By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
"Dare We Call it Love?" Levi Not Hot on Thomson's Kidman Obsession
Looker editor and Film Snob godhead Lawrence Levi recently spent what appears to be 284 pages too many with David Thomson, whose latest critical biography to rattle down the assembly line, Nicole Kidman, earned not just a few sniffs in last weekend’s New York Times Book Review:
His obsession clouds his thinking. He seems offended, even hurt, that Kidman would stoop so low as to do a commercial for Chanel No. 5 or go seminude in an Italian GQ spread when she was already an Oscar winner. He clucks disapprovingly about her choice of lovers; they don’t “seem especially substantial or rewarding,” possibly because “she meets only famous or half-famous people.” He imagines the non-obsessed will want to hear his bizarre fantasies about casting Kidman in remakes of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and François Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid, or his dream — recounted over three excruciating pages — about stumbling across his beloved in a Paris brothel. (She’s wearing “a very revealing white brassiere, a size or two too small,” as she cavorts with a Gestapo officer and an “elderly Chinaman.”)
Wait a second–I cannot tell: Are you shaking your head or just shuddering? At any rate, go wash your hands, grab a biohazard suit and get a peek at a few more squirm-worthy Thomson bons mot at the Book Review.
UPDATE: Also check out Levi chatting about Thomson and Kidman about two-thirds of the way through this podcast with NYT Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus.