Noted

[Via BuzzFeed]

Sorry that I missed the most-important news story of the weekend -- or maybe ever

According to the Post: Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth claimed yesterday to have gotten its hands on a leaked script for "Sex and the City 2." Here's what they say happens:

* The situation looks bleak for Bradshaw, whose marriage with Mr. Big unravels after they lose everything in a financial scam.

* Seeking work, Mr. Big ends up in London, where he's living in a rundown apartment, but cheats on Carrie — who dumps him before finding out she's pregnant.

* Miranda quits her law practice after getting sued. She and her husband Steve decide to open a restaurant.

* Besides the characters' heavy financial losses, tough times in the real world will also be reflected in the film's wardrobe choices, which an unnamed production insider says will be "less over-the-top but still stylish."

Fun!

No undergarments will be harmed during the filming of SATC2

Yes, that was really bad, that headline. Filming for "Sex and the City 2" gets under way yesterday. According to the Post: "Sarah Jessica Parker, wearing angelic white and a pair of gold Jimmy Choo heels with bright red soles, happily cavorted on the Upper East Side before jumping into a cab."

Image via.

Noted

From Page Six:

IT'S casting time for "Sex and the City" extras. Producers of the sequel starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon are holding a "cattle call" Thursday at the soon-to-open restaurant Le Souk on LaGuardia Place. "They're looking for Middle Eastern people for a scene where the girls go to a club in a Middle Eastern neighborhood, so it's fitting they're holding it at a hookah lounge and restaurant," our spy said.

How YOU can be an extra on SATC, part Duh

The Daily News has the inside poop, er scoop, on nailing that SATC part Duh casting call. And it's sooooo helpful!:

“You have to dress for success,” says well-known casting director Bernard Telsey, whose company is casting the speaking roles in the “Sex and the City” sequel (but not Tuesday’s open-call audition). “If I were going for the socialite part, I’d come dressed to the nines. I’d see what people wore to the Met gala event.”

Short of not eating from now until Tuesday, chain-smoking and sipping Champagne while you wait in line to pass yourself off as a model, Telsey advises: “Dress like anyone you see in Vogue.”

The kiss of death, on the other hand, is obscuring your face. “Wearing an outfit that doesn’t show the shape and size of your face won’t get you the job,” says Telsey. Same goes for hairstyle, even if you’re passing yourself off as a supercool clubber.

“When you walk into the casting call, they immediately see if you’re right or not,” says Celina Carvajal, who was cast by Telsey as “City Girl #4,” aka a young Miranda Hobbs (the Cynthia Nixon character), in the first “Sex” film. “If you’re not right, [there’s] nothing you can do but make yourself as perfect as you can. You won’t get everything. It’s part of this business.”

So this guy walks into the Mars Bar in a green shirt with a pink sweater around his shoulders...

When he walked in, I thought he was lost. I expected him to say, "Excuse me, where's the Bowery Wine Company?"

But he didn't. He ordered a drink.

Did he lose a bet? People don't usually walk into the Mars Bar wearing yellow sneakers, green shirts, and pink sweaters draped over their shoulders.

A few people stared.



Trying to get my head around it, I've told this story to several people this past week. Their first reaction has usually been, "Seriously?" Someone asked me if the guy got his ass kicked. No. We're not in high school, though I often think I'm living in one on weekends. The thing is, we're so used to seeing entitled young professionals in the neighborhood, we hardly give it a second thought. It has been happening for years. Usually it's much more intrusive than someone simply having one drink and leaving. Somewhere last Friday, Bloomberg was likely smiling. It's still the city of his dreams, built in his likeness.



Everything is so watered down that even someone dressed like a dish of sherbet can walk into the Mars Bar. Nothing is sacred. Bloomy and the gold-mining developers have beaten the city into submission. They're vampires and they've drained the remaining drops of lifeblood from what was once the most vibrant, potent city anywhere.

But is it too late?

[Bloomy photo via]

The challenges of making the Sex and the City sequel "recession-friendly"

US Weekly has this press release from Access Hollywood:

Sarah Jessica Parker says it's a challenge making the Sex and the City sequel recession-friendly.

"How do we do that well? And how do we do that in a not lazy way? How do we address these economic times in a franchise that has a lot to do with luxury and labels?" Parker tells Billy Bush for Access Hollywood.

