durga polashi

SALLY/SUZY

After last night’s episode, I really hope something like this happens:

Hayward, who has been a member of Mensa since she was nine, will likely be courted by Miu Miu and invited to audition for Mad Men. Coincidently, time wise, Moonrise occurs almost in tandem with Mad Men’s current season: Suzy Bishop, Sally Draper’s freewheeling, blue eye-shadowed foil. Go-go boots vs. Saddle shoes. Running away to her father vs. Running away from her father (among others). In this way, Hayward could play Sally’s first real best friend. They could pass notes to each other in their shared copy of The Bell Jar. Or ditch class and wander to Tompkins Square Park where someone will offer them mescaline.

DERs

• When the Manhattan bound 3 train stops at Clark Street, women with diamond engagement rings step in. You can bet on it. Sometimes the ring’s band will clink against the pole—one woman steadying herself as the train jerks forward, another woman, flipping her hair as she readjusts her purse, eyes darting once to survey the other passengers. These women are the last ones to get on before the train leaves Brooklyn.
• During last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, I interviewed Taylor Kitsch. Before the interview, me and three other writers, all female, were asked to wait in a tiny hotel room at the end of a long hallway. As I walked in, the three women were excitedly talking. But not about Kitsch. Or the movie. Or the weather. All three of them, recently engaged, were sharing details about their wedding plans.  Each woman got up from her seat to show the others and myself, the ring. Diamonds. A band. Shiny. New. There was a sense of ritual to how they spoke, a patience to how they listened to one and other, and an excitement that seemed to fizz like soda bubbling out of a bottle as each woman showed hers off. Out of politeness, or because it would be extraordinary that all four of us were recently engaged, one asked me if I too was, soon to be married. I smiled and said no. They smiled back and went silent, and I briefly felt a tinge of guilt—Why? Who knows—that I may have interrupted their “me too” moment of bliss. Seconds later, the PR girl would come in and call my name. But not before one woman turned to me and said, “You’re excited to meet Taylor, right?”

THE KIDS TABLE

From above, it’s easy to imagine Wes Anderson’s production of Moonrise Kingdom resembling a fine scale model railroad: coastal New England homes landscaped with ferns and red cedars, with nearby inlets and a pebble beach, and flanked of course by a series of rails for tracking shots. As per Anderson’s request, trailers were not allowed on set and actors were expected to show up camera-ready. The effect? Dioramic. The opening sequence? A dolly shot through a dollhouse. And the director? In a manner, Gulliver-sized. Picture Anderson poking one eye through a window as his finger pokes through another, readjusting the needle on a miniature record player or using tweezers to fill a runaway girl’s picnic basket with books. His airtight world shaped by the romance of expressing first-time feelings with a hobbyist’s delicate, near-crazed hand.

Wrote about Moonrise Kingdom for TR—as well as Sally Draper & Suzy Bishop, Manny Farber, Joan Didion, and childhood

MM/FNL:

The most Mad Men moment of Friday Night Lights is when Julie Taylor crashes her Chevrolet Aveo into the neighbor’s mailbox so that she doesn’t have to return to college and face humiliation.