“I don’t want to be identified as being in this time and place with you.”
Totally!
More from Hung Up this week: Drake watched Phantom Thread (very me) and then listened to Gracie Abrams (very not me). “I definitely think the farther away I get from those events, the more determined they feel, where it’s like they were always fated to happen, but then I'm less certain about why they happened at all…” Talking to my friend Haley Mlotek about her exquisite divorce memoir, No Fault.
I often write about sentences that stick around my mind, like the “You shouldn’t be upset that I fucked her, you should be upset that I had a laugh with her” line in Marriage Story or the “Did you leave in a rush?” line from Girls. My friends have gotten me addicted to saying “many such cases,” a phrase from an old Trump tweet that has … many such applications. These words repel each other like the wrong side of two magnets, like every word rebuffs and rebukes the one after it. But they sound so weird and addicting together, and I turn them over and over in my mind.
It feels passé to still have opinions about Scarlett Johannson, the actress and quote machine. She is exhausting1 and exhilarating2, the actor’s Azealia Banks. She will, rightly or wrongly, stand on business every time.3 Johansson told Disney, “Let’s do it, baby, I know the law,” but she also said that she “should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal.” She was excellent in Marriage Story, Under The Skin, and Asteroid City. She defends Marvel and Woody Allen. She has a giant vine of roses tattooed on her back, flanked by a cherubic little lamb. What I’m getting at is this: her opinions are not that different from a liberal arts school’s freshman seminar or a contrarian teen skulking around a suburban mall’s Hot Topic.
Johnsson is on the cover of the latest InStyle, talking about, honestly, whatever the fuck. (Her skincare line, and co-hosting the fourth hour of the Today Show.) Near the end of the story, Johansson talks about the “irrevocable nature of fame,” namely whether she’ll take photos with fans. She won’t. “Johansson has long had a policy: She does not take photos with fans if she’s not at an event,” InStyle reports. “‘It really offends a lot of people. It doesn't mean I'm not appreciative, of course, that people are fans, or happy to see me. But I always say to people, ‘I'm not working.’ [And that means] I don't want to be identified as being in this time and place with you. I'm doing my own thing.’”
Johannson is married to a professional comedian, but it would be a mistake to think that she’s not the funniest person in that family.
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