More People:
Everyone For Cricket?
Everyone For Cricket?
Too Many Women
Too Many Women
Priscilla, Queen of the Eco Store
Priscilla, Queen of the Eco Store
An Organic Process
An Organic Process
Lutwyche - Riding High
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One Giant Leap
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One Man and His Rainforest
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Disco Can Save the World
Disco Can Save the World

On the Casting Couch

Movie stars and moguls
And grilled sardines,
Pistou potage –
And a good massage

And paparazzi and Mr Perd
And Pigozzi and la dorade,
Swim fast, swim slow,
The suntan glows

Far from gloomy grey
London and Paris in May.
Asparagus in vinaigrette
And fresh baguette.

How this old dog smiles
At Cannes’ follies –
Bare-breasted, and mad,
And ever so bad.

La Côte d’Azur.
Still a pleasure,
Still a whore –
But never a bloody bore.

Poor some haute down me,
Plaster me in rouille!
Let the lights dim
And the Festival begin.

We go on, us gypsies,
Treading the heads of pygmies!

– Unknown Sherpa




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UHURA III


UHURAFQR’s very own Uhura, Elizabeth Saltzman, looks to Hollywood to explain – and perhaps fortell – the weird ways of the world

So here we are. In the eye of the hurricane. We had little, if no, time to watch it approach, but gathering our wits and sensibilities about us, felt we had some sort of sense as to how we might deal with it. Wrongo, it seems.

Every time we feel we have a measure of the depth of the situation, we find another rug pulled from under our feet, another plank of recovery yanked away. We’re like high-stepping chorus dancers desperately trying to find a solid piece of turf on which to lay our spangly feet.

The most extraordinary example of “well, it couldn’t get any worse than it is” is without doubt the yet-to-be-unravelled horror show of New York financier Bernie Madoff. His giant Ponzi scheme and the alleged subsequent misappropriation of $50bn have left not only New York stunned but the community as a whole. It has yet to be proven, but it appears that Madoff stole from families and, by proxy, philanthropic trusts, college and charity funds and it came as a body blow to the community which for so long had trusted him. And at a time when a sense of family seems so important, his apparent abuse of the community, his exploitation of people’s fallibility and desire, seems an almost unnecessary reminder of how cruel life can be.

All of a sudden no one seems to know what is real any more, what we can truly believe in. Everything we’ve been told no longer seems to be true. Rock-solid investments, a growing economy, a global coming-together of technology, manufacturing and ideas – this was the golden future, wasn’t it..?

So where should we turn to make sense of this economic storm? Why, Hollywood of course! Admittedly, during this maelstrom of carnage, job losses, currencies losing their value, governments flailing, it seems almost surreal to watch the daily round of film-industry awards taking place. But examine the front runners more closely and you’ll see that in their own peculiar way they are somehow telling us more about the current craziness of the world than we might possibly imagine.

First off, let’s just use the title Milk – something Bernie Madoff looks as if he has been doing for the past 30 years. And let’s not forget the banks with their vast packages of debt so complex that even the Nasa-based mathematicians who originally devised them are finding them impossible to unpick.

Then there’s Doubt, a feeling we all have in spades right now. We’re walking on quicksand. Actually, we’re walking on quicksand while wearing stilettos.

The Wrestler. If you’ve ever felt as if you’ve been hit by a hammer blow and left pasted to the canvas, then this is the movie for you. Need I say more?

Frost/Nixon. Hey, how many crooks do you need? Another powerful man in complete denial, squirming uncomfortably as he’s interrogated by a journalist wearing an unfeasibly bad selection of shirts. Could life get much worse?

The Reader. An illiterate takes advantage of an innocent in order to cover up her own inadequacies and secrets… much like the armies of financial companies who offered us reams of free credit during the past 10 years. Let’s hope they choose a similar course of action to that of Kate Winslet’s character when their day of reckoning arrives.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Life’s so damn complicated it feels like you’re travelling in the opposite direction from everybody else. When you finally get to hook up with person you really, really want, they start getting old, wrinkly and exhausted. So much for romance.

Last but not least, the inspiring Slumdog Millionaire. We may be covered in excrement right now, but if we keep hoping, keep believing, and as long as we follow our hearts, then who knows, we might just win the prize, get the girl and find a way out of this miserable mess in which, through no fault of our own, we have suddenly found ourselves.

One can hope. After all, there is an inspiring new occupant of the White House and, as he said: “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realise your true potential.”
Uhura out.

-Elizabeth Saltzman is Vanity Fair’s International Social Editor



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