NYMag‘s culture-blog Vulture has an interview with a much more attractive self-promoter than Tod Kincannon, channeling a woman whose genius rose beyond the limits of her circumstances:
If you want to know how Emma Thompson came about writing her new series of authorized Peter Rabbit sequels, based on the Beatrix Potter series, well, it’s simple: The rabbit asked her to do it. “Do you know: I got a little box, and inside it there was a letter … from Peter Rabbit!” she said, emphatically. The two-time Oscar winner, clad in a billowy white dress printed with black leaves, was standing in front of an audience of squirming children and their rapt parents in the kids section of Barnes & Noble Tribeca, about to read from her latest book, The Spectacular Tale of Peter Rabbit. “And do you know what he sent? I have to show you this … ”…
“I don’t write for children,” said Thompson when Vulture spoke with her at the bookstore before the reading, squatting on miniature wooden chairs in a corner of the kids’ section. “I just write for myself, really, I suppose, to make sure that I’m pleased by it. Perhaps you’re writing for the child inside you, or whatever it is. It’s a curious thing, because it’s got to be something that you can relate to. It’s not like I’m writing something for these other people that are different than me. So yes, the language is perhaps crafted in a slightly different way and you’re not including themes that will be too disturbing … although you can also not afford to shy away from the darkness, and Beatrix Potter never did. Children know perfectly well that life’s very difficult, sometimes.”.
Thompson came about her love of children, and her love of children’s books, honestly: Her father was the writer and narrator for the popular British children’s TV show The Magic Roundabout, and she grew up with the sense that children were fundamentally no different than adults — which might be why some of Thompson’s most iconic roles, at least in recent years, have been in films for young people. “I heard [my father] talk to children in the same way as he would talk to some of his adult friends,” she explained. Like many English children, Thompson grew up reading Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows, but was captivated particularly by the intricate woodland world of Beatrix Potter. “I daresay it’s what captivated everybody: It’s that combination of the language and the art,” she said of Potter’s work. “I mean, this woman was a genius and would of course, had she been allowed, been a scientist,” she said. “I think there’s a great deal in those stories that we’re not aware of, particularly because it’s buried, but it’s like Einstein writing a children’s book. You just go, I wonder what that would be like. It’s layered and profound. And it’s sort of informed by a very fine brain.”…
I will also take this opportunity to recommend the movie Miss Potter, if you haven’t already seen it.
***********
Apart from rising above the small-minded and venal, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?
Mnemosyne
I am very irritated that I (a) missed the recent “Live from Lincoln Center” performance of Sweeney Todd starring Emma Thompson as Mrs. Lovett but (b) they appear NOT TO BE RE-RUNNING IT!! Fuck!
BD of MN
I’m sitting on my deck brewing beer. Did this last weekend too, when it was 30 degrees warmer… getting beverages ready for our annual Halloween booya extravaganza… I’ll have 20 gal of beer, 10 gal of hard cider, and 15 gal of various homemade sodas on tap. hope it doesn’t snow…
And yes, for you midwesterners, I said Booya. we have a hand me down 25 gallon cast iron kettle…
prufrock
@Mnemosyne: Two words; bit torrent. Definitely worth it, she was amazing!
Dee Loralei
Anne Laurie, there is a great video of flash mob at St Louis Symphony yesterday of people singing about Mike Brown. ‘Twas truly moving and lovely. Can you could front page that? I forgot who mentioned it in an earlier comment thread.
Hal
A friend had one of those Facebook posts complaining about some in line at the grocery store paying with food stamps. Her big issue is that the woman bought over 200 dollars worth of food and of course had a designer purse and wallet. Lots of chiming in from friends who apparently spend all their time watching other people at the grocery store. I never notice how people pay when I’m in line so I find it hilarious all these outraged folks trying to seem morally superior to someone probably struggling. It’s amazing how easy it is to set people against one another.
Dee Loralei
Also, I agree about Miss Potter, charming movie.
bemused
@Hal:
The busybodies checking out supermarket shopping carts and how the people pushing them are dressed has always floored me too. My mind never goes there, too busy thinking about my next stop on errand runs. At the very least, it’s rude. I bet the snoopers don’t bother to hide they are openly scrutinizing either. People who don’t want anyone treading on them sure love to get up in everybody else’s business.
Suzanne
@Hal: Seriously. Someone could pass out, and I might notice.
gussie
Today in Wretched People: Me.
“I don’t write for children, I just write for myself, really.”