"There is a lot that we have to think about because times are very different. So these are nice challenges, these are good challenges," adds Parker -- who once said her character Carrie Bradshaw would end up "in a hospital" if she couldn't afford her trademark $600 Manolo Blahnik shoes.

And what can we expect in the sequel?

"I think we want this one to be a romp," she says. "The last one, we got to tell a really mature sophisticated story that had real heartbreak in it, and this time, I think we want a romp. We want our audience to have a massive romp."

Hmmm....Romp, eh? I think SJP meant to say...."I think we want something like 'Romper Stomper.' We want our audience to have a massive romp."

Yes!



[And I'm late to all this...Esquared had this important SATC news last night -- check out his 40% off photo....Daily Intel also had the goods...)

We're all likely stuck with a SATC sequel, so we might as well make fun of it (some more)

Over at Runnin' Scared today, Roy Edroso has some fun whipping up plotlines that we'd like to see for the as-yet-to-be-written Sex and the the City sequel...news of which was recently confirmed. (Haven't we suffered enough of late with all the lousy economic news...?) Per Runnin' Scared:

Big's salary is capped at $500,000, and Carrie is replaced at the paper by a 19-year-old anal sex enthusiast with the nom de plume BrownEye, in honor of the Ivy League school she dropped out of. Money becomes tight, and Big finds that after a lifetime of Cohibas he cannot adjust to El Productos. After a series of comic moonlighting misadventures as a cab driver and new media consultant, he works contacts from his secret past as a NYPD detective and gets some shifts as a bouncer with his old pal Jesse L. Martin. Carrie starts a blog, which she makes racier to draw traffic ("How can I say I love you," her words scrolls across the MacBook screen, "when your balls are in my mouth?") but it still doesn't pay much, and they are forced to move to Greenpoint. There is a poignant, slow-motion moment when Carrie realizes Vera Wang isn't suitable for Studio B.

Noted

Page Six has a photo feature today of everyone's favorite, SJP....for reasons unknown she'll be featured in the March Harper's Bazaar....I'll let you read the rest...



... particularly that part about how Carrie Bradshaw would handle this recession....

Noted (and with apologies)

I don't know why I do this. Anyway, this article seems to be floating around out there in the interwebs -- different sites, different dates, but all by the same author. It is titled "New York travel inspired by romantic films."

Travelling the City is like watching or experiencing what we see in the movies or any TV series. If it looks good in the movies, well, I have to say, my instinct one way or the other tells me I want to be there too! New York gives us the thrill of experiencing shopping, dining, be entertained and be romantic.
If you are a fan of ‘Sex and the City’, the first thing that you will remember is watching Carrie Bradshaw (or Sarah Jessica Parker) and her addiction to shoes along with her fashionable dresses. What do you do? SHOP GALORE! One can never go wrong in shopping at Big Apple. Prepare your Manolos or Marc Jacobs to fill your shopping pleasure with sophistication and style at Barneys Madison Avenue.
Not done with shopping? Madison Avenue is where you will find the top end department store filled with American and European designers like Saks Fifth Avenue. Of course who can forget the transformation of Anne Hathaway on the Devil Wears Prada. Make time for celebrity designer shops (Calvin, Giorgio) and fashion house boutiques (Prada, Chanel) in Madison Avenue.
One of the feel good movies with unforgettable wedding proposal to date is Sweet Home Alabama. Why? While others go for a romantic setting at the beach or high end restaurants, Patrick Dempsey picked the perfect spot for a girl (Reese Witherspoon) to choose her own engagement ring at Tiffany’s. While there is a selection of jaw-dropping engagement rings for the bride to be, fine items for men are available and even for babies. Undoubtedly, Tiffany’s remains a girl’s best friend.
After shopping fashionably, and hopefully spending wisely, it is time to perk up your social life. Sex and the City’s famous girlfriends - Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha shows us their ritual revolving with friends and loved ones is by dining out. Despite the countless fine dining restaurants in Soho the City also offers funky and inexpensive ethnic restaurants in East Village.

New York City to become wedding destination

The Manhattan Marriage Bureau is on the second floor of the Municipal Building downtown. As the Times describes today, its hallways are "lined with cracked tile floors, fading yellow walls and dim fluorescent lighting where city employees . . . have been giving true love a brief, secular send-off since 1916."

