It bounced around like a rolled up $50 bill backstage at a fashion shoot between Sundance, Berlinale, Edinburgh and Melbourne. But did I have the wisdom to see it? Nope. I wrote off RJ Cutler’s The September Issue, deciding it wasn’t for me and that my time would be better spent seeing something from somewhere besides America.
The UK wide September 11 release of The September Issue is going to be one of the big doc theatrical launches of the year, and I’ll tell you why: my barber.
He’s a respectable chap, a film lover (but not film fighter) who is, at heart, clueless. And even he knew about this film, this something-something about this Anna Wintour ex-pat British lady who was the metal monolith of emotion that The Devil Wears Prada hung on. He knew she was Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, and one of the most erudite and highly venerated fashionistas to live since Coco.
He was taking his wife to see this. His wife was planning to take her girlfriends to go see this. My sister has seen it not once but twice at various festivals. If he was raring to see it, my god, perhaps a lot more people than I thought would be interested in a documentary.
So we at Sheffield Doc/Fest decided to make The September Issue our ‘Doc/Fest Presents’ film at the Showroom Cinema on September 8. The screening will feature a bona fide Q&A with director RJ Cutler. And no, he’s not coming to Sheffield. I’m going to video Skype him in-cinema and project his bearded chops on screen in front of the audience and chat ever so casually about the film; how it would have been easier to get access to JD Salinger; and what his impression of Wintour was when the camera was off. I can’t wait.
(Skyping guests and directors into cinemas is the best thing since spliced film for us, and I heartily encourage any and every cinema from here to Mark Cousin’s house to install similar technology if you want future rumps on seats. We did this with Rupert Murray when The End of the Line screened and audiences love it.)
Early on in the doc, i’ts made clear that Anna Wintour is not ‘available to everyone’. She lives behind big ass sunnies, thinks smiling is like smoking, and has the Caesar effect as she makes designers like Jean-Paul Gautier quiver when she nonchalantly suggests ‘more colour’ in a newly conceived collection.
And why should she be available to everyone? Wintour is astute, acute, confident and sure, she’s an arrogant mofo. I am the first to say that arrogance is the flower of ignorance, but in Wintour’s case she seems to be the arm attached to what economists call the Invisible Hand theory in that she influences practically all fashion that we wear today.
Wintour’s attention to detail, her belief in her own instincts and the endless shuffling of magazine layouts is a process I found fascinating. Last month’s Bruno tried to expose the very insulated world of fashion as being inspid, almost asinine. And in many ways it is a world that, paradoxically, thrives on public acceptance yet does not want to engage with criticism. But there is nothing frivolous about Wintour herself.
You find yourself thankful it’s not you at the wheel. The pressure to be ‘right’, to be steely, to be utterly sure of yourself is a talent that is learned and re-learned every time you walk out the door. Seeing her daily life (and a bit of her home life too) we soon understand why she is known as ‘Nuclear’ Wintour and why no one seems to do anything around her but agree.
Except perhaps for Creative Director, Grace Coddington. A stunning model in her time, Coddington is a fellow Brit now putting her two-rupees into the fashion world with a deeply rooted philosophy in what is ‘right’ in fashion and style. Coddington’s elegance is real and it’s her humanism which, on occasion, steals the show over Wintour’s monotone veneer.
There are some delicious moments in The September Issue but to me it ends up being a doc about women as leaders in a world run by media brokers who only care about a bottom line.
But what will draw the crowds are the wonderful clothes – their colours and contours and the flash bulbs and the names. The film walks the line in that it doesn’t give too much away about this illusive and influential world and, really, we don’t want it to. The mystique is held at bay enough for us to imagine the fabric and cut of this strange world. For that reason, the film is going to be as influential as the magazine.
Sheffield Doc/Fest are presenting a special screening of The September Issue on Tuesday September 8 at the Showroom Cinema. Check out the official site for more info.
