Stardom in the Age of the Selfie
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“Alan, you have to remember, you’re a star,” he reminds us—and perhaps himself—by way of Rob Marshall, who directed Cumming in his role in Broadway’s Cabaret. Marshall goes on to say to him, “They want to hear you. People want to look at you. They just do!”

Following his spectacularly successful and moving 2015 memoir, Not My Father’s Son, in which he dissected his relationship with his brute of a father, this new memoir is far more casual but just as revealing. Reading this book, which is subtitled My Life in Stories and Pictures, is akin to sitting with Cumming as he leafs through his ever-growing scrapbook of accomplishments, loves lost and won, and collaborations with other name-brand stars. Memories and observations, some no bigger than the crumbs left over from a shortbread, are related with drama.

For those unfamiliar with this son of Scotland, Cumming is the fifty-something TV, movie, and Broadway actor known for playing such disparate roles as Eli Gold on The Good Wife, the host of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery, and the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret. But the role he plays here is that of photographer and chronicler of moments, big and small, in his life. Cumming includes many a selfie, some taken long before that narcissistic endeavor became a word—and because he has always been a fetching lad, the photos are fun to pass around. We see him circa 1999 holding the lens so that all can espy a pair of new red swimming trunks. Other shots show him nuzzling Honey, his late beloved dog, and a long view of his hairy gams culminating in a pair of red Crocs.

Cumming’s strategy here is to pair a given photograph he took of himself or someone else with the story behind it. While walking the red carpet at a Tony Awards presentation, for instance, he snapped a shot of Glenn Close’s rippling back in a strapless gown. Rather than waiting to be interviewed and asked “inane questions,” he focused the lens instead on Close’s delts as a way to distance himself from the celebrity crush in which he was one of the main ingredients.

From the memorial service for Gore Vidal, Cumming includes a snapshot of the celebrity-studded program. He reminisces about a dinner with the late author at Vidal’s villa in Ravello. During an inebriated conversation about the meaning of homosexuality and what constitutes sex, Vidal confessed to Cumming that he had never been in love. Vidal also insisted that real sex involved penetration. Upon ruminating on these admissions, Cumming wrote: “[T]his bizarre notion Americans have that no sexual contact has occurred unless someone gets penetrated (and not orally, that doesn’t count) is very dangerous. Firstly because it denigrates, demeans, and discounts any kind of sexual contact that comes before or instead of penetration and secondly, because it encourages Americans to enter into a very dangerous communal lie: that getting naked and having an orgasm with someone else doesn’t mean anything. I think that’s weird.” He later adds: “Getting your penis out and having someone else touch it or put it in his or her mouth is having sexual relations in my book.” And this is Cumming’s book, after all.

There is no opportunity to get bored in this book. We witness Cumming taking on a new role every few pages. He snapped a former boyfriend, Rob, bare buttocks in full view, on their Chelsea terrace following one of Rob’s jogs. “He would always be drenched in sweat after a run and want to shower immediately, but first he had to run the gauntlet of me, my ever-curious nose, which loved to explore the olfactory nuances of an active young gentleman,” Cumming admits without embarrassment.

Not everyone in the book comes off smelling so sweetly. One example is Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian fashion plate known for her oversized glasses and extravagant outfits. Cumming had expected to like her—someone immersed in the orbit of New York fashion, an enlightened gal-pal unafraid of making a statement on the street. But after meeting her, he outs her as a humorless “rabid Republican,” one who angrily claimed that all that was wrong with the nation was “Obama’s fault.”

After admitting in another anecdote that he loves to attend fashion shows, Cumming makes a pronouncement about fashionistas—that the industry attracts followers and practitioners who “[believe]that they are more likely to succeed and be popular if they are mean.” From his front row perch, he concludes: “Actually, and thankfully, people who are most successful, on the whole, tend to be quite nice.”

As for the book’s title, it originated with Oprah Winfrey. Cumming took his best friend Eddie to a party at which Oprah was a guest. Eddie said to her that having his picture taken with her “would be my dream.” Her response: “You gotta get bigger dreams”—which could be interpreted either as a put-down or as self-deprecation. She did pose with the friend, and Cumming captured it. It’s hard to imagine Cumming attaining bigger dreams in light of all that he has accomplished so far. But, upon reading this book, we admire him all the more for wanting not only fame, but also respect.

 

David Masello is a freelance writer based in New York City.