Shelley Duvall as Millie Lammoreaux in 3 WOMEN

SHELLEY DUVALL

SHELLEY DUVALL as Millie Lammoreaux in 3 WOMEN

Probably my favorite unseen performance of all time. Altman dreamed up the concept of 3 Women while sleeping by his wife's sickbed. He even dreamed the title and the casting of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall and he knew that the story would somehow involve identity theft. But even that is too specific a description for this strange, beautiful and funny film. Altman has said that, of all his films, it comes the closest to eliciting a purely emotional reaction from the viewer.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times said in 1977

“Logic has nothing to do with films' effeciveness, though it does with all of the performances, beginning with Miss Duvall's. Millie Lammoreaux is the central figure in Robert Altman's funny, moving new film, "3 Women," and, as played as well as largely created by Shelley Duvall, she's one of the most memorable characterizations Mr. Altman has ever given us. Miss Duvall's large, round dark eyes are windows through which a tiny creature inside looks out upon a world whose complete disinterest Millie Lammoreaux refuses to accept.”

We all remember Shelley Duvall terrified face in the hotel bathroom as Jack Nicholson begins to break open the door from the other side in THE SHINNING. This film's performance by Shelley Duvall is a different kind of terrifying tale. A woman without a center. Without love in her life and is desperately is trying to be everything she says she is.

“Thoroughly Modern Millie”…Milie is like the the recipes she cuts out of Woman’s Day Magazine, ‘perfect’. Like her cannary yellow dress, her small apartment and hair cut, just perfect. Well, not quite. It’s doesn’t take long see right through Millie, she is frantically alone and of need of some sincere TLC - her loneliness is eerie, shocking and palpable. Relentlessly and deftly played by Shelley Duvall. It’s an in your face embarrassing to tenth degree rendering. Every molecule seems to scream for acceptance and love or just a little attention. Most of the journal entries and monologues and dialogue were created by Shelley Duvall herself. It’s an incredible performance. This film had no viewers when it was first release but later caught on with word of mouth and VHS and later DvD. I doubt with the reality TV brains that exist in today’s film taste would accept this ingenious and risky impressionistic film. People didn’t know how to take the film back then or the actors in it or what it all meant. Millie just made them uncomfortable and so did the other two women – Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule. But how deliciously uncomfortable Shelley Duvall is to watch.

Her coming down the stairs in the jumpsuit makes me howl every time I see it. Like genius satire – it’s high art at it’s best. Shelley striking a pose with every step trying the stir up the looks of the men sitting at the pool BBQ below – one man in particular – Tom, who always has cough. Millie makes it down to her favorite lounge chair a flips her new cosmopolitan, as all hip 70’s single women would do. Every turn of the page as though saying, 'look at me, look at me'! Nothing really for herself, no true desire or passion , everything , every move is a presentation of normal and sanity and beauty. Hysterical. It’s painful dream drama. Another great scene that will make cringe is when she joins the doctors in their commissary for lunch and sits between two of them, who talk right through her.

In a movie filled with mirrors, reflections, twins and multiple images. Millie always seems to be primping, making minute adjustments to her clothes and hair, perfecting her makeup, admiring herself in reflection while no one else seems to quite see her. So truthful it becomes funny because it is so uncomfortable to watch, you have to watch it again and again. Altman eerie dream keeps going full steam ahead – once it brings you in – largely due to Shelley Duvall incredible performance. I asked Mr. Altman about the dress in the car the car door, and he said, “Oh that happened once during one of the first takes and the DP pointed it out to me and we just keep doing it, it felt right and it felt right to Shelley”. Always working as a collaborator ‘ It felt right to Shelley”, and always available to find new things to throw into the mix to make his identity stealing drama work better.

Millie enjoys getting junks mail and fixing her curl and those tiny shrimp cocktail for her dinner party. Of course the guests never show and Millie comes undone.

Everyone else in the movie sees through her too ( but she thinks that they think she’s fabulous! – that’s what is so brilliant – the cruelty never affects her zealous or nerve) She's ignored even when she speaks directly to people, her party guests never arrive, and her plans for "hot dates" invariably end up with her going to the local dive bar -- which offers dirt bike racing and a gun range out back. The only people she gets are the tossed away old geezers at the gun range – whom she is flippant with and turns away from – of course. Looking back, it's ironic that 20th Century Fox, released both 3 Women and Star Wars the same year. The success of the latter caused the blockbuster system to click into place, which signaled the end of Altman's creative Hollywood phase. It’s sad really. This is what film could have been. Daring and unresting and personal with a ‘shining’ ( Get it Shining – Shelley Duvall was in the Shining.) performance at the center. Nevertheless, Altman quickly found a home in the independent movement and has continued to make fascinating films to his end.

Altman always points to Shelley when talking about how did he go about creating Millie. “I only had the idea – Shelley did all the work” Good casting Mr. Altman, rest in peace.

