Daily Blague

This evening's home movie (last evening's, actually) was Shopgirl. Although it's late and I'm lazy, the reason I don't pull down the books to get at the novel - it's triple shelved, way at the back - is because I'm still under the movie's spell, and the movie and scholarship even of this slightest kind are grossly incompatible. But! They changed the ending, no? As I recall, Mirabelle ended up with Ray Porter, not with Jeremy Whatsis. I remember feeling sorry for the kid, because the older man's advantages were so out of proportion. Shopgirl the book is one of the very first that I wrote up for Portico (way back in 2000!), but, typically - and I'm proud of this - it's useless in the Cliff Notes department. Tomorrow I'll excavate. At least I know it's there.

It's a beautiful movie, with a truly magical score by Barrington Pheloung. Beyond that, it had an extraordinary charge for me. I had expected to identify with Steve Martin's character - even though I'd stayed away from the film precisely because I think it's kind of creepy to write a bestseller and then star in the movie adaptation. But I didn't identify with Steve Martin at all (much as I'd love to be mindlessly rich). Instead, I wanted to throw him out of the house, because when Claire Danes wasn't busy looking like my first wife (especially when she wore eyeglasses in her pickup truck and tried to see where she was going), she was doing a fine job of acting pretty much exactly like my daughter. This conjunction of influences (mother/daughter) has never occurred before, and I'm more than a little shaken. But I like Claire Danes a lot more than I used to do.

For a very moving account of Shopgirl, don't miss MS Smith's essay at CultureSpace.