Say It In Broken English

I hardly ever think of Zoe Cassavetes as "John Cassavetes's daughter" - I always think of her as "Sofia Coppola's friend." They had that magazine show "Hi Octane" on Comedy Central in the early 90s, which I can hardly remember now but watched obsessively then out of some intense fascination with that little segment of young hip L.A. royalty (the Coppolas, the Cassaveteses, the Leitches, the Blahblahblahs). There's only one clip available on YouTube, and you might want to just skip to the very last second to catch the three or four unintelligibly Valley-Girl-accented and thus self-caricaturing syllables that escape from Sofia's mouth* (although the death metal band in the middle is fantastic as well).

* It's okay for me to make fun, since all I ever do the rest of the time is make big kissy faces at her (textually speaking, of course).

The point of all this is that the former Marc Jacobs/Anna Sui muse's new movie Broken English is premiering this weekend. I've heard mixed things but will probably check it out anyway, because (1) I pretty much dug Zoe's short film Men Make Women Crazy Theory when I saw it last January; (2) it is good to support women-directed films, especially on their opening weekends; (3) maybe she named it after the Marianne Faithfull song?; and (4) the cast is so awesome: Parker Posey and Gena Rowlands and Justin Theroux and my boyfriend Josh Hamilton. Here's the trailer:

There's also a fun little style-related bit in Zoe's interview from the latest issue of Mean:

...we're running a special summer fashion report in this issue and I have a fashion-related question for you: Do you have an outfit that you love and hang on to mainly because it's tied to a specific memory?

...I guess maybe this skirt that I wore the night I met my fiance. Every time I look at it in the closet I'm like, "Oh! That's what I was wearing." When I was a kid I was so lucky because my grandmother would make me these outrageous costumes that I just wore as regular clothes all the time. Like, gold lame dresses with fake pearls on them and things like that. And capes! I don't have them anymore, which is unfortunate. I have no idea where they went.

What are your favorite labels?

They change all the time. I love APC, Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui. These designers ended up being my friends too, so maybe there's an emotional attachment in that too, although the clothes themselves are good and I like to wear them. I always say that I like clothes but I hate fashion.

Yet you were a part of that world. You did some print ads for Donna Karan in your 20s and walked the runways for various other designers.

Yeah, I did that. It was kind of fun. And it was good money; I can't lie. But fashion was such a different thing 15 years ago. Now you have to have this bag and you have to have these shoes in order to be accepted within the ranks of the fashionable. It's gone completely out of control. Whenever someone asks me now, "What's the one thing you can't live without?" I have to say, "I guess it's jeans." I want to get out of the jeans, but I can't.

Posted by Liz in Film
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