Uptown Girls for Maddie Schumacher by Emma Garner

Maddie Schumacher is the reason you’re all here.

The editor-in-chief of Cold Worm Column, she’s the voice notating every piece you read, the spirit inhibiting every word on the page. She’s behind it all, gleefully passing her excellent tastes in art, people, and words onto all of you with a grin. Hell, she’s the watermark itself – she’s the worm in the apple, digging her way into your brain with a stellar turn of phrase and a fresh blowout to boot.

Meeting someone with whom your own interests align so closely is increasingly rare, yet, somehow, Maddie and I managed to cross paths at the end of last year when I had the privilege of directing her in a production of Stephen Belber’s Tape (because, oh yeah, she’s a stellar actress too). She’s one of those people you instantly know you want to talk to, to interview, even, because you know she’s got something interesting to say that others deserve the privilege of hearing. She can spend an hour passionately explaining the significance of a performance, a shoe style, or a piece of sushi with the same seriousness someone else might reserve for religion, and make you a believer all the same. 

I’ll make this brief, because Maddie’s own words are more interesting than anything I could ever say about her. When Maddie and I sat down in her Broome St. apartment, decked out in little odes to the media we both love, to discuss her favorite movie, I should’ve anticipated I’d leave with 45 pages of content. While our conversation has been abbreviated for clarity, it is the biggest gift to me that I even get to hold those small, cut-out blurbs just for myself; to cherish her brilliance on my own every day. You should feel lucky, too – you still get her gift of the gab for ten whole pages.

Emma: Hello. Who are you? What's your name? Who am I speaking to right now?

Maddie: Hi, I'm Madeline Jane Schumacher.

Emma: Your middle name is Jane?

Maddie: Yeah.

Emma: You sound like a real classy lady. 100% class, our First Lady.

Maddie: I've never gone by Madeline, but, you know, it could happen.

Emma: I think it's very chic. I think a Madeline moment could happen for you at some point. It comes with a career pivot at, like, 45.

Madeline: I'll just suddenly only answer to Madeline.

Emma: Period, Madeline. So, we're here today to discuss your favorite movie. As you said yourself, you've now done tons of interviews with a range of subjects discussing their favorite movies, so it feels only fitting that we talk about yours now.

Maddie: Yes. Thank you so much.

Emma: So, what is your favorite movie?

Maddie: My favorite movie is Uptown Girls.

Emma: Uptown Girls! Why is Uptown Girls your favorite movie?

Maddie: Thank you so much for asking, Emma Garner. So, when I was a kid, I used to watch this movie, like, biweekly.

Emma: What age, would you say?

Maddie: I was probably seven or eight. I watched it so much, and I thought it was just the girliest, most fun movie ever. I thought it was so funny and so warm. And now that I'm older, I realize it is deeply sad.

Emma: It’s a very, very sad movie.

Maddie: It's a deep cut, but I didn't know it was a deep cut.

Emma: It was almost marketed better to our demographic than it was to the general population when the movie came out, because this is, shockingly, a critically panned movie.

Maddie: I'm aware.

Emma: It has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Maddie: Yeah, which is really ridiculous.

Emma: Totally. But if you look at the movie's ratings now, they're so inherently positive, which I’m assuming is at least partly because our generation has grown up with it.

Maddie: Like, obviously, I was born the year the movie came out (2003), and started watching it, like, seven or eight years later, and it was so exciting to watch a movie with a young girl leading it. I think that was probably a lot of the allure. Like, ‘She looks like me! She is me!’ We wore the same clothes, and we're both kind of OCD and kind of ran things a little differently. I related a lot to her.

Emma: You're also a New York native.

Maddie: And I was a New York kid.

Emma: You’re an uptown girl, if you will.

Maddie: No, because I am uptown girl.

Emma: You are an uptown girl living in an uptown world.

Maddie: I will say, my circumstances were obviously really different. I have two awesome, very around parents, but, like, sans that. I had the same pill case as Ray (Dakota Fanning). Like, I was Ray, but I was Ray if she had been brought up in a really warm home. Do you know what I mean? .. And I had a lot of Brittany Murphys in my life. 

Emma: Did you have influential nannies in your life?

Maddie: Yes! I had one VERY influential nanny who raised me from when I was two until I was, like, 15, and was, like, at my house five days a week. In my mind, I was Ray, raised by a nanny who let me see things differently. I think there is this culture in New York City of these, like, young, kind of... I guess the term you would use is, like, these young fast kids, who mature so quickly, yet you have a nanny because you're in New York City, and an eight-year-old isn't gonna walk home alone.

