24Romeo and Juliet (Paramount Pictures, 1968): screenplay by Franco Brusati, Masolino D’Amico, and Franco Zeffirelli, based on the play by William Shakespeare; directed by Franco Zeffirelli; with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey
25Little Darlings (Paramount Pictures, 1980): written by Kimi Peck and Dalene Young; directed by Ronald F. Maxwell; with Kristy McNichol, Tatum O’Neal, Armand Assante, and Matt Dillon
26Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Universal Studios, 1982): screenplay by Cameron Crowe, based on his book; directed by Amy Heckerling; with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates
27“Somebody’s Baby,” by Jackson Browne and Danny Kortchmar
28The Other Side of Midnight (20th Century Fox, 1977): written by Herman Raucher, based on the novel by Sidney Sheldon; directed by Charles Jarrott; with Marie-France Pisier
29Coming Home (United Artists, 1978): written by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones; directed by Hal Ashby; with Jane Fonda and Jon Voight
30Don’t Look Now (British Lion Films, 1973): screenplay by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, based on the story by Daphne Du Maurier; directed by Nicolas Roeg; with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland
31Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Paramount Pictures, 1977): screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the novel by Judith Rossner; directed by Richard Brooks; with Diane Keaton; All That Jazz (20th Century Fox/Columbia Pictures, 1979): written by Robert Alan Aurthur and Bob Fosse; directed by Bob Fosse; Body Heat (Warner Bros., 1981): written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan; with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner
32Last Tango in Paris (United Artists, 1972): written by Bernardo Bertolucci and Franco Arcalli; directed by Bernardo Bertolucci; with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider
HOW TO BE A DRUNK
THE LOG BOOK OF A DISTINCTIVE ALCOHOLIC
Sarah T. — Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic
The Lost Weekend
Arthur
Days of Wine and Roses
When a Man Loves a Woman
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Valley of the Dolls
The Morning After
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Opening Night
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Leaving Las Vegas
Flight
I love alcohol. I love to drink alcohol. I love the grapefruity redolence of Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand and the juniper berry kiss of gin. I love the flirty burn of tequila liberally citrus’d with fresh lime. I love the velvet tongue of Merlot, the apricot honey of an ice-cold IPA beer. I love the celebratory Kir Royale, Champagne turned ruby with just a touch of crème de cassis, and I love the low-maintenance flexibility of that frosted bottle of vodka in the freezer, just so happy to go along with anything in the pantry or fridge: OJ, a few mashed raspberries, the juice from a can of lychee nuts. Sometimes I honor the vodka by drinking it straight up, all ice-and-diamond clean.
I love the sound FX of drinking, the mimetic hum: The chuckle of a liberated cork, the shaking shaker of crushed ice, the gasp and fizz of a cracked-open mixer, the trickle-and-splash sound of cola hitting the waiting rum.
I love the mise-en-scène of drinking, the aesthetics of all that crystal and glass: The fat breast of a brandy snifter, the hieroglyphic martini glass, the elegant phallic flute. I gaze at these glasses posed just so in my hand and marvel at my sophistication. I see lovely Romy Schneider in Le Vieux Fusil, lifting the nose veil on her 1930s cocktail hat to sip her coupe de Champagne; youngish Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, flirt-shooting tequila with Harrison Ford and delicately swiping lime pulp from her preplumped lips; Barbra Streisand seductively stroking her breast with a glass of sherry in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; Meryl Streep’s Sophie in Sophie’s Choice, being brought back to life and love by a single sip of a red wine so exquisite it is what, if you have lived the life of a saint, the angels will serve you to drink in Paradise.
What I don’t love is anything fruity and disingenuous: Margaritas, daiquiris, mai tais, any trendy, girly, garish concoction. I’m turned off by the banality of paper umbrellas, the cloying simple sugar syrups. Give me the honest bite of clear, pure ethanol — let me hold my jeweled glass to the light, revel in its power, its authentic, unambiguous intent.
I also do not love raucous drinking, frat-boy swilling, sports bar rowdiness, the inelegant kegger or red plastic Solo cup, the hint of eruption tick-ticking behind a boozed-up lack of control. I like the well-mannered bar, the leather booth, the candle’s flicker, one’s sensibilities and imagination set gently aflame; I like my drinking atmospheric, soft-filtered, refined.
But most of all, I love the feel and effect of drinking: The absorbing swell of the alcohol in my mouth and throat; the initial belly-warm and faint blush in my cheeks; the expansive, generous alchemy that will make me a wittier, sexier, more interesting and insightful, both more vulnerable and more impervious, more fearless, more charming and delightful me.
I decided to become an alcoholic when I was eleven years old.
Back then, though, it was really because of my friend Sarah. Sarah T. Maybe you met her, back in 1975? She was a few years older than me, she was fifteen, with ripply Mona Lisa hair, a lingering layer of baby fat pouting her cheeks. She was so shy, struggling with a new school, her parents’ divorce, never quite at ease in her tender puppy skin. She totally botched her try-out for the glee club out of sheer nerves, a pained insecurity about her place in the world made embarrassingly public, rich fodder for Mean Girls. But boy, get a few drinks in her, and wow. She blossomed, went full swan, got all on-key and giggly and happy happy happy. Other kids flocked to her instead of ignoring her, complimented her cute outfit, remembered her name. Poured her more drinks.
My friend Sarah T. was not a real person, of course, but the titular character of Sarah T. — Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, one of those “social issue” network television Movies of the Week from the 1970s, meant to be instructive and realistically gritty yet still exploitative ratings-grabbers, part of an often-named “Portrait of. .” craze (Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, starring Jan Brady; Sharon: Portrait of a Mistress; Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn), showcasing distressed women and teens.33 I loved the edgy tease of these movies, the subliminal “this could be you” threat if my own safe, normal, middle-class suburban life ever took the slightest wrong turn. One bad decision on my part, they implied, one step outside my own Good Girl persona, and I could wind up in reform school, or vomiting in the gutter, or turning tricks for the first savvy pimp to hustle and pick up frightened naïve runaway me at the bus station. These movies made me feel a longing: I was the most boring adolescent ever, the easiest, most issue-free child, no problem to anyone in a household full of people with voluble, visible problems, and the problem with being no problem is that you go about in that cloak of invisibility: Attention need not be paid. Or, if it is paid, it is a passing pat on the head, an approving dismissal, an overloud laugh track and a cued round of auto-applause. A tribute to the persona, not the person. Being such a Good Girl, I always feared Something Bad would happen to me; I was worried Something Bad never would; I longed for Something Bad to offer me a kind of distinction. These movies of tortured souls trapped in disturbing narratives offered an alluring paradox: Both happy fantasy and a cautionary lesson.