Latest news with #AlgonquinHotel
The Age
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Two new books delve into the 20th century's wittiest women
Kaplan's lavishly illustrated book would certainly catch the eye on anyone's coffee-table (although the captioning of the pictures is eye-rollingly literal and sometimes just plain wrong). But much of her commentary about Ephron reads like marketing hype. 'Think of her as the fairy godmother of modern-day rom-coms,' she urges. 'After years of a genre lying in wait, she waved her magic wand and penned dazzling scripts, equivalent to charming ball gowns for women who wouldn't take any shit.' And her afterword – in which she confesses that 'Nora's trio of groundbreaking genre films had shaped (her) core beliefs of finding true romance' – is simply embarrassing. And it's 'Nora' throughout, even though she never knew her. She's alert to the primary focus of Ephron's work: 'Each project focuses on women who were three-dimensional and who had something to prove – either to themselves or to the world at large.' She also attends to her public persona – her humour, her fashion sense, her love affair with food – and to how her mantra that 'everything is copy' fuelled her work, especially her 1983 novel, Heartburn, a thinly disguised account of the collapse of her marriage to famed Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein. But she never looks far beyond the surface, relying far too heavily on others' observations or assessments and coming up with few insights of her own. Jacob Bernstein's 2015 documentary about his mother, Everything Is Copy, is much more illuminating. Only in the book's final chapter, made up of interviews with some of those who worked with Ephron on her films, does Kaplan seem on more solid ground. By way of contrast, British academic Gail Crowther's fluently written book about Parker is much more revealing, attentive to detail and interested in what might lie beneath the surface. She easily dispenses with the most dominant myth regarding Parker: that she was a bouncy, carefree soul, tossing witticisms across the famous Round Table with her illustrious peers in the literary world (among them Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Sherwood and Donald Ogden Stewart) at New York's Algonquin Hotel during the 1920s, before heading off to Hollywood where real money beckoned. Her account instead fixes on the collision between two early 20th-century phenomena, Parker and Hollywood, neither nice to be around, despite the surface glitter attached to both. Like Crowther's 2021 book, Three-Martin Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton, her portrait of Parker ponders what went wrong, what made this professionally successful woman so mean, why she seemed to be forever sabotaging herself, why she repeatedly attempted suicide, why she suffered such a sad, lonely death. Intrigued, compassionate and affectionate at the same time as she keeps her distance, Crowther hones in on Parker's 'mix of helplessness and viciousness' as she situates her biography in the social circumstances of the time. Significant events swirl in the background: the 'Roaring '20s', the Great Depression, the imposition of the Hays Code to counter Hollywood's perceived debauchery, the general oppression of women in the social hierarchy, the rise of the 'Red Threat' and the establishment of HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Commission) to deal with it. Meanwhile, in the foreground, her Parker is a restless figure, struggling to make her way in a world that has no serious interest in anything she has to offer aside from her reputation, suffering the consequences of her alcoholism, dealing with the torture of miscarriages and failed relationships, discovering a political cause and finding herself blacklisted. Loading Curiously, Crowther largely sidesteps the possibility that traces of Parker's personality might be found in her work, whether on the page or the screen. But otherwise thorough in her research, she draws intelligently on her sources pointing to the gaps in their examinations and recognising that, perhaps inevitably, everyone's inner life is, finally, fated to remain a mystery.
Sydney Morning Herald
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Two new books delve into the 20th century's wittiest women
Kaplan's lavishly illustrated book would certainly catch the eye on anyone's coffee-table (although the captioning of the pictures is eye-rollingly literal and sometimes just plain wrong). But much of her commentary about Ephron reads like marketing hype. 'Think of her as the fairy godmother of modern-day rom-coms,' she urges. 'After years of a genre lying in wait, she waved her magic wand and penned dazzling scripts, equivalent to charming ball gowns for women who wouldn't take any shit.' And her afterword – in which she confesses that 'Nora's trio of groundbreaking genre films had shaped (her) core beliefs of finding true romance' – is simply embarrassing. And it's 'Nora' throughout, even though she never knew her. She's alert to the primary focus of Ephron's work: 'Each project focuses on women who were three-dimensional and who had something to prove – either to themselves or to the world at large.' She also attends to her public persona – her humour, her fashion sense, her love affair with food – and to how her mantra that 'everything is copy' fuelled her work, especially her 1983 novel, Heartburn, a thinly disguised account of the collapse of her marriage to famed Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein. But she never looks far beyond the surface, relying far too heavily on others' observations or assessments and coming up with few insights of her own. Jacob Bernstein's 2015 documentary about his mother, Everything Is Copy, is much more illuminating. Only in the book's final chapter, made up of interviews with some of those who worked with Ephron on her films, does Kaplan seem on more solid ground. By way of contrast, British academic Gail Crowther's fluently written book about Parker is much more revealing, attentive to detail and interested in what might lie beneath the surface. She easily dispenses with the most dominant myth regarding Parker: that she was a bouncy, carefree soul, tossing witticisms across the famous Round Table with her illustrious peers in the literary world (among them Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Sherwood and Donald Ogden Stewart) at New York's Algonquin Hotel during the 1920s, before heading off to Hollywood where real money beckoned. Her account instead fixes on the collision between two early 20th-century phenomena, Parker and Hollywood, neither nice to be around, despite the surface glitter attached to both. Like Crowther's 2021 book, Three-Martin Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton, her portrait of Parker ponders what went wrong, what made this professionally successful woman so mean, why she seemed to be forever sabotaging herself, why she repeatedly attempted suicide, why she suffered such a sad, lonely death. Intrigued, compassionate and affectionate at the same time as she keeps her distance, Crowther hones in on Parker's 'mix of helplessness and viciousness' as she situates her biography in the social circumstances of the time. Significant events swirl in the background: the 'Roaring '20s', the Great Depression, the imposition of the Hays Code to counter Hollywood's perceived debauchery, the general oppression of women in the social hierarchy, the rise of the 'Red Threat' and the establishment of HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Commission) to deal with it. Meanwhile, in the foreground, her Parker is a restless figure, struggling to make her way in a world that has no serious interest in anything she has to offer aside from her reputation, suffering the consequences of her alcoholism, dealing with the torture of miscarriages and failed relationships, discovering a political cause and finding herself blacklisted. Loading Curiously, Crowther largely sidesteps the possibility that traces of Parker's personality might be found in her work, whether on the page or the screen. But otherwise thorough in her research, she draws intelligently on her sources pointing to the gaps in their examinations and recognising that, perhaps inevitably, everyone's inner life is, finally, fated to remain a mystery.