No more, though. This fall, the Bureau moves to shiny new digs up the street at Centre and Worth. Why the move? Stupid question! As the Times notes:

The relocation will mean more than just swapping one space for another, or reconfiguring furniture into new surroundings. What will happen, in fact, is the death of the marriage bureau as Manhattan has known it for generations: a storied but shabby place, long on protocol but short on charm and comfort.

The move, an idea that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has nursed for almost as long as he has been in office, was inspired in part by concerns about dignity. The bureau’s appearance has not changed much over its 92 years, and despite periodic renovations, Room 257 — which houses the wedding chapel — looks as bureaucratically stiff as all the other Municipal Building offices. The chapel itself has no adornment except a pulpit used by the handful of officiants who perform the ceremonies.

The other reason for the switch is purely strategic. City officials see in the revamped marriage bureau an opportunity to market the city as a wedding destination, offering it as a more tasteful alternative to Las Vegas.

[T]here will be are doors coated in bronze, heating-unit covers fashioned by a Brooklyn artisan to match the building’s Art Deco style, and ornate columns throughout the 5,000-square-foot space

.

I know a few couples who were married at City Hall. They've said there is something romantic about the drab surroundings. If they wanted fancy (say, art deco style and ornate columns), they'd have got hitched in a hotel ballroom somewhere. According to city records, there have been 1.2 million weddings at the Bureau since 1930. Here are a few of them, via YouTube.

"As much a part of the fabric of New York City as the landmarks she helped popularize: Magnolia Bakery, Pastis and her beloved Greenwich Village

Page Six Magazine puts Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell on the cover of its new issue.

And we begin:

Honey blond highlights? Check. Sample-size physique? Check. Closet full of designer duds to wrap around said physique? Check. But Candace Bushnell, the creative genius behind Sex and the City and the NBC TV hit Lipstick Jungle, doesn't just look like a character from one of her best-selling novels. (Take your pick: Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, Trading Up or Four Blondes.) By the way she lives (a feminist, she eventually married a much younger man) and who she writes about (most famously, of course, Carrie Bradshaw), Candace, 49, embodies a modern breed of New York woman that is as ambitious about love as her career. She is also as much a part of the fabric of New York City as the landmarks she helped popularize: Magnolia Bakery, Pastis and her beloved Greenwich Village.

Candace, who grew up in "upper middle class Glastonbury, Conn.," also recalls moving to New York:

After three semesters at Rice University in Houston, she dropped out to "run away to New York City." Her goal was to become a writer, but when she first moved to Manhattan in 1978 at age 19 she lived in a two-bedroom apartment on 11th and Broadway with three other girls. She had to scrape to pay her $150-a-month rent, often eating $1 hot dogs or a can of soup for meals. Dating was a way to score free meals and meet the city's glitterati.

The article doesn't get into what Candace thinks of a post Sex-and-the-City New York ... or the impact the show may have had on New York.

Still, the article notes that: she is relieved to be out of the dating pool. "There's nothing harder than being single. And things are even harder for young women these days," says Candace.When I was growing up in the 1970s, you didn't have to shave your legs, let alone have a Brazilian wax."

No one attended the schmancy Sex and the City DVD release party

Horrors! Writes Sheila at Gawker: There's no satisfying way to explain the party, other than a PR clusterfuck/fuckup. However, maybe people are getting a little tired of the franchise after a six-year TV run, one of the most-hyped movies of the year, and a cultural reach that, on some days, seems to have infected the entire city with luxury brand names and bus tours. What does this say about the sequel? We're guessing nothing good. Sometimes you just have to get the shotgun and take the old mare out behind the barn.

Saturday morning bonus!

Here's a feature on the Sex and the City Tour from April 2004 by Norwegian journalist Henrik Pryser Libell:

Are you there God? It's me, Carrie

Candace Bushnell, whose mid-’90s New York Observer column was the basis for Sex and the City, has signed a deal with the children’s division at HarperCollins to write a young adult novel about Carrie Bradshaw’s high-school years. Hello! (New York Observer via Gawker)

Too many people got Carrie-d (groan, sorry) away on the stoop

According to this week's issue of The Villager (via Jeremiah):

Call it “Stoop and the Groupies.”

