Hello WNVM-ers!
We’re publishing early this week due to the 4th of July holiday. We know you all have your phones with you on the beach, so hopefully you’ll read our offerings.
It’s feeling very summer movie-ish around here. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the original Beverly Hills Cop and 30 years since the third one. On July 3, Axel F, the fourth in the series, drops on Netflix. Eddie Murphy, Paul Reiser, John Ashton, and Bronson Pinchot (!!) all reprise their roles. And we look forward to seeing Kevin Bacon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Taylour Paige (as Axel’s daughter) as new characters.
In more movie stuff, first up this week, Cheryl talks to Susan Seidelman, new memoirist and the director of Desperately Seeking Susan (among many other things!), who graciously answered questions about Madonna, nostalgia, and the whereabouts of that amazing pyramid jacket.
Fawnia also revisits 1985 through A24’s new slasher-horror Maxxxine — with Mia Goth as the title adult film star-turned Hollywood ingénue — and her pivotal acid-washed denim ‘fit. For all the skeptics out there, the retro look is actually very right now if you feel like channeling your own Maxine attitude (or redoing your teen years).
Plus, links to things you oughta know are at the end.
(Come join us over on our Instagram, and leave a heart or comment here if you’re enjoying our work. It would mean so much to us.)
Get Into the Groove
Chatting with barrier-breaking director Susan Seidelman
By Cheryl
If someone asked me to choose one image that best represents the ‘80s for me, it would have to be Madonna drying her pits in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). Everything about the movie was aspirational to me: her sassiness, the clothes, the cool of downtown New York City, Aidan Quinn’s unconventional hotness, the pyramid jacket, women being independent and having fun, and oh my god Madonna’s hair.
I watched it a few times this past year and, the silliness of the amnesia plot notwithstanding, it stands the test of time. Perhaps not coincidentally, women directed, produced, and wrote the story, which also centers two female characters. Talk about aspirational.
So I was pretty excited when I heard that Susan Seidelman, the film’s director, had written a book, Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), which was published a few weeks ago. I devoured the snappy writing, which is full of fun anecdotes, moving personal details, infuriating tidbits about the casual sexism of Hollywood, and some jaw-dropping name-drops involving all the people Seidelman encountered and worked with in the industry before they were famous. Case in point: Bruce Willis was in the running for the role of Madonna/Susan’s boyfriend, Jim. When he lost it, it prompted him to move to LA, where he then landed the lead on “Moonlighting.” He thanked Seidelman a few years later.
Seidelman, 71, started her career studying fashion design at Drexel University, but ended up with a film degree from NYU. Her first movie, Smithereens, was the first American indie film to ever compete at Cannes. DSS came next. She then worked early on with John Malkovich, in Making Mr. Right, a sort of female gaze corrective to the Weird Sciences and Mannequins out there at the time. She directed Meryl Streep in her first comedic role, in 1989’s She-Devil.
In the ‘90s, she went on to helm the pilot episode of “Sex and the City,” going on to direct several more episodes the first season, giving the series its NYC-centric point of view. (This is only a partial resume!)
Some excerpts of our conversation follow. And hang around until the end for some DVD extras I wrote about the DSS movie poster and the potential whereabouts of That Jacket.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Reflecting:
[In her late ‘60s, Seidelman moved from NYC to New Jersey. Then came the pandemic. Her friend Mark Blum, who played Rosanna Arquette’s husband Gary in DSS, was one of Covid’s early victims.]
“Over the years, I had read many things, other people writing about my movies, or writing about how they interpreted my movies, but I had never approached it from the inside looking out. So I thought, You know what, turning 70, that's sort of a good reason. I finally have enough years behind me to maybe look at the past less emotionally, more objectively, and try to make sense of all this stuff. And so it started out as just notes to myself. I realized I had about 200 of these notes, and I started to put them in some sort of order, and I realized that maybe I have a memoir.”
Nostalgia:
“I'm flattered that [DSS] still has people's interest 40 years later. New York in the late-‘70s/early-‘80s was a very interesting place. I can understand why young people in their 20s and 30s, who are coming into their own, might look back at that time period with some fascination, because it really was a cool time. I kind of lucked out to be there! Having now seen the film again, with people in the audience that weren't born when the film was made — 25-year-olds who related to the characters not for nostalgic reasons — there was something about that theme of wanting to reinvent yourself or wanting to be your authentic self, that I think is timeless.”
