Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy audiobook

 

Audiobook's Club presents "Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy" (2024) by Elizabeth Beller: In this video, we delve into the mesmerizing life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the iconic figure who captivated the world with her elegance and grace. "Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy" explores her journey from a private upbringing to becoming a style icon and beloved wife of John F. Kennedy Jr. Through personal anecdotes and insightful commentary, we uncover the untold stories of Carolyn's life, her enduring legacy and the profound impact she left on fashion and society. Join us as we celebrate the timeless allure of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

"Brats" (2024) by Andrew McCarthy, exploring the Brat Pack, Molly Ringwald's offbeat candor

Brian Tallerico: I have seen so many hagiographic clip reels masquerading as documentaries that I kind of just presumed that Hulu’s “Brats” would be a similar love letter to the young stars of the ‘80s, the actors and actresses who shaped pop culture in the middle of the decade in a way that’s still being felt today. I’m happy to report it’s not that. It’s an ambitious, introspective look at how pop culture and acting careers can be shaped by reputation and even just a nickname: "The Brat Pack". The well-spoken interviewees make an intriguing case that the Brat Pack were the main driving force in an entire cultural shift to stories of young people, which gives “Brats” unexpected poignancy in that these actors and actresses who made such an impact were reduced to an undeniably insulting label. Even if it derailed the dreams he once held, McCarthy appears to find some peace with his membership in this exclusive club—which never really existed, since they never hung out or even knew each other—by grasping that it made him and his “branded” brethren the very thing all movie actors aspire to be: immortal. “Brats” is a reclamation and a reshaping of that label. And it’s overdue. Source: rogerebert.com

Molly Ringwald: "The character of Claire in The Breakfast Club was the most different from me, because I never considered myself a popular kid, and I didn’t come from a wealthy family or anything, so at the time that was a real stretch for me. Also, I have never actually given my panties to a geek." Source: people.com

Pauline Kael review on Pretty in Pink (1986): Molly Ringwald, who possesses a charismatic normality, is enshrined as the teenage ideal in this romantic movie of teenagers, although its script slides at moments with the consistency of watery Jell-O. The spoiled-rotten richies are mean to Ringwald's Andie, a poor-girl high-school senior who lives in a dinky, rattletrap house on the wrong side of the tracks. But she's the opposite of trashy: blessed with quiet good taste, she's proudly conventional. And so she ends up wining both a college scholarship and the rich boy of her dreams. John Hughes, who wrote the script and supervised the work of the first-time director, Howard Deutch, seems to project the Boomers' approach to a teenage romance. In its sociological details, it might have been made by little guys from Mars. With the winsome comedienne Annie Potts as Andie's closest friend, Andrew McCarthy as her rather passive young prince, Jon Cryer as the smartmouth nerd who follows her around, Harry Dean Stanton as her  stricken daddy, and James Spader as a snobby hunk. 

In Sixteen Candles (1984), Kael reviews: Samantha (Molly Ringwald), a high-school sophomore, is having the worst day of her life. It's her 16th birthday, and, in the midst of preparations for her older sister's wedding, the whole family has forgotten about it. And in the evening, when she goes to a school dance and longs to be noticed by the handsome senior (Michael Schoeffling) who's the man of her dreams, she's subjected to the unrequited attentions of a scrawny freshman (Anthony Michael Hall), who's known as Geek--a pesty, leering smartmouth with braces on his teeth. Less raucous than the usual 80s pictures about teenagers, this new comedy by writer-director John Hughes is closer in tone to the gentle English comedies of the 40s and 50s. Hughes devised too much of a farcical superstructure, and a lot of the characters function at a sit-com level, but he brings off some fresh scenes, and he has a feeling for teenagers' wacko slang. The geek confesses that he has never "bagged a babe." And Molly Ringwald has a lovely, offbeat candor, a truly weird creation. 

