…
A woman is always accompanied, except when quite alone, and perhaps even then, by her own image of herself. While she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father, she cannot avoid envisaging herself walking, or weeping. From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others and particularly how she appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.
(Berger, Ways)
…
Dürer, who believed in the ideal nude, thought that this ideal could be constructed by taking the shoulders of one body, the hands of another, the breasts of another, and so on. Was this Humanist idealism? Or was it the result of an indifference to who any one person really was? Do these paintings celebrate, as we’re normally taught, the women within them, or the male voyeur? Is there sexuality within the frame, or in front of it?
(Berger, Ways)
…
[INT. Judy’s Bedroom, Hotel (DAY)]
…
Speaking of the filming of the scene in which Judy comes out of the bathroom remade as Madeleine, Kim Novak said, “It was so real to me, the coming out and wanting approval in that scene. It was like, is this what you want? Is this what you want from me? My whole body was trembling. I mean I had chills inside and goosebumps all over just because it was the ultimate defining moment of anybody when they’re going to someone they love and they just want to be perfect for them. And that’s what I think makes it contemporary. It’s about that thing that goes wrong in love, when you’re attracted to someone and then suddenly you need to change them.”
…
If Scottie’s fantasy of the letter is real — if Judy really was Madeleine — Madeleine dies at the end of the movie and Judy dies at 01:57:00.
…
I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. I had pretended to be one kind of man and revealed myself to be quite another.
(Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl)
…
Because of the nature of the firm’s clients, my job — hand-delivering important documents to courthouses and other law offices — involved monthly trips to Seattle and Olympia, San Francisco and Sacramento. Even the rental car counter in Sacramento was a bright spot in the mindless routine of it. Though I was making less than I had as a professor, I no longer had to worry about what I would do in six months, a year, two years. As long as I did my job, I had a job. My wife picked up more work to make up for what I could no longer pay for. She took me out to eat. She decided when we would go to the movies, where we would go on vacation. She bought me what she called “school clothes.” She took me to get my hair cut.
…
She decided. It was her decision, ultimately. I hadn’t wanted to say it, as often as I thought it, but it was her decision, not mine.
…
Madeleine E.
This book is about a screenwriter. When the book opens, the screenwriter is still just a struggling writer, hardly a writer at all. He’s never had anything published, he doesn’t have an agent, nobody’s heard of him, and he doesn’t live in New York or Los Angeles. He lives in Portland, and he works as a barista. He gets up early every morning to write, then he goes to work. He has to be at work by 6 AM, so he has to get up very early, but he does it. At work, no one knows he’s a writer. He doesn’t ever talk about it. He writes spec scripts and short stories, and he starts a novel he knows he won’t finish because he’s never finished one yet. He wants each thing he writes to be something special, something new, but none of them are. None of them look like he thought they would. He is frustrated, but he keeps writing.
One day, one of the screenwriter’s coworkers tells him that someone at the coffee shop has a crush on him. He can’t imagine who it is. He doesn’t want to ask this coworker because he thinks he will look desperate if he does, but eventually he decides that looking desperate is better than being desperate, and he asks. He hasn’t been on a date in over a year, and his last relationship ended when the girl he was seeing just disappeared — her phone was turned off, and her roommates told him she had moved out; he never saw her again — which, he thinks, partly explains why it’s been so long, but does nothing to make his situation better. It turns out it’s a customer, someone he never really thought too much about. He knows who she is, but he can’t even call a clear image of her into mind. She doesn’t come in very often, and she’s kind of awkward and giggly when she does come in. He can’t believe he didn’t figure it out sooner. He asks her out, and on their first date the two of them are nervous around each other, a good sign. She moves in with him and his three roommates less than a month later. The two of them move out to get a place of their own.
All along, the screenwriter has been writing. He still doesn’t have anything published, still doesn’t have an agent, no one knows anything about him, and he’s still in Portland, but, maybe because of the love he feels for his girlfriend, he thinks that things will work out somehow. With the support of his girlfriend, he quits his job at the café to write full-time. Even though he doesn’t sell a script, he does have a few near-misses. He tells her about them over dinner. She keeps working; in fact, because he isn’t working, she starts working more so that they will have enough money to pay rent and eat and so on. At first, the screenwriter was able to pay his share of things out of his savings, but after a while, he’d spent all his savings and she was paying for everything. But still things are good between them, they’re still in love, and she believes in him, or at least wants him to be happy.
Because she is gone more often, and maybe because the script he’s working on is about a betrayal, the screenwriter suspects that his girlfriend is cheating on him. He starts following her around when he should be at home, writing. She’s at work, working to support the two of them, but he can’t believe it. Tensions rise. She doesn’t know he’s been following her, she just knows that he’s possessive and always wants to know where she’s been, even when she’s only a few minutes late.
Then, it’s three or four years later. The screenwriter, a casting director, and a producer are casting a movie the screenwriter has written and is set to direct. We learn that each of the three has his or her favorite — the producer wants a star who the screenwriter thinks can’t act (and the producer knows the production can’t afford), the casting director likes another actress, a “rising talent” she’s tried to get into several roles, and the screenwriter wants an unknown actress who he decides he likes best before she’s said a single line. She is a nobody but he gets her in on the call based on her headshot, and now that she’s here, in the flesh, walking and talking, he’s certain she’s perfect. He can’t stop thinking about her, and he’s so persistent that the producer relents (secretly, the producer’s thinking he can get the screenwriter yanked before they go into production, especially if he keeps throwing tantrums like this one), and the casting director comes around to his way of seeing things, too. The casting director makes a suggestion about the leading man, and the screenwriter, seeing he’s being offered a trade, agrees, even though he liked another actor better. The screenwriter tells the actress she has the job. She’s excited but a little afraid, too, because she thinks the screenwriter — who will be her director, the director of her very first film role — is coming on to her. Still, it’s a big role, and she needs the work.