Emma: Right.

Maddie: So the nanny and babysitter culture... I mean, actually, I don't know anyone who refers to the role as a ‘babysitter’. It's a nanny. It’s a much bigger role here.

Emma: It's a career.

Maddie: It is a career!

Emma: You have health insurance.

Maddie: It's not a part-time gig. It's a lifestyle. You are, in part, responsible for raising a child. New York is essentially a character in this movie in itself. And I think so many kids who grow up in New York often, like Ray, want to grow up very quickly.. You get to an age as a New York City kid where you realize it's gonna be a lot more fun to be a New York City adult, so you do whatever you can to get to that point as fast as possible. With Ray, you know, grief and a lot of other circumstances are making her grow up so fast, but I do think New York City kids inherently grow up very quickly regardless. 

Emma: You have to. 

Maddie: You have to, but also you want to.

Emma: Describe the movie in three words

Maddie: Nostalgic. Blumarine. Girlhood. 

Emma: Fabulous..You said you watched the film as a kid, and it was so warm and comforting. It was so fun. Now, you’ve hit a point where you watch it, and you recognize that the whole movie really circulates around grief and trauma and the transition from girlhood to womanhood. What was that transition like for you? 

Maddie: In high school, I remember really disengaging with this film, probably because I went to performing arts school and it wasn't, like, ‘highbrow’ enough to tell people. I probably didn't list it on my Letterbox giggles.. And then I revisited it during my freshman year of college when things in my life were really changing, and just bawled my eyes out. It's a movie about grief, and watching it again was like processing grief that I didn't even know that I went through at that age. And again, I emphasize, my circumstances were entirely different from Ray’s, but I know what it's like to wanna just fast-forward. So it is really cool when one day you watch the movie as Brittany Murphy's character, and you’re like, ‘Holy shit, like, there was this whole chunk of my life that I wanted to skip past.’ But that was the best part. Being a kid in New York City is so fucking awesome. Why did I rush that? And I guess it never hit me as a kid that Ray and her trauma are a younger iteration of Molly’s trauma.. 

Emma: This is what I mean, that it's crazy that the people who attached themselves to this so much were our generation. The first time I watched this movie, I was probably seven or eight. I was at a sleepover at a friend's house, inside the pillow fort we had made. And I remember thinking, ‘Huh, this is kind of sad, but I can't put my finger on why.’ The environment that's created is so colorful and beautiful. They're all wearing Blumarine. And then you go back and watch it 10 years later, and you think, ‘Oh my God, this is so damn upsetting.’ 

Maddie: It is really hard to watch for me now.

Emma: It is a movie about death!

Maddie: It’s about the many ways we deal with death, and how one of the most common is to pretend it's not happening..

Emma: I think part of the reason why it's critically panned is that it's so easily written off as either a kids' movie or a chick flick. But what makes this movie, to me at least, is the performances. 

Maddie: Brittany Murphy.

Emma: Brittany Murphy. 

Maddie: Yeah, I could just cry. Brittany Murphy. I've followed a lot of her work, and I've always loved her. She IS every movie she's in. She's the point.. she's who you're watching. She's just the most sparkly human. You couldn't pick a better actress to star in a film alongside an eight-year-old girl, because she is just naturally so youthful... even in interviews, she is so vibrant. There's a serious side to her, for sure, but when I think of Brittany Murphy outside of Uptown Girls, I see this kind of Molly-esque character; somebody who just kind of, like, radiates through the world. 

Emma: She's kind of the freewheeler in a lot of the movies she's in. 

Maddie: 100%, and she's good at it… Brittany Murphy, like, was such an older sister on screen in my childhood, from her entire filmography, so seeing her in this role, to me... listen. She has some amazing films, but this role, to me, is, in many ways, the movie of her lifetime.

Emma: It's her bread and butter.

Maddie: It's her movie, and like I just imagine this movie being really evocative to her personally, and that's a little… hand on heart. I don't know her. I didn't know her, I wasn't lucky enough, but through this film, I feel like I do, and I think that’s really special.

Emma: Absolutely. It's such a star vehicle for her in such a beautiful way, and I really don't think that this would've had any of the impact that it did on anyone's life if she were not at its center.

It's so easy for this role in particular to become a caricature, but she fits there so naturally.

