Gretchen Mol digs Brooklyn. (Edward Reed/Mayor's Office)

Ms. Dunham, on location in Brooklyn. (HBO)

At the ribbon cutting for Steiner Studios earlier this month, The Observer caught up with Voice of the City Lena Dunham, who had just moved production for the second season of her feverish hit Girls to the studio in Brooklyn. Gretchen Mol of Boardwalk Empire was up on stage, looking radiant beside the mayor and Doug Steiner, but Ms. Dunham hid in the back of the sound stage.

It was actually her first day at the studios, she said, but her experience helps underscore why the city needs more and bigger studios if it is going to continue to grow its film and television industry. (Also, there wasn't room in our profile of Doug Steiner for Ms. Dunham, but we figure giving her her own post should drive some good Google hits to Observer.com, what with the ultra-buzz humming around Girls at the moment.)

"I'm very excited to be here," Ms. Dunham told The Observer of her arrival at Steiner Studios. "I love the Navy Yards, it's such a cool, historic place." Somehow we could not help but think of that scene from Tiny Furniture where she has sex with the chef inside a giant pipe somewhere in nearby Dumbo.

"I think we're going to do some ghost hunting," she added of her enthusiasm for the historic 300 acre property, which dates to the Civil War.

Girls shot its first season at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, but it had to move to Steiner for its second because CBS' Person of Interest had become an unexpected hit and was taking more space at Silvercup. "You can judge by the posters that this is a good place to be," Ms. Dunham said of Steiner Studios, which has lined the lobbies with its past work.

Though The Observer knew she had only been here a day, we asked which studio she preferred. "They're all good in their own way," Ms. Dunham replied. "I have to say that because I could be working at any of them."

She said she thought the food was better in Long Island City, but her producer, Ilene Landress, said it was actually better here, with Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Dumbo just a short walk away.

"At the end of the day, it's doesn't matter where I work," Ms. Landress said. "Whether it's Silvercup or Steiner, it comes down to supply and demand, the shape and size of the production and the budget we have to work with."

This is the same thing Stuart Suna, co-founder of Silvercup Studios had pointed out to The Observer in a telephone interview last month—a rising tide and all that. But he was quick to point out that just because Steiner now has the largest studio in the city does not necessarily mean it is the better one.

“It is not how big the stages are but how good the shows actually are," he said. "Let the awards tell the story.”

One person who is happy with her options is Gretchen Mol. Being able to work in New York has been a thrill, something The Observer heard repeated again and again from cast and crew on the various New York productions. The thinking often is that the architecture, the buildings, the locations, even the light are what matters when shooting in New York, which is true to a point: what's important is being close to home.

"For me, I'm from Connecticut originally, and I moved here, and I just love working here," Ms. Mol said. "I love being about to work in Brooklyn and not have to move my family all over the place."

There is another unexpected benefit. "It's nice that the extras look like real people," Ms. Mol said. "That makes my job so much easier because you look around and it's real, it's not like you're pretending."

Hollywood is fake. Brooklyn is real.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Emma Stone!

For the first time since January 2008, the cover of Vanity Fair this month features an individual working actress under the age of 30. Hello, Emma Stone! (We're still kind of figuring out which one you are!) One wonders if something's gotten in the water at Vanity Fair--the magazine's typical nostalgia for dead celebrities (last year saw Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, and--sigh--Marilyn Monroe covers) has been replaced by nostalgia for the late-nineties days in which untested stars used to romp across the cover. Teenage Natalie Portman! A near-unknown Charlize Theron!

2011 Vanity Fair is getting a little riskier than the dead-and/or-hyperfamous formula it had landed on in the past couple of years (excepting big group shots, which always have had and always will have a few random unknowns in there). This year saw covers by desperate post-celebrity Rob Lowe, neither (yet) dead nor (now) hyperfamous, as well as, randomly, the costume-loving pop singer Katy Perry. Risk! Oddity! The nineties are back! Between Ms.

Gretchen Mol!

Stone and Ms. Perry, one of them stands a decent chance of going the way not of Ms. Portman but of Gretchen Mol--the anonymous starlet granted a cover and fashion spread in the magazine, then not heard from again.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Hollywood’s obsession with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy plods on, peeking through keyholes, peering under frayed carpets and sniffing out new conspiracy theories fed by whim, suspicion, conjecture and rumor, with no end in sight. The preposterous An American Affair, set in the time of Washington’s nervous breakdown over the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, newsreels of Nikita Khrushchev embracing Fidel Castro, and Walter Cronkite weeping for a nation in shock over the events in Dallas, implies the answers to all unsolved mysteries were shared by a blond tart who was J.F.K.’s mistress and a 13-year-old boy who lived across the street. I mean, what next? The discovery that Lee Harvey Oswald plotted the death of Marilyn Monroe to further the career of Mamie Van Doren?

