Utter disbelief.

I lost my GG virginity this weekend.... now Edie's Big and Little will forever be a part of me!

I was quite excited to read that the Maysles are planning a Grey Gardens DVD scrapbook.... can't wait for more!

GREY GARDENS TO GET ANOTHER RUN

Rosemary Feitelberg
609 words
26 July 2005
Women's Wear Daily
10
English
Copyright 2005 Fairchild Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved

NEW YORK -- Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, the reclusive mother-
daughter team in the 1975 documentary "Grey Gardens," still intrigue
the fashion world. And, thanks to filmmaker Albert Maysles, there
will soon be more of them to watch.

Three decades after Maysles and his late brother, David, made what
has become a cult classic film with the Beales, Jacqueline Kennedy's
cousins, he is putting together a "Grey Gardens" DVD scrapbook to be
released by the end of the year.

Maysles said in a telephone interview that the film has
inspired "Grey Gardens" parties at which people dress up like the
characters and recite favorite lines such as, "C'mon in, we're not
ready," or "They can get you in East Hampton for wearing red shoes on
a Thursday," and "The hallmark of aristocracy is responsibility."

Maysles, who during his 50-year career turned his lens on John F.
Kennedy, Truman Capote, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Bill
Blass, is stumped on why the film has such appeal to the fashion
crowd. In April, the short film "Ghost of April" made it's debut at
the Tribeca Film Festival.

Having worked as a psychologist before getting into film, Maysles
said while Freud examined the Oedipal complex at length, not as much
attention has been paid to the combustible mother-daughter
relationship. Analysis aside, it's Little Edie's outlandish outfits
and mane-like headscarves that wow designers and stylists. About 15
designers, stylists and artists gathered last week for a "Grey
Gardens" screening at the Dactyl Foundation, a SoHo art gallery.

Afterward, Vena Cava co-designer Sophie Buhai said, "Little Edie is
the ultimate do-it-yourself fashion icon."

David Covell, creative director of JDK Design NY, watched the film
for the second time in two weeks. "`Grey Gardens' is a quintessential
portrait of aristocracy run amok and the sublime mix of high and low
culture, ideas that seem to endlessly inspire designers," he
said. "The two old dames are the kind of unique characters that seem
lost to a bygone era of real eccentricity."

In addition to unused footage, the release will have a `where are
they now?' quality. Jerry Torre, the handyman who befriended the
Beales at their dilapidated estate, Grey Gardens, and is now a New
York City cab driver, recently tracked down Maysles and invited him
for a sentimental journey. The filmmaker obliged with camera in hand.

Maysles happened upon the Beales in a roundabout way. The
photographer Peter Beard steered his friend, Lee Radziwill, Jackie
Kennedy's sister, to Maysles to make a film about her childhood in
the Hamptons. While filming, Radziwill received a phone call saying
that Grey Gardens was about to be condemned by the East Hampton board
of health. She invited Maysles to tag along on a visit.

In addition to the DVD scrapbook, Maysles is finishing an HBO film
about Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park project, "The Gates,"
with fellow filmmaker Antonio Ferrera. He is also working
on "Handheld and From the Heart," an autobiographical flick, as well
as "In Transit," a film about his interesting train encounters in six
countries.

Looking back at "Grey Gardens," Maysles said there is no telling
whether Little Edie put much thought into her many costume changes.
However, she did hint at exactitude years later. In Montreal for a
screening of one of his films about Christo, Maysles met with Beale,
who had moved there for a spell after her mother died. He said she
told him, "I spent six hours dressing for this occasion."