THANK YOU TO MY HATERS

I mean it truly I do

In the pre-sex positivity, pre-Paris Hilton days, being a woman who talked about sex with a recognizable last name was like having a scarlet letter on your chest. I want to thank the haters referenced here who talked shit for motivating me. I may not have been grateful at the time, but I sure as fuck am now.

When I was making my documentary, Pretty Things, I was part of an all-girl band called Hot Lunch, for which I was a singer and songwriter. This is 2001/2002 early indie-sleaze scene in NYC. We made our own beats and sang 4 part harmonies, with songs about being “Big in Japan” and “Ladies who lunch” —the Shangri-Las meets electroclash.

With my bandmate in Hot Lunch, Glynnis McDaris and my trusty video camera in hand.

By 2003, I was married and living full time in LA, deep into filming Pretty Things, which had received a few prestigious grants for funding. This was no easy task, as getting grants to research/document burlesque/ gender studies/ANYTHING related to sexuality was extremely challenging 20+ years ago (tbh not sure much has changed.) I had just applied for a competitive fellowship with strong letters of support. As I mentioned in PINUPS, academia was the world I wanted (and wanted this work) to belong to. I spent my days in dusty archives and loved every second of it. This particular fellowship meant as much to me as being nominated for an Oscar would have.

Meanwhile…my Hot Lunch bandmates were planning a gig at a party they were throwing in New York. While waiting for the next round of filming with my burlesque queens to begin, I flew back East for it. I’d directed an arty music video for a track we had, Syncopation Condensation, produced by the legendary producer, Mario Caldato Jr., of then Beastie Boys fame, aka Mario C can’t front on that. We projected the film at the party, and proceeded to dance all night, not thinking too much about the several professional flash cameras that were taking photos of the festivities. 

Lizzi Bougatsos and Brian DeGraw of Gang Gang Dance performing, at front. I’m sitting with my dear departed friend (may he forever rest in power) skateboarder and actor, Harold Hunter (best known for Kids) in the back, watching.

Somehow, it gets into the press that the video I’d made was softcore porn! At most we were shown briefly changing clothes in the all pink Upper East Side dressing room of my former Sotheby’s boss and eating pork ribs. Total art school girl video that wouldn’t even make it to Only Fans. But Page Six and the National Enquirer both picked up the story, reporting that “Samuel Goldwyn’s granddaughter is making porn” and something to the effect of him rolling in his grave.

As I was reeling from the public beat down, a well respected family friend with a prolific career and important awards to his name, who had written one of the letters of support for my fellowship, told me that I lost out on it, in large part due to said bad press. I remember exactly where we were (a Hollywood Oscar party, standing by the bar) when he delivered the news and these lines: “You need to start dressing more buttoned up and stop talking about sex.” 

So I doubled down on talking about sex. 

But the incident also made me stop singing for almost 20 years. Prior to this, singing brought me so much joy and healing— joining in harmony with other voices, moving energy through sound. The public humiliation shut me down. Subconsciously I equated that doing something I enjoyed simply for fun was an activity that would make me even more of a target for people looking to add one more thing to their list of reasons to hate me (i.e. famous last name, wealthy family, talks about sexuality, likes to sing.) It wasn’t until 2020 when a friend suggested that I take singing lessons for fun that I even remembered how empowering it was to use my voice.

In the late 90s, early 2000s, Google was pretty niche. It wasn’t common to search for publicity reports or information about people, let alone yourself. By summer 2005, post-HBO premiere and broken toe, that had changed. I decided to Google myself, to read what people were saying about Pretty Things. It was mostly positive, but there was one article, written by a woman who made me sound like I was setting back the women's movement fifty years. I don’t ever like to disparage other women but… this bitch had it in for me. 

Post googling myself, on a valium, my toes taped together

Looking over the article now, almost 20 years later, her criticism doesn’t age well. Her tone—Goldwyn’s Third Wave feminist point of view, which projects onto the octogenarian burlesque strippers a glamorous sheen: For Goldwyn…burlesque is “liberating”—sounds like the arguments I would have with people early on while making the film, usually an older generation of white feminists who were neither intersectional in their inclusion of race or people who worked in the sex industry. The writer was also catty about everything from my physical features to being a multi-hyphenate i.e., “...given Goldwyn’s membership in the Hollywood elite, not to mention her Twiggyish beauty…Goldwyn, the granddaughter of Sam Goldwyn and a jewelry designer-costume archivist-writer-director, spent almost a decade making Pretty Things.”

It’s funny now to think of having to fit in a singular descriptive box when everyone is a dj/ influencer/chef. I worried about HBO not taking me seriously as a documentary filmmaker if they found out that I had a fashion profile only to be told that they were thrilled. It wasn’t typical for the fashion press to cover docs and my working in more than one field would only help bring attention to the project.  But to this aforementioned critic, it was a signal I was a dilettante, dabbling in the subject I’d spent (in her words) a decade on.

Signing a copy of Pretty Things with Joan Torino at my side.

With my beloved late Gussie Gross, burlesque costume designer. Wearing a civilian coat she designed and later gave me.

Back then, in my late twenties, I was destroyed by her review. In the aftermath, a friend in the industry gave me a valium and the sound advice: don't read reviews and don’t ever google yourself. But it was too late— I allowed a hater to make me lose confidence in my work, even though the documentary was popular amongst other women, who, like me, were exploring their sexuality, claiming their boobs and brains. I was in a deep dark place, secretly dealing with a mentally ill spouse, receiving public attention but letting go of opportunities because of how they might affect my marriage. Many years later I can re-contextualize the negative article as a formative event that caused me to fear the limelight.

Wearing Gussie’s coat in an outtake for Elle Magazine, 2005. Photograph by Hussein Katz.

I realize this may sound bitter but, now I can look back and have the last laugh. I mean, who the fuck thinks they have it all figured out in their 20s? I certainly wasn’t claiming to, but at least I wasn’t afraid of putting myself out there. So thank you to the haters who helped me arrive where I am now— someone who still isn’t afraid to say fuck it and put it all out there, haters be damned. 

Please enjoy a mini soundtrack to this period…

ICYMI: