Author event! Marisa Meltzer & Amanda Montell
[0:00]on the West Coast, so we are going to use my home state where I was from, just like the words of
[0:07]Joan Diddyon. I'm Marissa Meltzer. I am a native Californian but I live in New York and I wrote
[0:15]this book at Girl About Jane Birken and you know usually being conversation about with someone
[0:21]but now I'm just going to be talking to you like Miss Nancy on Romper Room or whatever but also
[0:28]way more time to take questions. So I mean sometimes I feel a little bit sheepish when people ask
[0:35]me about the genesis of this project because it is a little bit ambulance chasery. If I'm being a bit
[0:43]honest I found out that Jane Birken died and my editor suggested this could be a really good book for
[0:52]and she didn't even know really the extent of my sort of Frank Ophelia or anything like that and
[0:59]I was born on Bath Steel Day which is like the French version of the Fourth of July and
[1:06]my parents would often just throw me these sort of like half-ass default birthdays. It was like
[1:11]involved like a lame-iz theme or like a French cake and so like the Frank Ophelia went in my bones
[1:19]very early and so I was always into Paris and French people but then also I was into movies
[1:30]and watched Blow Up which Jane Birken is in at a very tender age and was introduced to her music
[1:40]probably through like a boyfriend when I was like 18 or something like that and so I knew
[1:45]enough about her to know kind of the broad strokes of Jane Birken's life that she sang that she
[1:51]acted in some significant projects and of course that she was the namesake for the Birken bag
[1:58]but I knew enough to know that there was probably like a whole lot more life and woman and
[2:03]person there and then the sort of like flattening to dimensional view that maybe we all had of
[2:10]her particularly in the English-speaking world she was like kind of a household name in France but
[2:16]France isn't that big and so for like a little backstory she was born to kind of like an upper
[2:25]class-ish family in London her mom was a pretty famous stage actress who was a muse
[2:35]to Noel Coward the playwright and her dad was a spy and a military hero who had an eye patch
[2:44]and she grew up in a big Victorian house in Chelsea and was very unhappy you know the kind of
[2:53]family where the kids go off to boarding school at like 11 or 12 and she hated it and she was
[3:00]in an all-girls school and the aisle of white and would do very dramatic things to try to get
[3:06]dismissed or like kicked out of school like eating rocks to be hate sent to the infirmary and eventually
[3:13]her parents were just like fine you know to go to school anymore and she went to Paris as kind
[3:19]of like a finishing school and then went back to London when she was still a teenager to kind of
[3:29]find herself and she ended up deciding to try to follow in the family footsteps and act and
[3:36]that's kind of when she became like the it girl that the title suggests she was in some place
[3:42]she was in like Cadbury commercial for chocolate bar she was in the movie the knack she was in
[3:50]blow-up and she also married John Berry who was the composer for all the early James Bond films
[3:58]who was also like 31 when she was 17 when they started dating and they got married
[4:07]which her parents really opposed for all the reasons you might imagine and it did not go well he
[4:14]seemed to never really be faithful to her and she thought you know she wanted a baby and I think
[4:21]she thought having a baby would help the marriage and basically that crumbled and she got a job
[4:30]and moved to Paris and so this is all the preamble to sort of her life really beginning in Paris
[4:38]and so what we have then is like a story of a woman who finds herself on the continent in Paris
[4:46]as one does and falls in love with like an ugly sexy French men who's one of the most famous
[4:51]people in the country as I was a gowns boy who's could previously was fresh off a hot and heavy
[4:58]affair with Brigitte.
[5:00]And they had a kind of a love affair for the ages and became one of the sort of most publicly horny and collaborative couples in Europe and in the world.
[5:14]And this is the story of a woman who, you know, is best known as kind of a sidekick and someone who inspires greatness and brings it out of other people and trying to kind of think about her in a fully nuanced three-dimensional way of, you know, how she might want to be remembered, how we should try to remember her.
[5:40]And who she really was. And if she was so carefree, if she was so happy to be, you know, spoken of in the same breath along the famous men that she dated and the bags.
[5:57]Yeah, I can start just taking questions now. Yeah.
[6:08]She was less interested in that.
[6:10]And I'm not even going to say that's super official, but she was very much more wholesome. And can you talk a little bit about, was she comfortable with that, that label as the style icon and what did she value?
[6:29]I think no one who's a real style icon is comfortable with the label, just like no one who's a real it girl, whatever call themselves an it girl kind of like hoisted upon you.
[6:41]And if you really are that kind of person, you know, it's sort of embarrassing.
[6:45]I do think that style was an area of agency and self-expression for her. And she just always had like an innate great sense of combining t-shirts and jeans with the right pair of, you know, like high-heeled Mary jeans. So it looked like something sort of like her more than the sum of its parts.
[7:09]And I also think, you know, her red carpet looks so good because she's wearing maybe like a lifestyle around gown or something like that.
[7:20]But it's in conversation and looks, you know, part of the whole of how she dressed day to day.
[7:28]is conversant and happy and like glad to be part of the world of fashion. Certainly didn't seem to turn down opportunities to be in fashion magazines. She was so famous in France in the 70s as she was on the cover of vote like multiple times a year.
[7:47]So she participated in that. But if you go a step deeper and you read her diaries and interview people, you do see that I don't think that's where her like quotidian, you know, daily concerns lie.
[8:01]I think she was much more interested in her creative life and her family and kind of self-actualization for lack of a better sort of word.
[8:14]And you see how little she seemed to think about fashion, which is maybe part of the privilege of like being good at fashion and being good at dressing yourself.
[8:24]That it just kind of comes naturally and also having, you know, being friends with famous designers and having Paco Robon send you a dress like you're not thinking about it that much when you're five, seven and like a size zero and look incredible and everything and people are sending you free clothes because it's easy, you know, she could make a
[8:46]a sailor shirt, you know, look amazing or whatever. But I think that fashion was certainly key, but I think that the sort of way that she's remembered the scales are off, right, especially in America and Britain and kind of outside the French language world because she really did act almost exclusively in French and in European movies.
[9:12]So, yeah, she's kind of remembered as this most like nameless person on mood boards and, you know, now and in reality, you know, she was in a lot of films and she was a subject of two feature lens documentaries and she was a lot more than that, which isn't to say that this book is just a sort of love letter to her.
[9:38]She was actually a very complicated person who had a strange relationship with ambition and money and those sorts of things, but there's a lot to explore for sure.
[9:50]Yeah, should we just start taking questions. Is there anything else you guys want to hear about?
[9:57]Yeah.
[10:00]Well, she pulled a real, it girl move, which is that she gave birth to a few, it girl
[10:07]daughter.
[10:08]So one of her daughters sadly died like a little over 10 years ago.
[10:16]And then the other two are Charlotte Goundsburg and Lou Dweil, who are both in kind of creative
[10:23]industries, living in France. And Charlotte Goundsburg is pretty famous, is an actress,
[10:30]and a singer, and models, and Lou Dweil is, I think, more of a singer and a model.
[10:36]But they've both been kind of multi-hyphenists, and were famous from birth.
[10:42]Charlotte, in particular, got like the Stasar award, which is like the French Oscar for
[10:48]best newcomer when she was 13 or 14 years old or something like that. And, you know,
[10:54]was the kind of person that was made tabloid headlines just for being born. So she's been
[11:00]really in the public eye her whole life. And Charlotte is maybe like 55, 53 now, and Lou
[11:11]is in her probably like early 40s. Yeah.
[11:15]She had kids pretty spread apart. She had a daughter in like 1967, and one in like 72 or
[11:25]73, and then one in 1984. So pretty spread apart. Yeah.
[11:31]Yeah.
[11:32]Can you talk about something with your research?
[11:34]Yeah. I mean, it was a total delight because I thought, you know, okay, I should probably
[11:41]go to Paris for research. Yeah. Right.
[11:45]With my twist, my arm. Yeah. And at first I thought I would go for, you know, two weeks
[11:51]or something like that. And then right around the time that I was starting to kind of schedule
[11:57]it out, I found out that the apartment that I was living in New York was going, the building
[12:02]was being sold, and I was going to have to find a new apartment, live in. And, you know,
[12:07]I'm sure you all are very familiar with like the hell of finding places to live in any city.
[12:14]And so I just put it off and put all of my stuff in storage and took my dog and two suitcases
[12:21]to Paris for a few months and then found an apartment when I got back.
[12:26]But it gave me a lot of time to be in Paris, which I'm glad because I needed it because
[12:31]there was so much. I mean, there were tons of magazine archives like of L and Vogue and Marie Claire and like
[12:39]Anna and on and on. And there were people that interview and there was her grape to visit and her favorite
[12:45]restaurants and her home and just all of the, you know, like media, like, you know, songs and movies that are
[12:56]easier to come by there. And yeah, I mean, I could have every book kind of has a strange thing where, you know,
[13:08]when you hear about someone saying that they worked on a book for like 10 or 15 years, you can see why,
[13:13]because you could just keep researching and going on and on and on forever.