Shirley MacLaine as Augora Greenway in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

SHIRLEY MACLAINE

SHIRLEY MACLAINE as Aururo Greenway in TERMSOF ENDEARMENT. (1983)

My childhood friends have been asking me when I’m going to write about Shirley MacLaine or Debra Winger in TERMS. Now that I’m older I probably would choose two different signature roles for both these actors. The movie just doesn’t hold up for me anymore. But, at the time, in 1983, and I had a very mature level of film-making and an adult taste, in terms of achievement, in acting and in quality films. I would have movies parties and friends would have movies parties and I would make all my seventh and eigth grade friends watch TERMS OF ENDEARMENT before watching anything else. At that point I had never seen anything like it – a movie that resembles life and the characters in my life. The people in this film were like the characters my world. The women in this movie were like the woman who raised me. It was my signature movie as a young teen. I was all about TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and I guess I have to honor that time. So now that I’m traveling back – I wanna talk about Shirley MacLaine. Even though the film oozes emotionality and a big score and result oriented moments without any real build up I still think the performances are incredible. Absolutely incredible, especially Shirley MacLaine. Shirley had always been an old school talent and played very well her APARTMENT and TURNING POINT leading lady roles. But I could feel the acting underneath. I could see the lines on the page. With TERMS OF ENDEARMENT she commits to the character on deeper level and becomes Aurora Greenway. The little looks off the tip of her nose, her breathe, the sounds she made, the eye roll, the squints... She just feels this woman like no one character before. It hits you in the middle of the chest – right in your heart. She’s my Aunt Linda. The leader of the family. She can’t help it.

When families get together to remember their times together, the conversation has a way of moving easily from tragedy to comedy.

You’ll mention a story from the past, one of those stories your cousin tells at the beginning of every Thanksgiving and it’s funny but laughter turns into anger and resentment by pumpkin pie. It’s layered in your own perspective and hurt but the smile on top remains, then you get home and say, “Never again, that’s our last Thanksgiving with those people”. But next Holiday you return like a faithful masochist. Or at a funeral of a loved one, possibly a loved one you have mixed emotions about and you get ‘the church giggles’ and can’t stop laughing. Life always has a way of turning up unhappy endings, but with family you can have a lot of fun along the way, and makes this life bearable. It doesn’t always have to be dripping in deep emotional pain and significance. The great thing about TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is that it finds the real balance between the happy moments in life and then the sad. The truth and the ridiculous, the unbearable with the acceptance and the love that remains to the troops: the family.

The movie begins with anxious, ferocious Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) clambering up over the side of her baby's crib and hurling herself on the tot, hysterically convinced that she has only seconds to administer the kiss of life to her darling Emma and save her from crib death. Naturally, all she does is disturb a healthy infant's sleep. From this scene it is obvious that TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is a a different kind of comedy.

As Brooks sees them, his movie's mother and daughter are actually sisters under the skin, connected not just by kinship but by subtle parallels of emotions and experience. Aurora appears initially to be no more than that familiar figure of satire, the American Mom as American Nightmare, all coy snarls and fierce demureness, while Emma, protected only by a thin skin of perkiness, seems to be her victim. "You aren't special enough to overcome a bad marriage," Aurora snaps on the eve of Emma's wedding, voicing her own fears about what might happen if she ventured outside her perfectly tended Texas house and garden. "I am totally convinced that if you marry Flap Morton tomorrow you will ruin your life and make wretched your destiny," she adds. As always with Brooks, locution is character.

A lesser movie would have had trouble moving between the extremes that are visited by this film, TERMS understands its characters and loves them, we never have a moment's doubt: What happens next is supposed to happen. Because life's like that.

The film feels as much like life as any movie I can think of. At the same time, it's a triumph of show business, with its high comic style, its flair for bittersweet melodrama and its star turns for the actors. Maybe the best thing about this movie is the way it combines those two different kinds of film-making. This is a movie with bold emotional scenes and big laughs, and at the same time it's so firmly in control of its tone that we believe we are seeing real people.

The movie's about two remarkable women and their relationships with each other and with the men in their lives.

Shirley MacLaine is Aurora, a widow who lives in Houston and hasn't dated a man since her husband died. Maybe she's redirected her sexual desires into the backyard, where her garden has grown so large and elaborate that she either will have to find a man pretty quickly or move to a house with a bigger yard.

Her daughter, played by Debra Winger, Emma is one of those people who seems to have been blessed with a sense of life and joy. She marries a guy named Flap who teaches English in a series of Midwestern colleges; she rears three kids and puts up with Flap, who has an eye for coeds. 



Back in Houston, her mother finally goes out on a date with the swinging bachelor – Jack Nicholson, mellow and ultra cool as ever, who has lived next door for years. He's a hard-drinking, girl-chasing former astronaut with a grin that hints of unspeakable lusts. MacLaine, a lady who surrounds herself with frills and flowers, is appalled by this animalistic man and then touched by him.

