Sex and the City: Ned, August 22
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Hello, you old so-and-sos.
There have been two Sex and the City movies, and many fans are eager for a third. Producers, too—it makes a lot of sense. Let's pop a cork, shoot some scenes and make some money, girls and boys! Notoriously, Kim Cattrall, who plays Samantha, is not interested in shooting a third movie. This also makes a lot of sense. "Leave them wanting more," my mom likes to tell me, and I would assume that when you've shot six seasons and two movies of something over the course of two decades, you feel like there isn't much more to leave them wanting.
In September 2017, the Daily Mail reported that Cattrall had made demands of the studio—namely that it greenlight some of her own producing projects in addition to the franchise—and that when the studio failed to comply with these demands, the third SATC film got stalled. Cattrall refuted this report in a tweet: "The only 'DEMAND' I ever made was that I didn't want to do a 3rd film....& that was back in 2016."
As details about Cattrall's aversion to completing the would-be trilogy came out in gossip magazines, its terms seemed more fraught. She commented to a disappointed fan on Instagram that, at 61, she didn't want to have such a hectic life, that she wanted to rest and start a new chapter. Then she did what anyone who wants to have a less hectic life and start a new chapter does, and went on Piers Morgan to clarify everything. "Sarah Jessica, she could have been nicer, she could have in some way," Cattrall told Morgan. "I don't know what her issue is, I never have." Of her costars, Cattrall said, "We've never been friends....We've been colleagues and, in some way, it's a very healthy place to be."
Earlier in 2018, Kim Cattrall's brother died. CNN reported that he was "found dead in Canada," after going missing the week before. Cattrall told the story—that he had disappeared from his home, that this was unlike him, that his cell phone, wallet, and keys were on the kitchen table and the front door was unlocked—on Instagram.
Sarah Jessica Parker commented on Cattrall's Instagram post about her brother: "Dearest Kim, my love and condolences to you and yours and Godspeed to your beloved brother. Xx."
Cattrall then responded with a new post:
Below this post, Cattrall wrote a caption: "My Mom asked me today 'When will that @sarahjessicaparker, that hypocrite, leave you alone?' Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now. Let me make this VERY clear. (If I haven't already) You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I'm writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your 'nice girl' persona. Copy and paste link https://nypost.com/2017/10/07/inside-the-mean-girls-culture-that-destroyed-sex-and-the-city/"
The NY Post link is to an article discussing the fight between the two stars, with quotes from various unnamed friends of Kim Cattrall's. The article ends, "Good for you, Kim," in case there was any doubt as to whether the paper was choosing a side.
I have been interested in this social media interaction between Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker for many reasons. Firstly, I am a snobby millennial, and I take snobby pleasure in watching celebrities struggle to know what's appropriate for social media. When a celebrity posts something ridiculous, it seems to confirm that stars are flawed human beings "just like us," and simultaneously, that they are cut off from ordinary life to such an extent that they are messy as hell. This social media interaction between Cattrall and Parker illuminates the existential contradictions of celebrity in such a succinct way. Kim Cattrall may want to just be in her sixties and move on to a new chapter of her life, but she still has the internet, and she still gets to perform on it whenever she wants. Perhaps Kim Cattrall doesn't want to be Samantha anymore, but it seems like she certainly wants to keep performing. This post is so beautifully messy, so nakedly feud-y, that it strikes me as nostalgic, like a prop from a true old Hollywood tiff, an All About Eve moment, a note left on a dressing table, in plain sight of a tabloid reporter, on opening night. "That Sarah Jessica Parker, that hypocrite!"That it is so effortfully distancing, that Cattrall is explicitly asking for not-support, that she is deciding that Sarah Jessica Parker's support is worthless to her, and that she took time out of her grieving process to express this on social media, is fascinating. And she won't take it down. It remains on her Instagram, for the world to see, whenever they want, proof of how much Kim Cattrall doesn't need the condolences of Sarah Jessica Parker and how much she's moved on. Should we print it out? Should we hang it in a museum?
