A Postcard from the Edge of Shutter Island.

Thought I'd share a fun little trivia nugget from a recent interview with the actress Robin Bartlett. You may remember Bartlett from her recurring role on TV's Mad About You or as the unusually named "Aretha" from Postcards from the Edge.

"Are you black?"
"...no."

Robin: I loved playing Aretha. That was another good piece of writing. Carrie Fisher is no slouch in that area.

Bartlett has appeared in two Streep movies (she's also in Sophie's Choice) and now she's taking over a role many viewers will automatically associate with the great one herself. She's currently in rehearsals for the mammoth "Mother Pitt" role in Angels in America (it's actually six roles on stage). The classic play is getting a New York revival this fall. Tickets go on sale on August 3rd. (I've just finished a magazine piece on the revival -- yes print still exists.)

During our chat we talked briefly about her big scene in Shutter Island earlier this year. Leo is questioning all the asylum crazies and we see Robin madly scribble something dramatic into his notebook before sliding it his way, all sneaky like.


Nathaniel: Is that your actual handwriting?
Robin: If that was my handwriting, you wouldn't be able to read it.
Nathaniel: [Laughter] The magic of the movies!
*

Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking Encore

I saw Carrie Fisher's one woman show Wishful Drinking on its closing weekend so I didn't write about it. I didn't want to recommend something that was unable to be seen. However, if you're in the New York/New Jersey area, you have one last chance to see it live. She's filming it for posterity in June.
Here's the info.

No word yet on exactly what it's for. I suspect some sort of pay cable airing. Maybe short theatrical?

The show is very funny whether you're into self-deprecated celebrity wit, Old Hollywood lore or Star Wars trivia. The highlight of the show for me was an absurd celebrity genealogy chart that springs from one of Hollywood's most legendary scandals: the breakup of Carrie's parents Eddie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds ("America's Sweetheart") once La Liz wanted Eddie for herself.

Fisher also picks at Princess Leia like a scab. I'm sure the Princess Leia / Star Wars bits were the hook for any Broadway tourists who picked up tickets during the show's initial run but for me it's the weakest setpiece of the show. Still funny though, don't get me wrong...

Leia and double get some sun in the Yuma desert on the set of Return of the Jedi

My biggest gripe with the one woman show is that it was too short. I could listen to Fisher yammer on for at least twice the length. I would totally love a sequel or better yet a miniseries wherein Carrie delves deeper into her onscreen Warren Beatty fling in Shampoo, or the making of Postcards From the Edge (but Debbie gets a lot of attention in the show so perhaps she felt she covered that).

There wasn't a peep about that Wizard of Oz riff she starred in called Under the Rainbow that everyone has long since forgotten about. Seriously, mention that one aloud anywhere and people will be like "what? never heard of it"! ...even if they lived through the 1980s. And isn't there anything to say about antics on the set of When Harry Met Sally?

I suppose I should buy Wishful Drinking in book form since I've read all of her other books. Her best, if you ask me, is Surrender the Pink which was the follow up to her bestselling debut Postcards... (which is quite different than the movie version though Carrie wrote both of them).

Have you read any of her books?
*

Halfway House: Oh Suzanne-ah

Halfway through the day we freeze a movie halfway through. What do we see?

Doris Mann: Have you known Suzanne long?
Jack Faulkner: Ah, lets see. we've known each other about a month. It seems like longer, though.
Doris: Oh, I know what you mean. I'm her mother and it seems like longer.

Fifty minutes into Postcards From the Edge (1990), Jack (Dennis Quaid) has dropped by to pick up Suzanne Vale (Meryl Streep) for a date. Her mother (Shirley Maclaine) intercepts the man with the bedroom eyes ('and the living room nose and the kitchen forehead'). The performers are deliciously insynch with Carrie Fisher's rapid fire witticisms.

One of the reasons people get so invested in the Oscars is the joy that comes from arguing about whether or not the octogenarian institution got it right in any given year / category. When it comes to Postcards From the Edge, they got it very very wrong. It's one of the best movies about movies ever and it only received two nominations. Even Fisher's adapted screenplay, superior to some of the actual nominees, was snubbed. Dennis Quaid and Gene Hackman were both doing sly work here as Suzanne's player boyfriend and sympathetic director, respectively. But both actors didn't break a sweat in roles that wouldn't really be Oscar's thing even in the best of circumstances.

