Live blogging The September Issue (on delay)

I wrote up my thoughts as I watched The September Issue documentary about Anna Wintour creating Vogue's September 2007 issue, the important one with all the ads.

--In the midst of Anna's meeting with Neiman Marcus I realize that this documentary was filmed in 2007, at the end of the economic high times, and I am watching the end of the golden age of magazines.

--Anna hops into a private limo and asks to stop at Starbucks. She looks pretty lonely, her body language is all closed off. Perhaps that's how she is, or perhaps it's because she's self-conscious about the camera next to her. And I didn't realize that The September Issue could also be subtitled Anna Wintour, as the documentary is as much about her as the magazine.

--Watching Grace shoot the girls, I realize I like props. There are none in this first shoot. Any fashion imagery I've seen has had props, but maybe I haven't seen Vogue.

--Watching this I realize I'm not interested in fashion, I'm interested in cut and fabric, great cut, great fabric. Flattering cut, excellent fabric. All of the other stuff is marketing-- the seasonal stuff, the shows, what's in, what's out.

--During the twenties shoot I wonder where they get their influences. Why do they have to go back to older times, why not create something new? Who is creating these themes? It's as if in the endless churn to create new styles every season, they have to get their ideas from somewhere, rather than wait until the ideas are new to create something. And I realize I like things that have a lot of effort put into them-- a shot of them painting the eyes of a woman in the twenties shoot-- something that takes a long time to set up. Certainly not like a live blog.

--When Sienna Miller comes in there's one photographer taking her picture and I wonder if he was tipped off or hired to be there to make her seem more important.

--And Anna is valorized as being a key innovator for recognizing celebrity culture and being one of the first editors to feature them on fashion magazines.

--Of course, Sienna Miller is British, and Vogue is British.

--Anna comes to a meeting with her sunglasses on and I wonder if it's partly or mostly for the cameras, as she takes them off when she sits down, almost embarrassed to be wearing them inside a windowless conference room.

--The whole place seems devoid of people, as if there are only a dozen people working in the office.

--And I realize now why live blogging is so popular-- you can see the timing of things. And the problem with not publishing these is that I don't publish the times. Pausing now to get laundry.

--Now I'm thinking that I could start a new blog called live blogging the movies.

--In Paris during the couture, I recognize one of the models as Lily Cole, from the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassis. She walks and the camera focuses on her, as if to say hello, here I am. And I was thinking about the industry that supports fashion, the models, the public relation firms, the magazines and editors, and here she is, a model, working on becoming an actress. It's too bad the movie didn't do too well.

--And then I think that cities are just playgrounds for the rich. Maybe I'll have to watch this again and really live blog it, turn it on and post these things or re-write them and post them in real time as I watch.

--Because this is a new form of commenting--instead of commenting after watching a video, you should be able to comment while you are watching it, and watch other's comments fly by like Twitter tweets.

--Now we're looking at Grace taking a picture of a Lady Gaga type wig and a model who is concerned about taking a bite of a mini cake because her courset is too tight. Grace assures her that it won't make a difference.

--It's a week until the magazine will be ready and I think this is no different from releasing a website. The only difference is that it isn't printed. Instead of all this paper, the work will be done on large HDTV monitors and computer screens. And there won't be a centralized office, but teleconferencing and web video. You can be in Paris, London, and New York at the same time; telepresence.

--With the other stuff that's been manufactured for this film-- the sunglasses in the boardroom, the friction between Grace and Anna, I wonder if the struggle over the cover image is really that much of an issue.

--When she talks about how her siblings are amused at what she does, I wonder if she means they think it's a joke.

--She looks like a woman trapped in a business that may have lost its luster for her as soon as the clothes stopped being marketed towards her.

--Vogue is in the same office as Gourmet used to be.

--Grace is talking about how Anna saw the celebrity thing before everyone else did, frustrated that her shoots were bumped for 22 pages of Sienna. But if Anna was so fashion forward with celebs, is she as aware that print is breathing its last breaths and pretty soon an issue will be nothing more than a web page?

--Grace, very pomo, gets the cameraman in one of the shots.

--100 pages up from last year and pages won't matter, unless they're web pages.

--I don't think I've seen Anna eat once in this whole movie.

Capturing this moment in time

Elliot Smith playing in the background I read Tavi's summary of Blogs versus Magazines while thinking that she still has years of time to become a better writer. In 10 years she'll still be young, while I'll be... old. In 20 years she'll still be young while I will still be... old. Hell, give her 25-30 years to still be young as 40 seems to be young in the grand scheme of things, while, yes, you guessed it, I'll still be... old. I've got about 3 years left to be young before I start getting old. So no time like the present to publish, right?

What would Salinger's blog be like? I wrote a comment on the Times article about his recently unsealed letters:

Someone should do the world a favor and burn all his unpublished writing. In an age where Nabokov's index cards for the Original of Laura are ripped from his rigor mortis-suffering hands to be published against his will at death, and the Jung family releases a limited edition newly translated Red Book exposing their great grandfather's private visions, do we really need another dead author's unpublished drafts polluting the mindscape? Why not give the man his privacy and make way for new voices?

Surprised to see that 5 people recommended it.

Related to burning manuscripts (and artists who died suspiciously, i.e. Elliot Smith), I recently found out about Nikolai Gogol, a Russian realist writer who burned the sequel to his career-defining book because he was worried about the sinful nature of his work. From Wikipedia (which we all know is the definitive source of all knowledge):

...he intensified his relationship with a church elder, Matvey Konstantinovsky, whom he had known for several years. Konstantinovsky seems to have strengthened in Gogol the fear of perdition by insisting on the sinfulness of all his imaginative work. His health was undermined by exaggerated ascetic practices and he fell into a state of deep depression. On the night of February 24, 1852, he burned some of his manuscripts, which contained most of the second part of Dead Souls. He explained this as a mistake, a practical joke played on him by the Devil. Soon thereafter he took to bed, refused all food, and died in great pain nine days later.

I found a book that talked about his life and put it on reserve at the library: The Creation of Nikolai Gogol by Donald Fanger, which mentions Gogol and the Devil, by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, which might offer more information if I could find it anywhere, as well as The Anguish of Mykola Hohol A.K.A. Nikolai Gogol, by George Stephen Nestor Luckyj, which is also out of print.

Word of the day: cynosure. According to Merriem-Webster, it's "one that serves to direct or guide; or a center of attraction or attention." Fanger's book called Gogol one as he seeked to define himself, and extensively the entirety of Russian culture, through his literature.

First Idea: The Future

• Talking and texting on cell phones are like smoking used to be, rude, dirty habits that damage not only you but the people around you. 
• Negative thoughts are like drinking, you are toxic if you have a bad attitude as it infects everyone around you and brings them down. You're given attitude adjustment tests and thrown in the attitude tank to sober up. It's hard for the elderly to adjust so the kids just laugh off their cranky attitudes.
• Labels are everywhere, people get paid for mentioning brand names in everyday conversation.
• A ghostwriter works on the sixth novel of a series of three by a famous author who has since died.