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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

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from: Marjorie Williams

Deconstruction

Posted Wednesday, July 22, 1998, at 6:03 PM ET

Dear Tim,

Well, one's first and most important duty in an instance like the collapse of the elevator scaffolding on the Condé Nast construction site is to check the headline of the morning's New York Post. SHAFTED, it says. I guess they felt that since someone died, good taste forbade the addition of an exclamation point. It is curious that this is the third big accident (and the second fatality) during the construction of Condé Nast's new building in Times Square. I think we might start a whispering campaign that Slate's own David Plotz caused the accident, with his rapier report earlier this year on the spending habits of Condé Nast editors; you never know where the bean-counters might have decided to compensate. In a disaster movie, see, the cause of these mishaps would definitely turn out to be a decision by some hard-pressed senior executive to substitute paper clips and pipe cleaners for important rivets and bolts. (See, e.g., Towering Inferno, in which Richard Chamberlin, as William Holden's sniveling son-in-law, turns out to have altered all the electrical specs.) I will only add (a) that I of course hold nothing but positive opinions about everything having to do with Condé Nast, source of my paychecks; and (b) that I was astonished to learn there still is a senior citizens' residence in Times Square. (85-year-old Thereza Feliconio died in the Woodstock Hotel when a section of the scaffolding plunged through its roof--a fact that the Times, I noticed, gave only the briefest mention.) I thought the Disney Corporation had banished such things.

You must be relaxing if you're reading the Food sections. I couldn't help feeling that the Times coverage sort of recapitulated the decadence of the craft it was writing about. Now why am I suddenly the person with all the cranky opinions?

I did you a serious disservice by hiding the Wall Street Journal today (it was on top of my computer tower). There's a great A-head about the Albanian film industry--an inherently funny idea rendered even funnier by Robert Frank's feature. Albania spends more than $700,000 a year making six to eight movies. (In the years since the collapse of communism, it is no longer de rigeur to make hagiographic movies about Enver Hoxha and the Albanian worker.) The problem is that there are no longer any movie theaters in Albania, save a single one that specializes in Greek porno movies. And "the overseas market for Albanian films hasn't materialized," sighs the country's leading director. This is perhaps because Albanian films run to the dour: Take "Superbalkan, the grim tale of a moody Albanian poet," and "100%, a movie about how the Communists locked up the popular vote by cutting off the arms of detractors so they couldn't cast ballots.'" (This was cited by the general director of Alba Films in response to the writer's question about whether the company has produced any comedies.) Or try The Coffin, which is "the story of a wife of a coffin maker who kills him became she's fed up with death." I'll leave it on your chair; I know you love a good Albania joke.

And by the way, it's nice to be home.

XOXO Marjorie

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