Its fawning author was eventually revealed to be James Kurisunkal, an awkward college student who updated posts from his University of Illinois dorm room. The writer’s discomfort is palpable, her expressions of horror and anguish serving as signposts for the viewers’ own feelings when faced with the values of the culture in which we all participated less than two decades ago.Īnother blog that fixated on Mortimer was Park Avenue Peerage, which read like a Mortimer fan zine. PSYCH!” or “Debutard Tinsley Mortimer’s handbag-line launch featured a worst-nightmare tableau of lookalike Tinsleys”.) Gould, now a novelist and culture writer, gamely agreed to appear in the film and listen to Drucker read aloud from her posts (eg “In this lengthy interview, Tinsley Mortimer shares her thoughts about the works of Marx and Engels. Nightlife queen Amy Sacco appears in the film to share that Mortimer was her personal favorite, and former blogger Emily Gould made sport of chronicling Mortimer’s every move on Gawker. “It could have been more big-picture, but the more specific you are, the more universal it is,” she reasoned.ĭespite her unorthodox background, it was often Mortimer who was the top-seeded socialite. “Many of them have elected not to be in the limelight anymore at this point,” Drucker said of the challenge. Only a couple of the It Girls themselves agreed to meet with the crew, including Olivia Palermo and Mortimer. The shape of the film was dictated by who was willing to sit for interviews. “He was very much our Scheherazade,” said Drucker. He appears throughout as something of a royal correspondent. “She was committed to constructing a narrative around her that would keep people watching,” former gossip reporter Lola Ogunnaike says in the film.īen Widdicombe, a one time Page Six reporter and author of the memoir Gatecrasher was among the producers who initially approached Drucker about directing the film. “That she really shouldn’t talk too much.” Another queenmaker was Paris Hilton, who figured out how to stir up intrigue without saying much more than “that’s hot.” The heiress cultivated and dropped best friends, boyfriends and dogs at cheetah speed. “I told her it was more of a silent movie game than anything,” he said. He taught her how to show up to seven events a night in as many designer dresses. The power publicist made Mortimer quit her job (also a publicist) before agreeing to take her on as a client. He molded Tinsley Mortimer, a statuesque blond from the south (gasp!) who had a day job (can you even!) into a social swan and future Real Housewives star. Many of them also had the help of R Coury Hay, the publicist who is seen in the film calling himself “the Queenmaker”. These young women were reality TV stars before there was reality TV – famous not for doing something but having all the things: bags and jewelry and invites. Casey Johnson, the Johnson & Johnson heiress who died in bed in 2010 at age 30. Rising up, Aphrodite-like, in the ashes of 9/11 were Paris and Nicky Hilton. “I was conceiving my identity as a woman at the time,” Drucker said. Having a parasocial relationship with them was all but inevitable, and they helped shape her sense of self. She read the tabloids and frequented the downtown nightclubs where the characters that populate her film were VIP deities. “I think this film is about misogyny.”ĭrucker, 40, was living in New York and attending the School of Visual Arts during the time that Queenmaker takes place. “It was the height of toxicity for women,” Drucker said in an interview from her Los Angeles apartment, backgrounded by a wall of books arranged by color. Which isn’t to say it was an entirely empowering development. Drucker’s film chronicles the precise moment when a multitude of women of means dared to court the public’s attention. But privacy used to be a cornerstone of privilege, and the gilded-age dictum held that the names of respectable ladies were only to appear in the newspaper when they were born, married or died. It girls, armed with appurtenances both flashy and furry, have swarmed the earth since the creation of capital.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |