The Paris Issue
How to travel to the City of Light without actually leaving your couch. Plus: Lisa Bonos' beef with "Twisters."
I’m slightly embarrassed to report that I have Olympics FOMO. I was lucky to visit Paris last July, and if I could go back in time, I’d hit up the vendors already selling official merch and score, at the very least, a hat. It would’ve been a crassly commercial yet authentic souvenir from the site of the 2024 summer games. From Paris.
(I know, I know, I can buy online. But it’s not the same!)
At the time, I was on a whirlwind tour of hotspots from Monet’s glorious Water Lillies at the Musée de l'Orangerie to the Seine-adjacent Shakespeare and Company, where I slipped a copy of my baseball book in the shelves. I got lost in the Marais and bought a painting of poppies — in honor of my daughter’s name — from an artist in Montmarte. I jumped on a river cruise and took a macaron-making class. I discovered shabby-chic shops stocked with vintage clocks and maps and prints of artichokes, among other curios. I ordered the sole meunière at Le Dôme. I went to a little grocery store in the 7th and bought cheese and a bag of roasted chicken-flavored Lay’s potato chips, then found a spot on the grass at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and watched the sun set and the crowd roar when the tower’s spectacular light show began. I took the Metro around the city and observed Parisians’ studied nonchalance — their breezy dresses, comfortable shoes, everyday tote bags and Rachel Green-style hair claws. While Paris is the fashion capital of the world, they were not dressed to excess. Their clothes communicated ease. They played with their children in the Luxembourg Gardens. They sat at cafes and dipped frites in mayonnaise and smoked cigarettes like chimneys — on-brand, I suppose, for a young Parisian nine-to-fiver. Non, not for this tourist, who’s only ever lived in American cities with smoking bans.
Whenever I go to Paris, I always feel like an outsider, which is OK by me. Paris is a shrine to beauty, and for many, it is the place that they live and work. I am content to pass through from time to time and snap uncool selfies with croissants, and should you attend an Olympian sporting event — say, tennis phenom Coco Gauff going for gold — I’ll be watching from afar, wishing that I were you! (Could you please bring me back a hat?)
But, you know, I don’t actually have to leave my house to experience the excitement of the Paris Olympics. I can “travel” thanks to the immediacy of social media and NBC’s wall-to-wall coverage. (See: Drinks With Broads’ streamlined event schedule here.) I can also explore the Paris that has long inspired the artists and dreamers among us. The City of Light that exists in books, and films, and television, and our fantasies. Below, my essential Paris List, comprised mainly of cultural offerings from outsiders like me.
THE FILMS
Funny Face (1957): A pre-Holly Golightly Audrey Hepburn plays a winsome bookseller who finds herself moonlighting as a high-fashion model, but would rather wear all-black and talk philosophy in Paris’ bohemian salons. Oui oui, Hepburn and Fred Astaire make an intensely awkward match! But thanks to Audrey’s star wattage and Stanley Donen’s stylish direction, Paris has never looked chicer.
French Kiss (1995): This is my stepdad’s all-time favorite romantic comedy. Meg Ryan, an Audrey for the 1990s, channels a prim schoolteacher who flies to France to confront her cheating fiancé. On the plane, she sits next to a French thief (Kevin Kline) and detests his louche attitude. The twosome dials up the hijinks when Kline sneaks a stolen necklace into Ryan’s bag. I suggest pairing this effervescent rom-com with a St-Germain spritz.
Before Sunset (2004): If you worship Richard Linklater’s iconic Before trilogy, then you, my friend, are a genuine romantic and/or an Ethan Hawke superfan, both overlapping circles on a Venn diagram. The second movie of the trio reunites Hawke’s Jesse with Julie Delpy’s Celine, nine years after they first met while taking a train to Vienna. He still talks like an earnest philosophy major; she remains wry and radiant and oh-so-French. He’s supposed to catch a flight back to the States, but when he follows her aboard that boat down the Seine — the golden afternoon sun shining upon them — well, you just know he’s gonna miss that plane.
THE TV
Emily in Paris: Who, me? A ringarde? You’re not wrong! I shamelessly adore the frothy, infamous, wildly popular and polarizing Netflix series starring Lily Collins as Emily Cooper, an American expat. Emily is fun. And perky, often annoyingly so. She creates drama wherever she goes, but not in a malicious way, in an “oops, I didn’t mean to make your boyfriend fall in love with me!” way. Keep your boyfriend away from Emily. Yet the scenery is lush and the supporting cast is fabulous, especially Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (Emily’s boss, Sylvie), Ashley Park (her ride-or-die, Mindy) and Lucas Bravo (her chef-with-benefits, Gabriel).
Call My Agent!: Now, if you want a real Parisian experience, look no further than the French comedy-drama (original name: Dix pour cent) that debuted in 2015 and was eventually acquired by Netflix. It follows four agents at a talent firm who take the helm after their founder dies. They compete with one another while placating needy clients and putting out fires small and large. Call My Agent! is filled with messy people, and unlike Emily’s technicolor escapades, the show captures the grayer sides of Parisian life. But it’s addictively entertaining and will make you feel like an insider.
