Old Reads #7: It's an It Girl!
You can't say anemoia without ANNE.
And just like that…And Just Like That…is back. My ambivalence about the show notwithstanding, I WILL be watching. I am contractually obligated to consume every available piece of IP related to this franchise. I don’t make the rules!
My dedication isn’t born out of the fashion or the romance, and definitely not the jokes. It’s the glimpses, however rare after season one, of the environment and perspective of a mid-thirties woman in 1995 New York. Going out was essential and talking was entertainment. I could cry just thinking about it.
That, too, is why I’m obsessed with this week’s Old Read. “It’s an It Girl! The Birth of Sex and the City,” eulogizes New York’s pre-internet literary social scene, before Giuliani and HBO would sanitize and glamorize it for mass consumption.
Bushnell was genius to document this period and her experiences in her “Sex and The City” column and The New York Observer was wise enough to treat it as front page news. (Literally. The column ran on A1.)
Thank god for this piece, and Bushnell’s willingness to continue to share her past exploits which preserve the grittier side of being a writer and gal about town in downtown New York. Forget And Just Like That…that is the reboot I want to see.
It’s an It Girl! The Birth of ‘Sex and the City’
By: Steven Kurutz for The New York Times
Published: June 6, 2018
Did You Know?
Bushnell was adjacent to the literary brat pack that was running around New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s—Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz, etc. The social scene was so busy that Ellis kept track of all the parties and events on a whiteboard.
Candace’s column gave anonymized accounts of her and her friends’ exploits. Lara Shriftman, power PR girl and frenemy of Lizzie Grubman, goes on the record to refute that she is the source material for “CiCi.” 🤨 Sure.
Candace pitched and sold the Sex and the City book after midnight at the Bowery Bar—the Clandestino of its time. Her boyfriend, the publisher of Vogue and inspiration for Mr. Big, negotiated a 25% increase on her advance on the spot.
Research indicates that this guy, Ron Galotti, was MUCH more interesting that his small-screen counterpart. So much so that he’s getting the Old Reads treatment next week! Stay tuned. 😈
Hidden in the comments was a hilarious anecdote testifying to the impact of Bushnell’s column:
Good reminder to read the comments.
Words of Note
“With any editor, your job is to fix the stuff that’s broken, and if you have the luxury of time, to make the writer sound like who they are. That’s why I miss the telephone so much because you can talk to a writer and they reveal things about themselves they don’t even realize. With Candace, you just light the fuse and step away. She has a novelist’s heart and a reporter’s brain.”
Peter Stevenson, NYO editor and former boyfriend of Candace Bushnell. Four sentences that put a shot right through me!
Extra Credit
To see how closely season one of SATC hews to the source material, read “Downtown Babes Meet Old Greenwich Gals,” watch the SATC episode it inspired (“The Baby Shower,” S1E10), and consider how much better the series would have been with a cooler Carrie. This is the show we deserved!
For more contemporaneous Bushnell coverage, check out this 2002 party report and profile, written by Ariel Levy for New York, in which I learned that she also dated Bob Guccione Jr. and GORDON PARKS. A legendary roster!
RIP Bowery Bar—I hardly knew ye.
The rumored inspiration for Charlotte was Marina Rust—a socialite and granddaughter of Marshall Field. If only Charlotte’s backstory was as interesting as what Rust shares in this very fun 1999 profile.