She's "Mad" at "Hel" And She's Not Going to Streep It Anymore!

"Streep @ 60" continues...

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn were 43 and 46 respectively when they made the summer promotional rounds in support of Death Becomes Her in 1992. The satirical comedy focuses on the hostile friendship between two desperate aging women, Helen (Hawn) a writer, and Madeline Ashton (Streep) a famous actress. In the early nineties, the 40s were still considered 'The End' for actresses, so the casting and topic made sense.

To give you a sense of how bad it was, magazines were already taking shots at Michelle Pfeiffer (!) who was all of 34. "She's not getting any younger," one article stated with unnecessary hysteria, whilst discussing Pfeiffer's post-Catwoman career prospects. Things have improved enough since 1992 that were they ever to remake Death Becomes Her, one imagines they might think of casting 50somethings.

Recurring verbal joke: Their nicknames for each other
"Mad" & "Hel" betray not-so-friendly true feelings

Premiere's headline called this Meryl & Goldie's "Golden Age" and a TV profile/joint interview (I wish I could remember which show) suggested that this was a smart pairing. The angle was something along the lines of 'If only Meryl could get some of Goldie's box office and Goldie some of Meryl's respect!' The irony of this was that Goldie was already an Oscar winner but her box office was about to fall off precipitously (she only had one more hit in her, The First Wives Club) and Streep wasn't ever truly box office poison (she had had huge hits in the 70s and 80s and would have them again in the 00s). But the ungenerous perception in many quarters was that Streep's appeal was waning and that her sudden lunge toward comedy was desperation.

This perception was both true and untrue. The way things shook out in the nineties, her 40s (aka the 1990s) did turn out to be her most fallow and least popular period. The move toward comedy, however, so suspiciously received in the beginning, ended up making her more popular than ever. It just took another decade for audiences to rally around New Meryl.

What do I see? That's the question I'm most afraid of.
One that asks me what I'm really... made of.

One of the most endearing things about Death Becomes Her from a retrospective vantage is the way it follows so closely on the heels of Postcards From the Edge, forming a prismatic, self-mocking double feature. The subject is an aging actress in career crisis, one who just happens to have an absurdly amazing singing voice; Postcards ends with a big gorgeous musical performance as career redemption and Death begins with its inversion, a big gawdy one as career killer. So this early 90s double offered audiences two potential futures for fictional "Meryl Streep." Or the same future, if you could predict the coming of Mamma Mia! -- it would look exactly like a huge gawdy career killer but be a mammoth hit in actuality!

Further pushing this Meryl on "Meryl" dialetic to the forefront is that Death also seems to confirm, revel in and foretell critical complaints about Streep as Overrated Queen of the Hams. There's nothing within the script or Streep's performance in Postcards to suggest that "Suzanne Vale" is anything other than a mediocre screen talent and Death's "Madeline Ashton" is, quite demonstrably, a bad actress.

Meryl doesn't go for subtlety this time, which is an absolutely wise choice. Death Becomes Her needs both broads to be broad. Subtlety wouldn't work in a film that spends its first two reels speeding through 14 years (!) of boyfriend-stealing, dated Broadway flops, fatsuit gags, faux movie clips, career changes of fortune, plastic surgery addictions, marital misery and revenge fantasies. But broad doesn't have to equal bad. If anything, Death Becomes Her is pinpoint sharp about how big to go, and I'm not talking about Goldie Hawn's fatsuit.


Goldie clearly relishes her spurned woman gone nutso role, but the biggest and wisest laughs in the early scenes aren't coming from Goldie XXL but from the massive size of Madeline: her ego, her stardom, the space she takes up in Helen's brain. The mere mention of her name sends people into hysterics [see photo above], which is a super funny subtextual joke about stardom underneath the actual joke about Helen's patience-testing obsession with her frenemy.

And if you're going to be making jokes about an actress taking up way too much mental real estate, isn't Meryl, The Greatest Living Actress™, the ideal butt of that joke?

"She's a woman, Ernest... a woman from Newark for goddsakes"
(Yes, both Madeline & Meryl are Jersey girls)

It's easy to imagine half of Hollywood's actresses relating to Helen's envy, and all of them, including Streep herself, howling at Madeline's comeuppance. Streep's supersize talent and endless good fortune in a cruel business that isn't half as kind to her talented peers would be insufferable if she didn't enjoy a good ribbing now and then.

For such a plotty movie -- there's a ton more to come involving magical age-defying potions, secret societies, violent revenge and living death (hence the title) -- Death is remarkably brisk in pacing and never loses sight of what makes it special: the witty screenplay and the Meryl & Goldie hamming. Not that the supporting cast isn't helping. Isabella Rossellini is a sexy hoot as seductive testy Lisle and Bruce Willis is fun, too, as plastic surgeon turned undertaker Ernest. He matches the heightened style of his co-stars but dorkifies it considerably as the flaccid man that both of them want... possibly only because the other does. One of my favorite bits is Meryl's trip to the hospital where she inadvertently turns the doctor (her Out of Africa director Sydney Pollack) into a patient himself.

<--- I think she needs to see a doctor.

Death rarely gets bogged down in attempting to glorify its (Oscar winning) visual effects, which is a common problem in lesser genre efforts. Zemeckis knows that for all the "wow!" appeal of the grotesquely imagined injuries including holes in bodies, protruding bones and heads facing in the entirely wrong direction -- "I can see my ass!" -- nothing is as super as watching talented funny actors having a laugh. He even finds great use of Meryl's twitchy hands, a common and sometimes distracting Streepism, which considerably add to the laughs when Madeline can't wrap her head around what's happening to her suddenly backward body. Zemeckis gives Hawn and Streep plenty of closeup attention for their well delivered zingers but he smartly uses a variety of shots for comedic effect. The use of focus-pulling and of long shots in particular really add to the visual panache of the film.

If Death Becomes Her overstays its welcome a tiny bit with those final frantic chase antics in Lisle's castle, it saves itself with great visual choices such as framing Mad & Hel like leaning gargoyles atop Lisle's magical castle, there to tempt and torment Ernest one last time. And the punchline is deliciously dark, with Mad & Hel's laughter preceding their "uh oh" realization of an eternity in each other's company. Misery loves company. Cut to: "37 Years Later", an epilogue to drive this punchline home.

While it's possible to view Death Becomes Her's central catfight and 'woman thou art vain!' characterizations as misogynistic actress-bashing from the land of the same (Hollywood!), it's hard to object when the film is this much fun, exhibits such love for its evil women, and the actors are so gleefully selling bad behavior.


Now a warning.
................"NOW a warning?"

You can fight aging through means both natural and un, but the ravages of time will get you in the end. Even if, like Madeline, you're rich enough to buy magic potion or talented enough, like Meryl, to stay vital in the cinema for decades on end.

See, offscreen as well as on, Streep got older. We all do. But you have to hand it to her. What seemed like folly to some at the time -- four consecutive and often silly comedies after her coronation as the world's preeminent dramatic force -- was actually a savvy forward motion move. She fought an aging career, not by underlining her dominance (Lord knows she probably had plentiful Oscar bait scripts to choose from in that four year period), but by stretching her instrument, experimenting with new genres and poking fun at herself. Laughing may cause crow's feet and smile lines, but it sure keeps you young at heart.

Streep at 60 thus far
Act 1 "Liberated Lady" Oscar Races: 1978, 1979
Act 2 "Chameleonidae Erotica" Oscar Races: 1981, 1982-1983, 1985, 1987-1988
Act 3 "Funny Lady" Oscar Races: 1990