There are a couple of other bittersweet relationships in the film. Both mother and daughter have timid, mild-mannered male admirers: MacLaine is followed everywhere by Vernon, who asks only to be allowed to gaze upon her, and Winger has a tender, little affair with a banker. The years pass. Children grow up into adolescence, Flap gets a job as head of the department in Nebraska, the astronaut turns out to have genuine human possibilities of becoming quasi-civilized, and mother and daughter grow into a warmer and deeper relationship. All of this is told in a series of perfectly written, acted and directed scenes that flow as effortlessly as a perfect day, and then something happens that is totally unexpected, and changes everything.


Could these two find it in themselves to reverse this role reversal one more time and arrive at a balanced acceptance of each other? Emma's illness provides the occasion for that final adjustment. Inevitably her growing weakness draws the young woman back toward childish dependency, and the need to defend her daughter against suffering summons forth Aurora's old ferocity. Whether she is questioning empty medical practices or keeping poor Flap shaped up ("One of the nicest qualities about you is that you always recognized your weaknesses; don't lose that quality when you need it most") or bullying the nurse into administering a delayed sedative, MacLaine achieves a kind of cracked greatness, climax to a brave, bravura performance. Her entire body gives way to the anguish of her daughters situation and despair. The scene in at the airport when she’s tired and tells Bredlove she loves him and makes that big circle back to get his answer. It’s just so full of tragedy and comedy – love and pain and bare bones rawness that you give way to the obvious emotional turns of the film-maker. She’s so ‘in it’ and full and emotional that by the time Debra looks at her mom for the last time – you are in that connection whether you want to be or not. You are outside of your body, flowing somewhere in-between that loving connection of mother and daughter. I used this movie as a barometer of whether or not my friends had a heart or not – And they all did. The movie parties always ended in tears and I was a very happy seventh grader.

Aurora Greenway is a character that become part of America’s family after everything is finished. Augora, like my Aunt Linda is someone we all want in our lives and someone that anchors the love – even though it comes out in a loud bark, belly laugh, jab or critique. Well done Shirly MacLaine and great OSCAR speech. My brother just realized that Warren Beatty is her little brother. Yes bro, they’re related.

Holly Hunter as Jane Craig in BROADCAST NEWS

HOLLY HUNTER

HOLLY HUNTER as Jane Craig in BROADCAST NEWS

Plain Jane name but this delivery from Ms. Hunter is anything but plain. From her hair at the uncomfortable conference to the way she stomps into work – gathering the papers and letting the news-stands shut on their own. If she weren’t executive producing the news division – she would be committed to a mental institution. Defiant, temperamental, under-sexed, jealous and willing to admit her faults and frailty. A high voltage character on a high wire act, a high stress job but Holly welcomes the range of stresses from heartache to high morality with ease and a big unabashed wallop. Most film snobs would point to THE PIANO, but I' didn't get THE PIANO, seen it many many times and I liked it but it's no signature piece.

This is a ‘Signature Role’ tailor made for pint sized Holly Hunter. Who else could have walk through these shoes. Her size, her tight upper lip. Holly Hunter is aware of what she is and how she comes across. Uses every once of energy and every emotion in this role. I’m not quite sure where she’s going now. This TV role she’s in – feels like she’s trying to re-capture her youth and play on her sexiness. She’s sexy, but in a geeky girl it's kinda hot way. She’s not really T and A. I loved her dance scene in LIVING OUT LOUD but again her current incarnation feels a tad desperate, but I can’t punish her for trying to cash in, she has twins to feed.

It’s Diana Christiansen's NETWORK but with big emotion and a softness that they didn’t give to Faye. It’s not in the role. But it is here. Tough as all hell, yelling at someone on the phone about parking to laying her self out on a bed before William Hurt “ how are you at back-rubs”– who rejects her. She’s revolted by her own desperate love needing acts and at the same time feels disgusting she falling for a idiot.

A big messy mass of contradictions. She ends up busting William Hurt for using his acting abilities to manufacture tears for a story but doesn’t mind sending off her rival female co-worker to Alaska into a blizzard - because she has the ability to do so. Because no one bust her – she’s OK with it. Brilliantly written and conceived role to ballsy actress without limits.

Hyperventilating, and then snap recovery to angry to demanding. She's one of those women sometimes thought to be too smart for her own good, and sometimes she has to agree. When the head of the network news division says, with a good deal of sarcasm, ''It must be nice to always think you're the smartest person in the room,'' she replies, ''No, it's awful.''

Another brilliant sequence is the moment right before when silently Jane Craig is watching William Hurt and moving uncomfortably around the room, sees him turn her back just before he sees her and walks away from him. You can feel her prepare, she tweaks her neck and relaxes her shoulders as he touches her and she turns to look at him. And he announces that she looks “Clean and Pretty”, says “Clean.?.” – please clarify and he tells her at work she’s and covered in a "kind of film". William Hurt, again brilliant. Her look of rejection and disappointment – haven’t we all been there? - is so truthful and specific. We are deep within the mind of this little bundle of quick firing energy. "It must wonderful to know you’re the smartest person in the room", “No it’s awful”.

As Jane famously observes of herself to her best friend – who’s in love with her on the other end (Albert Brooks best work – by far), “I seem to be repelling people, I’m trying to seduce.” Self mockery – twinge of twang, shoots at her later “I think you’re the devil!” to rewarding co-working for a job well done, “Thanks everybody” the tone that we’ve never heard before on film, like a friend or family member – a loved one – It sounds so real and familiar. Like someone we know or have worked with or a grown up with – she bring s new sound to her vocal cords and to her little body as well. Every part of her is vibrating in this role. This could be Tracy Flick from ELECTION all grown up. We can feel Holly Hunter is thinking and rethinking and acting from all possible angles when she’s going over her script. Smart lady, smart role – really smart performance from the gut.

I happy to see CHER ( come on - I'm a big queen) win that year, but would have been equally pleased to see Holly Hunter up there.

Dianne Wiest as Helen Sinclair in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

DIANE WIEST

DIANE WIEST as Helen Sinclair in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

I was going to wait to take care of supporting players another time, another day. But I couldn’t wait on this one. It’s one of those roles that boarders on being a lead, like Donald Sutherland in ORDINARY PEOPLE (who missed out on nomination because it was an in-between status role) but because she’s an ego less actress – always fitting back into the ensemble – without robbing any of the players of their moments. She not only got the nomination but took home her second OSCAR. This is a leading ‘Lady’ in the best sense of the word. The generous and warmth of Dianne Wiest, in a tiger of a role: Helen Sinclair. Wiest, vain, always in full make-up, summoning a deep, bassoon like voice that she's never used in a film before, Wiest plays the self-infatuated Helen like a second-class Norma Desmond –(“I’m still a star…”) pumped up with delusions, but savvy enough to get whatever she wants from her naive playwright "Bullets Over Broadway" is a bright, energetic, sometimes side-splitting comedy with vital matters on its mind, precisely the kind of sharp-edged farce Woody has always done best.

I’m including lots of lines form the film – in case you ever meet my friends or me – you can be up to speed.

Helen Sinclair a demanding grande dame on and off stage who is just a teensy bit over the hill. Just a teensy bit. She is (by her own description) "some vain Broadway legend." But it's also true, in the words of her manager (Harvey Fierstein), that in recent years she's "been better known as an adulteress and a drunk, and I say that with all due respect." Helen happily drops the names of "Max" Anderson and "Eugene" O'Neill at every opportunity, but she's ready to take a chance on a newcomer. She's also ready to make him rewrite his play so that it becomes more flattering to her. You would think with that incredible opening sequence, a very clever intro of a big Sunset Blvd esk type ego – with the throwing the script down first and then super needy star descending the staircase. It’s so important to the character to chew up the scenery but as I said before she’s a gifted and generous actress, She knows when to play it huge but she lets Harvery has his moments without robbing jokes from him. It’s a sign of true talent. She fills every moment with her barely see able – thin - squinty eyes with a bible of subtext in her moments when she’s contemplating her next big role. A extreme puff of smoke- “I should billed above the title” displaying it in front of her on the marquee, hysterical! Harvery quickly, “ It is without question…”

Nobody beats Helen Sinclair when it comes to making an entrance either, "Please forgive me!" she booms, sweeping in late for the first read thru. "My pedicurist had a stroke. She fell forward onto the orange stick and plunged it into my toe, and it required bandaging." Gazing around the empty theater, Helen feels the urge to offer grandiose greetings – underneath it all I am the star here folks – don’t fuck with me ("Mrs. Alving! Uncle Vanya. There's Cordelia! Here's Ophelia").

"My taste is superb," Helen corrects him. "My eyes are exquisite."

Her signature line “Don’t Speak” actually didn’t happen right away. In fact, the outside flower scene – the only scene that doesn’t really jive with the rest. The first scene they shot. Taking another week off to do pre-production. She wasn’t entirely happy with…either was Woody – Only because she was not happy they postponed the film shoot. She keep lowering her voice deeper and deeper and then the character clicked. She found it!

Every other scene she’s in – you watch with bigger eyes – your ears open up. She commands more attention than the other actors – It’s no just the role. She’s got a lot going on…Another scene I always haves actor study is the bar scene with she order herself a couple martini’s – When she’s knowingly trying to cast her spell to change his play more to her liking. She never strays off her super-objective to 'change that script'. She seduces, teases, compliments. Every arsenal in her book still acting coquettish and demure. Both needing a complement for herself and seducing to get what she wants. There’s an honesty and sweetness even when she is being manipulative and uncaring. It’s hysterical to watch her face and nothing else. Timing like this can’t be learned or achieved over years of practice – it’s something an actor knows innately. She honed her skills years in the theatre and off Broadway and off off Broadway and on Broadway. And then she met Woody Allen. Her three minute audition / meeting left her stunned and thinking – He must have liked the other girl she went in with she thought. Not a chance.

Woody Allen has stated many times that from the moment he met her – without seeing a stitch of his acting he just knew ‘she lit up the room’. “She’s one of the great actresses in America, comedy, tragedy – I’m not just saying that as a generalization, she is truly a great actress”. Three other actresses came into the audience room at the same time, they took a Polaroid, shook hands, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Dianne Wiest. He just knew. She thought it was an obvious rejection that ‘he liked one of the other girls’ He didn’t. He only had eyes for Dianne…Wiest.

FRANCES MCDORMAND as Marge Gunderson in FARGO

FRANCES MCDORMAND

FRANCES MCDORMAND as Marge Gunderson in FARGO

Nothing is as it seems on the surface. Frances McDormand goes very far to bring us back to where her character begins and ends. Fresh, pure heart and calm. Sweet by choice. Some can’t see the depth in this character. But this is a seriously smart – layered performance – But to the novice movie going it may feel like a one note caricature. You have to wait to the end to see it - the looks in the review mirror - educating and scolding her ‘bad guy’ – that’s when you see glimpses of the real woman underneath the simple big pregnant gal with the big twang and heart of gold.

The people with the badge, the ones that are good police men and women identify with the opposing forces with the bad guys. This is a cliche in and of itself, but it’s true. They are hidden criminals themselves – choosing to do good rather than do bad. It's almost as if the badge keeps them from being behind bars. The job imposes their moral duty and choices. When Marge tells clumsy co-worker, when she gently chides, "I’m not sure that I agree with you 100% on your police work there, Lou." – For those of you who felt this was a one joke – one note caricature performance – watch closely Frances McDormand’s face in these moments. A lot is going on – there’s a fascination with his ineptness – then calm patience – back to an inner smile and then sweetness. She decides she’s going to walk him through it. But there’s a flicker, just a hint of masculine sternness, perhaps, underneath it all, she’d just like to smack his face. It's brilliant. Strong lady. It’s hard to do good.

Right before this you had the classic moment of her bending over – "ut oh" morning sickness. "I think I’m going to barf”. Tough to have the best policeman in your area eight months pregnant. Our first meeting Marge is almost 45/50 minutes into the film. Rare for a best actress win. But Like Geraldine Page or Anthony Hopkins. You don’t need big screen time to make a big impression.

Frances McDormand has a difficult tasks of saying one thing – all the while having a string of thoughts that sift through the multiple options and evils. She plays up her humor and uses goodness with abandon to get what she wants. ‘Kill em with kindness’ could be her mantra.. It’s lonely to behave morally in this world that has celebrated its own greed and corruption. Great themes. McDormand goes deep to play a simpleton - this small town folk hero. As McDormand has said, “There’s a musicality to the language of the script, every single ‘yeah’ and ‘you betcha’ was in the script”

She is clever, but she outsmarts them because the men keep underestimating her. She talks nice, but she's actually pretty brave and tough and thinks like a con man- consider the scene in which she confronts Shep - "that right there would be a violation of your parole".

Plus, she never lets up on the details - the way she keeps on at Macy over the Tan Sierra is the core of how she cracked the case. Because when she meets him she knows – After a brief couple moments – This is the guy.

And Joel Coen has never handled performers better. He balances Macy’s Jerry and McDormand’s Marge against each other in a way that steadies the picture even though they have only two scenes together. You’re constantly comparing Jerry’s twisting on a hook to Marge’s steadiness, his agonized impotence seeps deeper into your bones than anything else in any of the Coen brothers’ movies and Marge, with her big blue eyes and mournful under bite, is there to comfort you with an incomprehension you can only contemplate, like being born without original sin. The Coens may not be able to get an adequate sense of horror from a massive spray of blood in the snow, but then the picture isn’t Jerry’s tragedy. It’s a black comedy about the resilient sanity of a woman who cannot understand how that blood came to be there. Marge cleans up Jerry’s mess like an ideal mom who knows, without even having done the comparison-shopping, which paper towels are the most absorbent. But somewhere deep within her – knows exactly how this person operates and ticks – how they all about how and why – and go the extra mile. To play this role just cheery and unaware wouldn’’t have rang true. She knows – You know she knows. But she chooses day after day to do the right thing. And yet she still wants to bring a child into this mess. “One more month”, her last line …Good stuff. There are die hard Emily Watson fans that still can’t sleep all through night knowing Frances won the Oscar that year – but I think they both got what they deserved. Emily got a career and Frances got rewarded for this signature piece of acting.

