Over the two years Muffie Meyer worked on the documentary Grey Gardens, she had no clue that it would go on to be such a cultural icon. The 1975 film, which followed aristocratic Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, living together in near-poverty in posh East Hampton, New York, has been selected for the National Film Registry and has been named to lists of best documentaries. A Broadway musical and a feature film have been based on the original documentary.
But Meyer, speaking at a NextTribe virtual event earlier this month, thinks it could possibly have been even better. As one of the editors of the film (also credited as a co-director), Meyer shaped the narrative, which tries to answer the question of why the never-married Little Edie Beale—Jacqueline Bouvier's cousin and once a glamorous, sought-after debutante—ended up living almost as a recluse with her mother. Right before the film's release, the directors, Albert and David Maysles, decided to cut a scene that Meyer and her co-editor desperately wanted to leave in.
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