Dree Hemingway backstage at 080 Barcelona Fashion.
The first time I visited EUR, Mussolini's failed Fascist wonderland on the outskirts of Rome, was back in July 2001. That was the year the Eternal City's left-wingers were fomenting dissent in response to the recent re-election of right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. By chance, I met one of said left-wingers at a gay sauna called Europa--but, of course, the only reason I was there was so I could sit in the steam room and sweat out all the champagne I had drank the night before.
Luis, a Colombian immigrant and self-described Marxist/Buddhist, took me on a political tour of Rome which began with the rarely visited Fascist buildings of EUR and ended, more or less, with the socialist/anarchist stronghold of San Lorenzo--the radical-chic 'hood populated by politically active squatters and students. (Also on the tour, because it was convenient for one of our dalliances, was the apartment that belonged to a former Communist Party senator where sofa-surfing Luis was currently crashing).
Our visit to EUR (pronounced AY-oor and stands for Esposizione Universale di Roma) was a highly memorable one. I was fascinated by the deserted de Chirico-esque ambience and haunted by the often derelict appearance of much of the area. The kitschy Roman Empire-inspired warrior statues that Il Duce had erected around his "square Colosseum" in the late 1930s were stained with age, their pedestals surrounded by sprouting weeds. The only sign of life was a teenaged Italian couple tucked away behind one of the statues engaged in a heavy petting session. After enduring hordes of deplorably dressed tourists and cheesy minstrels in bad gladiator costumes at the real Colosseum the day before, Mussolini's melancholic, ersatz Rome certainly appealed to me.
The next time I was in Rome, in 2005, it was at the invitation of the Turin Film Commission who had arranged an interview for me with Dario Argento. When the taxi from Fiumicino Airport passed by EUR's square Colosseum, which is highly visible from the highway, my heart sank: a gigantic banner ad for a mobile phone company hung across the building, reducing its stoic, enigmatic appearance to that of banal scaffolding. Given the average Roman's blase and unsentimental attitude toward even authentic ancient ruins, however, I shouldn't have been surprised.
The Palace of Labor Civilization, or "square Colosseum," in July 2009.
Fortunately when I returned to Rome this July to attend AltaRomAltaModa, the plot to turn EUR into a backdrop for crass advertising seemed to have been foiled. My driver took me there straight from the airport and this time I found the square Colosseum surrounded by a wire fence and evidence of construction and restoration. The muscular statues had been stripped of their decrepit patinas and shone brightly in the sun, while the square Colosseum was as white and polished as a Hollywood actress's veneered teeth. As Mink Stole declares while a gun is shoved up her ass in John Waters' Desperate Living: "Go ahead! A single bullet can never destroy the beauty of fascism!"
The streets of EUR have an eerie post-nuclear war ambience about them. (No wonder Antonioni chose the residential area of EUR for the final eight minutes of L'Eclisse, which function as a metaphor for Cold War anxiety and atomic apocalypse.) The low-domed building at the end of this street is the Palazzo dei Congressi, designed by EUR's chief architect Marcello Piacentini to reflect the style of the Pantheon. Berlusconi has held some of his electoral victory parties in this building.
The Palazzo INA
During the recent Alta Roma Alta Moda, Rome's twice-yearly fashion week, a fashion show was held in one of EUR's Fascist-era banks which has been converted into a swank night club (above).
Couturier Lorenzo Riva (right) and model during Riva's recent presentation in Rome. Photo: Glenn Belverio
Another remnant of Rome's recent past are some of couture shows that are held in the Eternal City that seek to channel the 'la dolce vita' era, the '50s and '60s. I recently attended a show by Lorenzo Riva, who opened his first couture house at age eighteen, which harkened back to those days. The rest of the shows held during Alta Moda were staged by younger designers, both couture and pret-a-porter. But one label (which I later realized is defunct) I was on the lookout for was Tiziani of Rome.
Why? Karl Lagerfeld designed for them back in the '60s and there are two noteworthy things about this freelance gig. One, the house was founded by an oil-rich Texan, not a Roman, and two, under Lagerfeld's hand, Tiziani of Rome designed the costumes for one of the biggest, over-the-top camp classic films of all time: Joseph Losey's Boom (1968) starring the booze-soaked megastar couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Noel Coward has a star turn as the "Witch of Capri" and among the many things to obsess over in this film are the lavish costumes.
The most famous costume in the film is Taylor's "kabuki" look, complete with daisy-adorned, porcupine-needled headdress. She chooses to don this not-very-casual look for a summer supper out on her terrace with the gossipy Witch of Capri and no other guests. Show off much, dollface?
Burton wears a samurai costume for most of the film. By the way, the film takes place and was shot on the Italian island of Sardinia. So why the Easter Island heads? Why not? A set like this seemed perfectly logical in the hallucinogenic days of the late '60s.
