10/10
Bill Cunningham can’t be bought. He is there to observe and to take pictures,
not to consume the fancy meal or mingle with the celebrities; a line which most
individuals in his position would most likely blur. Bill has a section of the Sunday New York Times
Style section where he will point out a new clothing trend he sees on the
streets, what people were wearing at a recent evening gala, or just profile an
interesting looking person. I used to
skip over this section every week; however, now that I know about Bill from the
excellent documentary Bill Cunningham New York, I will
never skip over this section again.
Even though Bill is now 80 years old, he still dons his
signature blue jacket every day and rides his bicycle all over Manhattan
searching and taking pictures. If it is
raining, he will duct tape a garbage bag over his shirt. He is searching for interesting clothing and
it does not matter if a celebrity is wearing them or not. A major separation between Bill and other
photographers is he is just fine not taking a celebrity picture; he does not
care at all about a person’s fame level, just in their choice of clothing.
Bill is usually the first to notice a new trend. While frequenting street corners, crosswalks,
and the outside of department stores, he will immediately stop his bike
(sometimes in the middle of traffic) to snap a few shots. During the first week of August, he happened
to notice that a lot of New Yorkers were wearing black and made that a his
column’s focus. Bill has become a celebrity
on his bicycle as he cruises the streets and there are many influential people,
who Bill could care less about, who crave his attention. There are interviews from Anna Wintour, Tom
Wolfe, and other very powerful people in the fashion industry who will also
take time out of their day to find out what Bill knows.
Even though he has the power to affect clothing trends,
until very recently, Bill lived in Carnegie Hall as one of the few remaining
visual artist tenants before the final lot of them were evicted to new
premises. He slept on a cot in what
could be described as closet space surrounded by dozens of file cabinets
containing his life’s work. If Bill
thinks he has seen something before, he is pretty sure he can go back and find
it. One example is of a designer who
revealed a new collection only for Bill to find a 1972 photo montage of an
eerily similar line.
Bill Cunningham New York is a documentary I was not eager to
see because I assumed it was just about the fashion world. I was completely wrong. It is not about fashion, it is just about
Bill and his routine which is completely absorbing and perhaps the best
documentary of the year. It is also the
second documentary this year dealing with the New York Times as it was released
just before Page One: Inside the New York Times. Now that I have seen them both, there is a
reason the story on Bill Cunningham is on the short list of 15 documentaries
which are eligible for this year’s Best Documentary Oscar. If it happens to win, it will not matter very
much to Bill. He will be doing what he
does every day, riding his bicycle to find the next interesting pair of
shoes.
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