[13:19]And at a certain point, you have to just kind of tell yourself like, this is when it ends unless some crazy thing comes through
[13:27]or I'll never start writing it. So Paris was kind of good because I just decided I had to stop when I left and start focusing
[13:35]on writing it and getting it all down. But it was, I mean, the research is always my favorite part of any writing project.
[13:44]And this one was just, you know, again, a total delight. It was over late fall and winter and, you know, the holidays and snow and, you know,
[13:56]walking, like there were just points when I was walking my dog along the sun, wearing a parade and like carrying a baguette and being like, wow,
[14:07]it was really, really this person right now. But it was a total, it was, it was really like a high point in my career. Yeah.
[14:15]And I hope that I hope all of that, like, immersion really shows in the book. Yeah.
[14:20]I mean, it's something that I've thought about a lot. I was actually at the auction over the summer when the bag was went for 10.1 million.
[14:43]And so I was very much in the room and covering experience. I think that she had a pretty healthy relationship with it.
[14:54]Part of that was sort of the bad side and that she didn't make money off of it.
[15:00]It was that kind of classic sort of old-school,
[15:03]mute situation where you're just honored
[15:06]to have something named after you.
[15:07]And she got the bags for free.
[15:10]And she was a friend of the house, as they say,
[15:13]in the fashion world.
[15:14]And but on the other hand, I think that lack
[15:18]of kind of like economic incentive or whatever,
[15:23]like business arrangement allowed her to feel like the bag
[15:28]was not her identity.
[15:30]And she was able to feel kind of divorced from the bag
[15:35]in a healthy way.
[15:36]Like everyone else is so obsessed with the Birken.
[15:39]And everyone else has kind of projected onto the Birken
[15:43]bag this symbol of like making it and like the ultimate
[15:48]and all of these things.
[15:49]And I think, you know, for her, it was barely an anecdote
[15:55]in her life.
[15:56]It wasn't something that she wrote about in her diaries.
[15:59]It was something that she really only talked about
[16:01]in interviews because everyone asked.
[16:03]But it wasn't something that I think was super important
[16:09]her.
[16:09]She wasn't ashamed of it.
[16:10]And I think she even celebrated it.
[16:12]But yeah, it wasn't her identity.
[16:17]And I think that that probably is the healthiest
[16:21]relationship that anyone has to a Birken bag.
[16:25]So she could have, you know, if you look at like Michael Jordan,
[16:31]the Air Jordan came out, I think, the exact same time
[16:36]as the Birken bag and look at the billions of dollars
[16:39]that he and his family has made off of it.
[16:42]But that was gone into in a completely different manner
[16:46]and negotiated and using his likeness and his whole identity
[16:52]to like market and sell it.
[16:53]And she didn't really do any of that.
[16:55]So she was kind of got to have the Birken without having
[16:59]to do anything for it and kind of just be herself.
[17:03]So I don't know.
[17:05]I think it's a bit of a war shock test.
[17:07]And I will be interested as people read the book
[17:11]to think, you know, what readers take away on whether or not
[17:16]she should have, whether she was robbed of money
[17:19]that she should have been owed or whether it seemed
[17:21]like a relief not to have to promote the Birken
[17:26]and be the face of the Birken or whether it's just sad or surreal
[17:30]when your name is kind of taken away from you
[17:35]when it's so much more famous than you will ever be.
[17:43]Any other questions?
[17:45]Yeah.
[17:47]I want to actually hear about you.
[17:49]How many books have you written?
[17:52]How do you motivate yourself to write when you don't
[17:54]ever want to get out of this?
[17:58]I, this is my fifth book.
[18:04]I'm like kind of, sounds so weird.
[18:07]But I am, I do have a sort of machine like quality
[18:11]where I'm just very good at like plugging myself in
[18:15]and like focusing and just doing it.
[18:18]And I think part of that is because I've basically been
[18:22]a professional writer my entire life.
[18:24]And so even though I love it, it's also like muscle memory.
[18:29]Like it's not like if I had to run a mile right now,
[18:33]it would be like the hardest thing in the world
[18:35]because I hate cardio and resist it.
[18:37]But like I write all the time.
[18:41]And so it's not like I just know how to kind of,
[18:45]and when you're writing a book, especially in a big project,
[18:47]it's like a subject that you're taking years to do.
[18:51]And so even when you're not thinking about it,
[18:53]you're thinking about it.
[18:54]Like you're dreaming about it.
[18:56]You're having like little insights in the middle of a shower
[18:59]and even when you're not sort of cognizant
[19:01]that you're thinking about it, it's all kind of like
[19:04]in your head and so, you know, for years.