The film is faithfully based on Tennessee Williams' play "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" and it is said that Boom was Williams' favorite film adaptation of his work.
Yes, Noel Coward is probably snorting amyl nitrate in this scene. The dialogue here has a distinctly misogynist gay tone to it. If you want to know more, watch the film (if you can find a copy!)
As Sebastian Venable might say, "Romans are on the menu" as I prepare for my trip to Rome to cover Alta Roma Alta Moda for A Shaded View on Fashion. The 4-day fashion event (July 12-15) will open with the 5th edition of a designer contest called "Who is On Next?" which is co-branded with one of my favorite magazines, Italian Vogue. Not to be a snob but as this is a fashion competition in Europe, don't expect the kind of low-brow bitchiness found on Project Runway and The Fashion Show. (But if we're lucky, we may see something on par with Diana Ross's fashion show in Rome from the film "Mahogany.")
Above: Italian Vogue creative director, Anna Piaggi at the Life Ball in Vienna, 2007. Photo by Glenn Belverio
Above: Adrien Brody and director Dario Argento on the set of Argento's 2009 film "Giallo."
The last time I was in Rome, back in 2005, I interviewed one of my favorite directors of all time, Dario Argento, at the invitation of the Turin Film Commission. For those who haven't heard, the Italian horror meister is releasing his new film, "Giallo," later this year and it stars American actor Adrien Brody. The title, literally "yellow" in Italian, refers to the tradition of Italian crime-fiction pulp novels with trademark yellow covers. Many of Argento's past films are classified as "giallos" because of their adherence to the genre's formula--a whodunit where the killer has a penchant for wearing sinister leather gloves and a black trench coat.
The female lead of "Giallo" is Brody's girlfriend, Spanish actress Elsa Pataky. Rumor has it that the reason Brody scored the lead role is because after Pataky was cast, Brody insisted on being on set with her at all times. Why? Allegedly he was concerned about Argento's reputation as a "misogynist director" who puts his actresses through grueling ordeals in his films. (Sound familiar? Remember the unconfirmed stories of Hitchcock ghoulishly chanting "faster!" while crews members hurled live birds at Tippi Hedren during the climactic attic scene in "The Birds"?)
So, since Brody would be hanging around the set of "Giallo" so much, it probably made sense for Argento to simply cast him as the male lead--bumping Vincent Gallo, Argento's original choice, off the film's marquee! (As much as I enjoy the handsome Adrien Brody, I can only imagine the kind of cineaste boner I would have gotten from watching Gallo in an Argento film!)
Interviewing Argento was one of the biggest thrills of my life. The feature I wrote, which was published in ZOO and WestEast magazines in fall/winter 2005, can be read below.
The Deep Red Menace
Italian horror maestro Dario Argento finally pays tribute to fellow Catholic, Alfred Hitchcock, and discusses his love of Turin, cats and sex
By Glenn Belverio
On the Via Veneto in Rome there is a rather unconventional chapel, known as the Cemetery of the Capuchins, whose interior is decorated in a meticulous, manic fashion: thousands of bones belonging to Catholic monks have been arranged in a diabolical manner that suggests a speed freak arts-and-crafts fair staged in Hell. This outré display of Roman-style macabre is similar in effect to a typical film by Dario Argento. His films’ notorious set pieces, almost too numerous to mention – Jennifer Connelly sliding into a pit of decaying bodies and maggots, a young woman being shredded in a tangle of barbed-wire, a raven gouging out the eye of a killer with its beak at the Regio Opera Theatre – have garnered him a fanatical following worldwide since his debut film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, was released in 1970. For years, lazy American journalists have pegged Argento “the Italian Hitchcock”, a label that he has vehemently resented. Until now. “I really love Hitchcock, even though I’m not as manneristic as he was”, says Argento. “I don’t imitate him, but sure, he has had an influence on me.”
Scene from "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage"
My friend Rinaldo Rocco, a handsome actor/playboy who coincidentally has portrayed the killer in many giallos, or Italian murder mysteries, has driven me to my appointment with Argento on the back of his Vespa. After the nerve-rattling ride over bumpy cobble-stoned streets, we are sitting in Argento’s Opera Film headquarters in Rome hearing about the maestro’s new TV film, Ti Piace Hitchcock? (Do You Like Hitchcock?). Argento, now a youthful 65, is friendly and robust while still possessing his signature ghoulish carriage that has caused more than a few to comment: “He looks like something out of one of his own horror films.” And while he seems to cultivate this physical image – he famously eats little or nothing while working on his films – he is a true Roman in many other ways: warm, demonstrative and with a fondness for anecdotes. His famous father Salvatore Argento was a key player in the Italian cinema world but what is less known is that his mother, who was a celebrity photographer in the 40s and 50s, is Brazilian.
