My parents had a large group of friends, almost all of them transplanted New Yorkers who were in the business. That’s what it was known as—the business. (People who were not in the business were known as civilians.) The men were screenwriters or television writers. Their wives did nothing. They were known at the time as housewives, but none of them did housework—they all had cooks and maids and laundresses. Our mother had household help too, but she was different: she worked. “You’ll just have to tell them your mother can’t be there because she has to work.” My mother uttered that sentence several times a year; it was meant to get her off the hook for PTA meetings and such, but it was also meant to make us understand that she was a cut above the other mothers. She was even a cut above the other career women—there were a few in the business, including the costume designer Edith Head, whom my mother once took me to lunch with, but none of them had careers and children. My mother did.
What do You think about I Remember Nothing (2010)?