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jacki Weaver: ‘What am I secretly good at? I pick up other people's dogs' poos'
You're hosting the series Australia: An Unofficial History, which includes government tourism films from the 1970s. How would you sell Australia to the world now? When people ask me, having lived in Los Angeles for 14 years, how is Australia superior to America, I say, 'No guns, free medical, affordable education.' What's the oldest thing you own, and why do you still have it? I've got a cane chair that was given to me for my second birthday. I have it in my sitting room, it's got a little cushion on it and it's really sweet and very tiny. I'm very small – I'm less than five feet tall, and I'm 48 kilos – so I can still sit in this little chair, and I do! I mean, probably I shouldn't have sat in it when I was pregnant, I could have broken it. But it survived. I'm 77 and a half, so it's 75 years old. That's pretty impressive. What's your favourite place to visit in the world? New York City – I just love it. I've been at least 40 times, and I've stayed in at least 30 different hotels. I first visited there in 1972 and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel, and for a time I used to go to New York every year. I love how you can walk everywhere. I love how if you really work out your timetable carefully, you can see 10 shows a week: three matinees – on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday – as well as evening shows. And there are great bars. I'm a bit of a barfly – I like to sit in fabulous bars and listen to other people. I love all the gay bars down on eighth and ninth avenue. And then there's the museums, the libraries, the parks – I think it's the greatest city in the world. What's the best lesson you learned from someone you've worked with? I'm not a tantrum thrower, but I remember very early on all the senior actresses and actors saying to me: try not to ever lose your temper, either in a rehearsal room for a play or on set for a TV show or a film, because it only makes you feel worse and it upsets everyone else. You have a storied romantic history – you once said you'd effectively had nine husbands if you counted serious relationships. What's your top bit of relationship advice? Kindness. I remember Germaine Greer saying – and she's always been a great hero of mine, because of The Female Eunuch – that the most overrated virtue is kindness. But I think it's the most important virtue, because it influences all the others. My ex-lovers and ex-husbands might disagree, but I've always tried to be kind in a relationship. If you had to fight a famous person, who would it be, how would you fight them and who would win? I'm a lover, not a fighter. I wouldn't fight anyone. First of all, I'm so tiny I don't think I could beat anyone in a fight unless I took a machete or an AK-47. I used to have a bit of a tongue when I was younger [so] I'd like to think I could demolish someone with words. But the people that are dislikable enough to want to fight, they're usually stupid. So no matter what witticisms you've managed to come up with, they'd probably go right over their heads. Do you have anyone in mind? I don't want to get political, but probably politicians. There's a few politicians that I don't like. What are you secretly really good at? I don't know, picking up dog poo? I wear gloves, and I'm very neat at it. I live in an apartment block in West Hollywood that has a dog park and the rules are that you pick up your own dog's poo, but a lot of people don't – it's very annoying – and so I do pick up other people's dogs' poos. Which is rather like changing another person's child's nappy, isn't it? I think I've got a very tidy mind – I'm a little obsessive compulsive – and I'm married to someone who I love dearly, but he is intrinsically untidy, so I think I'm good at being quietly subversive, going around tidying up. What's been your most cringe-worthy run-in with a celebrity? I don't know that it's cringe-worthy, but it's slightly embarrassing. There's a very exclusive club [in LA] called San Vicente Bungalows; I'm a member, and I took a friend of mine there for lunch. And this place has rules: you're not allowed to take photos of people, and if you don't know someone, you're not allowed to go up to them and speak to them. We were having lunch, and this young man with a baseball cap on backwards and sunglasses, who had been with a group of noisy boys, came up and said, 'I just want to say that I really love your work. I'm a huge fan.' And I said, 'Oh, thanks very much' – thinking: I thought you weren't supposed to come and talk to people you didn't know. And when he went away, my friend said, 'You don't know who that was, do you?' And I said, 'I've got no idea.' It was Leonardo DiCaprio. I've always been a fan, ever since Gilbert Grape, so I was really annoyed with myself for not recognising him – I would have said, 'Oh my God, Leo, thank you!' Which word do you hate most? I hate when fashion people say, 'Oh, your eyes just pop.' Actually I was reading something about the inauguration in the paper today and somebody was saying there were colours that really 'popped'. What do you mean popped? How stupid. I don't like 'reach out' either. People say, 'I'll reach out to your people.' Fuck off! Give me a call or a text. Do you have a party trick? I'm not very good at parties, believe it or not. I'm a card-carrying introvert, and my husband is too. I love extroverts – I find them fantastic to be with, because you don't have to do any work. But when we have to go to parties, my husband and I always find a corner and sit down and talk to each other. Which annoys my manager, who's like, 'Get out there and circulate.' Sometimes I force myself to say, 'I think you're fantastic,' but usually I'm too shy. That's my trick. Australia: An Unofficial History premieres Wednesday 5 March on SBS and SBS On Demand