Building the Eiffel Tower: I geeked out over the recent PBS hourlong special about the construction of the beloved Belle Époque landmark. Finished just ahead of the 1889 World’s Fair, the tower broke the record for the tallest skyscraper on the planet. How did engineers pull off such a feat, and in just two years, two months and five days? That story is riveting and inspiring all at once.
THE BOOKS
I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: I knew Glynnis MacNicol during my New York media days and always liked her and her writing. She resembles an Old Hollywood movie star, the kind who sports glamorous caftans and suffers no fools. When I saw that she’d written a memoir about her holiday in Paris, I immediately ordered a copy and devoured it in two days. It’s smart and languid and interesting. It made me want a chocolat chaud, Glynnis’ beverage of choice.
Fiction-wise, to any Francophile I’ll recommend Ruth Reichl’s The Paris Novel, which will make you very, very hungry (Ruth is the former editor of Gourmet), as well as Adriana Herrera’s swoony, spicy historical romance A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, which is staged against the backdrop of the 1889 Paris Exposition.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT TWISTERS
Last Friday, I dragged my friend Lisa Bonos, a Washington Post tech reporter and former dating columnist, to the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco’s Marina District for a screening of the tornado-themed blockbuster starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as swashbuckling storm chasers. A ripped Powell, who I have decided is a movie star, looks like he’s having the time of his life. We reflexively cackled when Maura Tierney, who plays Edgar-Jones’ mom, invites Powell’s alter ego, Tyler Owens, to “stay in the guest house.” At one point, Lisa nearly jumped out of her chair — those computer-generated F5s are no joke. “I probably wouldn’t have gone to see Twisters if you hadn’t invited me,” she admits. “But my rule is: Always say yes when Erin Carlson invites me somewhere. And besides, it’s Glen Powell Summer.” All told:
I am pleased to publish Lisa’s one big grievance with the popcorn thriller. (Spoilers below.)
The movie was fun and a tad terrifying. My only beef was with the ending: How can you have a running-through-the-airport scene that doesn’t end with a kiss?! It defies the laws of cinema and nature. Two beautiful movie stars who began as enemies, just chased tornadoes together and lived to tell about it. Next comes the smooch, right? Wrong! And it’s so wrong. X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, shows us swoon-worthy evidence that Powell and his co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones did film a goodbye kiss, it was just inexplicably cut from the film.
Even if they were regular folks, they probably would’ve ended up in each others’ arms: Research shows that living through a stressful or painful experience with someone increases trust and bonds you together. (If you want to try this in your own life and the skies are clear, take a date to an amusement park or scary movie — it’ll probably work!)
Almost on cue, as we left the theater, the San Francisco winds were blowing wildly — a storm wasn’t brewing, but the evening did remind me of a harrowing experience I’d had 20 years ago. I’d been visiting my college boyfriend in Missouri, and as we were driving from his family’s house on the Lake of the Ozarks to the Kansas City airport, a summer storm came out of nowhere. (Cue the Midwestern aphorism: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”) It wasn’t a tornado, but it was terrifying! We sat in silence as the rain pounded down and wind whipped. I had no cellphone reception and momentarily worried I wasn’t going to be able to call my parents to say goodbye. It was that kind of storm! At one point, my boyfriend stopped the car to pull branches from the road so that we could keep driving. Someone died in that storm! Thankfully, we survived.
That day, I saw a side of my design major beau that had never emerged in our life on UCLA’s campus. You better believe I kissed him goodbye at the airport.
I was equally confused by the Twisters grand finale. Come on! Give the people what they want! The movie’s director, Lee Isaac Chung, has explained his no-kiss decision to Entertainment Weekly, saying, "I feel like audiences are in a different place now in terms of wanting a kiss or not wanting a kiss. I actually tried the kiss, and it was very polarizing — and it's not because of their performance of the kiss."
"I think it's a better ending,” Chung continued. “And I think that people who want a kiss within it, they can probably assume that these guys will kiss someday. And maybe we can give them privacy for that. In a way, this ending is a means to make sure that we really wrap things up with it in a celebratory, good way."
His statement reads like PR-speak. I want to know the real story. How did the studio, Universal Pictures, sign off on this? Methinks they saw the recent study showing that Gen Z prefers less sex and more friendship on screen.
“First thing I yelled after the movie ended: I THINK THIS PASSED THE BECHDEL TEST,” my pal Ashleigh Bergh Duggan, a Millennial, recalled when I spoke to her yesterday. Now that is something to celebrate.
Did you see Twisters? I want to hear your thoughts, and any and all recommendations you have regarding Paris.
Yours in “If you feel it, chase it!,”
Erin
I am always trying to make everyone I know watch Call My Agent! It’s so good!! The two Camilles 😅
So my take on the kiss/no-kiss decision was that, since we started the movie with her former boyfriend's death, it might have rubbed people the wrong way to see her kiss somebody else at the end of the movie. Even though it has been FIVE YEARS between those two events for her, it was only two hours for the audience?