#Beverly Donofrio

[annarexcouture]

[wouldshesnip]

Beverly Donofrio (Riding in Cars with Boys)

Her son is shown to be circumcised in the hospital right at birth.

Would She Snip?: Yes

[queenie435]

“Hi. My name is Fay, and I’m Bev’s best friend. I just wanted to say how beautiful Bev looks tonight. And to wish her all the happiness in the world. But now that I have said that, maybe one of you could say it to her too. Sitting over there is this girl that just has a light around her. And when you’re near her, you just know something exciting is going to happen. So if you all think you deserve some sort of a medal for being here ’just for the special circumstances’ then don’t bother talking to me either. Cause I’m pregnant too!”

🎥 Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)🍿

[professionalintrovert]

[cinematic-literature]

Riding in Cars with Boys (2001) by Penny Marshall

Book title: Riding in Cars with Boys (1990) by Beverly Donofrio

[veryslowreader]

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 

Riding in Cars with Boys

[books-in-media]

Emma Roberts, (Instagram, October 15, 2013)

—Riding in Cars with Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good, Beverly Donofrio (1990)

[showmethesneer]

crying the most angry and frustrated tears because i rewatched Riding In Cars with Boys tonight for the first time in probably 10, 11 years. maybe longer. i saw this movie many times when i was younger but i never saw the film as an adult.

i knew every thing that was about to happen, but processing it with my adult mind, i really understood just how traumatizing these events were. these unsupportive parents, this teenage pregnancy, this PIECE OF SHIT husband-- i really got the impact of the tragedy now. i spent the whole movie angry crying. i don't think i ever cried at this movie before.

i feel so grateful that i was never a teen mom. so grateful that at 27 i have never been pregnant. i was never forced or guilted into marrying a man i didn't love or couldn't trust to be my partner in life. i have been thru some terrible, traumatic things in my life, but at least i didn't have a baby at 15.

[reecedarlene]

I wondered if I'd still remember Bobby when I was thirty or forty. I'd be an adult,  but in my memory he'd still be a kid.  ...   wondered if Bobby was the lucky one.  ...  Bobby would never get the chance to spread his wings and learn too fly. I wondered if any of us would.

"Riding in Cars with Boys" by Beverly Donofrio

[house-of-healing-communication]

Maybe when things start to change, you want to hold on to something familiar.

Beverly Donofrio, Riding in Cars with Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good

Quotes for all moods

[wepicy]

Quote By Beverly Donofrio About Life “One day can change your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is is three or four big days that change everything.” - Beverly Donofrio

[adamwatchesmovies]

Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)

I can feel Riding in Cars with Boys wrapping its fingers around my neck, desperately trying to wring out the emotions. I say no. NO! This movie may be poised to be emotional but it lacks the genuine heart to make it effective.

Based on the memoirs of Beverly Donofrio, the film begins in 1961. Beverly “Bev” Donofrio (Drew Barrymore) is a smart teenager who dreams of going to college in New York. Unfortunately, she becomes pregnant at 15. Soon she’s married to the baby’s father, Ray (Steve Zahn), and her whole life gets flushed from one toilet to another directly below it. Through it all though, there’s hope that she can climb her way out of this mess of her own making.

The biggest problem with this inspirational drama is Drew Barrymore. She's not right for this role. As a teenage girl, she doesn’t look the part and she simply doesn't have the skills needed to get you to overlook this detail. Next issue: she’s too attractive. No football jock would reject a girl who looks like Bev, even if she handed him some poetry at a party and this makes the circumstances in which she meets Ray unbelievable. She’s just too good-looking. This uneven foundation means the emotions don't come the way they should. Are there tears? Yes, but they ring false. There’s a spark missing throughout. Bev never comes off as a tough mother who loves her child and would never have traded her life for anything else in the world, despite the fact that it came in the way of her dreams. She appears selfish, bitter, petty, and overall unsympathetic. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “unfit” to be a mother, but certainly not motherly.

You want to connect emotionally to this story and its characters. It's easy to understand how difficult it must be for Bev or any mother to raise children while their partner continuously proves themselves useless, or worse. Everyone feels that desire to be more than what life expects you to be, that determination to overcome adversity at any cost. Except the movie doesn't really show you a "way out" or provide any true insight on what this kind of life is like. When you look at the grand scheme of things, she's actually much better off than Ray - who turns out to be a more complex person than her. In a movie like this, you're supposed to leave realizing that yes indeed, Bev's life was made better by giving birth. That's what she says, but you don't believe it, you don't see it, you don't feel it.

When the movie does work is when it spends time with Bev’s son Jason (various actors when he’s young, Adam Garcia when he’s a man). Even from a young age, you can tell there's a lot of conflicting ideas inside the boy. All of the best scenes concern him in one way or another. I know many will be suckered by this true story and the credit all belongs to him.

I’m making Riding in Cars with Boys sound way worse than it is. It’s not unbearable. I can even understand people liking it but you can tell there's someone else out there telling this story better. When it tries to be funny, it really isn’t. It’s a movie about a woman who is not a good mother but we’re supposed to think that she is and the ending is too neat, too clean considering all we've seen before. In different hands, Riding in Cars with Boys could have brought me to tears, but this effort did not come even close. (On DVD, September 12, 2015)

[cathygeha]

OTHER GIRLS LIKE ME

by Stephanie Davies

Published by Bedazzled Ink

Non-Fiction

1st September 2020, priced £13.70

   PRESS RELEASE

“I read the first 200 pages of Other Girls Like Me in one sitting, I couldn’t put it down. It’s my story and yet it’s not. It speaks to all of us radicals, feminists, and lesbians who grew up in the 70s and 80s. Stephanie’s warmth and compassion shine through these pages. What a life!" —                      NERI TANNENBAUM, PRODUCER, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

“Other Girls Like Me is funny and sad, powerful and inspirational, especially in these times that are calling for all of us to become activists. And Stephanie Davies can write. Her prose is lyrical, even at times mesmerizing.” — Beverly Donofrio, Riding in Cars with Boys

“Other Girls Like Me is about women being concerned about the horrors in our world and being willing to protest and take nonviolent direct action – which is a very good thing. I do hope that lots of people read it and are inspired to take action themselves!” — Angie Zelter, Founder, Extinction Rebellion Peace

“Other Girls Like Me is a lyrical, fluent and elegant read—it is also funny and poignant in equal measure. In the pre Greta Thunberg era, this personal account of one young woman’s journey into activism is captivating and compelling—and a salient reminder of how the power and solidarity of communities of people with shared values can shape and change our lives—for good!” — Ann Limb, Chair of the Scouts, #1 2019 OUTstanding List of LGBT+ Public Sector Executives

ABOUT THE BOOK

Till now, Stephanie has done her best to play by the rules—which seem to be stacked against girls like her. It doesn’t help that she wants to play football, dress like a boy, and fight apartheid in South Africa—despite living in rural middle England—as she struggles to find her voice in a world where everything is different for girls. Then she hears them on the radio. Greenham women—an irreverent group of lesbians, punk rockers, mothers, and activists who have set up camp outside a US military base to protest nuclear war—are calling for backups in the face of imminent eviction from their muddy tents. She heads there immediately, where a series of adventures—from a break-in to a nuclear research centre to a doomed love affair with a punk rock singer in a girl band—changes the course of her life forever. But the sense of community she has found is challenged when she faces tragedy at home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephanie Davies is a communications consultant who worked for many years as the Director of Public Education for Doctors Without Borders. A UK native, Stephanie moved to New York in 1991, where she taught English Composition at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus and led research trips to Cuba. Before moving to New York, she co-edited a grassroots LGBT magazine in Brighton called A Queer Tribe. Stephanie earned a teaching degree from Aberystwyth University in Wales, and a BA in European Studies from Bath University, England. She grew up in a small rural village in Hampshire, where much of her first book, Other Girls Like Me, takes place.

Photo credit NYRA LANG

Bedazzled Ink is dedicated to publishing literary fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books that celebrate the unique and under-represented voices of women. For

 For all publicity enquiries, please contact Midas PR:

Georgina Moore | Georgina.Moore@midaspr.co.uk | 020 7361 7860

[bedazzledink]

New Acquisition: Other Girls Like Me

Stephanie Davies recounts her journey from a girl who tried to play by the rules to becoming a feminist activist in her book, Other Girls Like Me.

Till now, Stephanie has done her best to play by the rules—which seem to be stacked against girls like her. It doesn’t help that she wants to play football, dress like a boy, and fight apartheid in South Africa—despite living in rural middle England—as she struggles to find her voice in a world where everything is different for girls.