When I meet Argento, I present him with a Portuguese-language version of Camille Paglia’s book on Hitchcock’s film The Birds and he is flattered that I’ve recognized the other side of his Latin heritage. During the interview, Argento rolls along energetically in Italian – like a runaway Vespa careening through the Villa Borghese gardens – as Rinaldo struggles to keep up with him as my English-language interpreter. “For my new movie, I really wanted to imitate the style of Hitchcock, especially the long, drawn-out scenes he used for suspense”, Argento tells me. “But for my film, I really exaggerate the Hitchcock style of suspense by portraying long, long scenes that are much longer than his scenes. This is my way of commenting on Hitchcock’s main device for suspense.”
"Suspiria"
The story of Do You Like Hitchcock? concerns a 23 year-old film student and Hitchcock fan named Giulio who meets two women in a video store, all of them set on renting Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Giulio surrenders the DVD to the ladies who – in a gesture to Rear Window – live in the building opposite Giulio’s. When Giulio spies the two women making out, it becomes apparent that Do You Like Hitchcock? conspires to break through the sex-less, Catholic guilt-ridden barriers erected by the repressed Anglo director. “There are a lot of sex scenes in my Hitchcock homage, this is the only aspect that is different from his films”, explains Argento. “Hitchcock was very moralistic, he had this British way of behaving and directing, a British decorum. But I love sex and showing naked bodies in my films.” While this obvious Latin affectation is at odds with Hitch’s infamously timid attitude toward women’s sexuality, the fact that the British Master and Argento have a Catholic upbringing in common begs examination.
The role of Catholic guilt in the horror genre cannot be underestimated. Argento believes that horror films from Catholic countries serve the function of “releasing some kind of evil you have in your inner self…this is a good thing.” But despite his overt Italian baroque tendencies, Argento claims the reason his films are popular in Japan is because “my mind is very similar to the Japanese mind. I have a lot in common with manga artists.” He feels the prevalence of moralism in cinema is more of a problem in non-Catholic, Western countries. “My films are not moralistic but American films are, especially the big ones like War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise”, he says. “There is a fixation with family values in that film.” And while the calculating Hitchcock seemed concerned with specific psychological conflicts--Norman Bates and his smothering albeit dead mother, Marnie’s pathological frigidity, marauding birds as primitive force vs. civilization--Argento’s work is frequently visceral. He is often so caught up with high visual style, lighting and mise-en-scene, there is a constant feeling that Argento is too distracted to notice the axe-wielding specter of Catholic guilt sneaking up behind him. Viewing Argento’s films is a bit like having sex with a stranger in a Catholic country--there is a nagging concern that you’re doing something terribly wrong but it feels way too good to stop.
"Deep Red"
In addition to the Catholic connection, there are also the inevitable rumours concerning the cruelty of both directors. During a scene toward the end of The Birds, where Tippi Hedren is being brutally pecked by the film’s feathered stars in an attic, live birds were thrown at the blonde heroine. Hitch, who was not entirely fond of Hedren, allegedly egged on crew members by sadistically chanting, “Faster, faster!” In a similar scene in Argento’s 1980 supernatural experiment, Inferno, live cats were hurled at actress Daria Nicolodi, who was Argento’s then-lover and mother of their daughter Asia, and whose combative relationship with the director is the stuff of eternal Italian gossip. “Yes, Hitchcock hated Tippi”, Argento grins when I bring up both stories. Without denying the frenetic feline-tossing on the set of Inferno, he adds, “Hitchcock was afraid of birds, but I love cats. Some feel that cats are close to the devil and for this reason, priests rarely own them. But I don’t believe that.”
David Hemmings and Argento on the set of "Deep Red"
Produced by RAI Trade, DoYou Like Hitchcock? – which was screened at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival – is the first in a series of Hitchcock-themed feature length programs and marks Argento’s return to the television format. When he was in his early thirties, Argento sported a modish mop-top hairdo that perfectly complimented his rock star-like status after his 1972 TV series, Door Into Darkness, catapulted him into the Italian pop culture stratosphere. Similar to the TV serial Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Argento’s series featured the horror auteur introducing hour-long murder mysteries from a variety of directors, including Argento himself. “When Door Into Darkness was shown on TV it caused a revolution. Many people called the station and also the newspapers to complain about the excessive violence. I met with the people at RAI and many scenes had to be cut”, Argento recalls. “Now, with the Hitchcock homage the complaints from RAI have been about the sex scenes rather than violence.”