I make a living writing kidlit. That’s the most cliched, vapid lie possible.
jibeaux
@Hal: Yep. Not to mention I would estimate the number of legit designer purses and wallets out in circulation, particularly the ones with flashy logos, at 10% or less.
Baud
@Hal:
Or your friend is just lying about the whole thing.
dmsilev
@Baud: Ockham’s Razor wins again…
Bill E Pilgrim
@BD of MN:
But what is it? Something Swedish ghosts say?
Iowa Old Lady
@gussie: I’ll join you among the wretched and say Thompson’s books may be good, but I suspect the reason they’re published is that she’s Emma Thompson.
Ever notice how when celebrities decides to write fiction, they write a children’s book? They think it’s easier than writing for adults. Ha!
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: If you have to go, whether you want to or not, doesn’t it make more sense to try to enjoy it? Did the bride look nice? Did the happy couple look like they were, in fact, happy?
MomSense
@jibeaux:
I have found designer purses at Goodwill for under five books.
ETA Books should be bucks. FY auto correct
WereBear
@Hal: The only time I notice how people pay on the grocery line is when they don’t start writing the check until the cashier tells them how much.
You’ve been standing there! You can put in the date and signature and Payee while you’re standing there, you jerk!
Like I once went to buy a dozen doughnuts and while I was standing there on line I figured out how many of each kind, and the lineup, and directed the person behind the counter so she filled the box efficiently, and when we were done she looked at me in astonishment and said she’d never done that before.
And that’s pathetic, isn’t it? None of this is rocket science, yet no one seems to do it.
Ruviana
@WereBear: Simillar to grocery bag packing. Sadly, I never took geometry yet I can easily repack my bag so that everything fits and the canned tomatoes are not sitting on top of the bananas. Who teaches baggers how to pack bags?
M31
My favourite story about Beatrix Potter comes from this autobiographical sketch written by the author Diana Wynne Jones (now THERE’S an author!).
(this takes place when she was a little child, sent to the county to escape the Nazi bombing of London)
“We were up near Sawrey, which was a long way for children to walk; but, if the mothers were to go anywhere, they had to walk and the children had to walk with them. No one had a car. Isobel and another four-year-old girl were so tired that, when they found a nice gate, they hooked their feet on it and had a restful swing. An old woman with a sack over her shoulders stormed out of the house and hit both of them for swinging on her gate. This was Beatrix Potter. She hated children, too. I remember the two of them running back to us, bawling with shock. Fate, I always think, seemed determined to thrust a very odd view of authorship on me.”
http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/autobiog.htm
she had some great other adventures there too, including finding a nice stack of paper with drawings on them, which she erased, so she could use the paper. Turns out they were botanical drawings by John Ruskin.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: I’ve seen it both ways. Not sure why I used the ‘k’, and my spellchecker was happy to give it a pass without the angry red squiggle.
Howard Beale IV
@Hal: How do they know that they didn’t pick up that wallet/handbag at the local Goodwill/Thrift Store, for fuck’s sake? Sheesh….
skerry
@Dee Loralei: This is the Wash Post article I posted earlier today with the link to the Requiem for Mike Brown.
Hal
@Baud: I actually thought that. One of her friends said someone bought lobster with an ebt card and I know I’ve seen that claim before.
M31
@WereBear:
There was a study done where people were observed using payphones (remember them?), and how long they took, on average, when there were people obviously waiting to use the phone, or not.
Turns out if people were waiting, the average time of the phone calls went up.
So people are assholes.
Baud
@M31:
I notice the same thing when I’m waiting for a parking space.
WereBear
@M31: Well, some are, certainly. Most of the time, they just don’t think. And no one ever taught them to.
I remember that payphone study! Some people revel in power… which, of course, means they really have none.
lamh36
Baud
@Hal:
I think I recall some GOP congresscritter using that meme in a speech or campaign ad.
jibeaux
@MomSense: That too. There’s a whole cottage industry in scouring the thrift stores of well-heeled neighborhoods for ebayable items. I don’t even do it very much and have found Keen sandals, gorgeous real leather boots, Denby plates, and a Nanette Lepore top.
MaryRC
@Iowa Old Lady: A friend of mine calls this “James Franco syndrome” although it has gone on longer than Mr. Franco has been alive. A celebrity such as an actor or singer decides to express themselves in another art form, usually writing or painting, under the delusion that they are multi-talented and never quite grasps that their new form of self-expression only gets attention because of their celebrity.