Anthony Michael Hall as nerdy Brian Johnson in The Breakfast Club: "Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain... and an athlete... and a basket case... a princess... and a criminal... Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club." Pauline Kael's review of The Breakfast Club (1985): "Set mostly in the library of a suburban Chicago high school, this encounter-session movie by the writer-director John Hughes is about five students, a cross-section of the student body, who in the course of serving a 7-4 Saturday detention peel off their layers of self-protection, confess their problems with their parents, and are stripped down to their "true selves." The five are: a champion wrestler (Emilio Estevez), a popular redhead "princess" (Molly Ringwald), a nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), a glowering rebel-delinquent (Judd Nelson), and a shy skittish weirdo (Ally Sheedy). 

With the exception of Ringwald and Sheedy, who have a marvellous comic sprite and transcend their roles until they are jerked back into the script mechanics, the movie is about a bunch of stereotypes who complain that other people see them as stereotypes. Hughes has talent, and when the kids are just killing time the dialogue has an easy, buggy rhythm, but this is a wet enterprise that appeals to young audiences by blaming adults for the kids' misery. Judd Nelson, who is supposed to represent what authorities want to crush, has the worst-conceived role, though Paul Gleason's part as the callous dean is a close runner-up. Each kid in turn tells the group of the horrors of home: the wrestler's father pushes him to compete, the princess is given things but not affection, the brainy grind is pressured to be a straight-A student, the (secretly sensitive) rebel is beaten and burned by his brute of a father, the shy girl—the basket case—has parents who ignore her. It's she who puts her finger on the source of all their troubles. "It's unavoidable," she says. "When you grow up, your heart dies." The dean's heart is dead, all right—he hates the students. He's a bureaucrat who's in the school system strictly for the money. He tells the rebel that he's not going to let anyone endanger his thirty-one thousand a year.

There are stray bits of oddball parody when you can't tell exactly what is being parodied. But the scenes involving the snotty, callous dean ring false right from the start, and though Paul Gleason seems miscast, maybe anybody playing this villain would seem miscast. Judd Nelson's role as the catalyst-rebel—the working-class kid who's good with his hands (he loves shopwork), and is also a hipster, and fearless—is a dud, too. And Nelson doesn't seem to have a speck of spontaneity. After his early scenes, he becomes too self-pitying, and he's given to tilting up his head and pointing his nostrils at the camera. The four other leading performers fare a lot better than Nelson. 

As the straight-arrow jock, Estevez is a little heavy on sincerity—but he does a creditably good job, especially in his long monologue about his father's always telling him to ''win, win." Molly Ringwald's role isn't as festive as her birthday-girl part in Sixteen Candles, but she slips into the well-heeled Miss Popularity languor without any unnecessary fuss. And Anthony Michael Hall delivers a thoughtful, nuanced performance. He excels in math and is active in the Physics Club, but is a frightened, virtuous dork away from his books. And then John Hughes makes his soggiest mistake: the princess takes Allison in hand, scrubs all the black eye makeup off her, gets her out of her witches' wrappings, and brushes her hair back and puts a ribbon in it, and she comes forth looking broad-faced and dull. But she's supposed to be beautiful, and she captures the jock's heart. The Breakfast Club is The Exterminating Angel as a sitcom." For a more extended discussion, read Pauline Kael's book State of the Art (1989) —The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael: A Library of America Special Publication (2016) by Sanford Schwartz 

Lou Reed, Jeff Tweedy & Wilco

What defines Lou Reed’s best work—besides fearlessness, beauty, intelligence, and switchblade New York City wit—is what places it at the highest level of art making: its empathy. Reed wrote his way into other voices, not all of them pretty, some belonging to “the other half/the irredeemable half”. These kindred humans, regardless of gender, spoke as if with Reed’s own voice, a compassionate ventriloquism that always seemed geared toward understanding both the subject and himself. And when you sensed Reed was indeed writing about himself—in a song like, say, “Waves of Fear,” as visceral a depiction of end-stage addiction and the panic-attack hellscape of withdrawal as any musician is ever likely to record—he seemed to be doing it to commiserate as much as to exorcise. New York, his most consistent and satisfying album attacked the greed and hypocrisy of America’s poisoned political and economic systems as they played out among the haves and have-nots on his hometown streets. And toward the end, in a storybook denouement, he achieved a kind of redemption, and grace, in large part through love.