Then she hears them on the radio. Greenham women—an irreverent group of lesbians, punk rockers, mothers, and activists who have set up camp outside a US military base to protest nuclear war—are calling for backups in the face of imminent eviction from their muddy tents. She heads there immediately, where a series of adventures—from a break-in to a nuclear research center to a doomed love affair with a punk rock singer in a girl band—changes the course of her life forever. But the sense of community she has found is challenged when she faces tragedy at home.

“Other Girls Like Me is funny and sad, powerful and inspirational, especially in these times that are calling for all of us to become activists. And Stephanie Davies can write. Her prose is lyrical, even at times mesmerizing.” -- Beverly Donofrio, Riding in Cars with Boys

“Other Girls Like Me is about women being concerned about the horrors in our world and being willing to protest and take nonviolent direct action—which is a very good thing. I do hope that lots of people read it.” -- Angie Zelter, Founder, Extinction Rebellion Peace

[lanavault]

Spotlight #2: Lana Del Rey and The Nexus

All Images: © Nicole Nodland, Aug. 2010

London-based writing and production duo James Bauer-Mein and David Sneddon became The Nexus in July 2009. Within a year the duo had begun to make a name for themselves as the place to go for new artist development; enter Lana Del Rey.  Spending a large portion of 2010 in London with other writers and producers such as The Rural, Del Rey added a further five songs to her repertoire as a result of her sessions with The Nexus.

1. National Anthem “Money is the anthem of success, so before we go out, what’s your address?” is how Del Rey opens the track I Want It All; the song that she had penned with writer Justin Parker which underwent a few minor revisions before becoming National Anthem. With Bauer-Mein and Sneddon credited as co-writers on the track, as well as backing vocals for the spoken male soundbites, multiple demos of I Want It All were produced before it was decided that the chorus would be left on the cutting room floor in favour of the now quintessential Lana Del Rey lyric, “Tell me I’m your national anthem”. Likely intended to be the final product, the Nexus version of National Anthem is a joy. Running on a sleek bass guitar riff, Del Rey is as cool as ever. Enamoured by an excessive and luxurious lifestyle, it’s an over-indulgent all-American anthem. So it was only fitting that Del Rey would film her own DIY webcam music video for the track in Las Vegas’ Wynn Encore 2,261-square-foot Salon suite, which has a standing rate of around $750 per night.

The production by The Nexus was eventually laid bare, and producer Emile Haynie introduced a more sinister tone to the track, with an orchestral string section being added by Daniel Heath before making it’s way on to Del Rey’s major label debut, Born To Die, in 2012. When the song became a single, Del Rey wrote a new treatment for the music video, based upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The singer was depicted as icons Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whilst rapper A$AP Rocky was enlisted to play President JFK. Filmed on location at New York’s Gould-Guggenheim Estate, the Anthony Mandler directed video has since amassed over 66 million views, whereas the song has been streamed nearly 75 million times on Spotify. 2. Prom Song (Gone Wrong) Prom Song (Gone Wrong) was made available through a public upload on The Nexus’ Soundcloud account, although with Del Rey’s name not being attributed to the track it went unnoticed for a period of time, and a while after its discovery it was taken down. Prom Song is an autobiographical part-fantastical account of Del Rey’s experience in high school. A young woman with wanderlust, Del Rey dreams about escapism from the “teenage wasteland” of Kent boarding school with her english teacher Gene Campbell, whom she was particularly fond of. “You’d play me Biggie Smalls and then my first Nirvana song”, she sings in the song’s second verse. The teacher clearly had a profound impact upon his student, as Del Rey has gone on to credit Campbell as the person who taught her who the “greats of every genre” were in various interviews, particularly this extract from a June 2014 cover story with Clash magazine:

“When I was 15, I had this teacher called Gene Campbell, who is still my good friend, in boarding school, to become a teacher you don’t have to have a Masters. I was 15 and he was 22, out of Georgetown. He was young, and at school you were allowed to take trips out at the weekends. On our driving trips around the Connecticut counties, he introduced me to Nabokov, (Allen) Ginsberg, (Walt) Whitman, and even Tupac and Biggie. He was my gateway to inspirational culture. Those inspirations I got when I was 15 are still my only inspirations.”

