Kingsfield Wears Prada
Maureen Dowd’s column today is about Anna Wintour, the legendary –and legendarily difficult –editor of Vogue who was reportedly the model for Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly in the (very funny) movie The Devil Wears Prada.
But I have a different theory. I think something in Meryl Streep’s characterization was based on Professor Kingsfield, the legendary contracts professor from the Paper Chase–the fictionalized account of life for first year law students at Harvard Law School.
Here are two scenes. Miranda’s brutal take-down of Andie, the new graduate of Northwestern University who finds herself unexpectedly working for a fashion magazine, and Kingsfield’s brutal take-down of Hart, the new graduate of the University of Minnesota who unexpectedly finds himself caught off-guard in the first day of class.
You have been watching far too many movies to remember that scene. You are right of course, the similarity is great. Of course, Mr. Hart did graduate with the respect of the professor. It was arduous, but he did it.
Yes. And Andie did “graduate” with the respect of Miranda.
That Paper Chase scene is from the inferior TV show. I watched Paper Chase the night before I started law school. Like Hart, I was the first person in my section to be called. Luckily, my professor was no Kingsfield.
Anna Wintour was on David Letterman last night to promote a documentary about Vogue (made by the guy who did the documentary The War Room about the Clinton campaign) as well as the September issue, the most important fashion issue of the year. Her chatter with Letterman was rather awkward: no chemistry between them at all. Except for a certain formality – she sat in the chair unlike any other guest on Letterman that I’ve seen – she wasn’t like the movie character at all. Even there, it’s hard to imagine Miranda Priestly sitting quite like that on a TV talk show.
On the movie characters, I suppose there is a certain similarity between Priestly and Kingsfield. I saw the Paper Chase on video some years ago and appreciate Prof. K putting the two scenes in one place. It is amusing to watch them back-to-back. But the book (which I haven’t read but have read about) has so much material on her that it is unlikely that the director or Meryl Streep based the character on Kingsfield. (The Paper Chase, too, is based on a novel.) In fact, I think more of this contrast in the two movies. The professor has little screen time and we didn’t see a demonstration his supposed brilliance to back up his dressing-down of the poor law students. Priestly, on the other hand, is allowed to show her brilliance in several scenes, including the scene above. Reflecting their respective screentime, Streep was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar while John Houseman for a Best Supporting Actor.
Yes. . .and Hart’s answer was actually not horrible. He was thinking in the right direction, especially if he hadn’t read the case.