Bill Cunningham: New York Page #4

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[Woman] Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

This is...

He's getting in a zone.

[Bill] I just go in the room and

say what's on my mind and that's it.

It's done in five minutes.

Okay. Yeah.

Uh, this is Bill Cunningham,

and "On the Street" this week...

... there's no question

black is the story this week.

Here we are, the first week in August, and

the New Yorkers are all in black clothes.

This is Bill Cunningham, and "On the

Street"this week is a very interesting...

Isn't it always?

But it really is.

The picture frame collar.

There was the most popular T-shirt this

summer was printed with multiple sunglasses.

There's no reason to be doom and gloom

and think that fashion is finished.

Just reach back into your closet...

I call it "the thin man."

It's a serious way of dressing.

They've got something going here,

and I thought it was serious enough...

for you to take a look at.

Thank you very much,

and I hope you enjoy it.

Hmm.

Okay, move it all over and take this woman

and put her in the corner.

Yeah, that's nice.

[John]

I think it's all right.

That's not bad.

You want me to order

your lunch today?

I beg pardon?

Do you want me to order you in lunch?

Oh. Lunch.

No. Soup, you know.

I'm not thinking about lunch.

No. I know what we need.

[John] What? Yeah. It's all right.

No, leave everything alone.

Uh, put her here,

and put her over here.

Yes. There it is. You got it.

See, the hair, the same gesture,

the wind. Wonderful.

If you examine his pictures,

he always is focused on some detail...

or some narrative or conceptual thing

that he's documenting.

Do you like

that we're dressed alike, Bill?

I said, do you like it that

we're dressed alike? Mm-hmm.

We've been hanging around

with each other for 60 years.

That's great.

We went to high school together.

That's great. Yeah. Terrific.

And we never

had a fight.

Oh, good.

That's better.

That's better.

There's enough people fighting.

Watch these

crazy cabdrivers.

Okay, good-bye.

[Koda] So his photographs,

rather than just paparazzi shots,

are really evidence of what fashion is

at any given moment in the world.

His archive is really not just

an encapsulation of fashion,

but of New York life,

and I think it's wonderful

for fashion historians...

that this did happen...

That there was this

one individual...

who was willing

to dedicate his life...

to this fascinating

manifestation of culture.

[Bill]

It's not photography.

I mean, any real photographer

would say he's a fraud.

Well, they're right.

I'm just about capturing what I see

and documenting what I see.

Ah!

I mean, is he Horst?

Put a bunch of flowers in front of you?

No. He's not that,

but that's not what he wants to be.

I think he photographs life.

[Younger Bill] The parallel between the

emerging japanese designers in the early '80s...

and the bag people in New York...

was startling, astonishing.

No one would talk about it

or even show the pictures.

And as time went on,

the Japanese woman

Rei Kawakubo admitted...

that her inspiration...

That when someone said, "Who do you

think are the best-dressed women?"

And she said,

"The bag women in New York."

Now whether she was being facetious

or cynical...

or a real artist and saying

what she really thought,

you know, we're too close

to a very touchy subject.

But as a historian, uh,

what we see in New York

in the 1980s in some areas...

is close to medieval Europe.

The shapes, I mean, of these people.

[Interviewer] Didn't someone

give you your first camera?

David Montgomery, an American photographer

who lived and worked in London.

We were there at his home with

his wife and all for dinner one night.

I said, "Gee, do you have an assistant

who could take a picture for me tomorrow?"

Some fashion shop, I mentioned.

And... Yes,

he sent one of his assistants out.

And then when he came to New York

about three months later,

he said,

"Here, I brought you something."

He said, "Use it like a pen,

like you take notes.

Do it with a camera."

A little Olympus half-frame.

They were $39,

and you got 72 pictures

to a 36 roll of...

Frame roll of film

so I liked that even better.

One of the interesting

things about street style...

is that it emerged

at the same point...

that, um, Bill got a camera.

And by street style, I'm talking about fashions

that really did emerge from the street.

There was always a sense

of a kind of quotidian world...

that one sees in photographs that were done

at the turn of the century, for example,

by the Seeberger brothers, or different

people who were documenting the bon monde,

but it wasn't really street style in that it

wasn't, theoretically, "ordinary" people,

going about their business

dressed in fascinating ways.

That really begins to happen in the 1960s,

and that is the moment which Bill begins.

[Bill]

On an Easter Sunday,

I came back here to get film,

and the phone rang

and I picked it up,

and it was the Times fashion critic and editorial

writer Charlotte Curtis, who I knew very well.

And she said, "Bill, grab your cameras and get

up to the Sheep Meadow as quick as you can.

They're having a be-in."

What the hell is a be-in?

I jumped on my bike

and went up to the Sheep Meadow,

and there were thousands of kids.

Oh! I mean, you just never saw

anything like it.

All the flower children,

the hippies, everything,

All up there,

and it was a lovely day,

and they were lying on the grass

or the dirt or whatever it was,

and they were dressed.

It was marvelous,

and that really did me in.

From then on, that was it, kid.

My Sundays and Saturdays...

Saturdays down in SoHo, and Sundays up in the park...

were completely taken.

That was it.

Course, as Antonio said, "Yep, and you

photographed everything in black and white,

and it was all about color."

[Laughing]

Course he was right, but I couldn't

afford color film and developing...

so it's in black and white.

Oh, boy. Someday,

it's all gonna fall down on me.

[Vinson] I know. I don't even

want to think about that. My God.

If I disappear under a bunch of books,

you'll know what...

They're all fashion books.

Imagine me having to move

the end of June?

I thought it was just open-end.

That at some time, people would have to move out of here.

Is there a specific date when you have to leave?

Yeah, June 30th. So they say.

Bill, that's like in two

or three months. Hmm?

The battle against a plan to evict artists

who live and work at Carnegie Hall...

was taken to the steps

of city hall today.

Over the years, the studios have seen the likes

of Marlon Brando and Leonard Bernstein.

Now the remaining tenants at Carnegie

Hall are turning to the mayor for help.

CBS 2's Andrew Kirtzman reports.

[Kirtzman] Today, residents

gathered at City Hall...

with actor John Turturro

as their champion.

They want Mayor Bloomberg to step in,

since the city owns Carnegie Hall.

Not far away, the concert hall's artistic director

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