"A True Indie"
Celebrating Bill Cunningham—Sans Cunningham—With a Doc and a Drink
Bill Cunningham, as just about everyone in the fashion world knows, crisscrosses Manhattan on his bike, shooting stylish people on the streets by day and on the social circuit by night. But the 81-year-old New York Times photographer and his trademark blue smock were nowhere in evidence last night at the Tribeca Grand, where MAC hosted a screening of Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary directed by Richard Press that offers an unprecedented view of the famously devoted and solitary—not to mentioned beloved—examiner of the way we dress.
"He doesn't like being praised," Paper magazine editor Kim Hastreiter explained before the screening. When the film played at MoMA in March, she added, "he wouldn't come in. He only shot the people arriving. He's a true indie." (He's also a true friend of Hastreiter's, having turned her from a Madison Avenue shopgirl into a magazine editor when he helped get her a job at The SoHo News in 1978.)
Maria Cornejo, Terence Koh, Prabal Gurung, and a handful of other "kids," as Cunningham would have affectionately called them, came by for a cocktail and a peek at the flick, which opens in March. That seems a long time to wait, until you consider that Press and his producer, Philip Gefter, spent ten years making it—eight of them convincing Cunningham to participate. "I think eventually we just wore him down," Press said. "He's never seen the movie, and probably won't. He knows what's in it. He's given us his blessing. But he's just like, 'You kids, I'm glad you made a movie. I'm too busy to see it.' "
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