THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE
I finally caught up with The September Issue, R.J. Kutler’s documentary about Anna Wintour and the making of Vogue’s large, vital September issue, this time in 2007. I thought it was great. I loved seeing Anna Wintour–I have never met her, but she reminded me of some of the great editors that I worked for, a person whose insistence on quality was so strong and uncompromising that she is considered tough and unfair and monstrous by the less perceptive, less committed people around her. I thought the movie captured very well the enormous pressures that she alone at the magazine carries on her narrow shoulders–meeting with the designers, the advertisers, the retailers, her publishing colleagues, even as she captains this complex, creative enterprise called Vogue magazine, demanding not only that it
produce but lead, not only that it appear but that it astonish. I actually found her a sympathetic and approachable figure. I also loved the film’s depiction of Wintour’s relationship with Creative Director Grace Coddington (pictured left, with Wintour), which is often depicted as tense or testy, but which is clearly one of mutual respect and affection where the tension is a product not of ego (well, not altogether of ego) but of fierce commitments to slightly different imperatives (Coddington’s is to artistic vision, Wintour’s is to the overall success of the enterprise) that are usually but not always in sync. But the film was great–my stomach clenched, my heart raced, and I found myself wishing I had a magazine to go to work for.
Drove up to my house last Friday afternoon, found a guy in a car with Virginia plates in my driveway. This isn’t exactly a vision we’ve never experienced before. We’re the first driveway off the first street off an exit of a reasonably busy road that forbods people from making a left hand turn and going on their merry way. Hence: a right turn, a left onto the first street, a left into the first driveway; reverse course, and off they go. But this guy was different; he wasn’t turning, he was sitting–gabbing on his cell phone. I hovered nearly and honked–once, twice–but got nada: no wafted fingers promising an imminent response. So I elaboately turned around (in my neighbor’s driveway), parked on the street, grabbed the two big shopping bags I had with me, and went over and rapped on his window. So absorbed in his conversation was he that he leaped in his seat, and then turned to me. “I’m just turning around!” he blurted. The blatant lie of an excuse angered me. “Bullshit!” I said. “You’re talking on my phone. Now get the fuck out of my driveway.” And he immediately did so, and drove away. So: nastier phrasing than that used by Clint Eastwood’s cranky old man in Gran Torino (“Get off my lawn!”) and probably less provocation. But then I wasn’t brandishing a gun.
On Sunday Ginny and I went to the Burns Center for a big screen viewing of what has been one of her longtime favorites, Gone With the Wind. I had seen the film the view times, and it was never one of my favorites. But the critic and historian Molly Haskell (pictured at right, with critic Janet Maslin)introduced the picture Sunday, and some of her comments helped me appreciate what was going on, and I liked it very much. Haskell called Scarlett O’Hara a teen rebel, and I guess I never before really thought of her that way–as someone very young and very immature and equipped with a very age-specific set of social tools. I guess I had always thought of her as a grown woman, and as such, someone whose character flaws really made her an unpleasant person. Also, I never really considered what the film was “about”, but this time, Rhett Butler’s comments about southern self-delusion made their subsequent travails seem like self-inflicted wounds, and not the result of Yankee belligerence; during these days when our self-delusions about war and greed have come so painfully home to roost, this idea seemed very pertinent. And despite all the verbiage about cavaliers and chivalry, the film’s point of view is not terribly 
sympathetic to the south’s sufferings. Some other thoughts: Vivian Leigh was really beautiful and really an incredibly good actress; I wish she had done more film work. Clark Gable really was a limited actor; Haskell made a good point, though, about how he had to play against type, because in most films he easily gets the girl, and here he can’t get the girl no matter how hard he campaigns. Also, did Bernie Mac steal his act from Hattie McDaniel? Almost, almost. And overall, the first half is a really terrific movie; the second half, when it draws inward and concerns itself merely with the tangled feelings of Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley and Melanie, is really less interesting. It’s hard to care, ultimately, about these people who just can’t get out of their own way and accept some kind of happiness.
Many years ago, Walter Kirn worked in the cubicle next to me at Spy, and he was a most entertaining neighbor (in fact, Walter was succeeded by Jim Collins and then by Larry Doyle. On the other side, I had Joanne Gruber. Spy provided me with tremendous neighbors.) During Walter’s short tenure, we spent pretty much the first half hour of every day talking over the wall, and because Walter lived a very different life than mine–he was literary, and a drinker, and a midwestern Mormon Princetonian, and in the process of divorcing his pretty English wife–I found him endlessly fascinating. Plus he always had interesting stuff to say, like whether everybody in the world could be divided into digital and analog camps. There was a day, or maybe more than one day, when Walter came in and expounded on airport life, on how all the things you do there are different than what you do in real life. You eat food you never eat anywhere else and read USA Today, which you never read anywhere else, and read novels that you don’t read anywhere else. He went on and on. I Wish I remembered his riffs more exactly, because they were so smart and funny, and because this one, no doubt, became his novel Up in the Air. Which, I confess, I have not read, but which inspired a movie that I saw last night, and 
which I admired very much (even though the movie does not contain the novel’s best line, “Fast friends aren’t my only friends, but they’re my best friends.” There was much to like, mostly the rather sad and unsparing ending to which the film builds. My favorite moment, though, came in a scene that takes place at a meeting. All of the road warriors, of which George Clooney is one of the best, have been gathered by their boss Jason Bateman, and there, sitting at table next to George, playing one of the road warriors, is Walter. They are watching video of someone being fired, and the person doing the firing says to the displaced worker “Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it.” It’s a line George spoke earlier in the film, and at that moment, a disgruntled George turns to Walter and says “That’s my line! I came up with that!” or words to that effect. I like that–the actor telling the original writer “That’s my line! I came up with that!” I know for a fact where the whole thing originated. Congratulations, Walter!
