July 6–13, 1995

critic pick|Reading

Libby Gelman-Waxner

Long acclaimed as the only good reason to buy Premiere magazine, Libby Gelman-Waxner has now had the characteristic good sense to collect her fabulously funny columns in book form (If You Ask Me, Fawcett Columbine). Libby taps into her vast life experience as an assistant buyer in juniors' activewear to talk about what really matters to the filmgoing public. "Movies," she reminds us, "are about Cher's wigs and Madonna's abs" and "about how much Dennis Quaid and Daniel Day-Lewis desire me on a very personal and intimate level, but that since I am happily married, they can only express their lust and adoration by removing their clothing onscreen and praying that somewhere I will be watching..."

Aggressively, triumphantly superficial (kinda like movies at their best), she throws off one-liners as memorable as any in the plays of say, Paul Rudnick, the playwright and novelist who wrote Jeffrey — who, sources say, will reveal that he and Libby are one and the same when he accompanies her (or embodies her) this week at Borders. Ask one of them to read the chapter about Libby's attempt to recreate the sex scenes from Body of Evidence with her husband Josh the orthodontist, using "a leftover bayberry candle from the Thanksgiving centerpiece" and "my old Epilady, with the rotating coils." It's an auteurist reviewers' masterpiece, if you ask me.

Libby Gelman-Waxner/ Paul Rudnick, Borders Book Shop, 1714 Walnut St., Thurs. July 13, 7:30p.m. (568-6400).

— David Warner