But then there's Shirley "It twirled up!" Maclaine. Hollywood usually loves it when Hollywood celebrates or satirizes itself as you can see in acting nominations like Dustin Hoffman's in Wag the Dog, Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain or Michael Lerner's for Barton Fink (among many others). But Shirley, who is a complete knockout as Debbie Reynolds substitute Doris Mann whether she's singing, cracking jokes, or winking for our sympathy, was bizarrely snubbed.

I'll never figure that one out.

I notice something new in the performances each time I see Postcards but the last time I popped it in the player I was totally amazed that I'd never caught this non-acting related detail (pictured below)


When Gene Hackman yells "Cut. Print." at the end of Meryl Streep's Oscar nominated "I'm Checking Out" musical number, the clapboard is not for the fictional film they're shooting but for the actual film we're watching (Postcards from the Edge) with its actual director Mike Nichols and cinematographer (the great, still unOscared Michael Ballhaus). How fun.

If you don't love Postcards don't tell me cuz I don't want to know. But if you do, tell us your favorite bit in the comments.
*

Wishful Linking

That Little Round Headed Boy has a fun insightful piece on Amelia and "serious" acting
Gold Derby Ricky Gervais to host the Golden Globes this year
ticklepickleme & elliptical edits thrill to the sight of Julianne Moore in A Single Man and in person. I am officially jealous
The Critical Condition has a change of heart about Where the Wild Things Are. Good read
A Blog Next Door appreciates Dollhouse when its icky ethically. As do I
I Need My Fix Emily Blunt & Matt Damon on the set of The Adjustment Bureau


Gawker Paul Haggis (Crash) resigns publicly from Scientology over gay rights. Quelle Scandale!
Gallery of the Absurd twists Mel Gibson's upcoming Beaver picture
wowOwow great and lengthy piece on Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Penn Ritchie by the one and only Liz Smith
Boy Culture speaking of the big M, did you hear about her gift to Glee?
Towleroad gay neo-nazi drama Brotherhood wins the Rome Film Festival
Art of the Title Sequence on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. They used Olivia Newton-John's "Xanadu"?!? Now, I have to see this movie
Noh Way on Carrie Fisher's family tree and her broadway outing in Wishful Drinking

And to send you on your way or off to the comments (I always root for the latter) the Sherlock Holmes poster...


Guy Ritchie has made five films prior to this rethink of a classic franchise. None have opened wide in the US to this date (Snatch, his biggest hit here and elsewhere eventually played in 1,444 US theaters but it started in one). Christmas competition will be ridiculously fierce: Avatar will be enjoying (?) its second weekend, two top Oscar hopefuls will go wide (that's Nine and Up in the Air), Meryl Streep's latest comedy It's Complicated debuts, and finally families without taste will presumably flock to that "squeakquel" [*gag*] in droves... I just can't bring myself to type the whole title. Weirdly The Lovely Bones is not going wide until January... I guess Peter Jackson isn't concerned with being to Christmas what Will Smith once was to the 4th of July. But the holiday weekend is super crowded even without him. It's so much competition... so why do I feel like Sherlock Holmes is going to be huge? I'm guessing it opens with a US gross that tops the size of all of Guy Ritchie's previous US grosses combined. (It'd need about $40 million to do that). Doesn't it just seem like the right unexpected-but-familiar topic with the right actually-talented cast at the right time of year?
*

The Year of Wishful Linking

Underwire apparently some fans think Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles can be saved from cancellation. I dunno. That season finale sure felt like a goodbye.
My New Plaid Pants congratulate JA on one year without cigarettes. He celebrates in the only way he would... sexy cigarette pics!
StinkyLulu a special smackdown coming on May 31st
CHUD worries that David O'Russell's Nailed will never see movie theaters or even DVD


Go Fug Yourself on Winona at the Star Trek premiere

...looking sheepish and as if she's not quite sure whether she's on the list -- despite the fact that she is IN THE MOVIE

Oh, Noni. Stitch that star mojo back together. Everyone is rooting for you. Almost everyone I mean.
popbytes Madonna back with Jesus... and crazy couture?
i09 and Jezebel on new superheroine meets Sex & The City comicbook Marvel Divas
BlogStage I no longer have to be jealous of you Los Angelenos who got to see Carrie Fisher's memoir show "The Year of Wishful Drinking". It's coming to Broadway this fall. This is the only Carrie Fisher book I haven't read. Not sure what I'm waiting for. My favorite is Surrender the Pink.

