Fried Gaga

In what is unquestionably the greatest meeting of minds since Edith Sitwell shared a couch with Marilyn Monroe, Stephen Fry, the Greatest Living Englishman, enjoyed an afternoon tea with with Lady Gaga, who was understatedly dressed as a horned medieval pageant.



You get a strong sense of the character and behaviour of a great star by smelling the mood of those around them. The assistants who popped in from time to time to apologise for the late-running of the afternoon (she was busy doing back-to-back TV interviews in another suite) all seemed relaxed, cheerful and unforced in their manner. They certainly didn?t have the cowed look of crushed hirelings fresh from a verbal bitch-slapping who were attempting to prepare me for sulky moods and obstreperous huffiness.

I cannot claim that the overtly Wagnerian headpiece she wore had been chosen in my honour, but it certainly put me at my ease, as did the easygoing, ?Hello again!? and proffering of a soft cheek.



I confess to being somewhat ambivalent about her ladyship and her cultural ubiquity.

I know, who cares? Who cares what I'm ambivalent about? Even I don't care.

But Gaga's music, her videos, her techno-baroque productions--they do not reach me, unlike the sweet, hip-swirling sublimities of Kylie Minogue.

Gaga's appearance on SNL, her HBO special--their post-industrial dissonance and clamor reminded me of a J. G. Ballard multi-car crash, and not in a positive way.

But Stephen Fry is convinced of her goodness, and that is good enough for me. Fry:



I don?t know what I expected from this global phenomenon, but it wasn?t the endearing mixture of warmth, wit, intelligence and larky self-knowledge that I found. There were comments she made about her work that I have no doubt she has come out with before - goodness knows, in my own small way I?ve had to do the publicity treadmill and I know how wearing it can be and how the same lines can easily be trotted out. But I was, silly old fool that I am, flattered by the attention she paid to each question and by the cheerful energy, after a long day, that she continued to exhibit.

And it didn?t end there. ?Let?s call the photographer back in,? she said, and then proceeded to art-direct the shoot like a professional production designer.

She took a rose from a vase on the table and said gravely to Shamil [the photographer]: ?Start shooting after the count of three, OK??

She sat down on the sofa next to me, tore the petals from the rose, cast them up in the air above us and called out ?Three!?



This is a portrait of a young woman in touch with the present moment, something so few stars are once they enter the bubble.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/05/fried-gaga.html

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