In this smoke ring of intrigue, a sexy morsel named Catherine Caswell, who poses nude in her bedroom window to enchant the residents of Georgetown (played by Gretchen Mol, who has shown it all on a regular basis, sparking up one mediocre movie after another), attracts the attention of a preppy kid named Adam (Cameron Bright), who watches her through a telescope lens from his own bedroom window. While she’s stripping above, dark limos arrive in the alley below, depositing the Secret Service and J.F.K. Understandably distracted from the dull routine of nuns, bullies and girls at his Catholic school and curious to get a closer view, Adam applies for a landscaping job in the lady’s garden. Suddenly an adolescent with raging hormones becomes a witness to one of history’s most captivating chapters. Catherine, it turns out, is being used by her ex-husband, who is some kind of unexplained government informer, and the C.I.A. to persuade the president to deal with the Cubans or his life will be in danger. The kid gets a close-up of his boss’ nudest assets as well as her secret diary detailing all of the secrets of the forthcoming horrors in Dallas. He steals the diary and learns the secrets that changed the world, placing his own life in danger; sexpot Catherine ends up in a pool of blood in the neighborhood alley; and the diary lands in the flames of her fireplace, the unsolved mystery of who killed J.F.K. in ashes. Meanwhile, the boy’s father, a respected Washington journalist (Noah Wylie), shrugs off the story of the century like it was the discovery of a grocery list. What makes the movie doubly unsatisfying is its inference that every aspect of the J.F.K. assassination, down to the remotest detail, was fueled by overactive libidos, and its stubborn refusal to reveal the contents of the diary that made it such a threat to national security. Maddening.

Forget the ambitious script by Alex Metcalf and the slacker direction by William Olsson—who comes from Sweden by way of the University of Southern California—that reduces the Cold War to heavy breathing and a bottle of scotch. The real scene stealer in An American Affair is Gretchen Mol, who has lost none of her full-frontal allure since The Notorious Bettie Page. Firm and confident with supple thighs and perky nipples, she’s made a career out of showing them off to all and sundry. Like the old studio cards audiences used to fill out at sneak previews, I say “Give us more like this.”

rreed@observer.com

Brooke Shields, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing a woman in the Oval Office after the 2008 presidential election. “I’m always convinced, at the risk of being—and I love men—but I think women are incredibly capable, and it seems that their talents and their intellect seems to be a little more varied, I should say,” said Ms. Shields, 42, in a purple Donna Karan dress. The Ivy-League actress, who will star in Candace Bushnell’s new TV show, Lipstick Jungle, was the special guest host last night at Saks Fifth Avenue’s “Viva La Cure” benefit for women’s cancer research. The party was held in the subterranean Sea Grill at Rockefeller Plaza, where guests then spilled out onto a carpet in middle of the ice rink and ate and drank on the pink island while hired ice skaters twirled and sported around them.

“So I think I would welcome that versatility. I think there is a multi-tasking ability that women have and an appreciation for things without a risk of being maudlin,” Ms. Shields added.

Asked what unique traits, if any, a woman might bring to the presidency if one is elected, actress Gretchen Mol opened her eyes wide. “Female power? It depends on the woman, actually, it really does. It’s not just about having a woman, it’s about having someone that can lead this country and bring us into a different place than we are now,” she continued, “It really does depend on the woman, but hopefully—it really is a cliché to say—but I think of women as not being particularly hawkish, so to speak. But then again, that’s not always true,” said Ms. Mol, 35, who was wearing a black-and-brown Jason Wu dress with a bright red band around the waist.

Amanda Peet, meanwhile, thinks that “there are a lot of sort of misconceptions about Hillary being cold and condescending, so I don’t know that she’s going to have this aura of compassion and maternal empathy more than, say, Barack Obama or even McCain, should he resurface or whatever,” said Ms. Peet, 35, in a peasant blouse and loose black pedal-pushers. “I’m working on being a mother,” she added.

Howard Stern’s ex-model fiancée, Beth Ostrosky likes the idea of a female president, because she, unlike a man, would understand “women’s issues, first-hand.” Wearing a black dress, black Jimmy Choos and clutching a black quilted-leather Chanel purse, Ms. Ostrosky, 35, went on to say: “I would love for Hillary to be the next president. I am definitely a Hillary supporter!”

Largely outnumbered by female guests at last night’s event, Saks C.E.O. Steve Sadove and Rescue Me star Mike Lombardi, were happy to offer their thoughts on the issue.