TONY Time
You've already read my ill-informed thoughts on Broadway's trophy races (I miss theatergoing so much!) but here are some other rundowns worth perusing: Justin Plus One offers informed opinions from someone who sees more theater than anyone else I know. Lots of love for Next to Normal and God of Carnage and complete disdain for Billy Elliott. Boy Culture hates 9 to 5 and lurves Billy Elliot. Gold Derby investigates the history of shared acting nominations in lieu of Billy Elliot's best actor citation. Everything I Know... has a long history of mixed feelings about Next to Normal but gives it the thumbs up in its Broadway incarnation.

If you are in NYC and want to see any of the shows, the cheapest though often chancy route is "rush" or lottery tickets. Here are the policies for current shows.
*

"come with me if you want to link"

Poster Wire an animated poster for Terminator: Salvation. oh god please let this marketing technique take off. We loves it
Awards Daily "a tale of two Nixons" -damn, I wish I'd thought of that
The Big Picture The Wrestler takes a hit from the LA Times. Right in time for Oscar season. Ouch, that'll sting
ONTD Seventeen describes the sexual appeal of Robert Pattison. Dear god he's like a Frankenstein monster of celebs
Modern Tonic has a Best of TV 2008 list...
Are You There, Blog? Carrie Fisher hawking her new book. She's so damn funny


Deadline Hollywood Luhrmann to take on The Great Gatsby next. Damn but Baz likes a challenge. That thing (brilliant) has to be considered unfilmable, right?
The Carpetbagger alerts us to the annual Oscar short films showing
Multiple Personality Cruise visits Letterman "they have this thing called the internet and they have these things called blogs"
Towleroad Seann William Scott photos from Balls Out. That boy (thankfully) has no shame
The Bad and Ugly ...speaking of shameless, Halle Berry going topless again (pics from the set of Frankie and Alice)
Boy Culture Matthew celebrates his 40th in swanky style... Yes, I was there (my illustration is the last one on the page. That is such a great party memorabilia idea. I'm totally going to steal it)

And finally... Heroine Content takes issue with Empire's "100 Greatest Movie Characters" list. There's a lot to take issue with. It's 88% male, 93% white. So annoying. Guess who's not on the list? Margo Channing from All About Eve. Severine from Belle Du Jour. Mrs. Iselin from The Manchurian Candidate. Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire. Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Bree from Klute. F***ing Annie Hall. Yeesh... and that's just the seven that popped into my head without looking at any list of movies. Most of the women chosen were from genre or "guy" movies (Aliens, Star Wars, The Professional, Silence of the Lambs, ...Roger Rabbit) The canons are always being rewritten but they always get rewritten in the same old ways.

Happy Birthday, Claudia Wilson Gator

.

By whom I mean Melora Walters, the actress who played that character in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, who turns 40 today. I know PTA's films - and especially Magnolia - can be a divisive bunch, even around these parts, but Walters will forever and always be etched into my brain as Claudia, swooping across the dinner table to kiss John C. Reilly in a fit of coke-fueled abandon and then mere seconds later asking if he'd mind never seeing her again.

Of course, she might be etched into my memory as that character since, looking through the films she's made since then there are only two things she's been in that I've seen - The Butterfly Effect and Cold Mountain - both of which I have taken great efforts to wipe from my memory.

Apparently she's a recurring character on Big Love though? I do wish I watched that show.

Anyway, a very happy 40th birthday to Melora! I would mind it if I never saw you again! Maybe PTA will use some of his regulars again whenever he decides to make another movie and I can look forward to seeing you there.

PS - Happy Birthday, Princess Leia!

