Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
On her U.K. "Camille Does the Movies" road trip, La Paglia enlightens the Brits about "Auntie Mame," fails to see a Roman lucky phallus and throws a diva fit over the lighting.
Jun 16, 1999 | Tues.-Wed., June 1-2 British Airways overnight flight from Philadelphia to London for the "Camille Does the Movies" festival at the National Film Theatre. Landing is delayed by unusually heavy downpours that have flooded highways and car parks in southern England since before dawn. Choral laments about the weather will mark my stay for the next week -- though by apocalyptic American standards of hurricane and tornado, things seem positively balmy.
My schedule has been organized by Brian Robinson, the very forceful and hilariously amusing press officer of the NFT. Interviews start almost immediately in my hotel off Oxford Street, after which I am driven to a radio studio for the gay-themed program "Lavender Lounge," a regular stop on my London visits.
Host Matthew Linfoot asked in advance for a list of my six favorite pop songs, and they are cued up for my commentary. It was a hard crunch to whittle my canon down to six, particularly since I taught my "Art of Song Lyrics" class this spring (a course I devised in 1985 for student musicians at the University of the Arts). My final cut: the Drifters, "On Broadway"; Jimi Hendrix, "Foxy Lady"; the Rolling Stones, "Jumpin' Jack Flash"; Cream, "Tales of Brave Ulysses"; the Animals, "House of the Rising Sun"; and Donovan, "Season of the Witch."
Now on to the National Film Theatre in the South Bank complex, where I must introduce the first film of my series, John Schlesinger's "Darling" (1965). I am shocked to hear from NFT staff that this great British classic (it won three Oscars) has fallen into obscurity in its native land. My program notes laud its extraordinary star, "coltish, mercurial Julie Christie," who represents "the exhilarating burst of cultural vitality" in the "restlessly kinetic new women" of the 1960s -- completely outside the frame of feminism.
Seeing "Darling" on the big screen again (after so many years of videos) is a revelation. I never stop talking for days about the film's fineness of detail as well as its swift economy of editing. Too many of today's movies are turgid and trite, with sloppy production values and buffoonish acting.
Thurs., June 3 The day begins in mad panic as the telephone rings and I hear, "This is Sally Soames." I had no idea that the photographer for my scheduled interview downstairs with the Times was to be Soames -- whom I revere as one of the few true artists I have ever had the privilege to meet. (Her moody 1992 picture of me for the Times was later reprinted in her volume of portraits of writers.) Unlike the pretentious pachyderms of big-ticket media photography who arrive with a ton of equipment and a pack of scampering lackeys, Soames works quietly and alone, using available light and homing in on her subject by creating a near-mystical mood of charged silence. With only five minutes' notice, however, I feel like Norma Desmond dragged into the light of day.
After a lively interview with the Times' Eleanor Mills (vis-`-vis the Yugoslavian fiasco, I snap, "Blair is Clinton's whore!"), I'm whisked off to the BBC for a long TV interview where I denounce the declining quality of current films and espouse my usual "pro-penis feminism." There are very stringent security measures because of the recent unsolved murder of BBC star presenter Jill Dando, a day after NATO bombs destroyed television studios in Belgrade and killed working staff.
I introduce my evening films at the NFT: "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "The Philadelphia Story" (1940). Liz Taylor makes a sensation as the swank Manhattan call girl in "Butterfield 8" -- a film that is unknown to the London audience and that probably has rarely if ever been shown in a theater anywhere in the world since its release. Its emotional power is enormously intensified by the big screen. A cardinal film of my adolescence, "Butterfield 8" imprinted me forever with its Babylonian vision of carnal woman.
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