Letter From The Editor September - Chloe Sevigny - Brief Article - Editorial

INGRID SISCHY

EDITOR IN CHIEF

There was a memorable moment that occurred during the photo session when we were shooting this month's cover story with Chloe Sevigny. The young collaborative team, Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm, were to do the pictures--it was their first cover shoot for us (in fact for anyone in America) and they came from Amsterdam to do the job. Chloe had never met them before, and so at the beginning things were a little stiff. We were all gathered in a studio on the Bowery and I was just waiting for the ice to break--I knew it would eventually because the subject and photographers were perfect for each other. Chloe isn't exactly known as the easiest, laissez-faire subject, though. In fact, she's famous for basically telling one of the most powerful photographers in the world to go to hell when he directed her to "give some shoulder." Who couldn't respect the fact that she refuses to be a puppet for the media and instead fully participates in how she is represented? Anyway, there we were beginning the shoot and Blom mers and Schumm were just doing some early set-up Polaroids to test the light and cropping. Chloe was staring into the camera, and with perfect timing, a friend joked, "Chloe--they're not paparazzi. You don't have to glower at them!" Everyone burst out laughing, and from that juncture on things loosened up. Chloe may be serious about what she's doing as an actress but she can also laugh at herself.

To us she seemed like just the person to be on our September cover. She doesn't have a movie right now, so there's no promotion angle to the story, and we all especially liked that. September, even if one has long ago left school, always feels a little like a blank slate with all its possibilities. And if Chloe stands for anything, it is that one doesn't have to go along with the herd in the way one does things--that it is possible to approach one's work in one's own way. When she first appeared on the movie scene with Larry Clark's controversial film Kids in 1995,1 remember people saying "Oh, she's just the latest kid. She'll be gone from the business soon." Well, it's five years later and she's still very much here. Not only that, but she has probably provided some of the most authentic, believable performances around during that time. Just watch her in Scott Elliott's A Map of the World or in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't cry and one sees performances that don't have an ounce of phoney put-on. In fact, she 's such a good actress that people still think of her as the person she was in Kids. They persist in stereotyping Chloe as some sort of transitional character, and don't think her capable of playing lots of different kinds of roles. That's because it keeps the power base the same to divide up the world into categories such as edgy versus mainstream. But the truth is that those categories are for marketing people--as we all know what is edgy today can be mainstream tomorrow--and has nothing to do with how artists really work. Chloe is an artist. It's that simple. She's proven it over and over again. And in my opinion she is trying to accomplish one of the hardest things to pull off in the entertainment business--she is insisting on the possibility that she can be successful in this business, yet still be who she is in life.

Chloe's always been this way. I remember when I first met her she was about 20 years old and starring in Kids--which the censors had tried to block--and we were doing a cover story on her. I'd heard that she'd turned down a lot of press and that she was difficult, but when I finally met her instead of a prima donna I found just the opposite: a person who was really on the ball and who really cared about what she did, rather than just going along with things because they were going to make her rich and famous. She has continued to be this vigilant. It's what has made her one of the few young stars around today who doesn't feel overexposed or tired. On the contrary, she is very much awake and ready to take off in a big way. It may still take a little while, but stand back.

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