JANE FONDA as Bree Daniel in KLUTE (1971)

JANE FONDA

JANE FONDA as Bree Daniel in KLUTE

“You never want to play a bad actor in film”. I think Dustin Hoffamn said that – and he outta know, he to learn the hard way. He played a great actor in Tootsie- Genius. Paid off in spades…and then play a bad actor in ISHTAR and almost destroyed his career,

You see my point.

In this film you see the Hooker try to be an actress and she’s not a very good Actress, but she’s a great hooker. Wow! It’s Jane Fonda - who knew? It’s Jane Fonda!

Henry’s daughter… A great, really great f-ing actress. Probably surpasses her Dad in this one. It happens. Good for her. She’s out and in raw rare form here.

Fonda plays troubled / angry New York City call girl Bree Daniel, who finds herself in the middle of an investigation by small-town private eye John Klute (Sutherland). Klute’s businessman friend has been missing for months, and he thinks Bree is at the center of it. As the lanky detective investigates, he gets involved in a sordid web of murder and with Bree, who uses sex as a way to assert herself over her array of insecurities.

Fonda gives her Bree , a sort of nervous intense center, that keeps her so firmly locked into a film character that the character actually seems distracted by things that come up in the movie. You almost have the feeling, a couple of times in KLUTE that the Fonda character had other plans and was just leaving the room when this (whatever it is) came up. Great acting tip: Don’t play the scene – play the scene that’s happening out in the hall.

Lots of research and deep emotional work by Fonda and it shows. She seems possessed in this film and it’s tiniest moments shine better then the big ones. I like that Jane Fonda plays her anger and never really backs down from that – ads to it and polishes the rage but doesn’t ever play weak. True, that’s how these ladies of the evening are…someone did their homework.

Bree is further developed in scenes showing her trying to get out of the trade and into something straight. She takes acting lessons, she auditions to model for cosmetics ads. She talks to her shrink (in scenes that sound improvised and exhibit Fonda's undeniable intelligence). I describe this ambitious undertaking from Jane Fonda as a lesson in authenticity. If you don’ know – go find out. She did her research from what I’m told and it shows and shines. Sympathetic with arrogance. (opposing forces working - yet again – attention actors)

Hard, cynical and brittle without feeling the need to back down and apologize or be forgiven. It’s a unforgettable performance in an otherwise forgettable film. You see that haircut and you think ‘Hanoi Jane' and that's a shame. You need to see that haircut and think of Alan J. Pukula’s terrific thriller and Jane Fonda’s killer Bree in KLUTE. That’s all that matters, good solid work.

SALLY FIELD as Edna Spalding in PLACES IN THE HEART

SALLY FIELD

SALLY FIELD as Edna Spalding in PLACES IN THE HEART

I know NORMA RAE has that signature moment that been pounded by the marketing teams and media – it’embedded in our brains holding the sign in protest in the factory. But like Sissy Spacek in CARRIE – Yes, by all means brilliant acting – worthy of Signature Role status but is it her signature piece of acting? Is it her personal best? That moment, holding the sign, is frozen in our brains because of the re-used image, it’s 20 years later joked about on ‘Will and Grace’, seen over and over again in ads and award season campaigning but for me her better work and most treasured role is Edna Spalding in Places in the Heart. Well, If I felt this way than why didn’t I chose MISSING for Sissy rather than COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER. My position is this. As a fan and teacher of the craft of acting I have to stand by the elements that I use to judge what it is to be a Signature Role. The level of commitment and ability to bring something to the role that no other actor in the world could do. Could somebody else play Edna Spalding. Yes most definitely make it better I doubt it – Make it different – yes. And when an actor has two great role – both signature ones like Hilary Swank – Sally Field and Jane Fonda I go with my gut. And for me my gut says this is a better use of self and deeper exploration than Norma Rea. They are doing everything right in both cases – but there’s one that just sticks out a little further than the others. I watched NORMA REA yesterday and I thought the accent was a tad generalized ‘Southern’. Not region specific. And the spine of her angry and rage was very one note. With other actors like Meryl or Geraldine – It would be criminal not to mention the other SIGNATURE ROLES – but with the other players – be happy with the what I give you.

Ok, back to the excellent work at hand, Sally Field - the time is 1935, and the setting is the small town of Waxahachie and the gentle Texas countryside surrounding it. When her husband is killed in an accident, Edna Spalding (Sally Field) finds herself, after 15 years of marriage, with two small children to support, a farm on which the bank is about to foreclose, less than $200 in the bank and no talent for anything except cooking and keeping house, which, for the self-employed, paid no more then than it does now.

PLACES IN THE HEART is the moving and often funny story of how Edna Spalding, through hard work, grit and a certain amount of luck, manages to see things through. Edna, as beautifully played by Miss Field, has a lot of the steadfastness that distinguished the actress's Oscar-winning performance in NORMA RAE. However, Edna is also a much less sophisticated personality, whose growth, in the course of the film, reflects an almost 19th-century faith in the possibilities of the American system, not as the system was, but as one wanted to believe it to be.