“It was a devastating thing for me,” Reed said of Kennedy's assassination. “I thought Kennedy could change the world.” Indeed, a generation looked to Kennedy—the youngest president in history, elected at forty-three—and Jackie Onassis as the ultimate inspiration. Even that nascent counterculture skeptic Bob Dylan was impressed. “If I had been a voting man,” he affirmed in one of his memoirs decades later, “I would have voted for Kennedy.” John Cale believed that Reed’s “fears about sanity” led him toward “provocative behavior, actively and purposefully trying his darnedest to set people off. That made him feel he was in control, rather than living in a state of uncertainty or paranoia. This put him in the position of perpetually seeking a kind of advantage for himself by bringing out the worst in people.” Lou Reed often combined Desoxyn with heroin. Desoxyn was straight methamphetamine, stronger and longer-lasting. Either way, speed was the ideal New York City drug. Distributed widely via legit prescriptions from psychiatrists and general medical practitioners, as well through gray-market diet clinics and assorted black-market channels, it’s estimated that between 8 and 10 billion amphetamine tablets were ingested annually in the United States between 1963 and 1969. 

Lou Reed remarked about “Waves of Fear”: “It’s about anxiety and terror about which nothing can be done. Terror so strong that the person can’t even turn a light on, can’t speak, can’t make it to a phone. Afraid to turn a light on for what they’ll see—for what he is.” “What motivation,” Bruno Blum asked, with astonishment, “could you possibly have to approach that subject?” Reed responded flatly and plainly, as if there was just one conceivable answer: “Empathy,” he said to the French author and journalist Bruno Blum. Reed was performatively frank about his tastes. He called the Beatles “garbage” and claimed he never liked them, while the Doors were “painfully stupid and pretentious.” He expressed dislike for Stephen Sondheim (“Broadway music I despise”) but admiration for Randy Newman. Reed was largely dismissive on the topic of Bowie. —Lou Reed: The King of New York (2023) by Will Hermes

Jeff Tweedy: "It’s hard to believe that someone with a reputation for being as relentlessly thorny and unkind as Lou Reed could write something as empathetic and tender as “Candy Says.” But he did. This is all my way of saying that I don’t quite believe the nasty image most of us have of what Lou Reed was really like. I don’t doubt the stories of his mistreatment of people that deserved better. But what doesn’t make sense is the idea that any amount of bad behavior could conceal a heart big enough to write “What do you think I’d see/If I could walk away from me?” I love this song so much. And I love that Lou Reed that belongs to only me, partly fictional as Lou might be for me. That Lou Reed made of a powerful magic able to move one’s mind behind someone else’s eyes. Maybe surrendering to an unwanted emotion is the only way we survive without getting trapped in our sadnesses and angers and jealousies... at least I think that’s how it works." 

Not unlike Kurt Cobain, Jeff Tweedy actively demythologized the figure of the rock & roll hero. Instead of painting a self-indulgent portrait of bravado, Tweedy related tales of social awkwardness and panic attacks overcome by hard work, claiming vulnerability as his defining artistic trait. Jettisoning the hackneyed image of the womanizing rock star, Tweedy defied that archetype, recounting a haunting story about a sexual encounter with a female friend named Leslie (25) when he was just 14. After Farrar left Uncle Tupelo after a bitter quarrel over Farrar's girlfriend Monica, Tweedy and his remaining bandmates formed Wilco, whose album Being There gained critical acclaim. Tweedy met his wife Sue Miller in 1991 at the Chicago club Lounge Ax and they were married on August 9, 1995. In 2001 Tweedy would fire Jay Bennett from the band. Tweedy suggests that he and Bennett were enabling each other's addictions: "I fired Bennett from Wilco because I knew if I didn't, I would probably die." Tweedy's music has never shied away from darkness, but he's also never been afraid to celebrate joy. His personality, like his music, has been alternately sorrowful and triumphant. Source: npr.org

 

