Apple Crumble

Rip It Up, Issue 143, 1 June 1989, Page 14

Apple Crumble

Sy janQWitz’s Slaves of New York

New York, New York, city of dreams. Where the streets . are paved with gold and the Velvet Underground were invented. Where King Kong climbed up the Empire State and where the editor of

Vanity Fairis paid a $20,000 . clothing allowance every year. Where Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe worked and died. Where Def Jamwas born. Where the starsgoforiunch. Whereart

dealerslive like rock stars. How arethingsin New York, Tama? “I's raining.” : Wow! No kidding? :

Tama Janowitz writes about New York and sounds like it. Her book Slaves Of New Yorkchronicles the city’s urban sprawl in 22 short stories. If's her second major publication (the firstbeing the much lauded andless sensational novel American Dad) and its subject and timing has captured the popularimagination. Everything that Less Than Zero and Bright Lights Big City promised to be, Slaves Of New Yorkis; atits weakest it'sathin pastiche of Damon Runyon, atits bestit's an amphetamine-paced chronicle of the art world that Robert Hughes loves to hate. “ljust wentto New York and hung outand went home and wrote about it,” Tama drawls. “l didn't see

anybody else writing about this

world. ltwas at a time when the art

scene was like the rock n’ roll scene. | didn'tknow anybody, but| could go to agallery opening and someone would give me a glass of wine and somebody else would say, Doyou like the paintings, and there's a party onlatertonight ... |mean I wasn't

writing non-fiction, but was trying to record some of the situations and

problems that were occurring at that particular time and place.” e The stories appeared in patchesin various publicafions, the New Yorker among them. And one day Andy Warhol was leafing through a copy ofthe New Yorkerand ...

“Warholfirst boughtfive of the . stories from me to make into a movie, so | did a screenplay for him. After his deathitturned outthat [film -

production team| Merci\onf-lvory

had been reading my work and

they'dbeen interested in it for some time, so after Warhol's death they found outthat my stories were available and they broughtthem from the [Warhol] foundation.”

Whichis how Slaves Of New York came fo become a movie. Janowitz penned the screenplay, Bernadette Peters plays the central figure /

narrator of Eleanor, and the film is produced by Ismail Merchant and directed by James Ivory. ~ Merchantand Ivory are the hard-nosed and starry-eyed guys who broughtyou Heat And Dust, Maurice and Room With A View. They're the sort of films in which

Julian Sands and Anthony Andrews ride bicycles around English colonial settlements, and Helena

Bonham-Carterfrets over her

virginity while sightseeing in Venice. Was Janowitz concerned that the makers of such films would miss the In Your Face style of modern New York?

“No. Merchant Ivory have been making films for 20 years, many of which have been set in social settings, and | thought in any event that if they could get down the Boston of Henry James and Edwardian England, then certainly that had to be more difficult than modern New York, which was standing right there infront of us. So | neverhad any

qualms— theirwork has alwg);s

been about social mores and

behaviour and rules of society and efiquette, and that was what | was interestedintoo.”

On paperthe Slaves Of New York are willing and cheerful victims of the inner-city in-crowd, the Manhattan art-world madness that daily packs galleries and covers canvasses with some of history’smost meagre

scrawl. The art scene in New York has always been hyped (a precedent set by Warhol and his media ancestor, Salvador Dali, amongst others) butthe 80s have seen it attain new levels of Raging Bullshit. The efforts of doodlerslike Jean

Michel-Basquiat (who finally did make headlines by killing himself with heroin) and Julian Schnabel make Madonna'’s publicity agents look like saints. Slaves Of New Yorkmakes this point not without sympathy, but ‘when the film was screened in New York the reaction was not good. The Emperor’s new clothes had been

removed, and in cinemascope. “They hatedit," Janowitz recalls, her voice starting to whine. “They hated the whole thing. They said it wasundermining the fabricof

American society, and that Tri-Star was an evil company for making the film, and that Bernadette Peters was too old ... just one thing after the other. They went crazy. : “| don'tthink they liked New York being made fun of. They were angry that | got a lot of attention and they were angry that Merchant/ vory were doing something otherthan Henry James or EM. Forster.”

Which is a surprising reaction — of all the cities in the world, one would think that New York could handle a media version of itself.

“They're like sharks here, they gang up on things. It was like the

/}yqfqfll'oh saying, Kill Salman

Rushdie. “I'mnot sure thatthe movie was sympathetic, orthatthe book was,” Janowitz says of her stories. “To me, thisis the way the city is. | don'tthink

the peopleinitare allbad, orall good; | don't think they're all creative geniuses, orthey're all hustling, ambitious people — this is the way people are acting atthis particular time at this particular place on the. planet” : New York does definitely have its own folklore ...

“Well, they come here from all overthe place, from Holland and Germany and New Zealand, and they all think that they’re gonna

make it somehow. There are an

awful lot of people here vying for attention— and there are not many people willing to give any attention.” Which is something that the film Slaves Of New York captures

beautifully —the spectacle of otherwiseintelligent people - spending their whole lives trying to shouteach otherdown. -

“There are people living on the streets here — | can’timagine Calcutta being much worse. These menare living inthe park, sitting on lawn chairs with furniture, everything. People come from all over and they getstuck here, like onflypaper.” Thefitle story of Slaves Of New Yorkhas a macabre premise; apartments are so hard to getin fown thatyou end up being the “slave” of the person who owns the lease —is. that still the case?

“There are more apartments around now. Do you have alot of apartmentsin New Zealand” Isuppose — New Zealand's a wide place with not many people in it. »

“That must be nice. My father wanted to emigrate there. You probably have good fishing...2" Yes...Doyou like fishing? “No. Butif I moved to New Zealand...| couldtakeitup.” Yes.

Tama'sscriptfor Slaves Of New Yorkalso required a plethora of actors, so she got a cameo role. How

did she enjoy being in front of the camera? “| didn't care forthattoo much. | couldnt remember my lines. lttook me like three daysto memorise them anditwas agony. You have to say them over and over again and you haveto getyourface to make the same expression. But what the hell doyoulook like if you say “Hi there how are y0u"222 | don’tknow how yourface is meant o look to match that expression. | mean how do you lookwhen you say something like “Well 'm used to Roger cooking for me, would | have to cook for Bruce2’¢ Am | smiling atthat point or ‘what? | dunno.”

Playwriting, not prose, was

Janowitz's main interest after leaving college, so the overall task of turning her storiesinto one coherent script did not pose a problem. Presently she’s working on a new play fora Louisville theatre company (“Right now there are 12 players, butsome may die”) and reading the work of other playwrights o getideas. “I'mreading Joe Orton and some Pinter and Sam Shepherd and Beckett. And | like George Orwell and Nabokov and Saul Bellow. It depends on what style | need. | read [Gabriel Garcia] Marquez for his style.l read alot of True Crime books. And like to read News Of The World.” ;

Oh, News Of The World—that's the very classy one, isn't it

“If's a little different over here. It has a lot of stories about Siamese Twins and women impregnated by aliens.”

Isthat @ good source of ideas for you? “ltmakes you kind of ashamed, because if those things aren'ttrue then somebody outthere has a fantasticimagination. If they aretrue, then all the better — ifthey aretrue, then why bother to write anything at alle” '

CHADTAYLOR

S @ O o <, S o 3 D N < O 2 < 3 : B D 2 5 Q\ o 3% ¢ o O, .