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# smithereens, selfies + sex and the city: on susan seidelman’s new memoir
- URL: https://see-saw.fun/smithereens-selfies-sex-and-the-city-on-susan-seidelmans-new-memoir/
- Published: 2024-10-23T17:51:38.000Z
- Updated: 2024-10-23T17:51:38.000Z
- Description: Nathan Gelgud on Susan Seidelman's new book Desperately Seeking Something and her journey from the New York City of Smithereens to the one of Sex and the City.
- Author: Nathan Gelgud
- Tags: comic

![In 1981, Susan Seidelman made her first feature film, shootin on the Lower East Side without permits.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares1.jpg)

![Before influencers and Instagram, Smithereens was about a young woman trying to achieve fame by posting selfies.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares2.jpg)

![After finishing it, Seidelman got a call from the Cannes Film Festival asking to meet her the next day for an early breakfast. "I'm sorry, I'm not a morning person." She went to the breakfast, and the movie went to Cannes.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares3.jpg)

![Seidelman chose to direct Desperately Seeking Susan next, because the script reminded her of a French film from 1974: Celine and Julie Go Boating.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares4.jpg)

![Desperately Seeking Susan is a perfect movie about identity, domesticity, and female friendship.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares5.jpg)

![As Seidelman writes in her new book, her career was spotty after that, marked by weak box office and mixed reviews. "The movie industry is ruthless...[but] it’s well known that in Hollywood, men can fail upward."](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares6.jpg)

![She turned to TV work, directing episodes of Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw: "I bought another pair of shoes!"](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares7.jpg)

!["Admittedly, [Sex and the City] was a vision of Manhattan that Smithereens' Wren would no longer recognize and probably disdain," Seidelman writes. Wren: "Puke!"](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares8.jpg)

![What might Seidelman have made if she'd gotten the same freedom and support of her male counterparts? Wren: "I stole another pair of shoes!"](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2024/10/seidelman-squares9.jpg)

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*Nathan Gelgud is a cartoonist and illustrator. His comics about movies and books have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and Hyperallergic.*