Last Night
At the Harvard Exit
Last night, I saw Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary about New York Times'
"On The Street" fashion photographer/columnist Bill Cunningham.
It's playing at the Harvard Exit and you have to see it. You don't have to care about fashion (I don't). But 80-something-bike-riding-monastic-eccentric shutterbug Bill Cunningham does. Madly.
The camera tags along as Cunningham, an endlessly cheerful fellow, casually goes about his big-deal job as a columnist for the NYT —cataloging and shaping worldwide fashion trends from the streets of Manhattan to the runways in Paris—while simultaneously living the life of an ascetic goofasaurus, mending his rain slicker with black tape, biking in Manhattan traffic (he bolts his bike in front of the Times building every day) and living in a closet-size studio without a bathroom or kitchen. The guy is like Ralph Nader if Ralph Nader loved life and beautiful dresses.
While Cunningham has surprisingly electric connections with all his fawning acquaintances; aging art divas, assistants, NYT editors, and former (early '80s Details!) editors—he's totally alone, a point that gives the movie its most heartbreaking and uplifting scene.
It's playing at the Harvard Exit and you have to see it. You don't have to care about fashion (I don't). But 80-something-bike-riding-monastic-eccentric shutterbug Bill Cunningham does. Madly.
The camera tags along as Cunningham, an endlessly cheerful fellow, casually goes about his big-deal job as a columnist for the NYT —cataloging and shaping worldwide fashion trends from the streets of Manhattan to the runways in Paris—while simultaneously living the life of an ascetic goofasaurus, mending his rain slicker with black tape, biking in Manhattan traffic (he bolts his bike in front of the Times building every day) and living in a closet-size studio without a bathroom or kitchen. The guy is like Ralph Nader if Ralph Nader loved life and beautiful dresses.
While Cunningham has surprisingly electric connections with all his fawning acquaintances; aging art divas, assistants, NYT editors, and former (early '80s Details!) editors—he's totally alone, a point that gives the movie its most heartbreaking and uplifting scene.