[19:07]So it's also not like I'm having to be like,
[19:09]what am I writing about again?
[19:11]What did that person say?
[19:12]Like it's also inside of me that it's, to me,
[19:15]it's not writer's block is never a challenge.
[19:19]It's more like finding when you're writing a book,
[19:23]especially like a biography,
[19:25]it's finding the right subject
[19:27]where it's like has someone written about them before,
[19:30]have they written about themselves before?
[19:33]Do enough people know about them?
[19:35]Do too many people know about them?
[19:36]Like, you know, it's that like kind of right person.
[19:40]Like does it make sense for me to write about them?
[19:43]Last night I did an event and I was joking
[19:45]that like I'm exclusively announcing
[19:47]that I'm doing a Diane Keaton biography right now,
[19:51]which is, you know, a little bit dark
[19:53]and I'm not someone else should do that.
[19:55]But like, you know, there is a little bit of like that,
[19:59]just
[20:00]funny the right subject that's like a match for you and I also always think it
[20:04]has to kind of be like a deeply kind of nerdy interest because you're
[20:10]spending so much time on you know this person or this company or whatever the
[20:15]story is and if it's not something that's always kind of interesting to you
[20:21]then it'll just feel like the worst kind of slog and yeah I mean I think that
[20:30]it's my job so I'm always interested in like you know what to do with myself
[20:35]and also I think that I want to relax and do nothing but I'm really bad at that
[20:42]like I'm I need kind of like a big picture project or all of my like or I'll
[20:49]just think about nuclear world time or something like that like I'll just I
[20:53]I just didn't like the person that needs to have my mind kind of like
[20:58]something to always kind of fall back on otherwise I get really
[21:02]neurotic so I like a big project and I love I mean it sounds unfortunately
[21:08]sincere but like I love I grew up a huge reader I was both voted best reader in
[21:14]1997 at the golf school in Santa Cruz, California and I and I think that they
[21:20]chose right sadly or no it was 1988 the year before I was voted best
[21:26]personality and somehow lost out that the next year to best reader but I
[21:31]really did you know I made something of myself and I love reading and I love
[21:37]writing and like you know I read books all the time and I love writing books
[21:41]I like to kind of contribute and be a part of that world because it's my
[21:45]favorite and so you know it's it's something I feel very like committed to and
[21:51]privilege to be part of yeah I have a question kind of along that thing I feel
[21:58]like when I read different books kind of at the same time I feel like they're in
[22:02]conversation together I know as you were writing this book do you remember what
[22:08]you were reading and how that may or may not influence this yeah it's a
[22:15]good question sometimes I can't read nonfiction when I'm writing nonfiction
[22:22]because I remember once I was when I was writing my last book glossy I started
[22:29]reading literally like five pages of Empire pain the Stackler book and it was
[22:37]so well written and reported that I was like I can't like I can't measure up this
[22:43]this is so and then I was like you can't do this like this is not you can't be
[22:48]writing your own nonfiction book about like a company and reading something
[22:52]that's even vaguely similar so I tend to read a ton of like romance novels and
[22:58]mysteries and genre books I have a book club seminar that my friend Jonathan
[23:06]who's also in it and we tend to read more like class we did Lolita we tend to
[23:12]read classics some most of which we have good relationships but we did read
[23:17]Dr. Javago in January and that was hard on many of us we but like so yeah I'll
[23:23]read classics I read a lot of fiction I'll read some things like I tend to
[23:30]review books and they're pretty much always nonfiction and so I was reading
[23:36]there's a biography that I reviewed of Gala Dali Salvador Dali his wife
[23:43]who you know similarly was celebrated in a different generation but as
[23:47]amused to the dadais and surrealists and there were certain things about just
[23:53]the writing structure of that book where like I was struggling in a draft of
[24:00]this book where my editor kept trying to cut out party scenes and I was like
[24:05]does she hate fun like why why do I love like I love famous people and
[24:12]parties popping up in the book and she was sort of kept trying to explain to me
[24:18]that there were so many parties that they needed to be distinguished or you
[24:22]know I need to kind of pick and choose and then I read the Gala Dali book
[24:28]which I really love but it had so many party scenes and I was like I got it
[24:35]like they knew famous people they went to fabulous parties that are
[24:39]legendary every single night like why is this night different from all other
[24:44]nights and that's when I realized that I had to that's what I needed to adopt
[24:50]in this book I needed to like show why certain nights out or parties that I was
[24:56]talking about were you know important to like what
[25:00]was going on in her life or meeting someone. It wasn't just enough that she was, you know,
[25:05]there were plenty of things that got cut out that I just thought were hilarious and delightful like
[25:09]she went to like a Bruce Springsteen concert in Paris with like with one of Grace Kelly.