Characters:
“The Madonna character, I think she holds up well because I see a lot of young, empowered young women these days. It's so interesting to see all these new women singers who are powerful and confident and in control of their careers. And on the other hand, you get the Rosanna character. I think she's kind of a timeless character, somebody who's living a traditional life, but inside wishes that something else is going on, wishes her life is more exciting.”
Madonna:
“She had a couple of videos on MTV, but she was not famous. Orion Pictures did not know who she was. It was sort of good for me, because there was no prima donna stuff. She was very down to earth, and my relationship with her was very straightforward. And then she got really famous. It happened just after the filming ended, but before the film actually was released. So the film benefitted from her fame in terms of publicity. The fact that her music career was taking off suddenly at the same time that her movie career was taking off, they both fed on each other and boosted each other.”
Rosanna:
[Read the book for juicy details of what shooting DSS was like.]
“We did have a big 25th anniversary screening and party at Lincoln Center. And that was fun, because there was enough water under the bridge to look at it in a different light. We were all in our 50s, which is another turning point in your life. As I talk about in the book, my work relationship with Rosanna [Arquette] wasn't always easy, but she was there at the reunion, and I was able to tell her in front of the entire audience how terrific she was. At some point, the movie was referred to just as ‘the Madonna movie.’ And it's not the Madonna movie, it's their movie.”
Fashion:
“The [shape of the] pyramid jacket sort of looks like a tuxedo jacket or a waiter’s jacket from a cool club in the 1950s. I remember when Santo Loquasto, who was our production designer and our costume designer, designed that. And I remember him telling me that at first Madonna did not like it. It's funny because it's now so associated with her. Santo did go to her house and looked through her closet. He pulled out pieces of her own clothing that he sometimes altered. Like the cut-off bright orange sweatshirt, it has the initials ‘MC’ on it…I always thought that fashion told stories about the people wearing the clothes. Fashion is part of the story, and not just for decorative reasons, but as a shorthand to define character. So that is very important to me.”
Sequel:
“People have contacted me over the years and said, Wouldn't it be interesting to do a sequel? And I think it would be a terrible idea, because certain moments are just kind of wonderful the way they were, you know? The timing was right, the characters were right, and to try to recreate that would somehow taint the original.”
***
DVD EXTRAS:
The poster:
In her book, Seidelman explains that Orion Pictures’ marketing department comprised “mostly middle-aged guys who didn’t totally get the film.” One of the first posters featured Arquette’s face reflected in a toaster (because, housewife) while toast-Madonna popped out of it. Luckily, the production hired Herb Ritts to take promotional photos, and the iconic shots became the movie poster. It was Ritts’ first time meeting the pop star, and he went on to have a long relationship with her and a meteoric career in fashion photography, shooting the indelible image of five nude Supers on a porch along the way.
The pyramid jacket(s):
Seidelman does not have the jacket, though she did keep the Nefertiti earrings. Costume designer Loquasto made multiples of it, though it’s not clear how many existed. A Vulture interview with Arquette revealed the tidbit that she gave hers to (ex-boyfriend?!) Peter Gabriel’s daughters, who claimed they no longer had it when she asked about it. The producers had at least one, according to the Hollywood Reporter. They gave it up for auction in 2018, where it sold for $100,000. Previously, a jacket allegedly from the film had sold for $87,500 in 2016. Another one got a bid for $257,000 in 2014, but the bidder couldn’t scrape together the cash and so it went for $100,000 to someone else. How many are out there, and why aren’t more people questioning Peter Gabriel’s daughters about this??
Dress You Up: Maxxxine
Costume designer Mari-An Ceo breaks down Mia Goth’s acid washed outfit, plus ‘80s-inspired denim to buy now
By Fawnia
For me, last month turned out to be 1985, all day, all the time — starting with the Brats Tribeca premiere and the ensuing hot takes. Then, I saw a screening of Ti West’s Maxxxine, set in Los Angeles the same year as the Night Stalker and David Blum’s salty New York magazine article that haunted Andrew McCarthy for four decades. (And yes, A24’s screening room is incredibly chic.) Out on July 5, the slasher-horror film stars Mia Goth as the title character, Maxine Minx, a successful adult movie star on the cusp of her big Hollywood break.
