I am very excited, pigeons, to share with you one of my special secrets for staying in love with the world: Bill Cunningham.
I have been following Mr. Cunningham’s work at the New York Times with total delight for years. I never knew a thing about him, I just knew he was that man who took photos of ordinary people on the street in amazing clothes and published those photos in the weekend Times. I have occasionally featured his slide shows on this blog, and here is a recent Easter-themed one that I adore.
I learned recently that there was a documentary film about Bill Cunningham called “Bill Cunningham New York,” and so I decided that I could NOT miss seeing it — and preferably IN New York. So that’s what I did. I went down to the Independent Film Center in the Village the other night and sat with New Yorkers in a great little theatre to see this amazing, wonderful and incredibly inspiring film about Bill Cunningham.
I think this is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I will definitely see it again and again. Do watch the trailer, it is so fun!
It was about being true to your calling. It was more poignant than anything I’ve seen in a very long time. I found out that Bill Cunningham doesn’t accept payment for his work. He lives (or did until very recently) in a tiny space in Carnegie Hall with no private bath or kitchen, surrounded by filing cabinets of his work. He delights in $3 meals and when he is working an event, won’t even accept a glass of water from his hosts lest it interfere with his total artistic freedom and objectivity. He has never been in an intimate relationship and goes to church every Sunday. He wears blue smocks that he gets from the drugstore, patches his rain ponchos with black duct tape and bikes everywhere. He is endlessly fascinated by people and obviously in love with his work. Those watching the film with a clinical and critical eye may view one of the movie’s most poignant final scenes and conclude that Bill Cunningham is the sexually repressed victim of his Catholic religious faith, but I hope that we can take a broader view. My own conclusion is that he is a happy man, a deeply faithful man, and a kind of modern-day monk living out a vocation with total purity of motive, being and behavior.
You know, ducklings, I have a few eccentricities myself. You may also has a few. And I find that living in suburban America, one can begin to feel that one is unacceptable and weird if one does not conform to the standard lifestyle and behaviors and appearance. Just as our town centers have evolved into Gap-ified generic replicas of one another, we have individually lost or abdicated uniqueness. Part of it is that we have become lazy and sloppy in our attire. As I said to a reporter the other day, many of us get dressed in the morning in garments that don’t even require us to zip a zipper or button a button. It’s all pull-on, pull-over wear now. Bill Cunningham’s work celebrates the people who use clothes to create a work of art, and who are not content to blend in to the schlumpy crowd. Viva New York style! And viva Bill Cunningham!
A blog called Offthefrontporch highlights two wonderful On the Street episodes here. Enjoy and don’t miss the little segment on strappy gladiator sandals!!
“He has never been in an intimate relationship and goes to church every Sunday. … Those watching the film with a clinical and critical eye may view one of the movie’s most poignant final scenes and conclude that Bill Cunningham is the sexually repressed victim of his Catholic religious faith, but I hope that we can take a broader view.”
It’s also possible that he may simply be asexual. I’ve never seen the film, but about 1% of the population are asexual, which means they have little or no sex drive. (Doesn’t mean they can’t fall in love, just that they don’t care about sex.)
[That’s what I assumed, too, but he says otherwise in the film. However, sometimes I think that being asexual is one of the things that people feel they absolutely cannot confess to in public because no one will respect their truth! – PB]
The NYT doesn’t pay him? Hard to believe.
Thanks for the link love! I enjoy your tagline for your blog too.
I had the same feeling about said poignant moment in the film – what was so deeply moving was that something that means so much / is closest to heart is also the thing least able to be expressed. It gave such depth to his character.
(I forgot to say who I am – one of the bloggers at http://offthefrontporch.wordpress.com/ – hence my thanks. :))