[25:15]It sounds like one of the Grimaldi princes and I think maybe like Bob Dylan was with them or
[25:21]somehow like they ran into him and they were just all so friends. You were like, oh Bruce Springsteen,
[25:27]you're so American, like you're so authentic and I thought that was hilarious but it didn't
[25:35]even make a draft of the book because it's like, you know, we don't really need that and some
[25:39]things are fun for an anecdote but her whole life was like that. Like, you know, even when she was
[25:45]a teenager there's like an entry in her diary in maybe like 1964, 65 that's like lunch with
[25:54]Jalen and very nice, you know, and she was friends with all the Beatles and that was her brother
[25:59]worked with them as a like a assistant director and cinematographer on some of their films. So it was
[26:06]all that was her life from childhood, you know, when of her childhood friends was like,
[26:12]Haley Mills, the famous, you know, British Disney actress. So that was kind of always how things
[26:18]were for her and I wanted to show that without making it sort of like repetitive or boring or
[26:26]just a slew of names like a, you know, party report. Yeah. And what was her relationship to her
[26:34]fame? Did she, I mean, you enjoyed it? Did she ever think it was too much? I mean, I think she
[26:41]enjoyed it. I think the parts that got on her nerves were when she would be older and people would
[26:48]just want her to talk about being 20 years old and she was like 70 years old or they'd want her to sign
[26:56]naked photos of herself when she was very young and it's sort of like, oh, I'm suspended as this like,
[27:03]you know, sort of, I mean, yeah, it girl Anjuna for my whole life, you know. And I think the bag
[27:14]also was like, people were like, are you really into bag? And even though I think she had a very
[27:19]good humor about all that stuff, I imagine it gets really annoying. But I also think she was in
[27:26]Paris and Paris kind of like New York is a city that you can be famous and also live like kind
[27:33]of a normal life. Like people won't bother you. And you can, you know, she went to cafes and
[27:39]bakeries and farmer's markets and just like everyone else and was sort of like a member of the
[27:45]neighborhood. And people saw her and I think people would stop or take her picture, but it seems like
[27:50]it was a not a bad level of fame. I mean, I think there were moments like when she and Serge
[27:56]gownsport broke up where it's like tabloid stuff. But even then she'd find out that like he would
[28:02]call the tablet and stuff. So, you know, I think I think living in France allowed her a nice
[28:11]kind of, yeah, balance of living. Yeah. There's a lot in the book about that. And she was like
[28:26]pretty brutally honest about aging. You know, it's we're living in such an interesting time
[28:33]to have that conversation because celebrities keep showing up with like new faces and
[28:40]plaques surgery is becoming more and more the norm and the standard. And she didn't do that.
[28:46]She got a teeny tiny bit of Botox, I think, but like, you know, didn't have a facelift and have the
[28:52]face of someone who had spent a lot of time in the sun and had once smoked three packs a day and
[28:59]lived. You know, and part of that might have been that she had a very long struggle with cancer.
[29:07]And so maybe plastic surgery is not like you're going to do while you're in, you know, chemotherapy or
[29:13]whatever. But also, you know, as I get older, I see people that are my exact age saving up or booking
[29:22]various, you know, increasingly invasive treatments. And it's always kind of a question of like,
[29:29]oh, maybe I should get this done or like maybe I would, but then every day you like don't until
[29:36]you do or until you die. And in some ways, I think that's just how it was with her where it was
[29:43]like a consideration and a joke. And she, you know, made kind of jokes at her own expense that
[29:49]she could just cover up the mirrors. And I think it's hard, especially when, you know,
[29:55]I'm a writer and my life has not been predicated on being like-
[30:00]like the hottest person in Europe,
[30:02]and looking great in mini skirts and thigh-high boots
[30:07]and stuff like that, but hers was.
[30:08]So to have wrinkles into a gained weight
[30:13]and have your face change,
[30:15]that's got to be particularly hard, extra hard,
[30:17]but she chose not to.
[30:20]And I think that's another part of the book
[30:23]that I'll be interested to hear
[30:26]how that kind of sits with people in this hot bed
[30:30]of, you know, cosmetic surgery,
[30:33]deep plane facelifts that we're all going through,
[30:35]you know?
[30:36]Well, that's inspiring.
[30:38]I think so too.
[30:39]I don't think it was this big like feminist statement
[30:42]for her that I can tell, but again, she didn't, you know?