Maxxxine closes out West’s screamfest trilogy, but if you haven’t seen the preceding Pearl or X, it's okay. Full disclosure: I haven’t, so, sure, some plot points went over my head (I will catch up!) But, I was too sucked into spotting all the ‘80s Easter eggs, like the seminal Brat Pack movie, St. Elmo’s Fire, emblazoned on the marquee of a respectable theater next to a seedy Sunset Strip peep show. I giggled at the perfectly-placed deep cut bangers, like Animotion’s “Obsession,” and enjoyed the brilliant casting of Gen X icons, like Kevin Bacon as a sleazy P.I. and Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s fast-talking agent. Plus, adjacents abound, like Genesis nepo baby and “Emily in Paris” star Lily Collins and Sophie Thatcher (and her glorious shaggy mullet), who plays the high school version of Juliette Lewis in “Yellowjackets.”
The mid-‘80s costumes, by Mari-An Ceo, are a spot-on delight. Setting up the film, Maxine heads to her fateful audition in her version of a power suit: a zip-up denim vest top and jeans set, with white pumps. “Ti had wanted an outfit that had the essence of [Goth’s denim] overalls from Pearl and X [by costume designer Malgosia Turzanska],” explains Ceo, who brought the inspiration straight into 1985. “I wanted it to be acid washed.”
At first, she created her version of the divisive mottled and faded denim. But due to time constraints, she recut and custom-fit a pair of vintage Levi’s jeans into Maxine’s tapered silhouette. The costume designer then used excess fabric to custom-design the corset-style halter, and added the zipper. “We love how it turned out,” says Ceo. “Mia felt confident in it, which was our intention.”
Maxine clearly did, too, as she stands out from the throngs of spiral-permed and Sun In-streaked competitors, all clad in bright colors and massive shoulder pads. “She is intentionally less dressed up than the other starlets auditioning. They are all trying a little harder in their North Beach Leather,” says Ceo, as I remember the familiar ‘80s and ‘90s mall fixture. “She is relying on her natural star quality and sex appeal. I loved that scene.”
Maxine immediately impresses director Elizabeth Bender (nod to The Breakfast Club?!), played by Elizabeth Debicki in knee-high boots and ultra-starched popped collars, like a terrifying Princess Diana. (All I could think of was “Las Culturistas” co-host Matt Rogers proclaiming, “TOO TALL.” That's for all you Kateighs, Readers, and Publicists out there.)
After the screening, I ventured to the modern day zenith of aura (did I use that correctly?), Dimes Square. I immediately spotted someone in a dark washed version of Maxine’s Canadian Tuxedo: a cropped halter top with jeans — but excessively baggy ones, of course. As the old adage goes, what’s old is new again, including the song of summer, which makes a well-timed appearance in Maxxxine.
You Oughta Know
Are we still obsessed with reading take-downs of Brats? Yes, yes we are. This one, in which writer Jennifer Romolini uses phrases like “our milky friend is still miffed” and “Sir, you’re a 60+ man with the swagger of a bandaid,” is particularly potent. [extended scenes/Substack]
Eddie Murphy sits down for a long-ranging interview about Beverly Hills Cop, being famous in his 20s, his feelings about returning to stand-up, and so much more. [New York Times]
The trailer for the sixth and final season of “Cobra Kai” is here. Episodes drop July 18 on Netflix. [YouTube/Netflix]
Balmain is partnering with Disney to release a collection pegged to the thirtieth anniversary of the The Lion King. The capsule will feature work by African artists. [Harper’s Bazaar]
Ione Skye, the actress best known for tolerating John Cusack directing a loud boombox at her window in Say Anything, is writing a book. Say Everything: A Memoir, arrives March 2025. [Deadline]
A24 movie soundtracks are always so well curated. Love that they included Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” in the trailer for Maxxine.
Susan Seidelman's SMITHEREENS is one of my all-time favorite movies. It also was beyond ahead of its time in showing us the strong, "unlikeable" female lead, played to the f-ing hilt by Susan Berman. Her character, Wren, might be the first example of an Influencer in that she desperately wants to be famous for doing absolutely nothing. (I love her!) And Richard hell is in it pre-A YEAR ON EARTH WITH MR. HELL, and...yowza. No worries about *that* guy winning Boyfriend of the Year. SMITHEREENS is also a great snapshot of gritty 1982 NYC. Just a great, fun movie. It's streaming on Nightflight Plus and (I think) Max.