The Sad Sad Life of Candace Bushnell

She's a salesman. You're either buying what she's selling or not. Would you prefer she had a husband a bunch of crotchfruit?

Actually yes, R1

By age 63, I would hope she would have found someone and been a mother or stepmother or grandmother, stepped away from the NYC club scene and found a little happiness.

Fucking Republican.

What nonsense R2. No one needs to have children and be a grandparent to find happiness.

R2 is disgusting.

is Dorinda the stoner???

Damn I would not want to hit the clubs at 60 yo. I’m 48 and done with all that. I guess it’s her brand/hustle and she does look decent but….just ugh.

Does anyone here know her? Is she friendly with SJP?

Wasn’t she disappointed with the AJLT reboot?

I loved partying in my 20s and even into my 30s. But as you age it should taper off.

When I was in my mod-20s, I would look around the bars and clubs where I spent (too much) time and see guys way too old to be regulars and tell myself, don’t let this become you!

I became that person and I regret it like you would not believe r9.

No Sex In The City?

A telling snarky detail was her inability to book an Uber because she's a Luddite.

But when I head downstairs for a cigarette, I find her wobbling back inside, unable to get a car. When she hands me her phone, I update the Uber app, switch out her expired credit card for Apple Pay, and walk her to the car when it arrives two minutes later. We’ve all been there, darling.

I've couldn't help but wonder...how do these old ladies keep it up going to the clubs? I'm guess if you start at 645 and are in a cab by 1030 then it's not so bad.

I mean it's still sad but at least you aren't out until 3am.

Can’t you just catch a cab in Manhattan anymore?

I think Carole is the stoner

Tinz (though I like her) is the dumb one

Barfenney is the past and present blow hound, though this could possibly be Dorinda as well

LuAnne is the sex fiend

I think Dorinda is the "surprisingly pretty" one.

They are ALL drunks and I see that's not a choice anyway.

Oh, c'mon. This is stupid. Older people who enjoy going out on the town every now and then aren't doing it the same way 'YOU' fat whores do. They're not looking for hook ups. And they have zero interest in trendy clubs packed with kids half their age.

They tend to go to more laid back venues to meet their friends for a drink before dinner, or to listen to some good live music..... maybe enjoy a little salsa dancing, etc. Usually it's with a group of girlfriends or as couples.

"I have a dick appointment!" should be added to the DL vocabulary.

R16 Did you read the article? That's definitely not what they're doing.

Uma's daddy, the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman still hits up the clubs at fucking 80. I don't see what the big deal is.

Hey Bob, don't you have grandchildren to bore to death with stories in front of the fire?

See? I'm a guy and even I see the double standard here. It is pathetic and it is patronizing.

I see nothing wrong with checking in on the young zeitgeist a couple times a year. Kids don't mind if you're not creeper.

Irish exit? What's that?

[quote] Tinz (though I like her) is the dumb one

I assumed she was in the cokehead category, and that Kelly (come on) was the dumb one.

R21, it's when you duck out without saying goodbye.

Never heard of any of these nightspots and have no desire to.

She's going to end up like Lexy Featherston!

I just skimmed through the other columns written by this tedious airhead. Apparently just waiting for the trust fund to fully mature. What a dullard.

R21, it's usually called the Irish goodbye. What R23 said.

OP = SJP, still mad at Candace for calling herself the real Carrie

R2, are you lost?

French Exit

no cabs. You need a car service now. So strange.

Of course people don't need kids to be happy, OverlyDefensiveEldergay at R4

But the Bushnell character in the early SATC columns did indeed seem to want that, and even in this article she seems to be looking to settle down with someone who can remove her from this trendy club scene.

It never seems to dawn on her that there are other people out there she might befriend, people she might actually like, instead of the Real Housewives she clearly can't stand but for some reason known only to her, she feels compelled to spend time with.

That was probably the biggest change Darren Starr made to the concept-- in the TV series, Carrie actually likes her friends.

That is a pet peeve of mine R18 - DLers who comment on articles they clearly have not read.

R31 Better tell that to the thousands of cabbies out there, every day

R2 is a big fat fucking Frau who needs to find her own Frau ground. This isn't it.

I read the column, it is a quick read. Does not sound like people are having a good time out there and I'm not missing anything

R36 I think the writer of the column is not having a good time, and that is what is coming through. I don't think this dipshit has ever known a "good time".

R35 just hasn't met the right gal yet.

Even the fact that she felt compelled to say "SJP’s full name in a whiny baby voice."