We Can't Wait #14 The Women

Directed by Diane English (Murphy Brown) her feature debut
Starring The Bening (excuse me, who else matters?)
Synopsis A married woman, her husbands mistress, and their catty group of friends get into it
Brought to you by Picturehouse + years and years of development (i.e. casting rumors for decades)
Expected Release Date October 16th, 2008

Nathaniel: Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither was the remake of this classic 30s melodramedy (word?) which has been on Hollywood's "to do" list for at least ten years. Wasn't it going to be Meg Ryan vs. Julia Roberts in the mid 90s? The original film was a hilarious rewatchable chatfest among a group of women including a betrayed wife (Norma Shearer -yes!) and the vamp stealing her husband away (Joan Crawford -"boo hiss" in the good way) and their various friends and frenemies. The big cast was a "who's who" of 1930s cinema, women only! If you need a modern comparison you'll have to think of the very retro French musical comedy 8 Women by François Ozon. Will the remake spoil the fun by throwing a man or two in front of the camera? Let's hope not.


Norma Shearer = Meg Ryan
Rosalind Russell = Annette Bening
Joan Crawford = Eva Mendes
Paulette Godard =Jada Pinkett-Smith
Mary Boland = Bette Midler
Phyllis Povah = Debra Messing
Florence Nash = Carrie Fisher
Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Ruth Hussey = somebody somebody and somebody, maybe Cloris Leachman, Candice Bergen, and Debi Mazar?

The list goes on. I just threw up a little from all the blasphemy. And then got excited again from the actressing. HELP ME!

Gabriel: I watched the original again the other day -- it seems to be on Turner Classic Movies every weekend (must be very popular) -- and was struck by three major thoughts regarding the remake (which I'm very excited about). First was the matchup you didn't list among your original-to-now comparisons, the directors: George Cukor = Diane English. Cukor was a living legend and one of the art form's best; English has never directed in Hollywood, and is best known for a long-dead sitcom (Murphy Brown). While that's not to say that she can't do this piece, it makes me nervous... especially when you consider the screen-time balancing act that Cukor pulled off.

The second thought: the original hinges upon the luminous freshness of Norma Shearer, who in my opinion makes the entire piece work by covering fragile plot points with bravura acting. Can Meg Ryan do to the same? Has she ever been that kind of actress in the first place? (And does anyone still think of her as a big star? I don't see even a moderate hit on her resume since Kate and Leopold seven years ago, and she had Hugh Jackman doing the heavy lifting for her there.)


My last thought: it's a little dated. I'm not saying vicious divorces don't happen in 2008, or that circles of friends don't still sometimes turn into circular firing squads. But as dramatic fodder, the idea of women clawing nastily and fighting over their philandering husbands hasn't been a part of mainstream entertainment since Dynasty, and even then it was barely-concealed camp and soap opera. Can The Women make divorce fun again?

Joe: Box-office-wise, I agree with Gabriel that this is going to be a tough sell, but I'm holding out hope that Meg Ryan still has that orgasm-faking stuff when it comes to comedy. In truth, my reservations for this film have reservations, I'm that concerned. The cast seems like such a hodgepodge -- I love the colorblind casting but wish it wasn't Eva Mendes and Jada Pinkett-Xenu specifically. I've seen nothing out of them in their careers that suggests they can pull this kind of comedy off. Weirdly, besides Annette Bening and Bette Midler (who is all but guaranteed a "Best Performance By A Drag Queen" nomination next year), the one person who I think fits the material best is Debra Messing. I wish Diane English well, but I can more easily see this becoming a disaster than a success.

MaryAnn: Oh, god, this is more on my "dreading" list than my "psyched for" one. Debra Messing *and* Meg Ryan in the same movie? Just shoot me now.

Nathaniel: The Bening is not enough to compensate? The Bening will not be pleased to hear this.

MaryAnn: I love the Bening, and I actually think Mendes has a lot of talent and charisma that has not been fully tapped yet. But Messing is like chalk on a board to me.