Furthermore, in exposing a feud, in so ostentatiously showing us her personal feelings, Kim Cattrall transgresses our expectations of what it means to be a properly enigmatic actor. As many actors have attested, the exposure of one's private life is often believed to be harmful to the craft. Keira Knightley once said in an interview with the Telegraph, "I don't want to know that the actor has just gone through a divorce. I don't want to know that the person is an alcoholic. It just gets in the way of my pleasure of watching the character." Matt Damon once controversially said that actors should keep their sexualities a secret, telling a reporter, "in terms of actors, I think you're a better actor the less people know about you period. And sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether you're straight or gay, people shouldn't know anything about your sexuality because that's one of the mysteries that you should be able to play." This is an absurd and marginalizing logic, as it assumes that public straightness and public queerness are graded on the same curve, but it is not an inaccurate assessment of how the business has worked for many years. According to this logic, toxic though it may be, we want our celebrities to all but vanish, to repress so as to express. Hence the figure of the aloof celebrity method actor who disappears into parts like a phantom, eschewing a personal life, protecting their identity by not having one, floating through Los Angeles and New York in joggers and hats, from salad to salad, wearing dark glasses, receding into *the business* as if through a curtain, into a cult, a ghostly existential rehab.
And so, as much as it's become a cliché that reality TV aesthetics now suffuse everything, fans of SATC don't necessarily want to know about the behind the scenes dynamics of the show. What they want is for actors to disappear into their characters; what they want is a third movie. After all, you're not "a Sarah Jessica Parker," you're "a Carrie." As our shared mythos of acting would have it, how Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker feel about each other doesn't necessarily mean that Samantha and Carrie can't still sip a Mai-Tai on the beach in the movie. But what if they willfully expose their animosity? Celebrities whose personal lives become larger than their characters' do not disappear into fictions so easily, having already stoked real-life drama more fascinating than the antics of any character they might assume. Lindsay Lohan, for example, doesn't really act anymore, because her life has taken over, first in addiction, then in recovery. She is now sober, Muslim, and a resort owner on an island she purchased in Dubai. The island is called, miraculously enough, "Lohan Island." I struggle to imagine a character in a movie that would interest me more than the Lohan who owns Lohan Island.
In the above post, Cattrall willfully and determinedly reveals just how unlike her character she really is. Unconcerned with the shared fiction of the multi-million dollar franchise that made her famous, she lifts the curtain on herself and pulls Sarah Jessica Parker onstage with her before either of them has gotten a chance to get into character. In a dramatic blaze, her life's work shifts from that of an actor to that of a performance artist (which may seem less weird if you consider that she's good friends with Laurie Anderson). She seeks not only to show how real she is, but how unreal Sex and the City always was. Rather than slipping into a character, disappearing into a narrative, completing the trilogy she started, Kim Cattrall does what any burgeoning performance artist does: she creates internet content. "Samantha never even liked Carrie," she whispers in our ear. "It was all just pretend. Didn't you know that?"
*
It's so hot, I haven't left my room today. I work from home. Sometimes I get exhausted just from staying home. Sitting on my bed, writing film descriptions and analysis for a website that has basically enlisted me to fill the internet with text, I am the Emily Dickinson of search engine optimization. Later I'm going to Williamsburg to watch the Bachelorette finale. On The Bachelorette, it's all about "the date." I used to go on "dates," which turns out to be one of the least romantic things a person can possibly do. Luckily, I didn't do it for romance. I did it to help me become a New Yorker. The dates were talking and drinking, usually in the East Village, and they rarely led to a second date, let alone a kiss. In some part of my brain, I must have thought I was Carrie Bradshaw or Jerry Seinfeld or someone else from the Nineties from the TV. I knew, before I had ever seen it, that Sex and the City isn't about sex; it's about talking about sex with your friends. I wanted to go to the diner with my friends and tell them about my date. I wanted to live in the same building as my friends. I wanted to have a laugh track, to buzz friend's apartments out of the blue, enter the apartment mid-sentence, talking about my latest romantic foible. I wanted to say things like "It's unconscionable!" and I wanted to say them lightly, about someone I was dating.
I went on a date with Vera Wang's assistant. He was a Cancer, like me. Vera Wang is also a Cancer. I have the same birthday as Vera Wang, which explains...well, nothing. He got a tequila soda. He talked about the myth of Narcissus. He literally talked about the myth of Narcissus on a gay date in the East Village. I went on a date with a guy who blogged and the blog made money. I went on a date with a writer for a late-night show. I was confused by his particularly aggressive kissing style, and a creeping sense that he wanted to crush my head with his bare hands. When I got home I reread his OK Cupid profile and discovered, in the fine print, that he identified as very dom. He never mentioned this in person. I guess I could have just asked him.