My favorite moment is in the cotton field as they near their deadline to come in first to win the prize money – to save the farm and keep the family together. Field goes from spent to humble to utterly terrified to exhaustion beyond this character could ever conceive of prior. She’s shaken to the core. It’s incredibly suspenseful and utterly wrenching to watch. The underlying fear of losing her kids and farm. Field’s hands go from dirty to cracked and then bloody, and her back can barely hold on, (as warned by the terrific Danny Glover – in another overlooked, understated performance that year) and we wince with her as what seems at first manageable work becomes harsh and abrasive. The camera holds on her face she tries to face the worse possible outcome. Not a word is spoken. She's shaken to the core. Every actor wants to be able to have that big moment – filled with words. Here Sally field gets to have her SOPHIE'S CHOICE moment, ‘I’m going to lose my children’ - all without words. It's astonishing desperation and pride in action. A great performance – essential also is her understanding of era and time. She could have could easily played up a stereotype of oppressed nobility. Field gives it a sweet understated dignity that makes this role stand way ahead of Norma Rea.

The moment in the office when she’s risks it all for a few pennies more a pound. Sizes up the winners of past farms that won the prize. We put it together along with Mrs. Spaulding. Desperate and yet proud, it’s a complex set of big emotions she swallows and owns perfectly step by step, moment to moment. Most actors would jump tot he finish line - not Sally Filed. Slow and steady. She figures it all out in that moment it's happening - fantastic!

And then she had to blow the whole picture with the whole “You like me, you like me” flub at the OSCARS and no one saw the movie – it’s a shame. It’s a great film with a knockout performance from Ms. Field.

SISSY SPACEK as Loretta Lynn in COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER

SISSY SPACEK

SISSY SPACEK as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Sissy Spacek- is Loretta Lynn. I still get them confused when I see them in pictures. I’ll see a snapshot of Sissy Spacek at a movie premiere and I'll start talking with a Southern accent like Lor-rettie. With the same sort of magical chemistry she's shown before, when she played the high school kid in CARRIE, Spacek at twenty-nine has the ability to appear to be almost any age onscreen. That’s the real deal about this performance. In COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER she ages from about fourteen to somewhere in her 30's. When mauling over true blue performances I always looks the age, and how she handles playing the various stages of a life. In this she never seems to be wearing makeup. She does it with her posture and acting ability. Age is a difficult thing to master and if done badly – actors come off as mongoidal; early in the film, as a poor coal miner's kid, she slouches and slinks around, and then later she puts on dignity with the flashy dresses and wigs she wears onstage. Lange did it in FRANCES beautifully and Marion – more recently in LA VIE EN ROSE. Early thirties seems to be that age where a talented actor can completely be able to go back and then forth – without any doubt. Late twenties / early thirties are the age range to do those legendary bio roles. This is the definitive example.

There is a grandness when finding a signature piece. CARRIE would definitely have signature characteristics and IN THE BEDROOM creeps in at times too. I’ll think about moments of what Sissy did in awe. I feel she had better acting moments in MISSING, especially the stunning sequence in Santiago when Beth, unable to get home before curfew but that film didn’t have the bigness that this film and character had. It’s a better film in my opinion but her Beth was a quiet suffering – subtle – wise – funny - warm lady where Loretta Lynn has all bigness that a signature piece represents.

But it’s those early moments of COAL MINER”S DAUGHTER that I always go back to and think - wow - how did she manage that? The movie's about Loretta Lynn's childhood, her very early marriage, her quick four kids, her husband's move to Washington State looking for a job, her humble start in show business, her apparently quick rise to stardom, and then the usual Catch-22 of self-destructiveness. You can feel love inside she has for her husband, kids, music, fans (at the end) and special friend Patsy. One of my favorite little moments is when Patsy Cline has returned tot he 'Grand Ole Opery' after her car wreck and winks to Loretta off-stage, who idolizes the talent and loves her new superstar friend.

We're not surprised, somehow, that right after the scenes where she becomes a superstar, there are scenes where she starts using pills, getting headaches, and complaining that everybody's on her case all the time, that no one loves her for her, "I need you Doo". We fiercely want to believe in success in this country, but for some reason we also want to believe that it takes a terrible human toll. Sometimes it does and that always makes for a better story. Straightforward success sagas, in which the heroes just keep on getting richer, are boring. We want our heroes to suffer. We like to identify, it makes stars more human, somehow, if they get screwed by Valium, too.

What's so refreshing about COAL MINER"S DAUGHTER is that it takes the basic material (rags to riches, overnight success, the onstage breakdown, and, of course, the big comeback) and relates them in wonderfully human terms. It's fresh and immediate. Spacek through every step has such an honest and simple way she delivers this performance we forget about a story and think it’s documentary about Loretta Lynn.

