The "Sex and the City" Movie

I'm very happy that Kim Cattrall was able, as reported, to negotiate a salary commensurate with Sarah Jessica Parker's, thereby opening the door for a long-proposed film version of the phenomenally successful HBO series, "Sex and the City."

After all Parker and Cattrall were the two ingredients that sustained the show for so many years, with Parker creating a genuinely fully-fleshed character, warts and all, and Cattrall locating a subtle pathos inside her character's flamboyant randiness. Both actresses were eminently watchable, making co-stars Cynthia Nixon (abrasively annoying) and Kristin Davis (a whiney drag) just about negligible and just about unnecessary.

I look forward to savoring the Parker-Cattrall chemistry again, but ... in what?

With the actresses - and, presumably, the characters - now into their 40s and 50s, exactly what will this film examine and confront? The material can't be what it was 10 years ago and, if the makers do try to recreate their winning formular, the results could be grotesque.

Besides, wasn't this film done by James Ivory in 1989? Back then it was called "Slaves of New York," based on the tome by Tama Janowitz (the Candance Bushnell of her day). Back then, Bernadette Peters played the Carrie Bradshaw role.

"Slaves of New York"? What happened to that film?

Note in Passing: I favor the popular suspicion that "Sex and the City" is really about four gay men (the same theory that still haunts "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"). With that in mind, perhaps the film could only work now if it were played that way - or, at least, in drag.

(Artwork: Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall in an episode of HBO's "Sex and the City"; artwork for James Ivory's "Slaves of New York")