As for Emma Thompson’s venture, those who try to follow in the footsteps of writers who have created iconic characters, whether it’s Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen or Margaret Mitchell, never get it right. I suppose a couple decades from now someone will try to ride the coat-tails of J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins or George R. Martin. And they won’t get it right either.
MomSense
@jibeaux:
I’m going with you next time.
Corner Stone
@Hal: Your friend is just a lying asshole.
Collectively, out of all the people here who go to the grocery store each week, etc, when was the last time anyone gave a damn about what the person in front of them was buying or what their “purse” looked like?
In all these fucking stories isn’t it amazing how the “bad guy” abusing the system is always a woman? They always seem to be a woman with a fancy purse, or fancy sunglasses or some jewelry or some other shit, always paying with government assistance.
Hmmm, I wonder.
Corner Stone
@MomSense: Heck, I want to go with her next time, too.
Corner Stone
@MaryRC:
It could just as easily be called “Eddie Murphy Syndrome”, when he thought he had musical talent because he was an amazing live performer.
But I think we sometimes judge these people too harshly. Just because they are world class at getting eyeballs to go see their movies, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give them a little stretch in other mediums as well.
Maybe not Picassos, but maybe interesting all on their own.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
That study has also proven people take extra time when they see someone waiting. Don’t have the numbers, but same kind of outcome.
WereBear
I have Long Island friends who love to go garage sale-ing in the tony neighborhoods; it’s amazing what you can pick up there, and on estate sales.
But the whole story has an apocryphal/Republican ring to it. Perhaps in the future they will all be parables, attributed to Saint Ronald of Kallyforneeah; the welfare queen with her Cadillac, the people buying t-bones with food stamps, the happy folks of Galts Gulch who discovered government was the problem.
Corner Stone
All of these smiling people for Southwest Airlines have the most awesome teeth I have ever seen.
BD of MN
@Bill E Pilgrim: It’s a big stew/soup kind of thing, often made in really large batches for fall fundraisers, etc… churches, fire stations, clubs, etc… Beef bones, chicken, all sorts of veggies , all cooked in a giant pot… We have a 75 year old handwritten recipe from my wife’s grandfather, we do a scaled down version (20 gal) in the littlest of the family kettles. (there’s also a two 75 gal and a 100 gal kettle sitting in my MIL’s shed…)
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: Why go, then?
You’re old enough to say no.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
My girl wants to party all the time.
Party all the time.
Party all the ti-ime.
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
Ok, there was a guy in front of me in line the other day who bought a ton of booze at lunch time (all 14 items!) and he looked a bit embarrassed so I invited the cashier and myself to his party. We all had a good laugh and then carried on. But no, I don’t really pay any attention
jibeaux
@MomSense: Ha! That’s a minority of times, but man, isn’t it just the best feeling? Especially if it’s something you actually really want.
MomSense
@jibeaux:
Yes!! One word for you. Courreges. Ok two. Vintage Courreges.
Shana
@Corner Stone: Also, who’s to say they didn’t buy those things during better times and now have them even though their financial situation changed.
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: Well, I did once get stuck in a checkout line behind a nun buying two full carts worth of groceries (there’s a convent fairly close by; I assume she was buying for the group). I do confess to having been a tad impatient at waiting for that to get rung up.
Don’t remember how she paid for the food.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev: Yeah, as someone else said, when they whip their checkbook out at the very end I want to choke out a motherfucker. It’s irrational how angry that can make a person.
But in the normal course of business I have never bothered to look over someone else’s purchases and then critique their payment system.
burnspbesq
@Hal:
I notice when people pay with checks. Hey, y’all, it’s 2014, why are you wasting my time?
Corner Stone
Tom Brady is aging faster than a sex worker in a third world country.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Shana: Now now, you can’t just go around spouting logical theories and such when good old ‘Real Murkans is getting their stereotyping horseshit on…
Corner Stone
@Shana: They knew what they were doing when they bought those items. I say, let ’em crash.
lamh36
I’m catching up on some TV Shows on myDVR.
Right now watching the series premiere of NCIS: New Orleans. The show unlike the original films on location in NOLA more than not. So I believe the actors live in the city a little bit of the year.
Some like CCH Pounder actually bought a home here. A friend of mine saw her at the grocery store.
The city has high hopes for this one.
