COLUMNS
Talk Show 4 with T Cooper, Lisa Selin Davis, Ellen Litman, Elissa Schappell, and Amanda Eyre Ward
/ Jaime Clarke
11.01.07
––Did you friends share your hero worship?
Cooper: I don't think anybody understood my worship, nor my quest for M*A*S*H action figures in lieu of the requisite Star Wars figures and spaceships that everybody else coveted. I have no idea what happened to all of my M*A*S*H action figures, but a few years ago I remember winning a Hawkeye figure on eBay, but I don't know where it is, and actually, this whole discussion reminds me that I need to locate that thing and put it on my desk where I can see it every day for inspiration and to remind me to try not to lose my sense of humor.
Davis: What little girl did not love Wonder Woman? Even her name, the invocation of wonder, which is sadly such a childhood phenomenon—think how many people lose their sense of wonder as they age. But, no, I can’t remember bonding with any little girls over WW. Perhaps, more likely, little boys.
Litman: I didn’t have many friends at that age. There was one who lived on the other side of Moscow (she went to a special English school and kind of looked like Samantha) and another who lived in Ukraine. I can’t remember for sure, but I think they must have liked her. How could they not? That girl was everywhere. There was some talk among adults that it was her parents who wrote the letter, that she was maybe a CIA agent, and wasn’t it altogether too convenient that she turned out to be so perfect and pretty, like a paid advertisement for America? But what did they know!
Schappell: Heavens no. They didn’t understand why I’d be enamored of an actress that they only knew from later movies like On Golden Pond. If I’d told them how I admired her outspokenness and ability to articulate herself when she was angry, the way she got up in peoples’ faces and challenged them--calling them on their hypocrisy like in, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? they’d have shaken their heads in complete wonder, in part no doubt because I’d have been inarticulately raging in a bad Bryn accent.
Ward: No. Most of my classmates worshipped a girl in tenth grade because she had appeared in a tampon commercial.
Cooper: I don't think anybody understood my worship, nor my quest for M*A*S*H action figures in lieu of the requisite Star Wars figures and spaceships that everybody else coveted. I have no idea what happened to all of my M*A*S*H action figures, but a few years ago I remember winning a Hawkeye figure on eBay, but I don't know where it is, and actually, this whole discussion reminds me that I need to locate that thing and put it on my desk where I can see it every day for inspiration and to remind me to try not to lose my sense of humor.
Davis: What little girl did not love Wonder Woman? Even her name, the invocation of wonder, which is sadly such a childhood phenomenon—think how many people lose their sense of wonder as they age. But, no, I can’t remember bonding with any little girls over WW. Perhaps, more likely, little boys.
Litman: I didn’t have many friends at that age. There was one who lived on the other side of Moscow (she went to a special English school and kind of looked like Samantha) and another who lived in Ukraine. I can’t remember for sure, but I think they must have liked her. How could they not? That girl was everywhere. There was some talk among adults that it was her parents who wrote the letter, that she was maybe a CIA agent, and wasn’t it altogether too convenient that she turned out to be so perfect and pretty, like a paid advertisement for America? But what did they know!
Schappell: Heavens no. They didn’t understand why I’d be enamored of an actress that they only knew from later movies like On Golden Pond. If I’d told them how I admired her outspokenness and ability to articulate herself when she was angry, the way she got up in peoples’ faces and challenged them--calling them on their hypocrisy like in, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? they’d have shaken their heads in complete wonder, in part no doubt because I’d have been inarticulately raging in a bad Bryn accent.
Ward: No. Most of my classmates worshipped a girl in tenth grade because she had appeared in a tampon commercial.