stephanieNY

I discovered Grey Gardens this week. Do people know about this? I didn't, but what I've read about it tells me that people know about it. I'm going to write about it now as if you've never heard of it.

OK, so an article about Drew Barrymore showed up on my Google News page and for some reason caught my eye. She's in a new HBO movie about these 2 women who were the subjects of a documentary in 1975. The documentary is apparently a "cult classic". I found it in segments on YouTube and just finished it all last night. These women are FASCINATING. The mother-daughter pair were former socialites of New York City and lived together in this old mansion (Grey Gardens) in East Hampton, that they let decay around them over the years as they turned a little nutty.

The documentary was so well done - no narrative and almost no intended interaction with the subjects by the photographers/filmmakers...just the two of them, raw, by themselves at their home. In the movie, they had raccoons living in the attic that by the end were coming down to the upstairs level...for the loaves of Wonder bread that the daughter would leave out for them! Apparently the house reached such decrepit-ness while they were living there that trees grew into the walls. This reminded me of Admiral's Row in Brooklyn. I wish there was a documentary about those houses. The world wide web hasn't quenched my want for a good history of them. And I'd like to think that there is an equally fascinating story to tell about them.