Besides, I’ve have the biggest crush on Scott Bakula since Quantum Leap!
schrodinger's cat
My old scientific calculator died, it was a Casio fx-3600 and they don’t make it any more. I has a sad.
schrodinger's cat
@Howard Beale IV: I found a really lovely leather purse
in a Thrift store in MD for less than $10 and I have gotten more compliments for it, than some of the purses I have paid full price for.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Dunno if anybody mentioned this or noted it, but Emma Thompson introduced fellow classmates Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and was responsible for their getting together as the premier comedy duo in the UK. Laurie later starred in the Drama series “House” and Fry did Oscar Wilde as well as numerous other movie credits in the US. Together they were a British version of Martin and Lewis, but funnier. Did the Black Adder series and also the definitive Bertie Wooster/Jeeves series at the BBC (where else?). Hilarious team.
schrodinger's cat
@Shana: That, or it could be a gift. Plus what business is of anybody’s how some one dresses. Do these busybodies want people who use food stamps to dress in ashes and rags
Anne Laurie
@BD of MN: Ah, Brunswick (possibly Braunsweig) stew!
WereBear
Yes.
Tommy
@WereBear: Sad but I think true.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Dee Loralei: Loved the look of that woman from the gated community looked like she stepped in some cow poo with her designer heels. And her prick husband who mutter the words Thugs and got caught only with his shit eating grin. I would bet he is some high priced partner at some fancy law firm.
sm*t cl*de
Pshaw! Potter’s paper on lichens was presented to the Linnean Society. She was a scientist.
Suffern ACE
@Corner Stone: if the busy body can’t name the designer of the “designer” handbag, they don’t know enough about fashion to know how much it costs. Nice looking cheap stuff is not difficult to find.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Hal: The lobster thing happened. Of course, the guy who did it was using his girlfriend’s card, and he was arrested after he tried to sell the lobsters for 50% off…
Snopes:
That was from 2011. The fact that one still hears about it 3+ years later is a good indication of how rare it is.
Cheers,
Scott.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: The HP-12C my dad passed down to me when I was in high school is still going strong, and as a bonus I can use it as a blunt instrument to defend myself in dark alleys…
JDM
@Iowa Old Lady:
Actually, I’ve often wondered at the fact that a great many people who are artistic in one area are also terrific in others. Certainly not always, but often. Then they so often look great, and they’re rich, and it’s a good thing I’ve got a sense of humor about life.
And Emma Thompson is a terrific writer, and has experience doing terrific writing which is interpreting classic writers. Throw in her family background and I’d bet on her.
Also like Miss Potter, but I’ve read that the notion in the movie that Potter was surprised to discover she had enough money to buy property is silly. She was a very canny businesswoman.
sm*t cl*de
I’ll join you among the wretched and say Thompson’s books may be good, but I suspect the reason they’re published is that she’s Emma Thompson.
Thompson has received awards for her scripts & screenplays as well as for her acting. She seems to know how to write.
WereBear
Celebrity will not give you success if you do, in fact, suck. Remember Bruce Willis’ band? Hint: please don’t.
Celebrity will, however, guarantee you a chance… and that’s what is unfair about it.
MaryRC
@Corner Stone: I do agree that many celebrities have produced interesting work in a field other than the one that made them famous. Anthony Quinn, for example — I believe he won an art prize when he was a child and his paintings are quite valuable now.
But although I’m a fan of Emma’s acting, in terms of this Peter Rabbit venture, she’s piggybacking on the work of a genius who created a famous and beloved character. Somewhere some poor unknown writer has written a perfectly decent book about a bunny called Fred, all on their lonesome, and will be lucky to get it published let alone written about in NY magazine.
Iowa Old Lady
@sm*t cl*de: You’re probably right. I haven’t read the books so I shouldn’t judge. But I will say that I hang out with a lot of writers, and knowing how to write and being published are two different things. They overlap, but they’re not identical. Publishers are interested in celebrities because they’re in business to sell books, and a writer’s high profile can increase sales.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Have no idea what the model number is but I replaced a Casio scientific calc that I’ve had for years with the same model that I found at Staples for $10. Solar powered(or any light actually) and I’m used to where the keys are. It’s at work and if I remember I’ll look up the number.
Bill E Pilgrim
I would actually prefer hearing Emma Thompson singing “Party All the Time”.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@sm*t cl*de: I thought Nanny McPhee was great.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Isn’t that sackcloth and ashes?
Bill E Pilgrim
@schrodinger’s cat: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/271168277117?lpid=82
PIGL
@schrodinger’s cat: That and scarlet letters burned into their foreheads….of course that’s what they want.