The Villa Scott in Turin
Do You Like Hitchcock? was shot in Argento’s second favorite shooting locale after Rome, the city of Turin in the Piemonte region of northern Italy. Besides its arguably inflated reputation as the Italian capital of black magic, Turin is also the birthplace of Italian cinema – the first Italian film, Cabiria, was shot there in 1914. “I love shooting in Turin because there are many small neighborhoods that not many people have seen – it’s a rarely filmed city”, enthuses Argento. “I especially love Turin’s architecture as it is different from other Italian cities – it is between baroque and art nouveau.” As a friend and admirer of Michelangelo Antonioni, Argento has always appreciated the director’s use of architecture in his stories – particularly in the 1962 film The Eclipse where Monica Vitti wanders past modern buildings in a forlorn Roman suburb – and sees architectural structures as actual characters in many of his own films.
Perhaps the most famous example of this in the Argento oeuvre is the flamboyant and decrepit art nouveau mansion in his 1975 giallo masterpiece, Profondo Rosso (Deep Red). Built in 1901, the Villa Scott--nestled in the hills of Turin--is featured in several key scenes in which actor David Hemmings is attempting to solve a series of murders. “A group of nuns and wayward girls lived in this house when I discovered it during a location shoot”, Argento says of the villa which remained empty for most of the 80s and 90s. “We paid for all of them to go on vacation in Remini, a resort on the Adriatic, so we could shoot there for a month.” The nuns and their girls returned tanned and relaxed to their villa which was henceforth referred to as “the Deep Red horror house.” Another famous Deep Red locale is the Piazza CLN,ontheviaRoma, with its bookend male and female statue-adorned fountains, where David Hemmings is witness to the film’s first murder. Off the tourist beat, this humble piazza will be known to the world when the 2006 Olympics descend on Turin this winter.
Monica Vitti strolls through EUR in Antonioni's "L'Eclisse"
What is also little-known about Argento outside of Italy is that he shares the left-wing tendencies of his Italian cinema colleagues Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. In 1969, Bertolucci joined the Communist Party and also collaborated with Argento on the script for Sergio Leone’s classic Spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West. “I was a member of the Italian Communist Party”, says Argento proudly. He also worked as the film critic for Party newspaper Paese Sera after he finished Catholic school. In 1973, Argento made a rare departure from the horror genre when he wrote and directed the underrated Le Cinque Giornate (The Five Days), a left-wing political satire about the Italian revolution centered in Milan in 1848. Evoking the comedy of Mel Brooks and Monty Python, Le Cinque Giornate is a savage commentary on the birth of Italy. “I wanted to show how false that birth was”, say Argento. “Because it was a revolution conducted by the rich and by the nobles. That is why six years later there was another revolution, an anarchist revolution.”
"The Five Days"
I mention that recently while re-watching his exquisite first film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, I freeze-framed and zoomed into a Chairman Mao poster that hung on the American couple’s apartment wall in Rome. This causes Argento to launch into an anecdote from the time of Inferno’s pre-production with 20th Century Fox’s involvement in 1979. An American producer friend from Fox, who was very drunk after a dinner with Dario and Daria, was invited to nap in the Argento bedroom. The man passed out in the dark and when he awoke an hour later, he saw an enormous wooden red star, the symbol of Mao’s Red Brigade, towering over the bed. “He came running into the living room where Daria, me and the man’s wife were drinking and talking and he started screaming at the top of his lungs ‘What the fuck is this?! Are you a terrorist, a member of the Red Brigade?!’” Argento recalls. “And I said ‘no, no, no it is just art, a sculpture’ and he said ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ After he went back to America, I never heard from him again and our friendship ended abruptly.” This story brings to mind the anti-communist soliloquy near the end of the preposterous 1949 American propaganda film The Red Menace: "My flag has three colors, not one that's the color of blood!"
Of course Argento will always be thought of as the creepy yet dignified creator of DeepRed and other blood-soaked sagas rather than as a Red menace – and will continue to forge ahead in the terror terrain. Masters of Horror, a new TV series that will be distributed worldwide, will feature segments directed by fright titans John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Roger Corman, George Romero (Argento collaborated with Romero on Dawn of the Dead) and others. Argento’s contribution will be a short film based on a comic book called “Jenifer”. The project grew out of a bi-monthly dinner gathering attended by the directors. At a recent one held in a Vancouver restaurant, Argento started arguing with John Landis after Landis opined that the shower scene in Psycho was effective because “you never actually see the gory stabbing." Argento began plunging his knife into the rare steak he ordered, screaming "No! I like to see contact with the victim! Lots and lots of blood! Audiences love it!" Would Hitchcock have liked Argento? We think so.
Thanks for reading,
Glenn
P.S. - The trailer for Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace"--a giallo set in a Roman fashion house:
I've been following the recent fracas that has erupted concerning Mrs. de la Renta's displeasure over Michael Gross's latest expose of New York's hallowed inhabitants and institutions: Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum. Though I've not read it yet, I'm sure it's packed with many meticulously documented, clutch-the-pearls anecdotes like the ones found in some of his previous works, such as 740 Park and Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren.
A hilariously written blog post and interview by the mysterious "Madame Arcati" documents de la Renta's attempt to suppress all media coverage of Gross's book. (Make sure you read the equally hilarious reader comments, as well).
I for one am not surprised that someone on The Met's A-list would resort to undemocratic tactics to quash any and all voices who dare to cast their social order in an unfavorable light. I was a victim of the Met Costume Institute's ire when I penned what was deemed an unflattering and irreverent piece about their Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit for DUTCH magazine back in late 2001. After attending a press luncheon with Harold Koda and Hamish Bowles to preview the show, I met with the Costume Institute's publicist (I can't remember the girl's name but I'm sure she's run off and married a once-rich banker and left The Met). She assured me that since I was covering the exhibit for DUTCH (the magazine was at the height of its buzz and influence at the time) that of course I would be invited to the Met Gala for the show's launch. Your invitation is already in the mail, she basically implied. Eight bottles of your favorite champagne have already been reserved. Your hors d'oeuvres? We'll ensure that the varnish on them has dried well before your arrival.
However, when I mentioned that my journalism style was often humorous, she blanched. "H-h-h-humorous?" her voice trembled. As if it was just was not possible to write anything funny or, god forbid, satirical about an exhibit celebrating the holy Mrs. Kennedy. (I'm really no big fan of the Kennedys. Jack was too rabidly anti-Communism for my tastes--how was he any better than Reagan?--and while I do appreciate Jackie on a certain level, I never could abide her ascension to sainthood via the fashion world. Her greatest skill was her opportunistic ability to choose the right men to marry, and her descent into decadence and self-indulgence during her Jackie O years, while entertaining, should somehow disqualify her from sainthood).
Jackie O squeezes out a smile despite the fact that the whale-testicle-covered chairs that she ordered for the luncheon never arrived.
So, after my article on the Jackie exhibit came out in the summer issue of DUTCH, I waited for my Met Gala invite to arrive in the mail. But every day was a Charlie Brown-like mailbox experience. ("What's the matter Charlie Brown? Still no invite to the Met Gala?") Calls and emails to the PR girl, who was a good friend of the club doorman I later wrote a book about, went unreturned. The doorman reached out to her and he was similarly rebuffed. (Despite their friendship, I believe he never heard from her again). Weeks after the gala came and went, I called her again and left a courtesy message (again, unreturned) to see if she had received her copy of the magazine (surely she had) and wanted to know what she thought of the article. At this point I was really just trying to provoke her, and I knew that she had most likely been instructed by her superiors to slash me from the invite list. There's nothing more dreary than institution people who have no sense of humor about their subject matter.
Anyway, here is the article from the Summer 2001 issue of DUTCH:
How Now Jackie
A new exhibit at the Metropolitan Costume Institute shows how Jacqueline Kennedy’s pop princess persona is irreplaceable.
By Glenn Belverio
In 1963, about a week after the publication of Jacqueline Susann’s memoir about her pet poodle, Every Night, Josephine!, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. When Susann stopped by her publisher’s for a meeting, she found everyone gathered around the TV taking in the news. “Why the fuck does this have to happen to me?!” she exploded. “This is gonna ruin my tour!” But like any good writer, Susann was eventually inspired by this pitfall. Her last novel, Dolores, was “the intense, tragic story of Dolores Ryan, the beautiful and fashionable young widow of an assassinated American President”. The most thinly veiled roman-a-clef in history, Dolores examined the psyche--and shopping skills--of an American First Lady. An excerpt: “Their first real argument came when she bought ten pairs of shoes. Jimmy stared at the bill with total disbelief. ‘How can you wear ten pairs of shoes at once?’ ‘They match different clothes,’ replied Dolores. ‘Clothes I intend to buy.’”
The clothes bought by the real First Lady of Fashion, Jacqueline Kennedy, will be featured in an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute titled "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years." Susann biographer Barbara Seaman writes of the author’s interest in Mrs. Kennedy: “She identified totally with ‘the other Jackie’, with her brunette beauty and elegance, her tragedies with children…her aura of sadness mixed with strength.” Sadly, there will be no juxtapositions of the Valley of the Dolls author’s famous Pucci outfits alongside Mrs. Kennedy’s Givenchy gowns. Also, don’t look for any mention of an experience that the two Jackies shared: both were patients of Max Jacobs aka “Dr. Feelgood,” the notorious quack famous for his vitamin B and amphetamine shots. (Mrs. Kennedy’s visits to Dr. Feelgood's office are documented in Sarah Bradford’s recent bio America’s Queen.)