You're 62 years old Candace.

Get over it.

Candace is a bitch. She treats people like shit and does not have the clout, money or social position she likes convey she has. She never wrote for the show and it is only because Darren Star never publicly corrected that musconception that she has a career. Also, SJP hated her.

I’m confused. Is there a link to an article somewhere?

They are both bitches. SJP pulls that baby talk out of her ass any time it suits which is often. She'll change it up with "oh, who me? I don't deserve this adulation (give me more of it) " faux breathlessness. She's a fucking fake who can't handle being older. Bushnell appears to be out of fucks. SJP is hanging on to every last fuck, and she's not that much younger than Bushnell either.

This is the author of the piece.

He is a they

Raves in Ridgewood. I ain't nobody and that is a no, even for me.

r43 Color me totally not shocked.

There’s a semi-documentary about an aging woman writer on Manhattan, reminded me of Candace.

This woman is at least 60 and scrawny, but you can tell she’s very proud of having kept her “figure”. She wears things like leather jackets and knee-high boots. Scenes with her in spaghetti strap tops and no bra.

She’s got some boyfriend who’s fucking other younger women. He’s an asshole, but he’s “rich”.

It’s supposed to be some wistful and hopeful look at a single older woman and dating and sexuality and it’s just painful.

If she’s happy, it’s all that matters, I suppose.

^What is the name of the doc?

Why is she obsessed with a rich husband at 63? Doesn't she have money of her own?

^And how does she imagine that will ever happen? Rich men want young.

What age was Rosanna Arquette when she married her last husband? Or Paul McCartney's wife?

Anyway, I doubt Bushnell wants marriage all that much. She knows her audience does, though.

a "semi-documentary"?

Can people PLEASE use the R reply function instead of the caret^ ? Even in slower moving threads like this one, it can be hard to follow. In fast moving threads, it's nearly impossible

r15 I don't think Bethenny is the cokehead. I'm pretty sure she is naturally high strung and further wacked out on adderall.

[quote] She never wrote for the show and it is only because Darren Star never publicly corrected that musconception that she has a career

I’m not following this.

I think that poster is making the distnction between Bushnell's column and the TV show (and its males creator).

Bushnell hasn't evolved in 25 yrs. Sad. All that cash and she still couldn't do the work in therapy. It's too hard!!!

R55 I’m still not following. Darren star didn’t have her write for the show because he was red to keep up the illusion that she had a career?

R51, it was real people playing themselves but there was a loosely scripted “plot”.

I’m doing my best to find it, but it’s difficult to Google. It takes place in Manhattan. This woman never married, lived a full bachelorette life with lots of sex and I think travel. She wrote a novel and worked as a writing coach for aspiring writers. There’s a rich guy she dates and he hires a blonde live-in chef who’s a young (40s!) hottie and he swears he’s not interested in her. But he is. She goes on a date with some other old dude, maybe it was an ex? She talks about sex and love a lot. Wonders if she should have married and had kids but I don’t think she regrets her choices.

Wish I could find it; I’d like to watch it again!

Can someone please explain why OP's post is crossed out like that? And can someone paste the article he's referring to?

The authoress of the piece, Brock Colyar, appears to be a cross between a gamine Gaysian and a T-Gal in training..

The writing is lively though, so there’s that

R59: go to your setting, look for ‘Flames and Freaks’, and push the button all the way to the right to ‘Asbestos Eyeballs’, then it’ll be ungreyed

^Thanks.

Oops I missed r43’s link

Here's the article

R60 poor dear lives in a 3k a month hovel and her glass is filthy.

I read Candace's column in the New York Observer regularly. Like Anna Quindlen of the NYT, she captured a slice of the Zeitgeist in the 1980s. Or was it the 90s. She spoke to me about the world i was living in.

I watched SATC after it had completed its run. I don't know what i think of it, just that it did not mean to me what her writing meant to me.

I love Candace. I, too, used to read her Observer column, it was so clever. I never watched SATC (I know, turn in my card), but I did love her book "Trading Up," about a vapid social-climbing supermodel. I read it as very much a modern take on Edith Wharton's "Custom of the Country." I think there was a Harvey Weinstein character in it, and a fascinating couple of chapters on yachting (before everybody knew what that was).

If anyone else has read it, do you know who other characters are based on? Who is Janey? I'd love to hear!

R66 and R67 - I read her columns too.

While it did reflect a certain slice of New York at the time, and her observations were indeed witty and clever, after a while did you not start to wonder why she chose to spend all her time with such shallow, self-obsessed people?

