In Which Her Good Skin Says It All

Carriage Ride

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

Of Manhattan’s 96 minutes, 25 of them swap comedy for candor and the veneer of midlife fitfulness for a snowy and plainspoken 17-year-old Dalton girl named Tracy. While she only occupies a quarter of the film's runtime - thirteen scenes, one cry, one carriage ride, five toppings on her pie, two close-ups, and the line, "Let's do it some strange way that you've always wanted to do it" - Manhattan belongs to Mariel Hemingway.

From the moment we see her sitting at Elaine’s with her 42-year-old lover, Isaac (Woody Allen), and his married friends, Yale and Emily, Hemingway typifies teenage limbo: a discomfort with oneself that for a lucky few, can yield the most luminous glow. As Yale waxes about "the essence of art" with Isaac, and as Emily, on cue, rolls her eyes and apologizes, "We've had this argument for 20 years," Tracy smiles and accepts. Her age and inexperience might keep her on the periphery this time, but her silence and presence, and elbows resting keenly on the table, suggest considerable aplomb.

Tanned and wearing a dark crewneck sweatshirt, teardrop necklace, and her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, Tracy's softness is offset by her sturdiness. She looks like she might have, moments before arriving at Elaine's, practiced her serve and volley in P.E. or finished her lifeguard shift at the local pool. She is incandescent in the summer and dimmed in the winter. She is Coppertone® and Hyannis Port personified.

In a piece titled, "The Littlest Hemingway" in a June 1979 issue of People, Kristin McMurran describes Mariel's first Cannes experience. "It had been a full day — a morning jog, four interviews (her French is serviceable), a TV short and a rich lunch at the three-star Le Moulin de Mougins—all amid the hustlers and hookers, yachts and yes-men that characterize the international film festival. Now "Merts" (her childhood nickname) was preparing for her big night."

On the opposite page, a photograph of the back of Hemingway's head topped with "a sprig of flowers in her hair" reveals Cannes' vintage cross of glamour and mania — a cascade of tuxedoed photographers wrestling for room on the red carpet and a shot of the young actress. With frenzy of that kind, one can only imagine that Hemingway's smile was akin to Tracy's: shy and appreciative, as if her cheeks and lips were somehow curtsying. Later, as the film's final moments played, Hemingway nearly fainted in the theater. "A doctor was summoned, and Mariel fell into a deep sleep while the others caroused until dawn at the party in her honor downstairs," McMurran writes. "The next morning Mariel blinked awake. 'Did I ruin everything?'"

Her reaction at Cannes matches Tracy's type of distress — one that she too affects with questions rather than statements. At Ike's apartment while she reads reclined on his couch, looking miniature against his wall of books, she responds to his own doubts about their relationship with, "Well don't you have any feelings for me?," "Well don't you want me to stay over?" The following Sunday night at the pizza parlor, upon receiving a letter in the mail accepting her to the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in London, she asks Ike, "So what happens to us?" Her featherweight voice (with the inflection of a foreigner) — that in some moments squeaks like "the mouse in the Tom & Jerry cartoon" — appears extra shaky when speaking about matters of the heart. For her, nothing is more perilous than those matters.

Tracy is not yet cynical; she hasn't been corrupted. She hasn't begun referring to friends as "geniuses" and art as "derivative." She insists on "fooling around" instead of fighting in bed. She thumbs her earlobes when she's listening and combs her hair until it's soft. She begins sentences with "Well" and "Guess what?" and asks Isaac "to have a little faith in people."

In the film's most devastating scene, the two sit at a soda shop; him with his harmonica and her with her milkshake. Here Hemingway looks especially pure. Her hair is wrapped tight in a french twist, her cardigan is creased on the sleeves (either new or ironed,) and a single ring sits on her pinky finger. Her wide elfin features and thick eyebrows appear holy; the product of one single brushstroke or carved painstakingly out of wax. The moment's melancholy anticipates itself and Isaac breaks up with Tracy. While she dips in and out of adolescence — "Gee, now I don't feel so good" and "I can't believe that you met someone that you like better than me" — her sincerity and logic remain heartbreaking. She lists what they had going for each other and the tally, for any couple, is near perfect.

1. We have laughs together

2. I care about you

3. Your concerns are my concerns

4. We have great sex

While Mariel is no Tracy and Tracy is no Mariel — "I'm different. I'm from Idaho," she told McMurran — their reactions to life are rich and replete with teenage-speak and sage musings. It's no wonder that lines like, "Are you kidding me? You should talk!" came so easily to Hemingway who described her Persian cat to People as "such a nerd" and scoffed at Woody's initial interest in her: "Give me a break." That duality of perceiving oneself and others at a young age while also staying young is incredibly rare and is what freed Manhattan of any precociousness and caprice.

