I first noticed actress Brooke Smith when she guested on Ray Donovan. I remember being so impressed with her that I looked her up. I’ve since seen her on Bates Motel and on Big Sky (I only watched half of the first season, it got complicated!) and she can definitely act. I just learned that she was the kidnapping victim in Silence of The Lambs and is best known for her work on Grey’s Anatomy, which I don’t watch. (Peridot is our Grey’s expert! She’s seen every episode.) Brooke, 55, has a new coffee table book out with photos she took of her time on the punk scene in New York City in the 80s. It’s called Sunday Matinee Book and you can learn more about it here. It was so nostalgic for me to read her interviews promoting it and to see her photos. I’m a little younger than her but I hung out with the goth crowd in Buffalo, NY in the early 90s. I could relate to so much of what she’s said about that time in her life. I’m going to quote an interview she did with EVGrieve.com and she also has a new interview about this in People.
As an unhappy teen growing up in Rockland County in the 1980s, Brooke Smith found solace riding the 9A bus into the city.
Once here, she’d take the A train to West Fourth Street. One day decided to keep walking on Eighth Street into the East Village and onto St. Mark’s Place.
Here, she found her home, a place where she felt as if she belonged…
While preparing to move about 12 years ago, Smith found a cardboard box full of the photos she took in the 1980s while part of the punk/hardcore scene on the Lower East Side. This discovery eventually led to a solo show at Primary Gallery.
These photos are the subject of a new photo book, “Sunday Matinee,” which features hundreds of photographs of the East Village in the mid-1980s and bands such as Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, Warzone and others. There are also recollections by band members and others involved in the scene.
What were some ways this scene helped you forge your identity?
There was no separation between audience and performer. It was our scene, and we were doing it for ourselves, not to get rich or famous. So I think that helped me. I learned to trust my instincts as an artist, and to stay true to myself and to always be authentic.What do you hope that people take away from “Sunday Matinee”?
It’s a love letter to that time and place and especially those people. I hope people get the message to be themselves. Don’t try to fit in. If you can find a group of people, or even just one other person who shares your interests, you can create whatever you want.
She was smart to take pictures and save them. I wish I had more photos from college and high school, but we were using disposable cameras and forgetting to get the film developed or losing it. Plus we didn’t have even flip phones at that time, not to mention cameras. As for finding people with your interests, I loved that quote because it reminded me so much of our Celebitchy Zoom group. The women in that group are just incredible. I’ve never known so many people who share my interests and values and it’s been so supportive and loving. Plus we’re all excellent gossips I have to say. Back in the 80s and 90s we met our people out in the wild but with the Internet we can connect with our exact niche of friends and it’s wonderful. I’m not saying one is superior though and am glad that I’ve been alive to experience both sides of that.
She knew Jeff Buckley!!
The summer of 1985, I worked as a nanny for an upper east side NYC family (because besides joining the military, nannying is what poor kids from Montana did) anyway, the whole experience was like a chapter out of the Nanny Diaries, right down to the Harvard bound boy who lived in the building. No great romance but he did take me out for wild night that culminated in dancing at the now long gone Cat Club. NYC at that moment in time was like nothing I’ve experienced since. Sigh. I’m buying the book.
We need your book!
Wow interesting! She was great in Silence of the Lambs…
Every time I see her, the first thing that pops in my head is: “it puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again”
I urge you to replace that with a few minutes earlier in the film when she’s driving free down the road singing to Tom Petty’s “American Girl”. That’s what I always think of when I see her. And what she has done since? She is bad ass.
She roomed with Jeff Buckley. It sounds like she’s led an interesting life. I will check out her book. I know someone who would love it for XMas.
She was also in Weeds as the DEA agent/brief husband of Nancy’s ex-wife and mother to his troubled son. And she was great in that.
If i see she is in something, i always look forward to her performance.
Wow!!! VERY nostalgic for me too. I was ALL about punk rock in my youth. I have seen all the bands named in the article (and many many more) MULTIPLE times. Bad Brains continues to be one of my all time favorite bands. But then again, I’m from DC! I was a regular at the Black Cat, the 930 Club (old AND new), Capital Ballroom (which became Nation), etc etc DC had one of the best punk scenes on the east coast, which eventually evolved into one of the best hardcore scenes, as did NYC. I had friends in NYC and would go to shows up there, even made it to a couple shows at CBGBs before they closed. Embarrassing fact- I had a fling with the Freddy, the younger brother of Roger Miret, the singer of Agnostic Front. Freddy had his own band, Madball. I thought I was so cool because I was hooking up with a guy in a band 🙄 😬😵💫
@annalise – if that was your scene, and you’re still in the area, H.R. from Bad Brains is going to be at a show a the Black Cat on 1/21. my husband grew up in DC and has said the same thing. his cousin was in one of the bands playing that night, so we were just talking about it yesterday- heck of a coincidence that this topic came up.
Brooke is so dang cool 😎