The Importance of Applying Lipstick

With a tenuous tie-in to the current Tiffany exhibit, the VMFA showed Breakfast at Tiffany's this morning and (painful admission) since I'd never seen the movie all the way through, I felt compelled to improve my cultural literacy about it.

Other attendees were far more into it, a few younger ones even wearing black sheaths, pearls and opera-length gloves (sadly, no cigarette holders).

As we were leaving, I heard one woman say to her friend, "I can't believe I saw that the year I graduated high school."

It was indeed a wide-ranging audience.

NYC, as seen through the 1961 sanitized lens of director Blake Edwards, was a thing of beauty: angular, leafy and clean.

As always, I was enthralled with the period details of it all.

The cabs all had serious fins on them. The concession stand in Central Park sold frankfurters for twenty cents. Men gave their dates money when they went to the powder room. Enormous card catalogs were still in use in the public library.

Women wore gloves at parties and hats everywhere. Flashbulbs went off when photographers snapped a picture.

Of course, the movie was rife with just as much political incorrectness as mid-century charm.

Especially notable were the ethnic stereotyping of Asians (as played by Mickey Rooney, of all people?) and people smoking everywhere (including in cabs and when being brought before the magistrate on narcotics charges).

I also loved the dialog, not surprisingly since the source material was Truman Capote's book.

There's clarity in a line like, "It's useful being top banana in the shock department."

But knowing how so much of the book was put through the Hollywood sanitizer, I was curious about what got left out of Holly's character.

But parts of her I instinctively understood with no further research necessary.

"A girl can't read that sort of thing without her lipstick," could have been written about me.

I've found that it's always best to apply some Witty Fuchsia before attempting anything challenging.

Holly: Do you think she's talented; deeply and importantly talented?
Paul: No, amusingly and superficially talented, yes. But deeply and importantly, no.

 Personally, I'd settle for deeply and amusingly talented.

But I'm no Holly Golightly either.