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They Shoot Jewish Witches, Don’t They?

October 28, 2017 in Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays

Last night I had dinner at a Truro restaurant, and encountered the particular strain of New England xenophobia that inspired me to leave the region decades before.

It annoys me that I feel compelled to report on what occurred. Soon I must jump back into my ADHD life in New York, and expending precious writing time on this topic feels like a microcosm of how our predator-in-chief siphons our energy by making it all about his ugly heart rather than the huge issues he should be managing. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The hatred lurking everywhere in American life is leaping to the surface because it’s been endorsed at the top.

So here’s what happened. I had had an almost perfect day before that dinner. By 1 pm, I had written 3,000 words of a book section that had been giving me trouble. Then I’d headed over to the Provincelands, an extraordinary stretch of the Cape Cod National Seashore comprised of dunes and forests and ancient, still-inhabited shacks. I walked for miles in this extrarrestrial territory—all sand mountains, barreling blue sky, trees stubbornly growing sideways. I was dressed how I most like to dress—a loose skirt and trenchcoat, barefoot and pigtailed—and could not stop smiling. It was the first bright day all week, and I was fucking happy. Continue Reading →

The Dated “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”

October 25, 2017 in Book Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Film Matters

There are films that ripen on the vine, and then there is “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” Richard Brooks’ 1977 adaptation of the Judith Rossner novel inspired by a NYC schoolteacher killed by a one-night stand. It was a crime that seized national attention – for some, as a cautionary tale about women’s liberation; for others, as a case study in lethal misogyny. Rossner’s fictionalized account–lurid and lucid both–was such a critically touted bestseller that the term “Mr. Goodbar” became mainstream slang for a hot one-night stand. But while Brooks’ film made bank, reviews were mixed. Viewed forty years later, you can see why. Its ambivalence about independent female sexuality makes for a jarring, fractured viewing experience if also a fascinating time capsule of the hypocrisies necessitating today’s #metoo revolution.

Fresh off the heels of her “Annie Hall” success, Diane Keaton stars as Theresa Dunn, roughly based on real-life victim Roseann Quinn. But while Keaton retains some of Quinn’s reported lightheartedness, Theresa’s shadows live close to the surface; she’s haunted by her repressive Irish Catholic upbringing and a childhood scarred by scoliosis. When we meet her, she’s studying to become a teacher and sleeping with her married professor (Alan Feinstein), a pipe-puffing cad who sports the unfortunate male perm that was de rigueur in the late 1970s. While he struts in front of her classroom, she fantasizes about fucking him in a hot flash; til its gruesome end, the film is very big on psychosexual stills a la “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist.” Continue Reading →

The #MeToo of My Tween Acting Career

October 18, 2017 in Age Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Food Matters, Past Matters, TV Matters

This morning, as the sun rose wanly here in Truro (yes, I’m back for the rest of the month), I caught up on the Harvey Weinstein revelations. Nothing unpredictable, I’m afraid, which made them all the more appalling. Woman after woman coming forward with the same clutch of details: the bathrobe, the massage requests, the obsession with showers, the need—nay, the demand—for sexual attention. What angered me most: Harvey claimed he was offering career ascension to hundreds of young women, but all he really was saying was: If you submit to my sexual demands, I will not harmfully, aggressively cockblock your career.

He is a larcenous pig not unlike, say, our alleged president.

As the estimable Gloria Steinem has written—as the Academy of Motion Pictures itself has acknowledged—such predatory behavior is hardly unique to Weinstein. Instead, this “isolate and destroy” brand of toxic masculinity has meant that we women have felt damned if we do and damned if we don’t in terms of sexual resistance.

Again, not news to anyone walking as female in this life.

But Sarah Polley did raise an issue I hadn’t considered in 15 years. In this week’s New York Times, the director addressed her reason for walking away from acting: She felt like prey. Scratch that. She was prey. And it made me think about my own career as a tween actor.

I never talk about why I quit acting. The truth is that it’s probably no loss to the world. As as an adult, I’m good enough on stage or in front of a camera as a commentator but not especially adept at pretending I’m anything but myself. As a young person, though, I really, really wanted to be an actor and experienced a surprising degree of success. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy