’sex and the city’: the ultimate post-modern live-blogged hypertext review of the film and its audience, by a middle-aged dater who saw it with her 66-yr-old internet-met boyfriend

7 p.m. friday 30 may. we are there to be seen

Of course we are there to be seen; why else would Plan C and I set foot out of doors? Why else does anyone ever go out? And when you’re going to an AMC multiplex an hour from Manhattan, you know the paparazzi will be there in full force.

We also know that product placement is everything, so we are dressed with careful forethought.

I’m wearing a purple INC tank top camisole (94% nylon 6% spandex) with a built-in bra, size small, too insignificant to appear on the Macy’s website; cost on sale approx $19; a blue ‘woven trip racerback dress’ from GAP, size small, $54.50; a beige jersey THEORY shrug, size small, bought two years ago from Bloomingdales so I don’t remember the price, but whatever it cost I got my money’s-worth out of it because I’ve worn it a lot. My shoes are camper sandals by Helena , cost $144.00. I’m not wearing my trademark Celeste Stein socks because I’m wearing L’eggs premium nylon Day Sheer knee highs, suntan, with reinforced toes from Duane Reade , nor am I wearing my trademark Onlyhearts shrug (I was wearing the Theory shrug, remember??). Underneath, I’m wearing black Bali microfiber briefs, size 6, and black capri Flexees, size small, so old that I don’t think they make them any more.

The total cost of my visible clothes is about $217.50. If you add in the original costs of the less visible items I suppose the total would come to about $231.

* * *
I’m carrying a Vera Bradley black quilted microfiber backpack/pocketbook. I can’t get the link to appear, but it’s now available in a dark brown as “Espresso Microfiber Backpack.” I adore it and rarely leave the house without it.

* * *
Move over, Oscar de la Renta, Diane Von Furstenburg, Louis Vuitton.

* * *

Plan C is wearing David Leadbetter khaki golf shorts from Joseph Banks, currently on sale for $49; a striped short-sleeved polo shirt that says Sayle’s Point Golf Club (not Plan C’s golf club), which I cannot find on the web, so I’m inserting a picture of it:

Bass docksiders bought at an outlet mall chain (Bass seems to have updated its classic boat shoe, and the equivalent is not visible anywhere on the web, but this is more or less what they look like),

and full-cut knit briefs from Joseph Banks .

Total cost of Plan C’s visible clothing: probably about $125.

His and Hers, approximate total clothing cost: $356.00

* * *

The only paparazza was me.

* * *

7:35 p.m. ‘The scene in the theatre was more interesting than the movie.’

That’s what Plan C says. For a long time he is the only man in line (and also for a long time we are the only people over 20), and he is very self-conscious.

You’d think a man who had dated 84 women in a year-and-a-half wouldn’t much mind standing in line with 500 women, but he does. As you can see in this photo, he’s trying to be inconspicuous, blending into the wall:

Great excitement before the showing. I see for myself what ‘chick-flick’ means:

We sit about one-third of the way up, Plan C on an aisle. A woman who passes him says, ‘You’re a brave soul!’

7:45 p.m. ‘Looking at all these women is making me thirsty.’

We have a long wait. ‘Looking at all these women is making me thirsty,’ Plan C says, and gets up to get a lemonade.

* * *
8:04 p.m. the time cometh and now is.

By the time the lights go out, about 19 other men (Plan C is counting…) have entered the theatre. The other 500 people are female.

* * *

After the last preview, when the screen announces ‘feature presentation,’ the theatre erupts in screams.

Plan C laughs.

I’m reminded of footage showing girls at the Ed Sullivan studios reacting to the arrival of the Beatles in 1964.
.

* * *

A still photo of Sarah Jessica Parker appears on the screen: more screams.

As photos of each of the Big Four in the film appear, applause breaks out, and more screams, as if this were a live performance and each woman were making a separate entrance.

* * *

About two-thirds of the way through the film, during the New Year’s Eve scene with Miranda and Carrie, a disaster happens: the film breaks.

The screen goes black.

More screams. Several people audibly wonder if a riot will break out.

* * *
The screen stays blank for several minutes. Plan C recalls that the film broke the last time he went to a movie in this theatre and wonders (this is typical of Plan C) if it is somehow his fault.

Is he jinxing the films?

* * *

The movie comes back: Carrie is walking up the steps of her brownstone.

How did she get there? How did the rendezvous end?

No one in the theatre has any idea. We’ve missed three or four minutes of the film.

I guess we’ll all have to go again and see it a second time.

* * *

The movie vs. the tv series vs. me

As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t watch the tv series, because I had a life then – a life very much like those of the women in the film: a marriage, children, a full-time job, stuff going on.

In the past 23 months, however, my life has been more like those of the women in the tv series: serial dating in Manhattan, one wacky man after another, until the arrival on the scene of the man who is sitting next to me, nursing his lemonade and feeling out of place in the theatre.

* * *

The film represents the supposedly ‘mature’, middle-aged life the tv characters have evolved into, the very life I was happy to leave behind to enter the life they evolved out of.

If you see what I mean.

* * *

So it’s all in ass-backwards order for me.

* * *

And I know what’s coming next! I can tell them:

Divorces, and then that surprising barely-chronicled phase of life when the divorced osteoporosis-ridden greying post-cataract empty-nested toe-separator-wearing AARP-mailing-listed women date the previously-married hearing-aided balding stomached cholesterol-medicated cialis-users.

* * *

I’ve seen about eight of the tv episodes, and they seem to me 70% comedy and 30% melodrama – like my life since June 2006.

The film, however, is 70% melodrama and 30% comedy.

It isn’t all that funny.

* * *

Dating is funnier than relationship angst. And I like funny.

so was it any good?? yes, when jennifer hudson arrives.

When Jennifer Hudson arrives on screen, things perk up. She energizes every scene she appears in. I feel my posture shift, my eyes open a little wider, my attention focus more sharply.

* * *

Thank god for Jennifer Hudson.

jennifer hudson and me

I found a video on-line taken during the shooting of SATC, featuring the Astor Place subway station and the Starbucks across the street.

OMG!

I have a romantic history at that very location.

That’s precisely the place where Rolly and I were standing during a very important conversation near the end of our first date, so probably around 10:30 pm on Friday 27 October 2006. Over dinner it had been established (as a result of my web research) that Rolly was not 69 but was 73, and although he had instantly said to me, when we met, ‘You’re pretty!’ with great surprise (not having liked my profile picture), nevertheless it seemed to be assumed that the age difference (14 years) would rule out a relationship. But we talked together better than any other man and I had on a first date, almost instantly teasing one another, on the identical wave length. And I had said to myself, This must be what ‘good chemistry’ means.

We had finished dinner at the no-longer-extant Trattoria Dante Ristorante, had strolled along MacDougal looking at stores, and had walked up to the Astor Place station, because neither of us knew where the Bleecker Street one was. As we approached the station, I turned to him and said, ‘At what point in the evening did it get established that you would be my — [I paused a long time here] — uncle?’

What I meant, of course, to be blunt now as I could not have been then, was when and how did it get established that we would not have a romance but just have a non-sexual relationship in which you acted as a kind of romantic mentor or older relative?

But that wasn’t spelled out. The pause over ‘uncle’ was a long one.

And Rolly’s response — I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘Let’s stop a moment’ or some such. At any rate, on that very rainy night, he paused and stood against the glass window of Starbucks (yes, the very same Starbucks in the video with Jennifer Hudson to which I’ve provided the link above!), holding his umbrella over both of us. So it was the first time we were standing face to face in the relative positions in which lovers would kiss, if they were going to, but we didn’t. That was when I noticed how broad his shoulders were, and how good he looked in his raincoat (a plain ordinary trench coat).

Over dinner at the restaurant I hadn’t found him especially attractive. This was the moment when I did.

In fact it was the first moment of a strong mutual attraction.

I can’t remember a single word of what we said then, but really, it was a conversation about our ‘relationship,’ such as it was.

I know he felt the same way about that moment, because this is what he wrote in an email the next day:

One of the things I liked last night is when we stopped by Starbucks and talked about the “Uncle” posture that I seemed to adopt. Probably it was a manifestation of my sheepishness (baa) about what we in the White House would call my “misspeaking” about my age; that is, taking myself out of contention for. . .oh, never mind, you know. I appreciate your trust in giving me your real e-mail address. But did I ever come out and actually say that I wasn’t a serial killer? I don’t remember. Anyway, I liked standing there in the rain with you.

Well, I liked standing there in the rain with him.

And it didn’t end in a kiss. It ended in crossing the street together to take the #6 train uptown.

(I wrote about that evening here but didn’t mention the outside-Starbucks conversation.)

11 p.m. A Marxist critique, please? The requisite attack on consumerism?

Why?

Does anyone complain about “Sleeping Beauty” or “The Princess and the Pea” – or, for that matter, Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It – by saying that ‘Most people don’t live in palaces’?

I’m tired of hearing people say that most people can’t afford those shoes blah blah blah.

* * *

A certain kind of narrative always tells about people richer or more beautiful or luckier than the members of its audience, and the audience loves that.

* * *

If I want to see bunions or clothes from GAP or Macy’s or Ann Taylor Loft, I can just look in the mirror.

* * *

I wouldn’t want to look at films about fashion all the time, but sometimes it’s fun. That’s why I watch royal weddings and even (shock) read Majesty or Royalty magazines occasionally. I love looking at the beautiful or exotic or outré clothes.

* * *

In fact, I’m disappointed when this film gets all moral on me, and the voiceover says that one of the characters is ‘dressed from head to toe in love; and that’s the one label that never goes out of style.’

* * *

Oh gosh, you mean I’m supposed to believe that labels aren’t important after all?

If so, then why do the credits show what seems like one hundred ‘name’ labels mentioned or shown in the film?

Don’t tell us labels aren’t important! Revel in the materiality! Be shameless!

Product placement revisited

But one label is undeniably important, and that’s Sex and the City.

There were SATC t-shirts and SATC popcorn bags (if you bought the large size) everywhere in the theatre.

That’s the product that’s marketed: the television series, the film, the musical, the novelization, the classic comic, the ‘concept.’

The film is about the television series, and the forthcoming musical will be about the television series and the film, and the novelization will be about…..etc.

* * *
Does that bother you?

* * *

Popular entertainment has always recycled characters, plots, little bits of stories. So long as there are consumers, why not keep it going? SATC’s producers are just recycling their own material, placing their own product, with all the mini-product-placements, out there in the marketplace (the AMC multiplex) for people to buy. If Ira Glass can go from radio to television, why can’t SATC go from television to film? And soon we’ll have the musical of This American Life.

If people buy your stuff, then keep selling it.

11:20 p.m. fresh air at last

As we leave, it is a little cooler than it was two weeks earlier or whenever we entered the theatre for this very long movie. Plan C thinks it was half an hour too long. I think it was one hour too long.

11:45 p.m. home again

We’re sitting at the kitchen table at Plan C’s house.

Plan C is drinking scotch, stroking and talking to his beloved cat, Polly.

I’m sitting opposite, taking sips of Plan C’s scotch and looking off into space thinking about Sarah Jessica Parker’s body. She’s only half an inch taller than I am, but I’m wondering how different our weights are.

MIMI: I wonder what she weighs…..

PLAN C: Thirteen pounds plus a little. We were at the vet’s last week.
* * *

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