Gill

The Empire of the Sun [Steven Spielberg]

Lit-hol Alex

Extra lemons.

We liked bizarre people because we didn't really take ourselves that seriously, and we were amused about how seriously everybody else seemed to take themselves. That was our approach at that point.
We rode around in that gray Mercedes, staying up all night after the discotheques closed at four. Sometimes I'd drive, but Edie loved to drive herself... it was like riding a horse. She told me all about her family. She seemed to love her mother... it was almost "the poor dear... the poor thing is going to be so worried." CHUCK WEIN

*

Edie got into spending her inheritance. It was a time when the discotheques were opening - like Ondine - and people were beginning to live up in places like that. We often went stoned drunk to a place called L'Avventura to have these gigantic diners. Edie loved salmon. And extra lemons on her Bloody Marys. All that extra this and extra that. She ate vast quantities of shrimp. Shrimp and salad, stuff you would think was healthy. But she had four of whatever it was.

I quit my job at the Right Bank restaurant to be her chauffeur. She paid me one hundred dollars a week. We had first met in Cambridge when she was studying sculpture and had gotten to be friends in a curious non-lover way. It was a bit of a strange arrangement to be her chauffeur, but it seemed okay to me. Then I went pow into a taxi in front of the Seagram building and cracked up her Mercedes. I felt so sad, because she loved that car. But it didn't faze her in the least. She didn't get angry. We began travelling in limousines. TOM GOODWIN

EDIE: AN AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

Copyright Jean Stein and George Plimpton 1982

Tiny apartment

Edie moved from her grandmother's late that fall of 1964 to an apartment in the East Sixties between Fifth and Madison. Her mother came to town and took Edie shopping to furnish the apartment. Suddenly this empty room was full of the sort of ornaments prosperous people have who've been living in the same place for years and years... solid crystal paperweights, great fur scatter rugs, fabulous embroided pillows, one of those enormous leather rhinoceros from where?... Abercrombie and Fitch, wasn't it? Elaborate cigarette lighters, really heavy and solid. Most of them never worked; Edie never bothered to fill them. She didn't have affection for any of these things: a lot of them she didn't even understand. None of this was collected with any love or preference, but just provided with a snap of fingers. She was always sending to Reuben's restaurant... blinis and caviar, always caviar. It was almost a game... everything had to be the ultimate. I guess she was extremely spoiled, because she was given whatever she wanted... a leopard-skin coat that must have come from her parents unless it was from an unkown admirer. A real leopard-skin coat! About the only thing that was her own was a huge horse above her bed that she'd drawn on the wall with pencil.

It was a tiny apartment. Sometimes the garbage was pretty messy in the kitchenette. She would let it go pretty far before she took emergency measures... someone would volunteer to reach into the sink and unclog it.

There was a lot of acid around then... LSD... the first days of it, and most of those people down from Cambridge knew Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. In the refrigerator they used to keep little brown vials of liquid to drop on a sugar cube. Edie would drive her Mercedes on acid! I thought that was the most daredevil thing she'd ever been to... I mean, she'd go up on curbs sometimes, and she'd never pay much attention to traffic lights. It was like everything else: her own rules applied. DANNY FIELDS

EDIE: AN AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

Copyright Jean Stein and George Plimpton 1982

I remember when I lost my mind

Edie was living at our grandmother's apartment at Seventy-first and Park. She saw uptown people. But she felt awkward being at our grandmother's and her bizarre habits were a great strain on the household - the servants were going bananas. Edie would take off on these enormous spending sprees: her closets and drawers were crammed full. I've never seen so many clothes in my life! Just incredible- Edie udes the place rather the way we all did... staying there the way you stay at a club... but it got out of hand. SAUCIE SEDGWICK

*

Edie had always dressed to conform to my mother's taste - little Peck and Peck costumes with navy blue sweaters - but in New York one day I suddenly saw her in this little red fox fur waistcoat with a matching hat and huge peacock-feather earrings, some kind of outlandish bag, black stockings, and high-heeled boots, none of which was in fashion then at all. Iwas very shocked. I said to her, "Is this the way you want to go around?" She said, "I think it's fun." SAUCIE SEDGWICK

EDIE: AN AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

Copyright Jean Stein and George Plimpton 1982

Sugestiona.

"Prepárate, Bogart, he encontrado una chica que puede ser tan cínica como tú."