Nothing says fall quite so well as something baking in the oven. As giddy as I am to go out of my way to step on crunchy red and orange leaves, buy bouquets of sharpened pencils, don smart tweed blazers, skirts, and warm wooly cardigans in crisp weather- I am out-of-my-mind excited about baking. I'm already dreaming about pumpkin patches and apple orchards! Turkey pot pies and beef stew! Squash and apple crisps! Don't even get me started on pumpkins...
Despite the fact that fall seems ages away (always the case in California, hopefully not back in New York), I've been faithful to my oven- baking pies, brownies, muffins, banana bread, buttermilk cakes, and dear Julia's out of this world quiche lorraine. Photographing things I bake is possibly the most difficult thing to do. Someone always ends up digging in before I can find my camera. Here are a few that I've managed to capture before they disappeared!
C'EST CHOUETTE, LA VIE
OU
À LEUR ÂGE
Zazie is a girl after my own heart- she pulls the strings of her facial muscles in such a way that your face splits open into guffaws and gummy grins. She is reckless, wild, and she'll kick you in the shins even if you didn't have it coming. Though, I'm sure you did.
Years lapsed in thick folds before I rediscovered Raymond Queneau's delightful tale, this time under Louis Malle's tutelage one bright and early Saturday morning in kaleidoscope-bright 35mm. I had pinky-promised myself one afternoon that I would attempt to see every film by Louis that I could (except that one time I fell in and out of sleep during Calcutta, despite my vested interest). I was hopelessly devoted to Louis from the beginning of the series and tried earnestly (and with varying degrees of success) to wrangle my pals together to wake up early for eleven o'clock movies. For Bergman, it was easy peasy. For Kenji Mizoguchi, a bit more difficult, but managed nonetheless. For Zazie dans le Metro, impossible! A baffling loss indeed for those friends that chose to sleep in!
I have read François T.'s Films in My Life so many times I could recite it backwards or read it cross-eyed; it's gotten to the point that I refer to my favorite movies as the "films in my life." A slightly ridiculous but entirely useful adage (though uttering "God bless John Ford" repeatedly is, perhaps, just a tad sillier). Truffaut obsession aside, Zazie truly ought to be the example cited for Merriam-Webster's definition of "delightful." I often heartily enjoy films, but I seldom wish to crawl through the screen just to eat buckets of clams with a saucy twelve-year-old! I've been crossing my fingers for the past two years that Criterion would package and distribute this gem (considering they have been awfully kind to Malle), but this film remains wedged in veiled obscurity. It's a damn shame!
Trust me, if I had access to all the film prints a girl could dream of, I'd be watching a double feature of Zazie and Monsieur Hulot's Holiday all day, every day, on loop. Or at least until someone had to be rushed to the hospital because they almost died laughing!
I admit, every time I send a letter or a parcel by post, I like to imagine that I am Alfred Kralik's "dear friend", Klara Novak, anxiously awaiting a new letter in Box 237. If I am wrapping packages, I dream that I am a shopgirl in The Shop Around the Corner, selling frivolous trinkets like music boxes. It shouldn't be of any surprise that I am hopelessly in love with all-things Jimmy Stewart. I have gone to many a ridiculous length to procure Jimmy stamps, Life magazines, and don't even get me started on how many biographies I've bought and read about this man! I'm prone to swoon for Jimmy at any age (from Ted Barker to Clovis Mitchell), but my heart skips the most when he is awkwardly young. He is tenderly naïve, perfectly gangly, and honestly, do I even need to justify how adorably sweet and wonderful he is? One of my favorite days this year was spent watching Pot o' Gold and Made for Each Other on the big screen with my best friend, sippin' down arnold palmers with mexican honey from Blue Ribbon Bakery Market (my Film Forum pit stop, if you will) and giggling from start to finish. Honest-to-goodness blushing in the dark! Not even the noisiest bunch of kids and parents (real rascals, too) sitting behind me could stop me from beaming for every second of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington! I'm getting a bit off topic, though. I promise this wasn't meant to be a Jimmy-fest of flowery words! Anyhow, Jimmy Stewart teamed up with one of my other all-time favorites, Ernst Lubitsch, makes this film just a dream come true. I can only hope the packages I send are made with the kind of careful consideration and love Alfred and Klara might have made them with at Matuschek's.
I feel as though I have been holding my breath for the past fortnight after first hearing of the impending fate of the LACMA's film department. Michael Govan, director and CEO (if you are not already aware), announced plans on July 28th to cease and desist the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's forty-one year old film program. With recent ventures such as Cinefamily and the Billy Wilder theater at the Hammer Museum, it is high time for the LA film community to develop and flourish. While volunteering at the LA film festival this summer, my conversations with the people I met and worked with always ran back to how disconnected and disjointed they felt from the community, despite promising resources and an endless history at their fingertips.
I am, in ways, glad Govan has caused such a stir. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but I feel that truly good things will come from this (based on my gut feeling that the film program will somehow survive). I owe many many thanks to LACMA for first exposing me to the love of my life, François Truffaut, at the tender age of thirteen, and for visiting years later to see one of my very favorite Lubitsch films, Cluny Brown (which I caught again on the big screen this spring in Brooklyn). What I love dearly about cinema is the feeling of possibility that travels down my spine as the curtains tear open, the lights dim, and the projector clicks to life. It is not just coincidence that the film department was created in 1968, the same year Langlois was removed from the Cinématheque by Malraux. The petitions, letters, and groups heralding together are not merely trying to save a film department from being axed- this effort goes to the deeper issue of trying to preserve the legacy of film spectatorship itself.
Save Film at LACMASign the online petitionMartin Scorcese's Letter to Govan
On the horizon:
Symphonies, beach trips, lawn parties and picnics, open mic nights at the folk music centre, sweater weather, one beautiful banjolele from the twenties, teaching myself calligraphy, moving into the MoMA for a week of Roy Andersson (honest to goodness their September programming blows me away every year; last year it was Dreyer, Reygadas, and Tarr, and the year before loads of von Sternberg), flea markets, Seinfeld reunion on Curb, NYFF, an excellent season of the Wordless Music Series, an evening with Leonard Cohen, farmers markets, spending afternoons in my favorite bookstores, readings at the KGB, John Ashbery in December (please pinch me, I'm dreaming!), wonderful classes, wonderful friends, wonderful everything!
Is there any other life better than this one?
