It evolved from my experience in the fifties, growing up during the McCarthy era, and hearing a lot of assumptions that America was wonderful and Communism was terrible. ↗
In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer. ↗
My dad was kind of a pool shark and had a Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin thing going on. I've always been fascinated by the fifties because of him. There was a hip, cool, anything-goes atmosphere back then, but looking good was still a priority. ↗
If I really had to pinpoint my happiest days out of the United States, I'd choose those Fifties military days in Britain, particularly my time in South Ruislip. I had a ball. ↗
There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists. ↗
In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel. ↗
Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It's tough on the ego. ↗
Here in L.A. the standard of beauty is kind of ridiculous. I want to be doing this when I'm in my fifties and sixties and this isn't what I'm going to look like. ↗