(46) First We Take Manhattan

(46) First We Take Manhattan. As the Crowd Designer outside a couple of nightclubs, in the feature film First We Take Manhattan directed by Guy Frenkel.

Here I play an attitudinous wisp whose job is to decide who gets to enter an over-hyped Manhattan nightclub. I wield a painfully exclusive guest-list at those velvet ropes, where the clubgoers queue up in eager hope. (One should spend a sweaty half-hour struggling to gain entry to any club worth relaxing in.) As evidenced first by the shimmery bronze skirt and then by the pink-and-purple ensemble, I’m no common-or-garden door-whore queen, if you please, but rather an actual “Crowd Designer”, excuse me … though in both scenes, the crowd’s respect for me is revealed to be somewhat lacking.

The closing shot, when I get my bottom pinched so respectfully, was filmed outside the front doors of the venerable Roseland Ballroom on 52nd Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue—a grand, cavernous party palace for decades, until it finally closed those doors in 2014. When that building first opened in 1957, it was described as having “purple-and-cerise tent-like décor that creates a definite harem effect”. By the time we filmed there, that purple-and-cerise décor had vanished, sadly; but maybe our wardrobe department was channelling some faint ghost of it in my outfit, which centred on an understated day-glo pink faux-leather jacket (vintage ’80s from Kensington Market). (1’10”)
(See video here.)

 

(This video is also on Vimeo and YouTube.)