Timothée Chalamet
by Jinwoo Chong
I ask Timothée Chalamet if he likes when his fans call him Timmy, Lil’ Timmy, Lil’ Timmy Tim, or any of the other names I have seen them call him. He says with a not-truthful smile, no, not really, would you like it? And I say no, as a matter of fact it seems pretty reductive, your parents named you something so clever and illustrated—with a French e and an accent right near the end of it—for a reason, and people should pay you the respect it deserves, even if they think your films are stupid. To which Timothée Chalamet raises his arms wildly, like a winded scarecrow, saying yes dude, you get it. Timothée Chalamet says I am the first person to identify his thoughts so intimately, which makes me feel amazing, it really does. I tell Timothée Chalamet that I don’t think any of his films were stupid. A great many of them, although there are only fifteen in total, are quite intelligent and allow ample room for his prodigious skill at looking hot and like a man and a woman at the same time, and Timothée Chalamet agrees, thanking me. My early films were embarrassing, Timothée Chalamet admits, the ones he made before he made it any sort of big, and I can tell which ones those are. The ones in which the camera forgets to linger on his face, treating him as just another person when he is not, and he really is not. People forget that I was the youngest person in eighty years to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and for playing a gay guy, for playing a gay guy in a movie adapted from a book nobody read, for fuck’s sake, Timothée Chalamet says without moving a single muscle in his face, and I say: do they really forget that? And Timothée Chalamet pauses a while, and rotates one of the silver Cartier rings around his left-hand finger and says you know what? That was pretty stupid of me to say. I’m such an asshole. Nobody’s ever forgotten that. How could they? And I say as well, how could they? And I am happy that Timothée Chalamet agrees with me, or rather that I agree with him. I ask Timothée Chalamet if it really is true that he doesn’t have a stylist, and if all of those pretty things he’s worn to red carpet movie premieres or to get bagels or whatever really were things he just picked up at Soho boutiques, or received as gifts from the many designers who have become his close personal friends; if it really is true that he really is that genius and without even trying very hard. And Timothée Chalamet smiles and says yes, that’s true, but it really isn’t that hard, they’re just clothes, there are other things going on in the world that deserve greater attention. And I think to myself that it's so true even though I can’t think of any of those things he’s talking about, and I even think of apologizing for bringing it up in the first place. But I am Timothée Chalamet’s friend, and I know him so well, better than anybody, and he calls me dude, and I have wanted to be somebody’s dude for so long that I instead say: I’m sure it must be pretty hard, figuring out what to wear while knowing that any number of magazines and influencers and normal people are waiting to publish hundreds and hundreds of posts about the significance of the color you’ve chosen, or the make, or the fabric, or what that tab bracelet on your left wrist means or why you cut your hair into the shape of a bowl and also made it look like it’s always been cut that way for as long as you’ve been famous. And Timothée Chalamet laughs and says he’s sure it would be a lot of pressure if he read any of those things. And I say wow, fuck, amazing. And Timothée Chalamet nods, because there isn’t much to say after that, especially since I’ve never really thought the way he does and never could. That’s what makes him famous and not me. And the thing is, I’ve only known Timothée Chalamet for about two years, because that’s basically how long his career has been, when before that he was just some eighteen-year-old with a French name, tiny nipples, and a body so skeletal you could fit it through a doggy door. Except not anymore. Now, Timothée Chalamet has made fifteen films and presented awards with aging and beloved film icons and worn ten-thousand-dollar outfits to get bagels or whatever and nobody really remembers that he really was nobody just a short while ago. Because that’s the thing. That’s how much I gain to learn from Timothée Chalamet even though he is two months younger than me and still so accomplished. I can’t think of a single person out there in the world that is better in any way than Timothée Chalamet and that’s a fact, and I know Timothée Chalamet thinks that too, but that’s not for him to say because it would be terrible optics. It’s a thing for people like me to say for him, a thing that Timothée Chalamet trusts me to speak into existence, because I am his dude, I participate in the great discussion that makes Timothée Chalamet Timothée Chalamet despite himself, which makes me feel amazing, it really does.
Jinwoo Chong is a writer and graphic designer living in New York and an MFA candidate for fiction at Columbia University. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming at sohohouse.com, Hemingway Shorts, and others. He serves as Fiction Editor for Columbia Journal Issue 59.
