Saturday, June 30, 2007

And Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer... is Going to Love Jennifer

I know every blog on the planet has already posted this but who am I to deny divas their due? Plus I wanna talk about it... "And I am Telling You" was and always will be a show queen classic. It wins its vessels TONYs and Oscars. One could make a case for it as the greatest of all showoff showtunes. Witness the Jennifers, Holiday & Hudson



Holiday has been singing the song too long so now instead of flourishes she's just chewing on it. She's actually eating the song and laughing at her own freaky mastication "ha HA!". To keep up JHud will have to let her own rendition go berserk. This encourages the most brazen display of overacting that I've seen since... well... Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé battled it out at the Oscars or if we're talking films: since Glenn Close did Cruella, Faye Dunaway was Mommie Dearest or Billy Bob made Halle Berry feeeeellll goood!

What I love most about this song as a diva duet is that it totally subverts the meaning. It's no longer a desperate sexist 'I'm nothing without my man' plea. Now it's a lezzztastic girl brawl. By the end of the number, the Jennifers have forgotten all about the audience and it's all about Jennifer lovin' Jennifer and vice versa. Hilarious. And heavenly if you love the Divas Gone Wild subgenre of entertainment. And who among you doesn't?

Now I'm off to dream of future pairings...

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

No one wants to see that movie Nate...no one. I don't really even want to see it with Gershon and Tilly,

Emma said...

Genius!

Anonymous said...

Magnificent !...Thankyou

NATHANIEL R said...

rural --you're missing out. it's awesome (the Tilly/Gershon I mean... ;) )

Kamila said...

This duet between the Effie-Broadway and the Effie-movies is simply superb!!!

russtifer said...

Heh, that was great, Nat, thanks.

Tom Steele said...

Nat, I was laughing out loud for five minutes over Jennifer Holiday EATING THE SONG.

Thanks, baby.

Anonymous said...

Oh I Love this.lol. It was great.

Anonymous said...

Arghhh... I thought this was gonna be something about Jennifer Jason Leigh in Margot at the Wedding :(

J.D. said...

Best thing in the history of forever. Except the invention of Roll-on deodorant. That was too awesome to top.

Anonymous said...

Oh. My. God.

Colin said...

Jennifer Holliday's mouth reminds me of the Roald Dahl story where the narrator was afraid of getting eaten by women. It looks like it'll contort out of shape and stay that way.

(And Hudson manages to have a few good inflections at the start, before Holliday arrives to yammer the song out of whack.)

Anonymous said...

That song won its singers a Tony, Grammy, and an Oscar. WORD.

Steven said...

Brilliant. Just brilliant.
That's all.

~Steven

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Anonymous said...

Jennifer Holliday's been doing that "I'm not waking up tomorrow morning HA HA . . ." addition since the 80's. That's just her interpretation of the song. It's nothing new really.

This "diva-off" was one of the most garrish things I've seen in a long time, but Holliday regained some specks of her former greatness there (and was so much better than her embarassing pre-Oscar E! performance of the song across from a construction site). Jennifer Hudson came off better overall though.

c.p. iñor said...

Agree... BOUND (the real one) it's great.

adam k. said...

I'd actually not seen this before. It is kind of obvious as a "stunt" performance, but it's still mega-enjoyable.

Sad, though, that Holliday's voice has gotten so thinned and lowered over time. I wonder why that happened. But she really doesn't sound like she used to. And I LOVE her, so it really hurts to admit that.

Anonymous said...

I love that Joe Pantoliano is still in this version of Bound. Excellent.

NATHANIEL R said...

you can't dump Joey Pants!

Yaseen Ali said...

That was frightening.

Derek said...

A cautionary tale in video-clip form. Not only has JHud now seen what she (God forbid) could become, but she's sung a duet with this same worst-case scenario.

The moment Holliday appeared, any chance of the number becoming anything other than unintentional parody vanished. All I could think was, "Holy shit - someone wrapped a skirt around Screamin' Jay Hawkins!"

I don't know if I see it as totally subverting the meaning of the song so much as totally draining all meaning from it. I for one can think of no way - no-no-no no way I *don't* want to live without seeing Jennifer Holliday, so the lezztastic chemistry factor really didn't happen for me. And I assure you, I'm not at all averse to lezztastic duets per se.