She clearly did not like any of them and yet made no attempt to find friends that she actually did like.

The protagonists in Edith Wharton's books were born into that world and knew those people since birth.

Bushnell came to NYC and actively chose to be part of that scene. She actively sought them out--it wasn't like they were friends of her roommate or she worked with them or anything.

And 35 years later, she still chooses to spend her time with people she finds overly shallow and self-obsessed, like various Real Housewives she slags off to the author.

That is why her writing always struck me as so sad--it was almost masochistic, the way she could not wean herself away from these people and find friends she actually liked.

R68 Well, she found a way to create entertainment and make good money from hanging out with and observing this crowd. Kind of a female version of Jay McInerney. Speaking of, I never hear about him anymore, is he still writing?

I find it even more bizarre that Nicole Miller (who still has her business, is richer than shit, and is even older than Bushnell) continues to hang out with this crew and do this circuit. What the hell is her deal?

Darren Star did not invite her to be on the writing staff so the charm and wit of the show had nothing to do with Bushnell. She supplied a dozen or so columns that were published as a book and source material. Darren created everything else. Being a good guy, he never corrected Bushnell for implying she had credit for the content of the show.

Bushnell came from old, old Connecticut money although I suspect she herself came from a fairly middle class background. Her father was a successful engineer and there may have been some residual money but they didn't live in the wealthiest or most exclusive of Hartford suburbs. She probably had enough sense of privilege to seek out other privileged people and, in her case, they were more upstarts than the old money types who probably would have seen her for what she was (old money with no class).

CB was married, and worked on the show for the first two years.

I thought Bushnell was happily married

I know nothing about her life, but the article says she was married to a ballet dancer at some point--it makes it sound as if the marriage was fairly brief.

She got married to a younger ballet dancer when she was in her early 40s. It lasted a few years.

I never got the sense she really wanted children. She's pretty scathing about suburban fraudom in her columns.

She always came off to me as someone with shallow values, but who also kind of knew there was more. It's weird.

R76 Yes, I agree with your last observation.

We don't know who makes up her real inner circle, by the way.

I’m more of a Michael Musto fan.

Books remind me of Jackie Collins, good trash, easy read.

[quote] Barfenney is the past and present blow hound, though this could possibly be Dorinda as well

Bethenny confronted the dry cleaner magnate boyfriend of Dorinda: have you been doing lines, bumps, etc.? B really seemed to have his #. He couldn't even deny doing coke. That said, hard to believe B, herself, isn't into coke. Maybe Adderal, as stated above.

Omg.

Bushnell will be one of the New York Housewives this season.

R73, She was married but did not work on the show. I know because I did.

R72 she's from old money but has no class? I'm confused.

It's that DL obsession with social class R84, the odd belief that the (old) moneyed upper classes depicted in black and white movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s still exists and that people born into that class are all superior beings who possess the charms, social graces and elegant bearings that elderly gay men from humble backgrounds should aspire.

Does Bushnell get money from "AJLT"?

One of the (very) few things about getting older is that you accept who you are & your choices & you're more or less comfortable with them, if not perhaps regretful at times about what did/didn't happen. Whether you want to spend your time scrapbooking or going to clubs, you're comfortable enough with yourself to live the life you want to live. She seems like a person that's always chasing youth & youth culture, a race you're never going to win after a certain point.

Bushnell has a credit for something like "based on ....", so she got a few bucks per episode. Probably enough to keep her in gin.

Is Brock Colyar really Cole Escola?

If she wants to be single or go to the clubs at 60+, I have no fucks to give. It's her life, and her hobbies!

But seriously, no attempt to mature as a writer? Still just bitching about bitches all these years later?

R89: Brock looks more Asian, while Cole is obviously a white boy

Susan Sharon is purportedly based on Dorinda Medley when she was married to Richard.

I'm 42 and thinking of having a lost weekend with some drugs.

How silly to think we can't still have fun, from time to time, in the same way we did in our 20s.

Live and let live works for me.

[quote] One is a sex fiend, one is dumb, one’s a stoner, one’s suprisingly quite pretty, and another did way too much blow back in the day.

Aren't all of these Sonja Morgan?

Just read the Warhol Diaries and he did the same thing. Chasing nightlife and youth until the end. Not for me - but some ambitious, striving people need that. And it’s part of the reason to stay in NYC. I’m over ambition and aspiration - contented is my goal.

Candace’s ballerina husband cheated on her, iirc.