Season Two, Episode Nine of Sex and the City: "Old Dog, New Dicks." A shot of Christopher Street. That "Village Cigar" store. "They say that the women in New York are the most beautiful women in the world," Carrie narrates. Beautiful women abound. "The city is a veritable playground for men's roving eyes." A man almost gets hit by a cab walking into the street while ogling a model. He slaps the hood of the cab with a New York Times.
Last night I took a $36 cab home. I was in Queens, the trains weren't running, and my phone was at 9%. Sometimes when I'm in a cab I can't believe that I am in it, that people are ever in them, just driving silently through the night, to different parts of the city, all the time. I can't believe how silent we are being, but also, I don't really want to talk. I think of Taxi Driver. I think of Robert DeNiro, a bloodthirsty vigilante, saving the city from itself, driving around Manhattan and scowling. I picture Cynthia Nixon playing Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, leering at the scum of New York, shaving her hair into a mohawk, buying a gun, talking to herself in the mirror, saving Jodie Foster from prostitution, fixing the MTA. Taxi Driver was shot in 1975 during the garbage strike, during a heat wave. The MPAA didn't know how to rate it at first, but once Martin Scorsese desaturated the red color of the blood, the MPAA agreed on an R rating. The first blood had been too bright for an R rating.
Miranda is asleep on the couch. She has a new apartment and a new boyfriend. The doorbell rings. It's Steve. She stubs her toe bad. Cynthia Nixon is great at acting like she just woke up, she is great at acting like she just stubbed her toe. She is, in short, a great actress. She will fix the MTA. She will act until it is fixed.The other night, after we saw Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again, my friend got a text from an unknown number. It was a guy who knew her name and said they met on Hinge. My friend was confused. She had Hinge, but she hadn't spoken to or given her number to anyone on Hinge with his name. When she told him this, suggesting that perhaps he had the wrong number, he got aggressive, called her "dude," and insulted her appearance, saying he never liked her anyway. We were shocked—who was this guy? How did he get her number? Why was he so toxic? We got beers at a bar in the Financial District near the movie theater. "Mamma Mia 2 made heterosexuality seem so easy," my friend sighed, and we laughed, because it had. Five minutes after insulting her, the guy sent another text, saying that he was at a party near Prospect Park and did she want to join him: "There's an open bar here, it's a Google event. Come through?" We laughed in disbelief, fear. Whose New York guy is this? We found someone's New York guy!
Charlotte is making out with a "cute but feared restaurant critic," Mike. Suddenly, Charlotte sees that Mike is uncircumcised. Record scratch. This is not okay. I brace myself for the meal in which the women will discuss circumcision.
I went for a walk with my friend near the Christopher Street piers and he said, "I have a horrible idea: let's go to Le Bain." We did, and it was a horrible idea, until it wasn't and it was a perfect idea. I took off my boots and put my feet in the little pool they have, drank a tequila soda and watched the sunset. A girl fell into the pool taking a photo of her friends. My friend and I kept laughing, the sun was pink and sleepy. A girl was on the phone nearby: "I don't know, Mom...I'm on a rooftop in Meatpacking...I gotta go!"
Carrie is writing about her situation with Big on her computer. Is this her column? Does she just write about Big in her column, without changing his name? Does she just write about her friends in her column, without changing their names? Does anyone read her column? Does Big read her column? Do her friends read her column? What is her column?
Mike decides to get circumcised for Charlotte, because of course he does. Miranda hates cuddling, but loves spin class. Miranda, I'm sorry, but you're queer. The women go to drag queen bingo. A drag queen comes over and says hi to Samantha. It's Brad, a semi-pro hockey player Samantha dated a few years back. He started doing drag right after dating Samantha. His drag name is Samantha. Samantha is jealous of Samantha.
Mike's dick heals. Miranda seduces Steve at night after five coffees. Steve is...adorable. This is a Steve stan account now. It's getting weird how much Charlotte likes circumcised penises.
Confused about where she stands with Big, Carrie lies on a couch looking stricken. What if Sarah Jessica Parker had played Virginia Woolf in The Hours? Sarah Jessica Parker walking into the Hudson with stones in her pocket, a low bun and a tweed coat. Sarah Jessica Parker spacing out and biting her lip in the middle of an English garden, wondering if men could ever change. Sarah Jessica Parker, not knowing how to speak to the servant girl. Sarah Jessica Parker, thanking Matthew Broderick for being so good, telling him no two people could have ever been so happy. Carrie lying on the couch wearing a tank top with Cookie Monster on it.
