Report from the Hamptons Intl Film Fest & The Golden Bachelor
You Can Call Me Al (but my phone's on Do Not Disturb.)
As much as I loathe the term āside hustle,ā I recently picked up a new one. Stacey Leuliette, a friend of mine from āhomeā (how long into adulthood do we refer to the town where we first sported braces and Abercrombie as āhomeā when, as Wells Fargo insists on reminding me every month, Iāve hung my hat elsewhere for a while now?) owns a magazine and invited me to be a Contributing Editor of their Scout Guide of the Hamptons. I havenāt done print since Obamaās first term and FHMās last one, so Iām excited to see how this goes. First stop: the Hamptons International Film Festival.
A Conversation with Paul Simon
I wanted to cover a few events and introduce myself to a few festival staffers, so my husband and I got a lovely babysitter for the little one and made a day date out of it. One great thing about my husband is, heāll take in whatever artsy, fartsy, BAM subtitled think piece no one else would ever sit through with me. (See, my recent post on Following). We might be hipsters. Anyway, Cambodian subtitles werenāt necessary on Saturday, because our first event was āA Conversation with Paul Simonā.
We crowded into a middle school auditorium to watch a Rolling Stone film critic (whose very being screamed āRolling Stone,ā from his shirt buttons hanging on for dear life to his casual name drop of every obscure song and forgotten band from here to Art Garfunkel). We get it interviewer, you like music.
Poor Paul seemed like a lovely guy who probably had a lot of better things to do than be peppered with questions from Mr. āRemember that E chord Hendrix did that one time,ā like nap or ācatch a (phantom)plane,ā which all the over-eager clipboard girls I used to be 15 years ago kept reminding us of. I strongly suspect Paulās āpeopleā fabricated this pat excuse long ago to extract him from just such a situation.
Paulās 1976ās SNL mono, the first of many poultry costume sketches. ^^
He was there promoting his new Alex Gibney doc āIn Restless Dreamsā , which unfortunately our schedule did not allow us to see. But Paul (he referred to Dylan as āBob,ā so weāre all friends here) did share that heād retired from performing in 2017 or so, then had a dream. He woke up from said dream and wrote Seven Pslams ābetween two thirty and five in the morningā over the course of the days that followed. Not to brag, P, but Iāve been up since five too (hashtag 9-month sleep regression), and all I wrote was this lousy newsletter.
Edie Falcoās Iāll Be Right There
After an overpriced lunch (if youāre not agape at the salad prices, are you even in the Hamptons?) we caught the much-hyped Spotlight film, Iāll Be Right There by Edie Falcoās Nurse Jackie director Brandon Walsh and Free Samples writer Jim Beggarly. I really wanted to like it. And yetā¦
OK, so itās about a mom in Anytown, USA being pulled every which way by her adult kids. Edie plays the mom, natch, and the pregnant daughter should have been played by Abby Elliott, IMHO. Itās billed as a comedy, and definitely did present like it was written by Showtime writers, which is to say the patter all-but paused for laughs rather than sounding like how humans speak. Thatās a choice, fine.
My āroseā to put it in Bravo Housewivesā terms was Bradley Whitford as her jerk ex-husband. My āthornā was that as a mom in hot-demand by her not-adult kid, it felt like it was written by a man who wanted to sell a film by writing a āfemale storyā. Act 3 quickly devolves into farce which my NYU professors made clear is what happens when the writer doesnāt know where else to go. To Crazy Town it is! No disrespect to Jesse Eisenberg, who Executive Produced.
We had passes to several other screenings, but my eager clipboard-girl days are long behind me and missed my son, so we scrapped the rest of our day date and got home just in time for bedtime.
What elseā¦what else?
Something to watch: Steve McQueenās Bullitt (1968)is on Prime. Cool cars going fast, Scrubs-level specific hospital dialogue, and a sweater game I havenāt seen since Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally.
Something to read: As an elder millennial who grew up watching shows like Two of A Kind in which 15-year-oldās parents were at most 28, I was intrigued when I heard the new Bachelor was 71 and all the women were 60+. As an NBC ex-pat, Iāve always considered that franchise (and almost all ABC programming) to be too corny and saccharine to endure, and sadly, the so-called Golden Bachelor is as well. Vulture agrees.
Something to think about: One of the most tireless beings in NY (no not the rats, the gym membership reps) got me and a joined a fitness center. Now, which is harder to quit: the gym, the mafia, or loving Heath Ledger?