[30:48]And I think it's more just that we all deserve to see
[30:52]an array of people aging the way
[30:54]that we would deserve to see an array of different bodies
[30:57]and faces, but different ways of aging in public.
[31:01]And in Europe, you definitely, I think,
[31:03]get more diversity of that, like in terms of whose famous
[31:07]and the way that they look in the public eye.
[31:09]And so that could also have helped
[31:11]that she was just in a culture where it's a little bit more
[31:15]okay to be 70 and not, you know,
[31:18]like look like you're permanently in a wind tunnel
[31:20]or like that you and your daughter could be the same age
[31:23]or whatever, you know?
[31:24]Yeah.
[31:27]Yeah, any other questions?
[31:29]Yeah.
[31:30]I'm really brave of my audience
[31:31]because we're talking to people
[31:33]who can ask for their future even more good life
[31:35]and really have it in their head to the face.
[31:38]But when I'm well-tuned in that,
[31:39]is there anything from the same version
[31:41]that can really absorb into your daily life
[31:44]and your personality that you wanted to head in the right
[31:47]or to any thing that you were like,
[31:48]oh, I really want to do this on the page.
[31:51]Yeah.
[31:53]And some ways it was the same thing.
[31:54]I think that I have a tendency
[31:59]to be very controlled in my life,
[32:03]particularly in my romantic relationships.
[32:07]And I think a lot of women feel this way
[32:10]where it's like the worst thing that a man can call you
[32:12]is like crazy.
[32:15]And I always want to be the person that's like,
[32:19]looks like I'm taking the high road
[32:21]or like can't be bothered
[32:22]or like I'm not going to text you three times.
[32:25]And that sort of thing.
[32:26]And meanwhile, I'm writing about someone
[32:28]who is like jumping into this then to make a point
[32:32]and like having like screaming fights
[32:35]in front of nightclubs and in public
[32:38]and feeling loved and worthy of loved
[32:43]and also like that was just who she was.
[32:46]And that was how kind of everyone around
[32:48]her was acting.
[32:50]In some ways it's a bit immature
[32:53]and childish and very dramatic
[32:54]and probably very annoying to be around.
[32:57]And I don't want to be that person
[32:58]but I also think a little bit of that was good for me
[33:03]just to remember that in any part of my life
[33:06]that like it was okay if I throw a holiday party
[33:09]and like everyone knows that I was drunk at, you know,
[33:11]it's like, oh, caught me, you know,
[33:14]like I got drunk in my own Christmas party while,
[33:17]you know, but like there's part of me
[33:19]that gets like a little mortified
[33:21]by those lifts in composure.
[33:25]And so I think bringing a little bit of that like 70s European,
[33:32]you're just a European-ness.
[33:34]Like big feelings, big emotions.
[33:38]Just being big was really inspiring
[33:42]but also there were moments where I was like,
[33:45]there were ways in which I want to be
[33:47]when I want to feel things and ways in which I don't.
[33:50]But it was something I thought about all the time
[33:53]while I was working on the book.
[33:58]Yeah.
[34:00]I'm curious how protective
[34:03]you sort of feel of the subject
[34:05]and if you want to hurt something that's not flattering
[34:09]and even as a writer, you can't just mention it.
[34:12]I mean, I'm a journalist too.
[34:14]And I interviewed people and someone has said something
[34:16]and I thought, oh, I wish you wouldn't accept that.
[34:18]And I have to include this
[34:20]because even though it's clickbait,
[34:22]you didn't mean it that way or whatever.
[34:24]Have you, have you ever unearthed anything about
[34:29]a subject that you felt like you would be included?
[34:33]I think I'm gonna sound like a sociopath,
[34:35]but you're just kinda like Joe Diddy in.
[34:38]But no, I would include it.
[34:40]I mean, I think I'm a good journalist
[34:43]and that I'm not including anything that isn't
[34:46]on the record, sourced, backed up.
[34:50]I would never intentionally take something
[34:54]and put it in like a context that I know to be wrong,
[34:58]but no.
[35:00]If you say, and like, and we're writing a biography, I love, we're all flawed, right?
[35:06]And we all make mistakes and I love books where you can show a person as being fully human
[35:15]and making choices that you wouldn't always support.