Glenn: I'm more excited for The Women BECAUSE it seems like such a high-wire act. That cast IS a hodgepodge (although any chance to see Jada Pinkett-Smith and Debi Mazar on screen, I'll take), the director IS untested and so on. I, unlike the rest of you guys it seems, have not seen the original film that this is based on - cry for me, Argentina, it's not out on DVD here - but the prospect of this movie succeeding is enough to make me excited than the more likely notion that it will fail.

Nathaniel: Divided opinions about its ticket-selling potential and the cast.

This one's for the readers: Do you consider this blasphemy? And if so are you just anti-remake in general? Have you obeyed any of my many demands that you watch the original? And if not, what do I have to do to make you fall for the great Norma Shearer, the First Lady of MGM?

the countdown
#4 Milk / #5 Blindness / # 6 Doubt / #7 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button / #8 Revolutionary Road / #9 The Dark Knight / #10 Sex & The City: The Movie / #11 The Lovely Bones / #12 Wall-E / #13 Stop-Loss / #14 The Women / #15 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince / Introduction / Orphans
*

20:07 (Tatooine)

"That malfunctioning little twerp... this is all his fault"

*
For my contribution to the 3oth Anniversary Star Wars Blog-a-Thon, I had intended to write about Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia. That won't surprise regular readers since I have read all of the woman's novels and am a card carrying actressexual to boot. But as is often the case in the past two months, I find I'm haunted by this random screengrab I pulled for my 20:07 series *

[Edited to add: Unfortunately, as it turns out my DVD player or the DVD itself, a rented remastered copy of the 1977 film, has some sort of glitch. I can't get an accurate read of the time (it jumps from 3:32 at the end of the text crawl to 10:29 and the first glimpse of the spaceship, thus rendering the clock unreliable from then on -apologies, editor]

But anyway... If you're an irregular reader and just here for the 'thon, I'll fill you in: as an experiment in visual blogging, I've been stopping movies at a random point, the 20th minute and 7th second and posting the screenshot with dialogue. Sometimes this leads to revealing giggles and other times to fascinating meta-criticism. Occasionally the random image pulled makes me ponder the movie in a whole new way. And, though I couldn't get an accurate read on this Star Wars disc, this image I grabbed from my skipping disc is haunting me anyway. The more I tried to pull myself away to talk Princess/novelist, the more I found myself lost in this image of the desert vista on Tatooine.

The beauty of the image is this: there's next to nothing there. Its simplicity is vast. We've just witnessed one of the most exciting opening scenes in film history: a text crawl has informed us that we've arrived in the middle of a story! We've seen an outer space attack, a princess, an evil cloaked villain, and two droids narrowly escaping armed soldiers. And here we are marooned on a desert. George Lucas couldn't have chosen a smarter locale to toss a curious audience into. There is so much that's unknowable, even alien about a desert... and yet its a familiar and static image. There is no distraction. Your mind is then free to wander, to wonder, to fill in the possible details. There's nothing to look at and you want to see everything. What kind of creatures live on this planet? Is there only desert? How will these machines (C-3PO pictured and R2-D2 dissed) make their way in this world? What will become of the Princess's message, already embedded in the malfunctioning little twerp?

The simplicity here got me thinking about visual schemes in the entire Star Wars series. It isn't just the desert that's low key. The color palette is largely black (costumes, Vader, space) and white (costumes, Storm Troopers) with abundant beiges (costumes, endless sand) and grays (spaceships). The Empire Strikes Back is similarly muted in its color schemes. Instead of the desert we begin on an ice planet (also familiar yet alien and wondrous to the eye). Return of the Jedi adds a forest moon and with it more greens and browns. These fantastical worlds are really quite generously familiar and plain. It's our imagination, fully engaged, filling in the details of this galaxy far far away. We're intimately engaged in the mythology because we're helping to create it as we watch.

This desert image from the 20th minute of the first film solidifies for me this partially inchoate notion I've had about what went wrong between the first set of films (1977 to 1983) and the later ones (1999 to 2005). When we first return to Tatooine in The Phantom Menace it's still a desert but there's more detail. Technological advances fill every frame with ... stuff. The new worlds created are bizarre (who lives under water or on lava?) and the costumes are explosively colorful and odd. The second trilogy (Chapters 1 through 3) is so visually detailed as to be entirely cluttered and muddy. The audience's imagination has no work left to do. There's so much to look at that there's, metaphorically speaking, nothing to see. It's certainly alien but the humanity has gone right out of it.
*
* I use a VLC DVD Player on an iMac for my screenshots. All 20:07 images in the series are from this system (unless other wise noted from guest images) Not all DVD players match in their internal clocks.

