september-2011

etL
O S T
IF THERE’S ONE THING Woody Allen does well,
it’s create a spectacle. Through his anxious, introspective
characters (usually proxies for himself)
and his personal life, he’s had ample opportunity
for that sort of thing. You could argue that it’s
kept the notoriously neurotic fi lmmaker in
business for years. But there may not be any
UNITED.COM • 5
WHEN A LATE-NIGHT WALK
IN MIDNIGHT IN PARIS LANDS
A MODERN-DAY WRITER IN
THE JAZZ AGE, HE LEARNS
THAT KEEPING TRACK OF THE
LOST GENERATION CAN BE A
BIT OF A CHALLENGE.
BY JOHN SELLERS
intellectual spectacle greater than a meeting of a whole mess of artistic and literary
heroes in one place, at one time. That’s especially true when those heroes were known
for drinking absinthe until they couldn’t see straight, in Paris, close to 90 years ago.
In Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson plays Gil, a successful Hollywood
screenwriter and aspiring novelist who, while visiting France’s capital city with his
fi ancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), is repeatedly transported by unexplained magic into
Paris in the roaring ’20s. There, Gil gets down with Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso,
Salvador Dalí and other luminaries, who have the combined eff ect of making his own
existence seem intolerably dull.
That so many expat American and European artists became acquainted in 1920s Paris
was due in large part to the social machinations of writer Gertrude Stein (Kathy Baker) of
“rose is a rose is a rose” fame. Essentially the Kevin Bacon of her day, she invited nearly every
notable painter, poet, photographer and writer living in Paris to one of the infamous “salon”
parties at her lavish Le Bank apartment. But without having been to one, you might
fi nd it hard to tell everyone apart. That’s why we made this handy chart, which explains
how all the artists knew each other (we even stuck Woody Allen in there for good measure).
Just think of it as a much-coveted social introduction from Stein. START PLAYING Ú