At the end of college, a grad student leading a senior seminar I took read us Virginia Woolf's suicide note on the last day of class, "to send us out into the world." It wasn't very heartening.
*
Carrie ordering two spring rolls on Seamless and texting Charlotte a tweet. Charlotte isn't on Twitter.
Carrie looking for the Wi-Fi password on the chalkboard at a new coffee shop that makes chia pudding cups, as "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens plays, and several unemployed 23-year-olds scan Craigslist for internships.
Carrie at a WeWork in Dumbo, looking at her bank account app and biting her lip, declining a call from her mother.Carrie at Storm King with Big. Carrie instagramming Storm King with Big.
Carrie at Dia:Beacon. Carrie instagramming Dia:Beacon with Big.
Carrie following Rupi Kaur on Instagram.
Carrie unfollowing Rupi Kaur on Instagram.
Carrie on Tinder. Carrie on Hinge. Carrie looking at Mario Cantone's Grindr. Carrie handing Mario Cantone his phone back.
Carrie at Alamo Draft House with a man who works for Google who wants to talk about cryptocurrency.
Carrie putting the Pride filter on her Facebook profile pic.
Carrie seeing Bette Midler in Hello Dolly! Carrie standing ovationing.
Carrie getting in a Twitter argument with a troll whose profile pic is an animated shark. Carrie blocking him.
Carrie crying on the subway. Carrie crying in an Uber pool. Carrie cracking her phone.
Carrie reading Elena Ferrante. Carrie reading I Love Dick.
Carrie running into an ex at Whole Foods in Williamsburg.
Carrie Airbnb-ing her apartment to Dutch tourists.
Carrie watching Big Little Lies.
Carrie eating a kale Caesar.
Carrie reading half of an article about climate change.
Carrie putting her phone on airplane mode.
Carrie cutting up her credit card, throwing her phone in the East River, and walking north.
Carrie walking until her shoes break.
Carrie settling in a small town in rural New York state.
Carrie working at a restaurant.
Carrie saving money.
Carrie building a tiny house. Carrie living off the grid.
Carrie becoming a vegan.
Carrie logging back on to Instagram to create a wellness account all about her years living off the grid. Charlotte DM-ing Carrie. Carrie never responding.
Carrie becoming an online entrepreneur.
Carrie attending summits all over the country.
Carrie helping individuals manifest abundance.
Big driving upstate to find Carrie.
Carrie seeing Big walk into the back of a seminar she is leading. Carrie losing words, biting her lip. That incessant inner monologue that she abandoned years ago begins to chime in—"Can you ever really forgive, if you can't forget..."—when suddenly a woman in Lululemon in the front row asks if she's alright. Carrie apologizing. Carrie finishing the workshop.
In the parking lot: "What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?"
"This is my home."
"Get in the car. Come back to New York. Live with me. You can go back to writing your column."
"I'll never go back to New York. I hate it there. I belong here. I belong on the internet."
"But what are you doing?"
"I help people manifest abundance. I have thirty thousand followers."
"This is madness, Carrie."
Carrie and Big back at Carrie's tiny home. She fixes him a cup of tea. He looks skeptically at the titles on her bookshelf: Simple Strategies for Getting Out of Your Own Way, The Art of Making and Manifesting Your Intentions, The Ethical Slut.
"Carrie."
"I don't want to fight, Big." She rubs an essential oil on her wrists.
"I don't either, but this is crazy, Carrie!"
Carrie smiling a strange smile, as she stares into Big's eyes.
Big leaving, getting in his car, driving back to New York.
Carrie getting into bed, going on Twitter, posting a tweet, scrolling until she falls asleep.
Love,
Ned
The Slow Burn, v. 4: An Introduction
Ivan Ramos (Guest Post), October 1
Audrey Wollen (Guest Post), October 22
*
The Slow Burn, volume 4, will run in this space all summer. Previous summers can still be found on Post45:
2015: A Summer of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels - Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, Katherine Hill, and Jill Richards
2016: Summer of Knausgaard - Diana Hamilton, Dan Sinykin, Cecily Swanson, and Omari Weekes
2017: Welcome (back) to Twin Peaks - Michaela Bronstein, Len Gutkin, and Benjamin Parker