With the May film release of “Sex and the City,” flocks of female fans of the show once again are pouring into narrow Perry St. in Greenwich Village. But as waves of women visit the front steps of the imaginary home of Carrie Bradshaw, tempers in the community have begun to flare.

Visitors are lured to the area by the fictional lives of the characters created for the popular TV series. They sit for photos on “Carrie’s stoop” and shop in local boutiques. They wait on line for cupcakes at nearby Magnolia Bakery, then sit outdoors eating them on a nearby bench — just like Carrie and Miranda did.

For the show’s fans, at least, it seems a picture-perfect ritual. Yet, in the sweltering heat of summer, some neighbors are resenting all the ruckus and seeking an end to “Sex and the City” tours on their streets.

Last week, residents won a reprieve, when, on July 15, the largest of the tour operators, On Location Tours, announced it would take Perry St. off its route.

On this solemn occasion, I'd like to look back at this post from June 2:
These are a few of the photos you'll find when you search for "Carrie Bradshaw" on Flickr

"Every year since I've arrived there have been people crying that it was not like it was before"

That's Florent Morellet, owner of the soon-to-close Florent, in a Q-and-A in today's Post.

An excerpt:

Some people blame "Sex and the City" for the gentrification of the area.

I totally disagree. These are societal changes. We love to simplify things as humans and put labels on things. So the 18th century in France was Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and a couple of writers. You put some people in charge of some periods. They say I made the meat market. I could have died from the whooping cough at age 5 - which I almost did - and I don't think it would have made a difference in the [area]. Some people put [the gentrification] on Pastis, some people put it on Jeffrey opening, other people put it on the Gansevoort Hotel. It's all of us. Every year since I've arrived there have been people crying that it was not like it was before.

But has it changed for the better?

Let me tell you, in the early '90s, the neighborhood really was so scary with the crack epidemic. The people who feel nostalgic were not coming then. That was the year we actually lost money. I think people don't remember. We had to leave the restaurant in groups of three because almost all of us got mugged. Memory is a beautiful thing and it's totally influenced by emotions - mine as much as anyone's.

Andrea Peyser does not like the Sex and the City movie (or, apparently, men in pastel shirts)

So New York Post Columnist of the Year Andrea Peyser caught the first screening of Sex and the City yesterday. What did she think?

In a roomful of women who looked as if they hadn't digested in months - and scant few breathing men - I saw the big-screen version of "Sex and the City," an excruciating paean to Manhattan, Manolos and menopause that should have been sponsored by Depends.

When did the story of four aging broads - and these women are about as far from being "The Girls" as Phyllis Diller is from puberty - turn into a horror show?

Time and the tyranny of the camera close-up have not been kind to Sarah Jessica Parker, who at 43 looks positively ghoulish as the still-single Carrie Bradshaw.

Her litany of lifestyle impossibilities continues to mount like her facial blemishes - a rent-controlled apartment, dozens of $525 pairs of stilettos, and a noncommittal, mega-rich boyfriend, Mr. Big. Sadly, the only thing large about Chris Noth these days is his protruding gut.

Ouch.

I spied a gaggle of gals who looked as if they'd eaten recently. I asked, Did you like it?

"Loved it!"

You can't be from New York, can you? "No, Connecticut," she said.

"Better than Indiana Jones!" trilled only the second man I saw. But this guy wore a pastel shirt. Figures.

I predict huge success in the multiplex. New Yorkers know better.

"Sex" sucks.

Hmm.

Well, it's really easy to make fun of a movie like this; it's even easier to make fun of the people who may enjoy this movie. Oh. And not to mention the looks of the actors in the movie. (Chris Noth fat? SJP ghoulish? C'mon.)

I wish Andrea would have written about the real problem with the movie -- how it ruined New York City. It's a subject worth repeating. Maybe she took a different route because the Post covered this a few weeks back. But is saying that Chris Noth has a beer gut do much to bring attention to the rampant commercialization, sterilization and development that the movie helped spawn here?

I invite anyone who may be new to this subject to read the following articles at Jeremiah's Vanishing New York:

How the cupcake crumbled

A plea to SJP

How SATC killed NYC

Related today:
Fashion review: 10 Years Later, Carrie Coordinated (New York Times)