There will be plenty to say once Shopgirl comes out in the fall—I’ll even try to swing a press pass so I can report back to you sooner—but for now it seems best to collect the available data into one post and say: Ecce Homo! Ecce Danes! I’m sure that’s not proper Latin. Corrections from Bostonians and smartypants relatives are welcome. Anyway, here is the official site, where you can watch the trailer; here it is on IMDb, which, while not my favorite movie resource, is my daily helpmeet. This is the poster.

Furthermore, Steve Martin has, of course, been talking about both the movie and the book. Meghan Daum interviewed him for the May Believer; the whole text is on AlterNet, which has a stern no-reproduction policy and which I sense (probably erroneously) I shouldn’t piss off, but there are tons of questions about Shopgirl in both its forms, not to mention Martin’s non-obvious inspiration for his Shouts & Murmurs pieces and a bit about his Osama riff in the March 5th New Yorker. (Randomly: someone’s nutty compatability chart for Osama and Martin.)

And from a little About.com interview with Martin in 2003:

For “Shopgirl”, how did you get into the mind of a young girl?
You know, it’s a tough question to answer because the answer is really just experience. Talking to people. I’m this age, I’ve lived a lot.

But you got into her mind.
Well, that’s from listening and asking. It’s not conscious, the listening and asking. It’s when you go to write something like that that you realize, “I remember this, I know this.” You’re surprised at what you know. Let’s put it that way.

You once said the writer was taking over the actor.
Well, I’m having a lot of fun re-writing this “Pink Panther” script and working on it, let’s say. So I guess that’s writing. But it’s also going to result in a movie. I don’t know, my career’s all over the place now because I had this terrible thing happen to me. I had a hit with “Bringing Down the House.” Everything was so fine. I had time on my hands, and occasionally I’d do a movie. Then suddenly I have a hit and a lot of demands and offers, and suddenly your head is kind of reeling about what to do.

Is there another play in the works?
No, there’s not another play. There’s nothing sophisticated in the pipeline at this point right now.

Why did you write “Shopgirl” as a novel first? [!]
Well, I never thought it was going to be a screenplay, that’s why. I had a story to tell as a novel and I told it. I never thought it could be a screenplay. Then I started thinking about it even two years afterwards, the scenes started coming into my head. I thought the images were lovely. Then your mind starts working at night a little bit and then one day, you pick up your computer and you start typing.

What are the major differences between the film and the novel?
Well, in the book there is very little dialogue and in a movie there is only dialogue. You can’t go inside a character’s head like you can in a book. So, I discovered one thing. The character Ray Porter in the book is much more sympathetic than in the movie. Because in the book you can go inside his head and see what he’s thinking, and why he does certain things and how he justifies certain things. How he comes to conclude certain things. In the movie, he just does them and they look a little harsh sometimes. I think I could be wrong. When the movie’s over, it’s a whole different animal.

Did you pick out Claire Danes for that part?
Yes, she’s been fabulous. I can’t believe her emotional intelligence at her age, 24. We’re two weeks from finishing the movie, so it won’t be ready to be seen for six months.

Do you still have time for your music?
Playing the banjo? Yes. I play almost every day, or try to. Sometimes I get together with friends. It’s hard. I play with Billy Connelly. There are a few of us. We’ve played before. Kevin Nealon plays the banjo.

Is this how you thought your career would pan out? Are you blown away by it?
Yes, I am. When I first did my standup act…And you think you’re over. 2003 and I’m still here.

Two years later, I’m ready for Shopgirl, and while the trailer makes me a wee bit nervous (Jason Schwartzman, styled as he appears to be here, is a laughable rival for Martin at any age—I know he’s supposed to be a lost soul, but this is going too far), I liked the book a lot. I would post my Newsday review of it, but I can’t find it in the pile o’ clips. Anyway, I liked it, and I’m always willing to give adaptations a try on their own terms; as the columnists at The Nation like to say shortly before press time, conclusion TK. In the Believer interview Martin says, “Because you don’t know if it’s the corniest thing in the world until you put it out there in the world.” That’s pretty much my motto.

Categories: Movies, Books, NYer, Martin

Overheard in New York continues, day after day, to be brilliant. It’s the best wikipedia I can think of to describe exactly what living as a New Yorker constantly jammed into close quarters with other New Yorkers is like, via the inane and insane and witty and alarming conversations happening on every subway and every corner as we speak. It should be required reading for anyone trying to write fiction or screenplays about New York, in particular. Or trying to govern it. It would be seriously foolish not to read it if you have any interest in how this city functions and the language it functions in. A few recent examples of the city’s contributions to Michael Malice’s sincerely malicious, yet just as sincerely humble and grateful, project (MM’s heds omitted; you can go snicker or grimace at them on the site itself):

Man: Oh, man! Where have you been all my life?…Can I borrow your lighter?
Woman: Oh, thank goodness. I was like, “I’m flattered, but gay.”

—57th & 5th

Girl #1: Oh my god there’s too many people in this elevator! There’s only supposed to be 10 people!
Girl #2: It’s OK, I’m skinny. In my own reality I’m actually only half a person.

—Hotel Gansevoort, 9th Avenue

Black chick: Yeah, I broke my sister’s knee with a baseball bat.
White chick: Wow, me and my sister had some bad fights but yours top all our fights. You must really hate each other.
Black chick: No, I did it out of love.
White chick: What do you mean?
Black chick: My sister’s in the Army Reserve. They called her unit up to go to Iraq. I hit her on purpose so she wouldn’t have to go. I had to hit her twice to make sure her knee was broken.

—Tillary Street, Downtown Brooklyn

There is a Buddha statue on the counter.

Teen girl #1: Wow, she has weird nipples.
Teen girl #2: I think it’s a guy.
Teen boy: That’s Gandhi. Duh.

—99 cent store, Hylan Boulevard

Dad on cell: So did they give me a credit?…What? It just says “from the New York Times” and not “from Jesse McKinley of the New York Times“?

—18th Street between 5th & 6th

Guy: You know how, like, with alcohol they require ID for proof of age? They should really do that with bikinis also.

—Great Lawn, Central Park

Guy: What book is that?
Girl: The new Harry Potter; it’s the 6th of his 7 years at school.
Guy: 7? Shit. If that author was smart, she would have made high school 10 years.
Girl: Huh?
Guy: Yeah. And that bitch was homeless when she wrote those books.

—F train

August weeks like these make Melville mindsets inevitable. Recall:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

No need to knock off hats, or kneecaps for that matter. Take to the spiteful/generous refuge of Overheard instead. Overheard, c’est nous. Someday, we’ll all see ourselves quoted there. In fact, it brings the city together. There’s a lot of profanity, true. We’re good at that.

Update: Esteemed emdashes reader Julia S. reminds me that Overheard co-creators Malice and S. Morgan Friedman were on the Brian Lehrer show not long ago. Did WNYC turn into Howard Stern for an hour? Let’s find out. Here’s Malice: “If you’re a girl who goes to NYU, and you’re on your cell phone—I always walk in step right behind her, because I know it’s going to be gold.”

Bar Gossip [painting, Brent Morrison]