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Looking
down (and west) at the terrace of David Copperfield's Penthouse
apartment with Madison Avenue and 57th and 58th Streets below
during the launch
party for Fete
Accompli! The Ultimate Guide to Creative Entertaining (Clarkson
Potter), a new book “written and lived by” Lara
Shriftman, Elizabeth Harrison, and Karen
Robinovitz.
Photo: JH.
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The Night. Started out with a (called-for) seven o’clock screening
that author Christopher Mason (The Art of the
Steal – see NYSD
The List) hosted at SoHo House, the private club in the Meatpacking
District (Ninth Avenue and 13th Street) that everyone wants to at
least visit and see even if they can’t belong. Busy place.
Very cool.
The movie was Stephen
Fry’s Bright
Young Things based
on the Evelyn Waugh novel Vile Bodies.
The screening room is very cool, probably holds about sixty – charcoal
grey leather seats with lots of leg space (after all, it is a private
screening room),
charcoal grey walls. The brilliant, witty and amusing and very
nice director Mike Nichols was there. As were Kathy
and Billy Rayner, Angus Willkie and Len Morgan. In front
of us were a couple late 20th-century former members of the Bright
Young Things category (still bright, of course), authors Candace
Bushnell (Sex and the City) and
Jay McInerney (Bright Lights Big City).
The director, who the Manchester Guardian describes as “a man
of many talents: actor, novelist, comedian, librettist, thinker and
wit. As an actor he was lauded
for a definitive portrait of his nineteenth century alter ego, Oscar
Wilde, in Wilde (1997).” And now he is a
director with this film which was made last year.
Before the screening Fry told us a bit about the world
that Waugh wrote about (the book was published in 1929). They were
the generation
known in this country as the Flappers, the Flaming Youth, the world
of Scott
and Zelda Fitzgerald. They came of age during and right
after World War I and it was the first time that a generation “rebelled.” They
were wild, party-loving creatures new to gramophone records and the
telephone — a self-consciously modern generation that could
not keep still for a second. In England, they are known to the press,
which
followed their every move, as the Bright Young Things.
About a hundred minutes in length, highly energetic, never missing
a beat, often very funny (witty) from the moment the lights went
down, the Bright Young Things blasted across the screen — rich,
careless, noisy, silly, nonsensical, drinking, coking like there’s
no tomorrow. Which was the point Waugh was obviously suggesting.
Except, there was a tomorrow. And it’s here. And it’s
still a No Tomorrow. There are still those Bright Young Things about,
although they’re not called that anymore. But they’re
still rich, careless, noisy, silly, nonsensical, drinking and coking
and god knows what else. And there’s a War going on, although
far from these shores and far from the consciousness of an awful
lot of us including many within the immediate vicinity of the screening
room at the SoHo House last night.
Which may be what Mr. Fry had in mind with this film, presented (masquerading?)
as it is by its “Period” atmosphere (the early 1930s),
which the British do so well, and its accompanying archival (and
wonderful, original recordings) music to keep us in the mood and
the mode.
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Fete
Accompli! The Ultimate Guide to Creative Entertaining
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Christopher
Mason had invited everyone to one of the club rooms right after
for drinks and “nibbles.” I had to get uptown. Ninth
Avenue was ajumble and aglow, crowds of people, cars and taxis. A
yellow glow from the lights of the outdoor café across the
cobblestoned street. A beautiful night; I wished I could have stayed
to take it all in.
Uptown on East 57th Street in a four-story penthouse
owned by David Copperfield, starting on the fifty-fourth
floor, Cornelia
Guest, Mr. Copperfield, Chris Heinz and Dan Peres were
hosting a party to launch Fete Accompli! The Ultimate Guide to
Creative Entertaining (Clarkson
Potter), a new book “written and lived by” Lara
Shriftman and Elizabeth Harrison and Karen Robinovitz.
The authors, Harrison and Shriftman, started a publicity and public
relations business eight years ago in their names which has become
one of the top pr firms in the country with offices here, in Miami
and in Los Angeles. Earlier this year they were acquired this year
by Omnicom Group a strategic holding company, listed on the New York
Stock Exchange, that manages a portfolio of global market leaders
in advertising, marketing services, specialty communications, interactive/digital
media and media buying services. |
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The
Copperfield pool
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Elizabeth
Harrison, David Copperfield, and Lara Shriftman
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Last
night’s
book launch was a textbook demonstration of the team’s
talents not only for party-giving but promotion. The Copperfield
penthouse
which was built in the 1970s originally for General Motors heir Stewart
Mott (I’m not sure he ever lived there) has a swimming
pool on its top floor, and 360-degree views of the city in all
its glory. You can see clear out to New Jersey, north, west and
south,
Westchester, Connecticut and Long Island. It’s beyond breathtaking.
Mr. Copperfield who made his fortune (as everybody knows as the
world’s most famous magician, has a huge museum collection
of penny arcade games from the late 19th, early 20th century. And,
they all work, so the far flung room was filled with guests inserting
their pennies (there were buckets of them about the room) and playing.
There were hundreds of guests and the party was set up by the Fait Accompli concept – music
(by Samantha Ronson, Lighting (by Bentley Meeker),
all kinds of food including neatly stacked pyramids of Krispy Kreme donuts which
I did not resist, cocktail bars with special drinks provided by Rose’s
cocktail infusions, flowers – roses white and red, and candy everywhere.
It was a trip and although the party was called for 7 to 10, at ten-thirty it
was only beginning to wind down. It was such a beautiful night in New York and
such a beautiful night to be outside fifty-four stories above the city swimming
in lights as far as the eye could see, that nobody wanted to leave. |
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