Tracy possesses you like the giant she is, standing five inches taller than Woody, able to cup his head like a basketball or drink it like a coconut with a straw. But her personality compliments and her thoughts are sound: "Maybe we're meant to have a series of relationships at different lengths," or better, "You keep stating [the break up] like it's to my advantage when it's you that wants to get out of it."

In real life too, her words were undisguised: "I feel closer to adulthood now, but it makes me sad. I get excited and depressed. If I have a problem I go to someone or just let it out by screaming and crying. Some people are too young when they become famous. I think I'm old enough to handle it now."

Durga Chew-Bose is the senior editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She twitters here and tumbls here. She last wrote in these pages about Teen People magazine.

with her sister Margaux

"Red Hunting Jacket" - Little Scream (mp3)

"People Is Place" - Little Scream (mp3)

"The Boatman" - Little Scream (mp3)

In Which We Flirt And Make The First Move

How To Love The Way You Look

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

Teen People is a cache of celebrities pre-yoga; a wealth of baby fat, dimples, and Simpson sisters. The design too, is totally obsolete; like one of those tri-fold Health Services brochures with a scholastic spin: pull-quotes made to look taped on the page, extreme shadowing, chalk fonts, graph paper templates, and didactic arrows that point to “Fun flip-flops!” “Better skin tomorrow!” and Monica in a beaded headband and bra-strap tank top.

There’s one cover that stills stands out in my memory, of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, both looking especially sinister. Unlike any teen magazine I’d seen before, this cover was perky in a possessed way. Flames were printed on the letterman “P” and Hayden’s eyes appeared to roll back into his head — a strange choice. But Teen People was always a bit ridiculous like that; the only magazine to put the entire cast of One Tree Hill on its cover, or Lance Bass...three times.

"The One Who Announces Her New Year’s Resolution In April"

Misses drinking soda in Styrofoam cups

Her Facebook profile pictures include a scanned Polaroid of her mother as a teenager, Anna Karina, Françoise Hardy, or her, crouched on varying kitchen floors giggling with a glass of wine

Flirts with guys by saying, "You’re such a jokester!"

Hair that vaguely smells of root beer, purse that smells of old lipstick

Her weekend brunch outfit is very "Just Like Us!": shades, baseball cap, Lakers courtside casual

Destination wedding, no doubt

"The Bay Area Groupie" 

Rolls her t-shirt sleeves, burrows in her sweaters, wears a thumb ring

Was for a brief minute, the fake Francesca Lia Block twitter

Her groceries are very 'ABC Family': Ragu®, SunnyD®, Bisquick®

Still looking for the Gaby Hoffmann Eloise-type Chelsea Hotel Book

Vows to never be a mom with Phaidon's The Art Book on her coffee table or the Butterfly Alphabet poster in her kids’ bedrooms

Will casually mention that she ate half a grapefruit for breakfast

"The Default Older Sister"

Wrote a pilot based on the 42West PR girls

Both enamored and grossed out by friends who refer to their parents without the possessive 'my' i.e. "Called Dad today while I was doing my laundry. Mom asked if it was weird that she friended you on Facebook."

Lies about her Excel skills in resumes

Sometimes describes a grown woman’s beauty as “very JonBenét”

Looks uncomfortable in pictures like celebrity DJs who pose mid-‘scratch’

Will ask a stranger to stop talking at the movies/seems to take a perverse pleasure in shaking the covered tray of letters when playing Boggle

"The Active Listener"

Is looking forward to one day baby proofing her apartment

At parties, she never sits lower than the armrest of a couch

Tans wearing her cornflower blue garment washed baseball cap

Her past Halloween costumes include: Tracy Flick, Left Eye, Madison Bell (Swimf@n), and the Napster cat

Likes lying in bed with her laptop warming against her thighs and digging into her ribs

Does not miss driving but misses tossing her purse in the backseat

"The '90s Vegetarian"

Her fingers are always a bit cold and clammy; the way people's legs feel when they peel off wet jeans

Wishes there was a 'September/October Cross-Draft' setting on her window air conditioner

Cringes when people say "à la" out loud

Doesn't run/loves reading running blogs

Has a stock image doppelgänger whose look is very at-risk teen cum Roxy model

Misses DKNY

Durga Chew-Bose is the senior editor of This Recording. She twitters here and tumbls here. She last wrote in these pages about Sidney Lumet's Running On Empty. You can find her tributes to Seventeen and YM here.

