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Originally Posted by Robert Schunk
For whatever it's worth:
I'm now watching the beginning of the film "Seven Days in May" on television, and they just now played a piece (on unprepared piano!) which seems, to me, to be a total ripoff of John Cage's "Music for Marcel Duchamp". (According to my guide, the movie began a little less than half an hour ago, so, if you enjoy independent access to the film, this item would be a little prior to thirty minutes into the film.
Enough of that now! It's time for me to switch channels so that I can watch one of my favo(u)rite films of all time: "Metroploitan". (No, not the German Expressionist film, but, rather, the American navel-gazing film concerning participation in the New York debutante season.)
In many respects the film is accurate, except for the following points:
1) No New York City debutante (at least in my experience) appears at more than one ball. Whichever ball provides the forum for any debutante's debut is the only ball that she (or either of her escorts) attends for the season. There may be several dances during the season, but only one cotillion per debutante.
2) The film shows a lot of dancing and listening to 1950's "Cha Cha Cha"-type music. This is possibly historically inaccurate: although I was part of this scene in the early 1980's (which, NOT coincidentally, was about the time I was getting into Sonic Youth), the film concerns this same scene in the late 1980's (years after my period of participation had concluded), the music we listened to being mostly "Moody Blues" (which I loved, and still love) along with "Foreigner" and "Journey" and Billy Joel (which I simply endured). Once, at a dance, someone played "New Rose" by the Damned, and we all went nuts!
3) The film shows young men walking down the streets of NYC wearing white tie and tails, striped pants and top hats, canes and cigarette holders and white gloves. NOT ON YOUR LIFE!!!! We walked to the dances wearing jeans and dockers (sans socks, regardless of the depth of the snow, of course (except that if the snow was too deep, we wore rubber overshoes)), five-dollar sweatshirts and tweed and various types of topcoats from the Salvation Army, and we carried our dinner clothes in hockey bags. Once we got to the hotel, we went to the public restroom, where we changed clothes with the assistance of the restroom attendant (who was MASSIVELY tipped for his assistance).
4) The highly intellectual discussion regarding philosophy and literature and the such, for the most part, simply didn't exist; almost all the conversation involved Stephen King horror novels, which I wasn't into. I tended to drive the conversation in the direction of Modern Classical music, which my fellows seemed to like, not so much for its own essential beauty, but simply because it seemed wild, and radical, and different.
But, the essential atmosphere of the film is historically accurate, which is probably why it's one of my favo(u)rite films of all time!
P.S.: That phrase "Urban Haute Bourgeoisie" would have been immediately rejected by my set as being redundant, as the term "bourgeois" already connotes urbanism. Further, we would never have referred to a baron as an aristocrat, as a baron is a nobleman (or a "peer" in UK usage), i.e., a member of the class just beneath the aristocracy.
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