And she wears some of the greatest clothes-

Maddie: Oh my God.

Emma: ... of all time.

Maddie: Oh my GOD.

Emma: You have mentioned-

Maddie: Yes.

Emma: ... on several occasions-

Maddie: Yes.

Emma: ... the Blumarine dress.

Maddie: The Blumarine dress! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Emma: You may have mentioned having a similar dress on your bedroom wall.

Maddie: So, Molly wears the dress on her 22nd birthday. And this is funny, because I’m about to be 23, but I think growing up, I always thought 22 was this huge number because it was “my Molly Gunn year.” The dress that she wears in that first scene at her 22nd birthday party, where she meets Ray, is a Blumarine dress that's… It is Molly Gunn, that dress. There are a million costumes in the movie that are fucking insane, but that first one is very impactful. I've always been looking for it but haven't found it within my price range, nor do I ever really find it at all.

Emma: It barely exists. I've dug.

Maddie: Me too. So when I was in Paris a few years ago, I was at a vintage store and found something…It’s not Blumarine, but it's the elk of Blumarine, and it's the elk of that dress. All of that being said, I graduated from college in the dress. I was going to wear it to my 22nd birthday party, but then I decided that graduating from college was kind of more important. Bigger, more eyes on it, you know? And now it’s on my wall!

Emma: It's so full circle.

Maddie: The clothes in that movie are insane. I think that, like, that sparkle hit me as a kid. I was like, ‘I wanna wear clothes like that every day. I wanna get dressed like that. I want to have those lampshades.’ I'm obsessed with everything physical in the film.

Emma: And in some way, that's the genuine through line that keeps you invested, uh, from age six to age 26. Clothes, aesthetics, that sparkle – they’re who we are.

Maddie: I was someone who shared a room growing up, too, so, like, the scenes of their bedrooms always really hit me. That movie was my ‘girl room.’ It makes a girl's room feel so special, no matter how you design it. If you wanna be really organized like Ray or if you wanna be like Molly and have glitter on the floor, you can do that because that's what a girl does.

Emma: Killer turn of phrase.

Maddie: Thank you very much.

Emma: You said earlier that this is difficult for you to watch these days.

Maddie: Yes.

Emma: Would you still refer to this as a comfort movie?

Maddie: Whew. Okay. I would say the first half of it, before Coney Island, reminds me of being a little kid, so it's warm in that way. And then I think the second half of it, now that I'm older and I understand it and see the themes of grief in it, yeah, it's a harder watch, but there is just something intrinsically cozy about it because it feels like a pocket of time. So, I don't know if it's a comfort watch, but it still feels warm to me. Of course, now that Brittany Murphy is gone, it feels like this beautiful love letter to her. And continuing to watch it is honoring her.

Emma: That's a beautiful way to put it.

Maddie: And also, like, honoring, like, a young Dakota Fanning who now has this amazing career and is so brilliant, but even here is this special young actress who delivers a performance that is just as poignant as Brittany Murphy's. I always wanted to be an actor, but I remember watching that movie and probably being around the age that Dakota was when she was filming it, and thinking, ‘Well, I can't do that,’ because that's an adult. I couldn't believe a young actress could take on that role. I was like, ‘I can’t do that, but I need to learn how to’. That’s how her performance struck me. It was a young child emulating an adult while still bleeding as a child..

Maddie: The truth is I really am fragments of both of the characters. As a child,I was a lot like Ray. And I think watching the movie now, I'm like, "Okay, well, it's good to kind of be at this point in my life where I'm so nostalgic for the past but in this way where I am so present in every moment of my 20s.’ Cause as a kid, like, I just wanted to be old, so, like, it didn't matter what I had to do to get old. I just wanted it faster.

Emma: You can almost see the magic in things so much more as an adult at this stage in your life, and you look back and see all of these beautiful things you were experiencing as a kid. Which brings us to the teacup scenes.

Maddie: So it's my favorite scene, obviously. My second-favorite scene is when Ray eats the hot dog. The one and only time in my life I've had major food poisoning was from a hot dog. So, like, I live and breathe that, like, there are nitrates in the dogs. And the quote is, I wrote it down, actually, Ray says to Molly re hot dogs at Coney Island, ‘They have dead rats and nitrates,’ I genuinely believed that as a child.

Emma: Are you a hypochondriac?

