september-2011
september-2011
september-2011
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etL<br />
O S T<br />
IF THERE’S ONE THING Woody Allen does well,<br />
it’s create a spectacle. Through his anxious, introspective<br />
characters (usually proxies for himself)<br />
and his personal life, he’s had ample opportunity<br />
for that sort of thing. You could argue that it’s<br />
kept the notoriously neurotic fi lmmaker in<br />
business for years. But there may not be any<br />
UNITED.COM • 5<br />
WHEN A LATE-NIGHT WALK<br />
IN MIDNIGHT IN PARIS LANDS<br />
A MODERN-DAY WRITER IN<br />
THE JAZZ AGE, HE LEARNS<br />
THAT KEEPING TRACK OF THE<br />
LOST GENERATION CAN BE A<br />
BIT OF A CHALLENGE.<br />
BY JOHN SELLERS<br />
intellectual spectacle greater than a meeting of a whole mess of artistic and literary<br />
heroes in one place, at one time. That’s especially true when those heroes were known<br />
for drinking absinthe until they couldn’t see straight, in Paris, close to 90 years ago.<br />
In Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson plays Gil, a successful Hollywood<br />
screenwriter and aspiring novelist who, while visiting France’s capital city with his<br />
fi ancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), is repeatedly transported by unexplained magic into<br />
Paris in the roaring ’20s. There, Gil gets down with Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso,<br />
Salvador Dalí and other luminaries, who have the combined eff ect of making his own<br />
existence seem intolerably dull.<br />
That so many expat American and European artists became acquainted in 1920s Paris<br />
was due in large part to the social machinations of writer Gertrude Stein (Kathy Baker) of<br />
“rose is a rose is a rose” fame. Essentially the Kevin Bacon of her day, she invited nearly every<br />
notable painter, poet, photographer and writer living in Paris to one of the infamous “salon”<br />
parties at her lavish Le Bank apartment. But without having been to one, you might<br />
fi nd it hard to tell everyone apart. That’s why we made this handy chart, which explains<br />
how all the artists knew each other (we even stuck Woody Allen in there for good measure).<br />
Just think of it as a much-coveted social introduction from Stein. START PLAYING Ú