[35:18]And so it's not like I'm looking to make anyone look bad or anything, but I also don't feel,
[35:25]I feel a lot of fondness for her, uh, for Jane Birken, but I also, I'm not her daughter,
[35:32]I don't, you know, I'm here to tell the story of her life. And obviously I am
[35:38]rooting for her, I have affection for who she is. I think she's important, but I'm more than happy,
[35:44]I think to show, you know, unflattering things, I think for any of my subjects and
[35:54]you know, I've had push back from people when I wanted to interview them saying like,
[35:59]I've read the other things, like, are you going to make me look bad? And it's like, I'm, no, I mean,
[36:05]I'm certainly, I always say like, I'm not, um, I'm not a mean spirited person. I never go into anything
[36:12]trying to make anyone look bad. And I think that I don't think I've ever made anyone look
[36:17]fully bad, but like, I do think that I want people to seem real.
[36:25]Yeah. Um, I'm just kind of curious going off a little bit of what you were talking about,
[36:29]you know, with glossy, yes, I'm really wise, it's like a big part of that, but it was more like
[36:33]about the company itself. And I wonder what's the difference between writing about that and
[36:38]writing out a straightforward biography. I mean, in some ways, they're similar, but,
[36:46]but different in terms of the way that you're telling the story. Like, for example, with
[36:53]glossy, I had, I lived in the same city. I was the same age more or less. I knew a lot of the
[37:00]people, not necessarily as friends, but I had interviewed them many times. I knew about the company
[37:08]from its earliest days. So I was like there and been there and had years of reporting and
[37:15]was kind of, you know, boots on the ground in a way. And this Birken book was different. Like,
[37:22]I didn't know Jane Birken. I never met her. And this was more drawn upon interviewing people and
[37:29]also just the great amount of like, you know, archival research of, you know, her past. And
[37:36]that's a really different way of viewing someone. But for example, with Jane Birken, we have her
[37:42]diaries. So there was a lot of like, in the moment emotional writing about how she felt about certain
[37:48]things. And I certainly didn't have that about like Emily Weiss for glossier. And, you know, it's like
[37:54]there's a new ish Mark Twain book. People write about people that are that they never knew that
[38:00]have been long gone all the time. And there's different ways of kind of telling people's stories. And
[38:06]I think each person telling the story of someone else is going to come up with a slightly
[38:11]different version. There's always a point in writing where I kind of like lose my mind and start
[38:17]having these like, what is truth? Like, who tells their own best story? Like, do I know the truth
[38:23]of my own light? Like, I start kind of like spiraling out. And that's when I know it's like, okay,
[38:29]you're like really in it. You need to like take a deep breath and like just get through the next
[38:34]chapter. But like, you know, those are big questions that I think every biography or like,
[38:41]you know, nonfiction book tries to answer. Yeah.
[38:54]They were published in French. I speak French, so I was able to like read them and then kind of
[38:59]translate them and put them in. And there were certain things that I was able to like,
[39:11]there's just a lot of archives in France, like state archives. So there was all kinds of like
[39:18]TV interviews and stuff that were sort of only available or like private archives where someone was
[39:25]collecting certain kinds of like fashion or whatever to see. Like, clothes she was wearing or,
[39:32]you know, whatever. And then there were all sorts of other things of just even like watching
[39:38]movies from the era that she wasn't in, but informed that time. So there was just like a lot of
[39:45]different layers of research. Do you even have to have permission to consider writing for a
[39:51]no, I would have had to have permission to re print a certain amount of them. So that's all part
[39:57]of the publishing process of like deciding how much
[40:00]you can quote and use and how much you're analyzing it and writing about it.
[40:10]Anything else?
[40:11]Yeah.
[40:12]Just going to go up with her last question and what,
[40:15]can you mention it early in your preamble about sort of the more
[40:20]...
[40:21]Preamble is a nice word for it.
[40:22]I hope it wasn't your boring.
[40:23]No, no, it's great.
[40:24]It was great.
[40:25]I needed it.
[40:26]It was a book.
[40:27]Yeah.
[40:28]I just came out.
[40:29]Yeah.
[40:30]So what were something mentioned in finances?
[40:33]Some of those more complex darker parts of her personality.
[40:39]I think she made some decisions that I personally would not have made.
[40:47]And I think don't age well in terms of motherhood and her daughters,
[40:51]especially the way that we see childhood now,
[40:54]is opposed to like the early 70s where she was like,
[40:58]I want to go out and I want to be close to my daughter.
[41:01]So I will go out with my daughter physically in a basket by my side.
[41:05]There's another time when she throws another one of her daughters,
[41:09]a 12th birthday party at a nightclub at midnight,
[41:13]so they can all dance.
[41:15]And it's like I can see how those decisions were made.
[41:22]And I think a lot of it was a reaction to her own sort of parents,
[41:27]slightly colder, like Edwardian parenting style,
[41:33]or it's like you have nanny's and you go to boarding school
[41:36]and even though her family was close,
[41:38]it was not that same.