“A woman could bring a lot to the white house from perspective, in terms of different perspectives, but I think it’s not about women or men, it’s about quality of thinking and ideas and who’s going to be able to bring about the kind of change that’s needed in terms of moving the country forward,” Mr. Sadove said diplomatically in a black suit.

After massaging most of his girlfriend Maria Helena’s body on the elevator ride to street-level, Mr. Lombardi, 31, who was wearing a black leather jacket, turned to the Daily Transom and said: “Being the women who bear children, obviously they come from a different perspective than we do. So I think a lot of different views and opinions, for sure, yeah.”

In retrospect, Bettie Page was no more a provocateur than Peggy Ann Garner. Her rise to infamy was, in fact, largely accidental. The movie follows her from a strict, conservative Protestant childhood in Nashville to New York City, where she pursues her dreams of an acting career. To make ends meet, Bettie first posed for a police officer with a camera on the beach at Coney Island. Studying the Stanislavsky “method” by day in Greenwich Village acting classes and stripping to her lingerie at night, one scantily-clad modeling job led to another until her flesh-and-fantasy magazine covers were all over the newsstands in Times Square, and it wasn’t long before she was posing for sadomasochistic fetish photos staged by a brother-sister team (Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor) who exploited her.

Those raunchy bondage pics may seem corny and dated now—quaint, really—but they attracted the attention of Senator Estes Kefauver, who accused Bettie Page of inciting lust in the blackest hearts of horny men everywhere. After playing the liberal, muckraking television icon Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, David Strathairn brilliantly plays the other side of the coin as the smarmy Senator from Tennessee whose hatred of female pulchritude was as suspicious as a cobra everyone thought was defanged. For a devout churchgoer who believed in Jesus and couldn’t tolerate vulgar language or obscene gestures, Bettie found herself dragged shamefully through the mire and labeled “the pinup queen of porn.”

In 1958, she underwent a sudden religious epiphany and disappeared from the public eye forever. She’s lost to us now, but wherever she is today, one assumes Bettie Page is still getting by on vitality, faith and an unstoppable sense of humor. She’s become an icon in the worlds of fashion, publishing, comic books, marketing, product placement and the Internet. Her bondage films are available on DVD. For all of her fame, she probably hasn’t got a dime.

As the mislabeled Lorelei of sin whose only real crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Gretchen Mol plays the notorious Bettie as a one-woman ruby-fruit jungle of lacquered hair and fire-engine-red lipstick who was a model of good-natured sweetness and fun. No matter what lurid tasks she performed for the camera, she was always discreetly posed and radiated poise and joy in every costume. (In boots, whip and dominatrix drag, she seemed less dangerous than a female jockey at Churchill Downs.) While charting Bettie’s accidental journey to X-rated stardom, Ms. Harron recounts the darker chapters of her personal history, such as physical and sexual abuse, but the filmmaker stops short of psychoanalysis. Bettie is like a Betty Crocker ad, making Jell-O in panties and a bra. This light touch is welcome, because this is a political film about 50’s hypocrisy, rendering the elements of its story and viewpoints through the most delicate modulations of tone. The naturalism of the period’s Super 8 home-movie ambiance is neatly juxtaposed with the lush Technicolor tapestries of 50’s Hollywood soap operas. Ms. Harron has managed to revive an era while telling a strange and compelling story. Like Bettie herself, the movie is wholesome and sexy at the same time. I liked it immensely.

Lovely, Sort Of

Nothing ever happens in Friends with Money, but a pleasant time is spent waiting. Heavily influenced by the overpopulated cinematic group-therapy sessions conducted by Robert Altman, writer-director Nicole Holofcener threads together a series of stories about Los Angeles thirtysomethings (well, a few will never see 40 again) collectively going through a series of early midlife crises that narrowly avoid sitcom-level clichés, thanks to clever dialogue and a terrific cast.

Despite ghastly, mewling songs by Rickie Lee Jones, the tales of three married couples and one hopelessly single friend (surprisingly well played by Jennifer Aniston) are intertwined with logic and realism instead of bad music, sight gags and one-liners. Christine and David (Catherine Keener and the marvelous Jason Isaacs) are married screenwriters collaborating on a script about a couple whose marriage is falling apart. Reading their roles aloud to each other from their computers, life imitates art before they can dismantle their hard drives. Jane and Aaron (Frances McDormand and Simon McBurney) are a prosperous designer of boutique fashions and her husband, a clothes-conscious swish who sells organic bath products with pieces of fruit in them and who is always getting patted and pinched by other men. The gnawing suspicion that Aaron is gay has plummeted Jane into a state of clinical depression. Jane and Aaron are best friends, but somehow it’s not enough. Rounding out this unbalanced sextet of “friends with money” are Franny and Matt (Joan Cusack and Greg Germann), the richest of them all. It isn’t always clear what these people did to earn their comfort-zone status, but there’s no question about the ease with which they flaunt it.