This would all make for an interesting comparative pop culture study in two American Jackies: Susann, the vulgar, brash broad of trashy letters, and Mrs. Kennedy, the polite, shy lady of historic and aesthetic preservation. Susann swore loudly like a sailor, indulged in Nembutal suppositories, and wrote books about pill-popping starlets and suicidal bisexuals. Mrs. Kennedy whispered demurely (“like Marilyn Monroe playing Ophelia,” Maria Callas famously quipped), smoked cigarettes while hidden from cameras (one would be hard pressed to find a photo of her smoking), and read esoteric French books. Some may argue that Jackie Susann was a precursor to the later, hedonistic Jackie O., wherein her First Lady decorum surrendered to the decadence of the late '60s--a period defined by Susann’s sensationalistic novels.
But being that the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit is not meant to be viewed as a perverse pop playground (the tone is decidedly reverential), Susann’s sensible absence requires no explanation. However, the impressive show contains many consolations. “Jacqueline Kennedy was taking a look that was very much in common currency in certain fashionable circles but wasn’t by any means an aesthetic that had been embraced by America at large”, explains Hamish Bowles, Vogue editor-at-large and curator for the exhibit. “She took something that came from a very sequestered world and made it nationally and internationally visible.” On display will be many of the elegant gowns Mrs. Kennedy wore for formal functions and public appearances designed by American designer Oleg Cassini: the black satin dress she wore when she met the Pope, the famed Inaugural ball gown, the sleeveless pink shantung dress she wore to India (a trip she reportedly brought sixty suitcases for).
There will also be a few Givenchys -- such as a stunning hot pink ribbon-back dress -- most of which were allegedly bought before she moved into the White House. (With the exception of the ones purchased for her appearances with JFK in Paris). This was in lieu of her suggestion that she would only buy clothes that were made in America. “If she was wearing Paris couture clothes that she already had in her wardrobe, I don’t think she can be criticized for that”, says Bowles. “On the contrary, it showed some level of sobriety and thriftiness, and it also showed that she was drawn to very simple, understated clothes.”
Another way that Mrs. Kennedy satisfied her French fashion fixation was to have some of her clothes made by Chez Ninon, an American company that legitimately copied Paris couture. One such example is the cranberry wool trompe l’oeil dress (a copy of a Marc Bohan design for Dior) she famously wore in the televised tour of her White House restoration project. Even better than the actual dress is the inclusion of video clips of the program in the exhibit. The White House Tour video is a hypnotizing historical artifact. Mrs. Kennedy’s whispery, campy recital of historical factoids, her sometimes stiff, sometimes boyish movements, and her nervous schoolgirl smile suggested a failed attempt at projecting a fully developed pop royal persona. (She allegedly went to bed in tears after viewing the broadcast.)
It perhaps goes without saying that at least one garment will not be included in the show: the infamous blood-splattered Chanel-like pink suit that is stored away in some arcane Washington vault. “The stained suit Jackie refused to change that day documented the polarities of womanhood: the pastel pink of girlhood and romance and the barbaric blood red of birth and death,” wrote Camille Paglia in her essay "Mona Lisa in Motion."
“That garment, like the Shroud of Turin, was a pictogram of her life story, with its failed pregnancies and widowhood.” Some may wonder how an exhibit on the clothes of Jackie Kennedy can be complete without the psychological and historical information displayed on that suit. Many will understand the need for restraint and respect on such an issue. Jackie Susann’s Dolores certainly understood the need for restraint: “Part of the duties of being First Lady was to look perfect. She sure didn’t look perfect now…the wrinkled suit…her hair falling across her face…she mustn’t allow the tears to come. A lady doesn’t show emotion in public.”
Two stills from the obscure Jerry Schatzberg gem Puzzle of a Downfall Child
Dear Fashion Fans:
A few days ago I checked out the "Model as Muse" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had expectations, but not too high. After all, I've been looking at and writing about model culture for over ten years. I was hoping to see something new, something startling--some new twist on what is just, let's face it, a recycled theme and a weak idea. As I walked through the exhibit I was making air check marks in front of various photos and tableaus: Iconic Penn photos, check. Dovima and the Elephants, check (would have loved some obscure images/info on Dovima; she had an interesting trajectory), a "Studio 54 room," check. Vintage Dior clothing, check. Magazines opened to '90s Calvin Klein ads, check. Scenes from Funny Face projected on a wall, check. (Great film but THE most obvious choice! Why not throw a curve ball and project scenes from Puzzle of a Downfall Child?....but more on that later). The music played in the various "decades" rooms was predictable and uninspired: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in the '90s room (most obvious choice) and "Talkin' 'bout My Generation" by The Who in the '60s room. Considering that Paco Rabanne was the featured designer in this room (complemented with clips from William Klein's film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? which satirizes Rabanne's metallic fashions in its opening sequence) I would have thought someone would have been savvy enough to dig up "The Martian Without a Master" by Pierre Boulez. This was the song played when Rabanne marched black models down his runway, a first, in the mid-'60s. But instead we got The Who? Mediocrity! Mrs. Vreeland would not be pleased.