Maddie: Yeah. Sad..But back to the teacups. So despite being a native New Yorker, I didn't go to Coney Island until I was 18. But for Molly, it's just this backdrop to let her be a kid, like, in the most kid-friendly place on earth. Coney Island is like New York Disney. It’s a perfect landmark to have Ray, like, open the door of her heart a little bit and let it out, and also recognize that it's a callback to exactly what Molly did when her parents died.

Emma: It's the best moment of writing in the whole movie in my opinion. I think that specific teacup sequence, where they're spinning in circles opposite one another and both sort of realize their own faults in each other while finding the beauty in each other’s problems, actually paved the way for a lot of other scenes like it in film.

Maddie: No, it's genius, and it all comes from Uptown Girls. I think Uptown Girls also really embraced the way young girls look up to women in their 20s. It’s crazy to me now, because I’m at that age and I feel so young, but when you’re a kid, a 20-year-old is like a Barbie doll with her whole life together. It’s wild that this 22-year-old was essentially parenting an eight-year-old in this way, serving as such a good role model for her.

Emma: That's it. And there are so many Molly Gunns in the world. People are being raised – young girls are being raised – by 22-year-olds, who, if you looked at them at that age, you assume that they have their shit together just because you're a kid.

Maddie: Mm. But they don't.

Emma: But they don't, and that's what this movie does so well: it recognizes that a 22-year-old does not know anything at all.

Maddie: I think that's maybe why it's hard to watch now. Because I think Molly's character is a real symbol of hope, but also, like, Molly herself is so lost. And I think it's easy to look at this movie and think, ‘Well, Ray needed Molly,’ but Molly needed Ray just as much.

Emma: Molly desperately needed Ray.

Maddie: Desperately. I think as a kid, I looked at Molly, and she had the Blumarine dress, and she had the big apartment in The Ansonia, and, like, she had all these friends at the club, so therefore Molly had it together. And then you're older, and you realize Molly didn't have it together at all. That's the whole point of the film. But as a kid, I recognized someone of that age as somebody who would.

Emma: She really did need Ray because she never really had parents either. So finding a child who had such a similar outlook on life was vital to her growth. 

Maddie: You see it in that scene where Molly's sick because she jumped into the river. Ray's physically taking care of her. It makes you wonder, if a young child has to do that, or even knows how to do that, there's a reason why. Like, an eight-year-old isn't supposed to know what pills to take and how many.

Emma: What do you think this movie says about adulthood in itself?

Maddie: That’s a good question. Um, adulthood is really fucking hard. Obviously. I think this movie does a really good job of recognizing that every year, your life can be very different. When you think about their relationship, to me, it’s formed over a matter of months. So, the fact that anyone, even an eight-year-old girl, can come into your life and change everything for you-- it reminds adults that adulthood itself is fleeting, as much as childhood is, and every year is different. And it gives me hope that Molly Gunn starts the year being torn out of her apartment and ends the year with, like, a real foundation, responsibility, and a more solid life plan than she had the year prior.

Emma: And a job!

Maddie: And she's put a down payment on an apartment with a Murphy bed! 

Emma: To wrap this up, what is a lesson from this film that you have carried into your own life?

Maddie: Your inner child is always right in front of you. You just have to be willing to see it. I feel  I make a lot of decisions based on what I think an older version of myself would want, but oftentimes the best decision is to go back to the roots I planted as a kid. I find that when I do what the child in me wants, I am happier. Because that's the thing that doesn't really change. You see Molly honor her youth, and I hope, like, you know, when I think about Ray as an adult, which is so crazy, because now she’s that age in real life. Older.

Emma: She's older now.

Maddie: She's older. Wow… But I like to think that while Ray should break some habits, she grows up still honoring everything she did as a child. Her inner child's wants and needs are still there. I think that's important.

Emma: It makes so much sense that this is your favorite movie, because it does symbolize so much of who you are as a person.

Maddie: Thank you.

Emma: I really do think you are such a beautiful mesh of both of these characters. You are a fashionista, but you are also a little hypochondriac. You are so in touch with yourself. You’re so emotionally intelligent, but also so anal. You have so many beautiful qualities that are reflected throughout this whole movie.

Maddie: I am them, they are me.

Emma: You are all of it at once. Well, Madeline Jane, it's been wonderful to speak with you.

Maddie: Emma Garner, seriously, thank you so much.

Emma: Thank YOU.

Maddie: And-

Emma: And-

Maddie & Emma: Scene.