Jeff Tweedy: My girlfriend had left Belleville to attend SIU–Carbondale college. She met a guy there during her first semester away while she and I were still technically dating. I was devastated. I’d experienced rejection before, but not that world-shattering feeling of betrayal. That feeling marked the beginning of the first identifiable pattern of depression in my life. When you’re prone to depression, this is the kind of catalyst that can bring it on and turn something upsetting into something debilitating and seemingly insurmountable. I drove down to Carbondale to see her, and I found her walking hand in hand with a guy toward her dorm room. And then I knocked the door. They were already in bed. God, it was a full-on catastrophe. Almost comically hurtful. And as inconsequential as it would be in the grand scheme of things, at that moment I couldn’t see it as anything less than the end of my life. I wrote “Gun” a little while after that: “It hurt much worse when you gave up/which way I oughta run/Crawling back to you now/I sold my guitar to the girl next door/She asked me if I knew how/I told her, I don’t think so anymore.” That was probably the most honest and direct I’d ever been in a song up to that point. Telling the world that I’d sold my guitar wasn’t saying I’ll kill myself, but it was close. To me, it was almost the equivalent of killing myself at that point. I was in so much pain I was willing to give up the one thing in the world that was sustaining to me, the only thing that mattered. That might seem like a martyrdom fantasy—“If I can’t have what I want, I don’t want anything!” It is grandiose, but I was serious about it. The feeling that “anything is better than this,” even giving up the only thing you love if it would just make it go away, is real. I can still identify with that. When I play Gun, that’s what hooks me in.

While Sam Jones's "I am trying to break your heart" documentary progressed, Jay Bennett started pitting people against one another, whispering rumors and stoking paranoia. If you weren’t in the room, he was talking behind your back or diminishing your contributions. I heard about all the nasty things he’d been saying about me when I wasn’t around—I guess it never occurred to him that the rest of the guys in Wilco would compare notes—and when it was just Jay Bennett and me alone in the studio, he said the rest of Wilco wasn’t pulling their weight. I suggested to create sounds that didn’t involve us, like an organ with some keys taped down, or a tape echo feeding back on itself, an electric fan strumming a guitar. The plan was to come back the next morning, turn all of our self-playing instruments back on, and hit record. But when I got to the Loft, Jay Bennett was already there, walking the camera crew and talking about how he’d put it all together, the whole room was buzzing, and he was fielding questions from Sam Jones about 'his' sonic experiments. I didn’t say anything—I knew that was petty and I didn’t want to get into another fight in front of the cameras—but I was furious. That was an idea that I’d suggested. There were many reasons I didn’t want to make music with Jay Bennett anymore. I fired Jay Bennett from Wilco because I knew if I didn’t, I would probably die. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s really not. I told him I knew what was going on. That’s one of the first things I said to him. “You’ve been getting FedEx packages full of pills.” 

The guy who was running the Loft for us would see him there in the mornings, counting his pills on a desk in the back. I told Bennett we would help him. If he wanted to find somebody to talk to about addiction and maybe get into a program, we would pay for everything. But he was incredulous, saying: “If I had a problem I would admit it.” I had to confront my Vicodin addiction in rehab. My thoughts were: “I’m not some junkie who wants to disappear. I have real migraines. I have real panic attacks. And I’m only being responsible by finding a way to control them so I can keep doing my job.” Some fans thought I should have stayed with Jay as a sign of loyalty for the band. But I think that kind of devotion, to something entirely made up like a “band,” is silly and even dangerous. There are only three people I’ve committed myself to completely for the rest of my life: my wife Susie, and my sons Spencer and Sammy. My actual family. 

Jeff Tweedy and her wife Sue Miller (married August 9, 1995)

Jeff Tweedy: My wife is Susie Miller Tweedy. I’m tempted to say that if you aren’t married to her then your life is crap. But hearing her voice in my head, I’m thinking better of saying such a thing. See, even without consultation, she’s been steering me toward a subtler and kinder way of saying what I want to say. Which all goes to show what a force she’s been in my effort to get better. After 29 years of marriage and over 30 total years of going steady, I still can’t believe my good fortune. Somehow the coolest and funniest woman alive thought enough of me to take my hand. I love her more every day and I wouldn’t be here without her. Happy Anniversary, Sukierae! Source: www.avclub.com