3. Driving In Cars With Boys Two versions of Driving In Cars With Boys exist. Dream-like, on the first version Del Rey is singing in a higher register, sounding like a girl who knows far too well how to hide her mischief. Whilst the second version, which also came from The Nexus’ Soundcloud account along with Prom Song, is sung a lower husky tone and subtracts a few of the lyrics which appear in the pre-chorus of the first version. “I’ve spent my whole life driving in cars with boys / Riding round town drinking in the white noise / Used to talk about where we’d be and where we’d go / Now we know, baby now we know”, Del Rey looks back retrospectively at the wildness of adolescence, memories she also drew upon for Born To Die album track This Is What Makes Us Girls. The singer likely drew inspiration from the 1992 Beverly Donofrio memoir Riding In Cars With Boys, about drinking, driving, smoking and rebelling. Driving In Cars was one of the 19 songs forwarded to the Guardian for their profile promoting the emerging singer in May of 2011. The reviewer pointed out how Del Rey “shoo-shoos like a Shirelle” whilst declaring she’s the desire of all the boys who already have girlfriends. 4. She’s Not Me On She’s Not Me, Del Rey is feisty and angry. The opening wah-wah guitars and Del Rey’s jazzy ad-libs wouldn’t sound out of place in the score to a David Lynch movie. Whilst the decidedly uncharacteristically Lana Del Rey ad-libs of “Uh! Let’s go” would feel more at home on a Britney Spears cut from the early 2000’s. Feeding her jealous side, the singer spends the entirety of the track taunting an ex-lover over the fact that her presence will always be with him, “I have left my mark on you / There is nothing you can do”, whilst reminding him that his new girl will never be the “ride or die bitch” bombshell that she is. “When you think you’re over me and your bad baby’s dead and gone / Remember I’m the ghost in your machine / I’m your real life suicide blonde”.

[heavycrowned-m-blog]

"Lily has died." (I had to for the AU okay I had to)

rip my child’s heart out || ACCEPTING ( @doeveined )

one day can change your life. one day can ruin your life. all life is, is three or four big days that change everything. – beverly donofrio

work had been slow that night so effy was allowed to go home early. perhaps she should’ve stayed at work that night. at least that’s what someone had said at some point. she couldn’t remember who. ‘ effy, ’ she was greeted solemnly as she hung up her jacket and made her way into the living room. ‘ okay, so no one’s happy to see me tonight? ’ the girl asked, raising an eyebrow. her mother ( emma ) and her grandfather had been missing. so she knew instantly there was a reason for her less than happy greeting.

‘ … mama? ’ she turned to look at regina who stood from the couch. ‘ what’s going on? ’ no other words were spoken, she was simply enveloped into her mother’s arms. returning the hug, she looked over her mother’s shoulder at her grandmother, older brother and uncle ( who was only about seven at the time ), wondering just what was going on. ‘ where’s mom and grandpa? ’ she asked quietly, pulling away from the now almost vice grip around her. ‘ it’s lily, sweetheart. ’ regina whispered, moving to sit on the couch, pulling effy with her. she had seen lily just that morning, so surely it couldn’t be anything too bad. ‘ what about lily? ’ the younger asked, knowing she hadn’t seen anything to cause alarm when she was walking home. ‘ there was an accident, it was a drunk driver… ’ neal had made his way over to her and she lifted him up into her lap. ‘ sweetheart, she didn’t survive. ’

she didn’t survive. the words echoed inside her head and for a long moment, she just sat, holding neal, tears gathering in her eyes as they remained unmoving from her mother. ‘ she’s… she’s dead? ’ when she said it out loud, it didn’t make any sense. there was no way that she could’ve been dead. ‘ mom please, please no… no she can’t be gone. she was my best friend and she… she can’t be gone… ’ neal had wrapped his small arms around the elder, holding tight to her. panic grew in her and regina carefully took the small boy and effy jumped up, running back outside before she stumbled down the steps and fell, magic shooting out from her hands and burning the pavement all around her.

it was then that emma and david had returned and emma rushed over to her daughter, pulling the shaking and sobbing girl into her arms. ‘ she can’t be dead, she can’t be! she’s not! ’ the denial came through sobs as she held onto her mother’s forearms. before she had fallen asleep in her mother’s arms, shaking and crying on the scorched pavement beneath her.