The other night, I finally got around to watching The September Issue on Netflix; a documentary about the making of the then-massive annual fall fashion preview issue of Vogue in 2007. For those unfamiliar with Vogue, it’s one of those first generation pre-Blogosphere e-zines delivered in low-res analog form via flimsy portable tablet computers made from the byproducts of dead trees. Yuck!
Seriously though, it’s a fascinating time capsule of a film, sort of the Titanic or Last Days of Pompeii of the New York magazine industry. And beyond the world of Vogue depicted in the movie itself, of a supremely competent insular liberal Masters of the Universe worldview just before the lights went out on the world’s economy, and elites got what they wanted in the years that followed — good and hard, as Mencken would say. President Obama likes to say that Americans have been pretty soft in recent years; he need only watch this film to see how right he was about his core constituency. When Occupy Wall Street complains of “The One Percent” and their enormous wealth, well, come and see the plutocratic excess inherent in the system.
When The September Issue first played in 2009, Serena French of New York Post, who dubbed it a “Hazy Shade Of Wintour,” described the film as “a snapshot of Paris before the Revolution, before the bottom fell out of the Park Avenue parquet, the world [that Vogue editor Anna Wintour] courted and documented so finely in the pages of her magazine:”
That the most powerful and protected woman in fashion does so now — in this film, on “60 Minutes” earlier this spring, on “Letterman” next week — is a mystery. Except that after 20 years, with fashion in economic crisis, management consultants turning Condé Nast inside out, vulture critics circling and speculating about her own exit strategy, she must be thinking in terms of legacy.
For the documentary, which opens Aug. 28, the magazine — which is to say Wintour — allowed Cutler an extraordinary level of access for the closing of the most important issue of the year in 2007, which at 840 pages was the magazine’s biggest ever. Cutler followed Wintour and her team from the shows in February — when fall clothes are shown on world stages — from planning with editors and photographers, fashion shoots, meetings with retailers and designers, to closing in July, interspersed with interviews at her homes in Greenwich Village and Long Island.
This peek inside the star chamber is juicy viewing on a number of levels. It’s a psychological portrait of Anna, powerful female executive, mother, daughter, perfectionist. It’s a front-row seat at how the albeit-impeccably-turned-out-but-sausage-nonetheless gets made at Vogue.
And perhaps most interestingly, it’s a snapshot of Paris before the Revolution, before the bottom fell out of the Park Avenue parquet, the world Wintour courted and documented so finely in the pages of her magazine.
Cut to the $2 million-a-year editor sipping her Starbucks in the back of a chaffeur-driven limousine that is her daily commute as the examples of a soon-to-be bygone era unfold.
As the pressure of producing a blockbuster issue mounts, Wintour jettisons $50,000 worth of photos from a shoot. One minute a designer dress is on a rack in the halls of Vogue, the next it is on her back. Heraldic assistants sounding the alarm of her arrival contrast nicely with viewers’ knowledge that, in real life, Condé Nast receptionists were all recently laid off.
Even if you don’t give a fig for fashion, it’s rare that you get to see Nero tuning up his fiddle as Rome is about to spontaneously combust.
As Kyle Smith of the Post wrote back then on his blog, that’s the magic of a documentary: “Convince somebody that you’re going to make them a big-screen star, then let them hang themselves.” (A technique that’s certainly worked to devastating results in the music world with such documentaries as the Maysles Brothers’ Gimme Shelter and Taylor Hackford’s Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll.)
Even after their plots are familiar, certain films are fun to return to again and again because they’re time machines that allow us to instantly turn the clock back to bygone eras, both good and bad. But what other time capsule films are there? We’ll explore that right after the page break.
My wife and I really enjoyed The September Issue last year…
How about The French Connection with Gene Hackman and Roy Sheider set in early 70′s New York.
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The naked City (late 40′s) perhaps older than you were considering, but a fantastic image of NYC before TV.
Three Days of the Condor or Parallax View, when Watergate and the Pentagon Papers made Americans think that maybe everything really was a conspiracy.
As far as Last Days of Disco, should one consider a movie made over a decade after the era it portrays to be a time capsule? Metropolitan would be a better choice if you’re going with Stillman. The changing of the Northeast elite from old money to the new meritocracy.
Although, the disco fan who said that the Philly sound didn’t qualify as disco because “for one thing, it was good” is priceless.
“Breezy” with William Holden; directed by Clint Eastwood. Movie is so so, but is a truly unique time capsule to 1972 upper middle class California. Never seen another movie that captures that culture and time period.
Repo Man and The Breakfast Club to me both capture late cold-war, mid-80s teen angst. Of course this dates me.
Whenever I see Brewster McCloud, I always say to myself that the ending must have made more sense in the 1970s.
Whenever I see any part of Casino Royale (1967), I always say to myself that it could only have been funny in 1967.
Dirty Harry to me was a little ahead of its time for 1971. I think of it as part of a later 70s backlash heading into the Reagan years.
Ha! Just last night, we watched “Bullit,” starring Steve McQueen, on Amazon.com. I remarked, at about the 10-minute mark, that it captured San Francisco just before it was ruined by hippies. The movie depicts 1967 SF and, strangely enough, it’s filled with mostly mature, sober people. No kids! No teens! No adolescents! And it seems that the only people who owned new cars were Lt. Bullit and the bad guys! Even the cops were driving cars that were a few years old!
“Big Wednesday” uniquely captured the early-60s surfer ethic of my youth, with its hedonism and proto-new-age quasi-pantheistic spiritualism. It also captured my memories of the Selective Service dance we all had to perform, as well as the comic opera of the LA armed forces induction center.
The original version of The Taking of Pelham 123 is very 70′s NYC.
Slapshot. Nothing says the ’70′s like Flyers-like goon hockey and polyester leisure suits.
“On Any Sunday” 1971. Motorcycles, motor oil and gasoline. Steve McQueen again.
You left out “Startup.com” (2001), about a bunch of guys racing to set up a website where users can pay a traffic ticket or apply for a fishing license on-line. About half an hour into the movie, I realized that these guys weren’t comedy actors, they were actual dot-com founders who had invited filmmakers to document their glorious rise to riches.
You’re right –and I saw Startup.com when it played in Palo Alto back then. It really does sum up the excesses of the wild west days of the early dot.com era perfectly.
“Tony Rome” captures the atmosphere of ’60s Miami. It still feels like the seasonal resort town it was a few years before, but the modern metropolis it will be is already showing.
What about “American Graffiti”? I graduated from high school in 1962 – the summer in which it was set – and the time was presented totally truthfully. To see it only eleven years later was nostalgic but also painful. How much, sadly, we had lost in such a short period of time.
I have a long-standing affection for ‘The President’s Analyst’, a remarkably self-aware encapsulation of everything that we remember as defining the 60′s.
“Juggernaut” perfectly captures the malaise mentality of the mid-70s, and it’s also a ripping good yarn.
Helter Skelter, and the Deliberate Stranger (Ted Bundy). Beyond the funny clothes, note the pay telephones, no CSI glamour, and NO COMPUTERS. Amazing.