hahaha, that's my cooking, looks great but the taste? hahahah We'll have to make that our official Birthday Cake here!
Well yesterday from Netflix I viewed the last of the Grey Gardens films. First came the HBO new one, then I watched the original documentary from the '70s' called Grey Gardens, then I read Lois Wright's book My Life at Grey Gardens, and then I viewed The Beales of Grey Gardens which consists of footage they left out of the first one.
Each film gives a different picture. I am having to wonder about why they left out this footage, an entirely different light, and possibly a more positive one on both women. Big Edie is shown reciting, beautifully, long verses, so obviously her mind was intact. Little Edie is shown in some of the 10 "costumes" a day her mother wanted her to wear (!) and swimming in the ocean. She is a very fine swimmer, and I have to say that there's no way I could make the "costumes" she does and look half as good. She flirts with the Mayses. There is another young man (hanger on?) also in the house. The black guy who did the lawn work is not shown. It's a different take on them, and not a full one. If a person is interested, he would want to see the films in the order above to get a clear idea of the entire picture. The Beales of Grey Gardens is somewhat pitiful, and also hard to watch.
Lois Wright, who wrote the book, appears in this one. She looks clean, but is decidedly odd, herself. And her paintings! Finally we see her paintings she talked about in the book.. If you saw Mickey Blue Eyes with Hugh Grant, her paintings are almost exactly like the ones of the mobster's son, believe it or not. It's hard TO believe, there are no machine guns but other than that it's pretty much the same. Perhaps that was an early period or something of her work, a later one looks somewhat different. I don't know a lot about art, period. She reads palms.
One thing the Beals of Grey Gardens does have is Big Edie singing well. She sings beautifully, just as everybody keeps saying, sometimes off key in spots, but she did have a nice voice. That is not shown in the other film, she sounds quavery and kind of sad in the other film.
Stranger than any fiction, two women whose non existent careers never died, living in abject squalor in a big house in the Hamptons. It's quite sad. It's the last I will watch or read of them, but at least I now know more.
I've started Burn which Jane recommended in the Fiction discussion and am enjoying it very much. The author Linda Howard, is listed by B&N under Romance so I am somewhat shocked to find myself reading a Romance and not being able to put it down. A lot of her fans think this book is a departure for her;, if so, I say vive la departure, so far it's really enjoyable. I've had a hard time this summer getting INTO any book. I can't seem to start one. Or stay with it, so much for Monica Ali's The Kitchen. I guess they don't hold up to my former fascination with the Beales, but this one does. I had read 31 pages before taking a breath or so it seemed.
I had at the same time picked up the new Zafon. When you take off the book jacket, the cover itself has a gorgeous photo of books books books, this one also is about the love of books, just like his Shadow of the Wind, which I loved.
Still reading Ripley in small doses and Sebald. I have a book called Go Slow England which it compliments.
What are YOU reading which you like? Anybody read the new Ann Rivers Siddons? Or the Conroy? I did get That Old Cape Magic by Russo and it also looks wonderful. But Burn is first, the perfect beach book, unfortunately not in paperback yet.
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