When I contacted former Costume Institute curator Diana Vreeland via Ouija Board, she confirmed that she was not pleased with the Met's current show. Photo by Andy Warhol.
I will admit that I was pleased to see some of the metal costumes from Klein's film. There was only ONE photo in the exhibit that I had never seen before, a sublime shot of Penelope Tree. But most of the choices were predictable and unsurprising to the fashion initiated. They've been seen millions of times; reproduced in the pages of American and foreign fashion magazines year after year and featured in countless other exhibits. (Even though I've seen it many times, I will admit it's always a pleasure to see Franco Rubartelli's photo of my favorite model, Veruschka--whom I interviewed in 1999 for DUTCH magazine--in Saint Laurent safari chic.)
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Glenn, you're old and jaded! You think you've seen it all." Perhaps, and perhaps this show will be of interest to teenagers and people in their early '20s. But even I know that many young people, especially young fashion fanatics, are very aware of fashion history and do have high standards. I have young friends who can describe in detail the looks from Azzedine Alaia's first collection (who, by the way, was not featured in this exhibit despite being well-known for promoting the concept of models as muses).
Above: Azzedine Alaia with Naomi Campbell. Campbell boycotted the Met "Model as Muse" gala to protest Alaia's omission.
Finally, one last gripe (which, I admit, is also a segue): I do not recall seeing even one image by Jerry Schatzberg in this show. Am I wrong? If I'm right, this is absolutely criminal! Schatzberg not only shot brilliant fashion images in the '50s and '60s, he also directed the above-mentioned film Puzzle of a Downfall Child which features a model/muse, played by Faye Dunaway, who has a nervous breakdown. So, would you rather see that (it's never been officially released on DVD or video) or Funny Face for the trillionth time?
Back in the spring of 2000, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Schatzberg at his Central Park West apartment and penned the following feature which originally appeared in the September/October 2000 issue of DUTCH magazine.
Schatzberg vérité
by Glenn Belverio
Jerry Schatzberg is talking about the time he was blacklisted--not by Senator McCarthy, but by Faye Dunaway. "We had a fight because she arrived late on the set. She put my name on the list and I just left it there," he recalls. Schatzberg is referring to the filming of his obscure masterpiece, Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), the story of a fashion model who has a mental breakdown. The film's protagonist, Lou Andreas Sand, played by Dunaway, has compiled an ever-growing list of photographers she refuses to work with. In a life-imitates-art moment, Dunaway added Schatzberg, who was once a fashion photographer and Dunaway's lover, to Lou's list. Luckily they reconciled and were able to finish this quirky gem of a film.
Based on the real-life story of model Anne St. Marie, Puzzle documents the rise and fall of a top model whose distortion of reality shapes the film's surreal narrative. "Anne had her own sense of humor," says Schatzberg, who fell in love with her when he shot her for Vogue in the late '50s. "The stress of this business led to her breakdown." The film is a bit like a Nostradamus prophecy of the tribulations suffered by contemporary models such as Kate Moss. Eerily, Dunaway's visage seems to channel the waif supermodel in the film. But Puzzle can be any girl's story. "Anne was not unique," Schatzberg remembers. "There were models who would walk into the studio and just break down crying because some editor told them that one shoulder was higher than the other." Schatzberg tape-recorded St. Marie during her downward spiral, which was abated by booze and pills, and later played the tapes for Carole Eastman, who wrote the screenplay for Puzzle. "Faye also listened to the tapes and got to know Anne that way," says Schatzberg. Eastman combined her own odd sense of humor with Anne's recorded persona, and Lou Andreas Sand was born. "When Carole initially listened to the tapes, she was so intrigued she left a friend with a toothache waiting in her car for three hours," recalls Schatzberg.
Above: Faye's fractured image in Puzzle
The film's title is derived from the story of a woman Schatzberg knew, who would wake up in the middle of the night, rush to the window and try to catch a "falling child." Schatzberg originally envisioned a film that was about an abortion, but as the story developed it became more about St. Marie and her downfall. Puzzle takes the viewer through Lou's fractured mind which imagines events such as an art director gunning her down while she is being photographed on a beach, and her bridal gown (which resembles a nun's habit and was inspired by the designs of Geoffrey Beene) changing from white to black as she flees the wedding altar. Puzzle is so obscure that the only copy Schatzberg has of his own film is the one designer Anna Sui taped when it was aired at an ungodly hour on a forgotten TV channel. It's the kind of film you hear fashion film freaks talk about in the same breath as that other classic Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? directed by another photographer/director William Klein. "We knew each other in the '60s," says Schatzberg. "I shot him working backstage at the Paris collections for Esquire."
Fashion photo by Jerry Schatzberg
Schatzberg, a native of Forest Hills, Queens, NY, got his start in photography in 1954 when he assisted fashion photographer Bill Helburn. In 1956, he moved to Manhattan and started shooting his own editorial for Glamour and Vogue. In addition to his fashion work, he was also involved with the '60s rock scene in swinging London. There, photographer David Bailey introduced him to Mick Jagger before most people had heard of the Rolling Stones. "Here was this guy with a ripped sweater and dirty fingernails, and all the girls were screaming and pulling at him when we got out of my car at one of their gigs," says Schatzberg, who later photographed the Stones in drag for the cover of their single "Can't You See Your Mother Standing in the Shadows?" Later, he was a financial backer for two seminal New York clubs, Ondine and Salvation, where Jimmy Hendrix (then Jimmy James) played his first gig. Most of all, Schatzberg wanted to make films and leave fashion photography. His debut Puzzle functions as a neat exit from his former profession.
Edie Sedgwick photographed by Jerry Schatzberg
Most of Schatzberg's films have garnered more enthusiasm abroad, mainly due to his European cinema sensibility: minimalist story lines, languid pacing, painterly-like vistas. "When I go to Paris, I'm treated like Spielberg. It's so good for my ego," laughs the director who still spends most of his time in New York, where he resides on Central Park West. After Puzzle, Schatzberg immediately began working on a new project, a film that he is perhaps most famous for: The Panic in Needle Park (1971), starring Kitty Winn and Al Pacino as heroin addicts who hang out in the park at the intersection of 72nd Street and Broadway. It soon becomes clear, however, that "Needle Park" is more than a row of grimy park benches; it is the mental landscape, or existential prison, that heroin addicts inhabit. The script was written by Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, who it is rumored spent just a couple of days researching the topic of junkies. However, before shooting, Schatzberg, Pacino and Winn hit the streets for six weeks to build on the script. "We hung out with junkies at Blimpie's and went to seminars for addicts at Roosevelt Hospital," says Schatzberg.
"What do you mean I can't get a prescription for heroin?" Kitty Winn in The Panic in Needle Park
The resulting film is pure cinema verite, partly because real ex-junkies were cast as denizens of Needle Park. A scene depicting the cutting and packaging of heroin by dealers is so realistic that one waits for a documentary-style voiceover to accompany the action. The authenticity is helped again by the casting, this time of actual heroin cutters. In many of Schatzberg's films, particularly Panic, Scarecrow (1973) and Honeysuckle Rose (1980), the action is so natural that one almost suspects a candid camera technique, as if the actors were unaware of being filmed. "I think in some ways it's what I did in fashion photography. When I brought people into the studio, I still wanted them to be honest and real. For the collection I shot for Vogue in 1960, I just had people walking across the set in a very natural way, with their skirts poofing up and so on."
Jerry frames a shot
Schatzberg continued to make films throughout the '70s and '80s, winning the Palm d'Or at Cannes in 1973 for Scarecrow, but was relatively quiet during the '90s. "I worked on six films where either the script didn't work out or the money didn't come through. But I'm not very prolific anyhow," he shrugs. Happily for Schatzberg fans, the director has both a new film release and a retrospective scheduled for the fall. His latest, The Day the Ponies Came Back, is about a Frenchman (Guilaume Canet of The Beach) who goes to New York to track down his father and through him, to find himself. The story is inspired by Schatzberg's ex-wife who embarked on the same quest. With Schatzberg's help, she found her father. "I think we're all looking for our fathers, even if we have a father, we're always trying to please him. We do everything we can to make him like us." The film, shot in the Bronx, promises to have the same gritty appeal as earlier works. His next project, Boomer, will be another collaboration with Puzzle scripter, Carole Eastman, who Schatzberg hasn't worked with for twenty-five years. It's based on the memoirs of an English professor overcome with ennui. "She experiments with drugs and homosexuality because she is tired of her life," he explains. "Then she sees an ad for a railway worker position and she takes it. She still works there today."
Al Pacino in Scarecrow
Schatzberg has been credited with being one of the few directors to craft a new style of drama, an American genre that surfaced after the dust of the tumultuous '60s cleared. "The absence of schmaltz and sentimentality in many '70s dramas had a lot to do with the reality of the '60s," he says. "That decade brought us a lot, but also took away a lot." One device Schatzberg often likes to employ is the anti-climactic/non-resolution ending (a style pioneered by Michelangelo Antonioni). Lou walking away from her beach house still trying to piece together the jumbled episodes of her life in Puzzle. Helen silently following Bobby after he is released from jail in Panic. Max the drifter banging his shoe on the ticket counter at the train station after leaving his catatonic companion behind in the hospital in Scarecrow. The characters stay with you after the film is over, you worry about them as if you knew them. "You hope that maybe something nice will happen to them," says Schatzberg. "I loved Anne and I wanted her to come out of it the whole time I was photographing her during her breakdown. Those endings leave a little hope, a little optimism."
Surprise! "Puzzle of a Downfall Child" is on YouTube.
