Writing In Public

In Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge, which was published in 1968, the title character/narrator observes “…to write in public in the electronic age is to commit an antisocial obscenity.” This, of course, was years before ubiquitous personal devices, before it became a social norm to check in on facebook and check out of the physically proximate: those who may be asking you how you’re doing or trying to take your coffee order or warn you of an approaching bear.

So why does writing in public still feel so dangerous? I’m talking about writing, not pressing buttons, I’m talking scribe, the act of leveraging a pen between three fingers and moving it along a surface. Why is it that when I walk down the street and get an idea and try to record it by putting pen against paper against the wall of the nearest building, it feels like an alarm is going to go off?

There’s a reason why writing can mean graffiti. Even when a piece of paper separates your pen from the building’s wall, though, cars slow, necks crane. Heads shake? Why would you have an idea, people wonder, and why would you use someone else’s property as a means—however indirect—of capturing it?

Or am I just that self-conscious? In reality, how can anyone care? This is a tension I’m used to, the one between wanting to be read and wanting to be ignored. That’s why I lock myself in a room to write: some day someone will read this, some day this will be public. Just not right now. This thing is too fragile right now, will shrivel in the sunlight, will shrink at the sound of sirens.

The public realm is not one of creativity. That’s why performance art is both so compelling and so disparaged. Keep that shit in your books, in your ipods, plug it into the zeros and ones that compose your blogs. Our range of creativity, by design, is limited.

All around us is a culture on autopilot, made manifest in the landscape, one that repeats and re-repeats the same mistakes, that is “created” and re-“created” not for us to exist in or bounce off of but rather for us to stick to our path and turn a profit for a select few, who then hand a cut over to our legislators, who in return shirk their responsibility of creative solutions, as do we, this is, after all, a democracy, and it’s our duty as its citizens to stay informed, and we see via our personal devices that drones will now populate our own skies as well as those of our enemies, that the cameras now trained on us are there to keep us safe.

Creativity, when not in service of making these dudes a buck, is not good for capitalism. So stay numb. I know I do. When outside, I avoid interaction, and thus potential confrontation, whenever possible. And when I go to bed at night, rather than interrupting my eight hours and taking the time to write down my dreams, I wake in the morning and, first thing, I let them flee my mind. 

TVanR.4: Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge

I really wanted to draw Mae West as Leticia Van Allen for this post. Raquel Welch is a bit of a dead pulse in 1970’s Myra Breckinridge,  a movie notorious for making critics’ Worst lists. Its costumery is really what takes center stage, each scene a new and different sartorial showcase, and it looks like Theadora Van Runkle had a really good time dressing the movie’s cast.

Except that Thea didn't dress West. For her return to the silver screen, the aged icon demanded she be outfitted by an equally legendary artist: Edith Head. So, while West’s dresses may look fabulous, they are not technically Van Runkles.

Several years earlier, when Theadora was shopping for fabric for Bonnie and Clyde, she'd run into Head and asked for advice. “Oh, darling,” Head said, “do everything in chiffon—you’ll have no problems.” Bonnie and Clyde ended up being noted for its chiffon-lessness, and when the two designers collaborated on Myra Breckinridge, their differing visions resulted in just one of many on-set aesthetic clashes: West’s signature look for the movie was black and white, and when Welch came to set dressed in a black dress with a white ruffled collar, West demanded the collar be spraypainted blue.

I liked drawing this look because of its tension between the profane and sacred, the cleavage taking center stage amid an almost saintly hood. That iconic American-flag one-piece does this too, I guess, but I wanted to draw something here that was a little more Thea and a little less Raquel.

Check back tomorrow for Bernadette Peters as Marie Kimble!

It's a Van Runkle. Isn't it fabulous?

Thus speaks Phyllis Nefler (Shelley Long), the spoiled fashion plate/housewife who tries to get earthy in 1989’s Troop Beverly Hills. Phyllis cycles through costume after elaborate costume, each one more fantastic than the next, and even when she dons her Wilderness Girl uniform, she does so with perfectly tailored—albeit, absurdist—flare. All of this is thanks to the brilliant Theadora Van Runkle, who died this past November.

When I was a kid, my dad said we had some sort of relative who was a Hollywood costume designer. It seemed like a strange thing for him to make up, so I always assumed it was true, although I never found out any details about the relative. Years later, as an adult, I happened to catch the costume designer’s name in the credits of Troop Beverly Hills: Theadora Van Runkle. I knew my family had dropped the Van from our name during World War I, and so I wondered if Theadora was that mysterious relative. A little further research (i.e., her IMDb page) found that her other work had been just as energetic and imaginative as TBH. She also outfitted the casts of Myra Breckinridge, The Jerk, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, as well as The Godfather: Part II; I Love You, Alice B. Toklas; Peggy Sue Got Married; Rhinestone and New York, New York. She was nominated for an Oscar for her breakout work in Bonnie and Clyde, and was respected for the influence its iconic costumes had on the mainstream late-1960s fashion world. Finding all this out about her made me really hope that she was the one.

So I found her address and decided to write her. I told her I was a big fan of her work. I drew a picture of one of Shelley Long’s costumes in TBH (which, having since seen Theadora’s beautiful sketches, I now feel pretty ashamed of). I asked her if we were related.

The letter I got back, in beautiful, hand-brushed calligraphy, answered no. Her husband had died very young, Theadora said, and she kept his name to use professionally. “I think it sounds art deco,” she wrote, “don’t you?” She also claimed the name had brought her luck. She started out working as a sketch artist for Oscar-winning designer Dorothy Jeakins after meeting her at a party. The veteran costume designer went on to recommend Theadora for what Jeakins described as “a little western over at Warner brothers”—a movie that turned out to be the acclaimed Bonnie and Clyde. Theadora, who had never designed before, winged it, and went on to receive that Oscar nod. The letter went on: “My first screen credit inspired others with unique names to use theirs without changing to something less ethnic or more conventionally glamorous.” She ended the letter by saying Warren Beatty had encouraged her to change her name to Thea Vee, but she refused.

Theadora wrote that letter in 2009, when she was 81. I feel privileged—despite the fact we’re not blood-related—to have gotten to know, however slightly, an artist with such warmth and singular vision. In memory of Theadora’s passing, I’m going to post a drawing a day this next week: five Van Runkle-costumed leading ladies from some of my favorites of her movies. They’re not attempts to compete with Theadora’s original sketches, which are genius, seriously—you should look at a couple here and here. The drawings I post this week are through my own awkward film-viewing lens, and are gestures of love and admiration.

Look for Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler tomorrow!