The Whistler

Molly Lewis is L.A.-famous for her very particular skill set. Now, she's coming to New York.

-  ANNIE ARMSTRONG

A FEW MONTHS ago, at Greta Gerwig's 40th-birthday party, Molly Lewis walked in and began to whistle "Happy Birthday." No one seemed especially surprised. In fact, they knew precisely what was happeningthe Whistler was whistling. "Her tone is so specific that everyone in the room knew who it was," says Mark Ronson, who set up the performance at the request of Noah Baumbach, Gerwig's husband. Someincluding Gerwig-were moved to tears.

Lewis recounts this story while sitting naked, in the middle of a workday, in the so-called ice room at Spa Palace, a popular Korean spa in Westlake. "I appreciate L.A.so much," she says. "I wouldn't have been able to do any of this if I didn't live here.

I really believe that. It's a city that really cultivates the weird and the wonderful." Lewis is 33 and has been whistling in an official capacity for the past eight years. It started as a childhood hobby-her best friend since elementary school in Hollywood, Nora Berman, recalls her whistling as early as the second grade. "Her teeth were kinda suited for it," says Berman. "She had a little space. I remember her making these, like, alien noises." Incidentally, her father, the Emmywinning director Mark Lewis, mostly makes films about niche subcultures. "He was making stuff about ferret competitions and synchronized swimming and the world-champion hairstylists' competition in Russia," she says.