[41:39]Like I'm cooking for you and I'm there by your side
[41:42]and I'm picking up from school.
[41:44]And so I think she wanted that, but it was kind of, you know,
[41:47]she's born the first year with a baby boomer.
[41:49]So I think it was that thing.
[41:51]She's close and aged my own parents and wanting to have it all.
[41:56]And that meant not sacrificing anything,
[42:01]but of course that doesn't, you know, work.
[42:04]And so I think that there are many different incidents where she allowed
[42:10]her daughters or her partners to make decisions
[42:16]that either I think probably made her really unhappy
[42:19]or weren't great parenting decisions.
[42:23]But then also like things about her career and vision,
[42:27]but I don't think that I think she was not motivated by money,
[42:31]or by ambition.
[42:33]I think she was very interested in like love and relationships
[42:38]and pursuing her own version of artistic greatness.
[42:42]I mean, this has been a long Q&A.
[42:51]So if you guys are questioned out, I will very much understand.
[42:54]Yeah.
[42:55]I mean, there's definitely push back when you want,
[43:10]when, you know, you want to write a story about someone who died recently.
[43:15]You know, there's definitely some comments or hearing there
[43:19]from representatives or people that like it's too soon.
[43:24]Which I understand, but I also have,
[43:29]I like respect the work that I wanted to do and the story that I wanted to tell.
[43:33]So that doesn't deter me.
[43:38]I think also I'm kind of a nobody in France,
[43:43]which is not, I'm not trying to put myself down,
[43:45]but it's like, you know, journalism doesn't always,
[43:49]it literally doesn't translate.
[43:51]Like, you know, I might write for places that are well-known in America
[43:55]and have us be able to say like, I write for the New York Times.
[43:59]I wrote this book about this person.
[44:01]And it just doesn't mean the same thing there.
[44:04]And so it's sort of like, why should we,
[44:06]well, reasons should we have to talk to you?
[44:08]Why does America need its own biography of Jane Birkin?
[44:12]Like, we have her.
[44:13]She belongs to us.
[44:14]And so I think there's a bit of that.
[44:17]But also there are plenty of people that are very willing to talk.
[44:21]You know, and it was,
[44:23]I was talking to everyone from people that are like,
[44:27]other journalists who had interviewed her before,
[44:30]or people who worked with her professionally,
[44:36]or people who were neighbors,
[44:39]or even just like, usually at the nose who knew her socially
[44:43]is like a fellow actress.
[44:45]So I take kind of like a, you know, leave no stone unturned kind of thing.
[44:51]Everyone that you talk to will often have someone else that you should try
[44:56]and you can't make anyone talk to you that's not going to.
[45:00]it's just a lot of like casting a really wide net
[45:03]and being assertive, like all remind people
[45:07]that the project is still happening
[45:09]and if they change their mind, but I'm also not,
[45:12]I never want to pop up in someone's inbox
[45:15]and have someone be like, oh, not you again, you know,
[45:18]happens to all of us and I guess annoying, but yeah.
[45:21]But I think, I mean, something like,
[45:24]some of the celebrities were fun to talk to,
[45:27]like, usually at the nose talking about how she felt,
[45:30]you know, Jane Birkin's frailty,
[45:33]like the last time she saw her on the red carpet
[45:36]and then found out that she had a stroke
[45:39]and that, you know, no one really knew that,
[45:42]you know, things like that that feel very intimate
[45:45]are interesting and things like just like talking
[45:47]to Dakota Johnson who had played a version of a character
[45:51]that Jane Birkin had played in the bigger splash,
[45:54]which was kind of a remake of Lopi scene,
[45:56]which is a great movie that Jane Birkin was in
[45:58]and she was like, I owe my bangs to Jane Birkin.
[46:01]Like, so it's kind of like all, you know,
[46:03]you can have things that are like quite vulnerable
[46:06]and sad and things that are like a bit like
[46:09]that resonated, you know.
[46:11]And I guess it helps when it's like someone very famous
[46:14]telling you that like you remember, but yeah.
[46:16]Thank you guys so much for being such a great audience for this.
[46:28]Solo expedition.
[46:30]Taking the time that you're easily holding your own.
[46:33]Oh.
[46:34]If you have a few more copies, if you haven't gotten one
[46:36]and I'm sure she will sign your copy,
[46:38]something at all.
[46:39]And anything at all.
[46:40]I can personalize, yeah.
[46:42]Obviously, thank you so much.
[46:43]Of course, should I take this off?
[46:45]Yeah.
[46:46]Yeah.