20:07 (Rehab)

Each morning a screenshot from the 20th minute and 7th second of a movie


"I'm tempted to marry him so I can tell people how me met."
*
This is Meryl Streep as Suzanne Vale in Postcards from the Edge. Great movie. I'd also recommend reading Carrie Fisher's original book of the same name. This is arguably my favorite Meryl Streep performance (yes, I argue with myself about such things). I alluded to just that favored status in my review of another musical comedy performance of hers in A Prairie Home Companion which you can read here if you somehow missed it. And I'm only pimping that review again because I'm feeling the guilt about it being so long since I wrote one that good. Oh to find the time...

Great Moments: Shampoo (1975)

I've got Warren Beatty on the brain since that tribute on Monday night at the Golden Globes. So, here's a moment I love from Hal Ashby's Shampoo (1975) written by The Bening's husband and Robert Towne. This scene always gets to me because Carrie Fisher seems like she's a hundred years-old. She was actually somewheres around 18 and this was her debut. There's a split second late in the scene when the teenager peeks through as she glances quickly back and forth, too aware that she's playing a naughty adult game. Great cameo-ish performance.

Warren Beatty plays George, a womanizing hairdresser. He's been invited into Lorna's kitchen for a snack.


Lorna: Want some lox?

George: No, thanks.

Lorna: You're my mother's hairdresser.

George: I do hair, yeah.

Lorna: Chopped liver?

George: No, thanks.

Lorna: Are you gay? Want a baked apple? They're cold, but good.

George: No, thanks.

Lorna: Did you hear me?

George: Yeah.

Lorna: Well, are you? Are you queer?

George: Sure.

Lorna: Come on. Are you or aren't you?

George: [chewing on celery] This is great, huh.

Lorna: Come on, tell me. Don't be afraid.

George: Why do you want to know so bad?

Lorna: See if you're making it with my mother.

George: Why would my being a faggot have anything to do with that?

Lorna: Nothing, I guess. Have you ever made it with a guy?

George: You ever make it with a girl?

Lorna: Are you?

George: Am I what -- what are you talking about?

Lorna: Making it with my mother?

George: I'd love to do your hair sometime.

Lorna: Do you have a thing about older women? Because that's sort of faggoty, isn't it?

I never get my hair done. In fact, I don't think I've ever been to a beauty salon in my whole life. You think that's funny, don't you?

George: Yeah.

Lorna: Beverly Hills hairdresser. You might as well be a faggot. You think that's funny, too?


George: No.

Lorna: Then what do you think?

George: You know, I think you got exactly the same eyes as your mother. And your chin's a little bit like hers, too.

Lorna: No, it isn't. No.

Goerge: I think it is.

Lorna: No, no... and my eyes aren't like hers either.

George: They are. Because they...

Lorna: No, they're not.

George: They really are.

Lorna: [suddenly angry] No, they're not, they're not. I'm nothing like my mother!

George: I'm not trying to insult you, you know. Can't we just be friends?

Lorna: Okay.

You want to fuck?

*

And... Scene

Surrender the Link

Apropos of nothing this post derives its punny name from Carrie Fisher's "Surrender the Pink." If you haven't read any of her books I highly recommend. Very funny stuff. But now -- links.
My New Plaid Pants geeks out on Supes and Wolvie. I so appreciate.
You Can't Make It Up trots out the cute animals again. Works every time.
Pop Culture Junkies "Low Notes and High Speed Thrills"
Lylee and Gabriel add their voices to the United 93 debate: Is it too early for these sorts of films? For the curious among you, I haven't seen it. The world may be ready but I'm not sure I am. More later... (possibly)
Cinematical details the latest gossip from the set of the new Yimou picture. Yet more fallout from the Weinstein's treatment of Asian films.