"Appetite (Kingdom edit)" - Usher (mp3)

"Yeah (DJ Prince Mellow remix)" - Usher (mp3)

"Love In This Club (MSTRKRFT remix) - Usher (mp3)

In Which Sidney Lumet Tells Us The Price Of Gas

Getting It

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

Running on Empty
dir. Sidney Lumet
1988, 115 min

“Note-perfect,” was how my friend Akiva described Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty in a recent gchat. As it often happens, I intuit praise as vital tidings; as if being made aware of something, in effect, hikes up its value. I have since watched the movie four times, three times alone, and once with someone who I feared was not 'getting it' — who I split my attention between, hoping to note a slight smile warming on his face during some of those 'note-perfect' scenes.

Released in 1988, three decades after Lumet's debut feature, 12 Angry Men, Running on Empty tells the story of Annie and Arthur Pope (Christine Lahti, Judd Hirsch), whose past involvement in a 1970s anti-war bombing of a napalm laboratory has forced them underground.

On the run with their two sons, Danny (River Phoenix) and Harry (Jonas Abry), the Popes adopt new identities every time they are forced to skip town. "Hey kid, you," Annie quizzes Danny as she opens a can of tuna in their newest home, "What's your name?" "Michael," he answers only to have Arthur drill him more aggressively. "What's my name? Spell it. What's your mother's name? And your brother?" Danny responds with mocking fidelity, out-daring the very authority his father had taught him to rival all of those years.

But moments like that last one are rare, and the conceit of a fugitive family pales in comparison to the story of a family and its day by day dynamic. Their readiness to conspire — not just as outlaws, but as a little brother who pulls pranks at the dinner table, or as a mother who whispers to her love-struck teenage son, 'I like her,' or as a father who playfully winces whenever his kids speak in surfer slang and misuse the word 'radicaaaal' — that spirit is portrayed with a fullness that tolerates bouts of adolescence in adulthood and prodigious wisdom among children. Like so many of his films, despite his characters' jeopardous lifestyles or expiring freedom, Lumet's capacity for creating an entire world feels triumphant.

In re-watching Running on Empty, I noted, as if pocketing mementos for later, some of my favorite parts. Written by Naomi Foner (Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's mother) the script really finds its sweet spots when Danny and his music teacher's daughter, Lorna Phillips (Martha Plimpton), fall in love. Lorna, whose assuredness and nervy manner of speaking (and whose voice is deeper than Phoenix's) — "You are certifiable!" is one of the first things she tells him — and who stands with her arms crossed, grins, defends her anger as wit, and impassively talks about feelings, family, and the future, is offset by Plimpton's soft, doll-like hair, her sunken boyish features, and most of all, her protective love for Danny.

River Phoenix, whose contemplative manner is at once serious and rebellious, anchors the movie. Even the score, a bittersweet piano that is somehow suggestive and nostalgic, both, might very well be one of his pieces; Danny's virtuosic piano playing and Julliard audition marks the beginning of his doubts to remain with his family on the lam. Although he talks like a teenager, "I feel kind of lousy," and reacts self-consciously like one too—removing his wire-frame glasses when he answers a question in class — his withdrawal is burdened by a life changing choice. Like most teenagers in movies who live in city outskirts, Danny’s rare flashes of abandon are captured when he peddles standing up and turns a corner, or how he never locks his bike, or how effortlessly he jumps over railings and climbs in and out of windows.

Annie's birthday dinner plays much like a foreign film: party crowns, a modest yet joyful table, jokes about LSD trips, and a James Taylor "Fire and Rain" sing-along as they clear the table, dance, and do the dishes. Here the Pope family's outlook is at its truest without becoming too darling. They are a unit, accompanied this time by Lorna, who in her tomato-red crop top and rainbow skirt is happily unfettered, a welcome change from her father's chamber music concerts where she "dresses for a funeral" in lace that matches the Phillips’ sitting room curtains.

phoenix & lumet

Especially great about Running on Empty is its endless supply of tokens from that time: Christine Lahti's high-waisted jeans and white baggy turtleneck, Judd Hirsch’s quintessential ‘Dad’ jokes, or those varying shades of corduroy brown and navy blues, or how saying "they look uptight" is the most accurate way of describing 'otherness.' Insulting someone's IQ, that too was once relevant, or how a teacher, if he took a particular liking to you, might say "Get outta here" after class. Or how home economics involved partnering off, aprons, rows of ovens and Formica counters, buttercream mixing bowls, and instructions on how to make tuna-walnut-casserole.

It’s an unusual type of fondness to love a movie that is neither groundbreaking nor particularly dazzling, and that does not occupy a critical place in its director's canon. But like passages from books that I revisit or quotes from teachers I copied in college notebooks, Running on Empty too, has incredibly strong restorative powers.

Durga Chew-Bose is the senior editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She twitters here and tumbls here. You can find an archive of her work on This Recording here. She last wrote in these pages about her mother.

the author with her brother

"Disappear" - Katy B (mp3)

"Go Away" - Katy B (mp3)

"Movement" - Katy B (mp3)

"Witches Brew" - Katy B (mp3)