Yatsuno
@MaryRC: Julie Andrews is still writing several successful children’s books with her daughter. Her motivation: stories for her grandchildren. It’s true she got the leg up from being famous but at least her creation is her own.
MaryRC
@sm*t cl*de: True, but she couldn’t present the paper herself or even attend to hear it being read, being a woman and all. Exactly one hundred years later the Linnean Society apologised to her.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Used @Bill E Pilgrim: ebay link to search for the model.
Casio FX260SLR Solar Scientific Calculator is the one. This is a replacement for your FX3600. I used to have one of those and when it crapped out I bought my first FX260. Very similar, bet you’d like it.
scav
And she’s not exactly just been lolling about stealing other people’s opportunities to publish (I mean the nerve, accepting the offer a publisher made her!).
Emma Thompson: ‘It’s a different patch of life, your 50s’ which gets into other things she’s been involved with recently, including the whole Climate Change / Arctic thing.. I actually prefer her sister’s acting, but Emma’s got far more in her resume than mere “celebrity” status.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: Does it use RPN?@Bill E Pilgrim: Thanks, but it is too pricey.
@Ruckus: Thanks! I will look it up.
schrodinger's cat
@Ruckus: That’s it, of course.
Mnemosyne
@MaryRC:
@Iowa Old Lady:
Uh, Emma Thompson won two awards for her screenplay for Sense & Sensibility — a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. But I guess screenwriting isn’t real writing.
/MFA in Screenwriting
jibeaux
Listening to an audio book narrated by Brendan Fraser. He’s quite good. Sexy voice, and a good ear for accents.
catclub
@scav: Yeah. She and Steven Fry are unreasonably talented in lots of ways.
Life ain’t fair. Hugh Laurie is no slouch either. And that Branagh guy. All in about the same Oxford/Cambridge generation.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: I really enjoyed Hugh Laurie’s spy novel.
Fred
Just watched “Stranger Than Fiction” saturday night. Emma Thompson is so funny in that. A neurotic author, slugging it out with terminal writers’ block. She is brilliant. And the rest of the cast is great too!
Also, “Miss Potter” is a great film. My favorite Renee Zellweger movie. I love the subtle snips of animation. It is perfect.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Branagh is not actually part of the Footlights Group since he didn’t go to Cambridge. He was briefly associated with them while he was married to Thompson, but they’re really her friends, not his.
Stephen Fry is also a major Apple ambassador in Great Britain — in her published diary about writing Sense & Sensibility, Thompson has a story about Fry rescuing the film’s script after her Mac crashed.
(Thompson is my spouse’s biggest celebrity crush, so I have to keep up on the competition.)
Barney
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: the definitive Bertie Wooster/Jeeves series at the BBC (where else?)
Well, at ITV, actually: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098833/ – specifically the Granada franchise, since that was back when there were regional franchises. ITV often makes quality TV series, and then when they’re shown abroad, people assume they’re from the BBC.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: Beg pardon, Mnemosyne. I didn’t mean what I said as an insult to screenwriters.
gvg
Hmm sometimes people don’t know all the rules too. We were foster parents and got wic automaticly with no questions on income whenever we had one under 2. My sister always worried about the busybodies and didn’t drive her new prius to shop. We spent far more on those kids than we were reimbursed (and well spent too). We never encountered anyone who said to our face that we were making money but it’s a meme out there-an offensively wrong one too. States vary but in Florida do not believe the training that your costs are covered. We all spend more though many have to be a lot more careful than we were. We enjoyed the kids and were able to be pretty indulgent but most have to be very careful. The only ones who can sort of make it an income are the ones who take multiple medical fosters. That is hard work and they can’t normally have any other jobs so they do get a higher pay. The normal reimbursements rates are a joke. If you like kids though it is very rewarding.
I really hate the welfare put down meme’s and all the variations.
We had a fool state legislator who wanted to require foster parents to buy all foster clothes from consignment shops/secondhand clothing shops….obviously didn’t know anything about those shops or fostering or real costs of clothing or much of anything. Nothing happened. I assume his fellow legislators foolish as they normally are knew how stupid an idea it was. Frankly it was poor shaming. It’s a big principle to try not to make the fosters stand out-normalcy.
Mnemosyne
@Iowa Old Lady:
I get it a lot, and it makes me hopping mad every time. ;-) But I think Thompson’s writing career is better known (and probably better respected) in the UK than it is here, which is why she was invited to write new Peter Rabbit stories by the UK publisher.