The only one whose bank account (and life) seems to have slipped through the holes in the pockets of her outdated Gloria Vanderbilt jeans is the group mascot Olivia (Ms. Aniston), a former schoolteacher who has chucked her job to work as a maid. Cleaning other people’s toilets and collecting free samples of department-store cosmetics, Olivia is a mutt, and her friends are a communal rescue shelter. The fact that she’s the only free spirit in a gang of miserable inmates imprisoned by the society pages of the Los Angeles Times is just one of this film’s pleasant ironies. Olivia smokes pot, has no fashion sense or romantic prospects and actually enjoys rifling through other people’s closets. What she does with one client’s vibrator you must discover for yourself, but I will say Ms. Aniston has rarely been photographed with such mischievous candor. Her detractors can eat crow: She is charming throughout.

Ms. Holofcener’s camera moves in and out of her characters’ lives like a dust mop swirls around furniture legs, while her dialogue provides insights and flashes of revelation along the way. As a writer, she has an uncanny ear for the way people really talk, even to their mirrors; as a director, she depends on entirely too many annoying close-ups. But in the sharply observed nuances of her characters’ neuroses, and in the unforced way she dismantles stereotypes until nobody ends up doing exactly what you expect them to do, she manages to make both slobs and snobs seem happily appealing. The odd result is that while you applaud Friends with Money, you may also feel lucky you don’t have any friends with money to call your own.

Boots for a Queen

With so few films on the market that come anywhere close to real entertainment, Kinky Boots, a British import in the delectable tradition of Calendar Girls and Mrs. Henderson Presents, is a cause for celebration. I can scarcely begin to prepare you for all the fun you have in store from this unexpected feel-good surprise about a dreary shoe factory in Northampton that re-invents itself by cornering a niche market for oversized glitter boots for drag queens with big feet. It is all the more exhilarating because it’s absolutely true: In fact, it’s dedicated to the men and women of the original Kinky Boot Factory, most of whom are still rubbing their eyes over their unpredictable windfall. So will you.

Charlie (the excellent Australian actor Joel Edgerton) inherits his father’s business in the Midlands, an established shoe company specializing in traditional men’s shoes for four generations. His fiancée wants him to dump this albatross, but out of loyalty and respect, Charlie is determined to make his dad proud. Trouble is, the company is bankrupt, clearly in need of an overhaul, and poor Charlie is forced to sack a chunk of the personnel.

But the day is saved on a business trip to London, where Charlie has a chance encounter with a rambunctious, feisty black drag performer named Lola, the star of a raunchy Soho transvestite revue. “The first thing you notice about a person is their shoes,” his dad always used to say, and the first thing Charlie notices about Lola is that he can hardly squeeze his manly arches into his murderous stilettos. A light bulb goes off in Charlie’s tousled head: Why not develop a niche market for proper women’s shoes that can support the weight and body size of a cross-dresser?

When Lola travels out to the Midlands to model and design the new line, the hairy factory workers who are forced to switch gears and sew new thigh-high knife-point heels on patterns of flaming red lizard and electric-blue sequins are mortified to the point of violence. What Lola needs is an ally, and he finds one in the unlikeliest of places—the factory’s most homophobic employee. What happens next is Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets The Full Monty.

By the time it all ends up at the international shoe fair in Milan, you really get to know Charlie’s detractors, who beg him to dump the factory, and Charlie, who re-mortgages his house to save it. Most importantly, you get to know the flamboyant and utterly human Lola, whose real name is Simon and who almost became a heavyweight-boxing champion, a profession that didn’t work with strapless cocktail dresses. Lola is played with great relish by the diverse and powerful British sensation Chiwetel Ejiofor, who electrified audiences everywhere in Amistad and Dirty Pretty Things and is currently Denzel Washington’s cop partner in Spike Lee’s Inside Man. Lola, a vehicle more challenging than anything he has ever done, is big, brave, funny and more of a man than anyone in pants, and he does all of his own musical numbers. (“These Boots Are Made for Walking” stops the show.)

The direction by Julian Jerrold, making his debut, is too predictable in its political correctness, and I’m not sure I buy the way everyone in the film undergoes a magical self-improvement after discovering marabou feathers. But Kinky Boots is hilarious and poignant enough to suspend skepticism and erase doubts. It adds up to one helluva movie picnic, and there isn’t an ant in sight.