The most entertaining scenes in the movie are in the middle, after the coal mines and before the Top 40, when Loretta and Mooney (Also terrific Tommy Lee Jones) are tooling around the back roads trying to convince country disc jockeys to play her records. The scene with Mooney taking a publicity photo of Loretta is a little gem illustrating the press agent that resides within us all... "Where do I look?" "Look up to heaven baby".

I think it's one of those films people like so much while they're watching it that they're inclined to think it's better than it is. It's warm, entertaining, funny, and centered around this great performance, Who raises the bar for actors taking on Musician bio pics but it's essentially pretty familiar material (not that Loretta Lynn can be blamed that Horatio Alger wrote her life before she lived it). The movie isn't great art, but it has been made with great taste and style; it's more intelligent and observant than movie biographies of singing stars used to be. That makes it a treasure to watch, even if we sometimes have the feeling we've seen it before. Another great brief performance by Beverly D‘Angelo as Pasty Cline, whom should have been nominated as well for supporting but Sissy won the Gold that year. I do feel Mary Taylor Moore should have won, ( A photo finish I'm sure ), but this is still one amazing performance with a magical ending.

Gywneth Paltrow as Viola De Lesseps in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

GYWNETH PALTROW

GYWNETH PALTROW as Viola De Lesseps in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.

I’m going to get a lot of flack for this but this is an amazing performance by an amazing actress and I stand by it scene for scene. She is the best young Actress in the young group – standing tall along side Reese Witherspoon, Michelle Williams, and Natalie Portman. Better than The Gel-lars, The Ryders, The Lohans – perhaps all of them combined. Starting with the text itself. This great story telling – clever - ingenious (the reducing of history and the period in a) contemporary romantic comedy. But these pieces of dialogue are not easiest words to say for the two leads. Let alone putting something underneath and then passion and inspiration and all that is art and theatre. Hard to do – easy to comprehend but very hard to play. Gywneth tackles it with gusto, grace and ease.

In every performance there’s always that one moment that wraps up the entire character and film and for me is at the end on stage with that look off stage to her lover waiting in the wings. Reminiscent of Hollywood’s Golden Era of Cinema and the leading ladies of the past like Hepburn , Davis and Grace Kelly – Paltrow is almost saying along with everything that’s required to her lover, to the audience as well - with a simple smile and gaze “Don’t give up on us young ladies yet!”. She is trying to bring 'style and class back to film acting'. That face and talent is one that gives us pure hope that things may change. Actors are not just about fashion, ( although she dos it quite well), paparazzi and tabloid - that the true blue art of acting is possible again. And young woman don’t have to flash their cuchie to get noticed in Hollywood.

It’s one of the best reviewed movies of the 90’s but yet people seemed to gather in their hatred for Ms. Paltrow and her nepotism and privileged upbringing with her father Producer – actress mother- Danner and God Father Spielberg but this is an actress of rare quality. So back off haters!

I remember Anthony Hopkins interviewed when asked about Ms. Paltrow’s talent on Oparh and he said simply – “I’ve worked with all of them as you know – And Gywneth is the best of them all” He said it – “OF THE ALL” – Anthony Hopkinds folks – Not Ryan Reynolds. ANTHONY HOPKINS, hel-lo! He worked with Hepburn, Anne Brancroft, Jody Foster, Emma Thompson and he picked this young lady. I think America must reconsider why we’d placed such hard judgements and exiled Gwyneth. It’s not justified, you are missing out on an incredible talent.

Back to Shakespeare in Love

This is all wonderful stuff Gwyneth Paltrow, in her first great, fully realized starring performance, makes a heroine so breathtaking that she seems utterly plausible as the playwright's guiding light. In a film steamy enough to start a sonnet craze, her Viola De Lesseps really does seem to warrant the most timeless love poems, and to speak Shakespeare's own elegant language with astonishing ease. ''Shakespeare in Love'' itself seems as smitten with her as the poet is, and as alight with the same love of language and beauty.

And the humor of "Shakespeare in Love" is standard setting. Mixing farce, sexual innuendo, old actors' and writers' in-jokes, puns to do with the situations at hand, a running joke about the popularity of Christopher Marlowe and everything I've mentioned in previous paragraphs, it does a better job of cramming sharp gags into every moment than "Wag the Dog", or even "Annie Hall". John Madden, who lets his camera breeze throughout the sets heedlessly and his actors perform with high energy levels, creating something joyous and accessible. Romantic, too -- his stroke of genius in making the movie is to push the love story into the foreground and the banter into the back. This gives us a true, emotional, serious involvement in the affair (Viola has a shattering line, with "This is not life, Will... this is a stolen season."), but also helps the comedy, because it now seems to have more of an unintentional, incidental, off-hand manner.

Madden's entire cast serves him well, too, because he controls each player just right, giving them the freedom to do showy work and yet applying enough restraint on them so that the ensemble piece works, with nobody trying to steal the show. Having said that, Fiennes and Paltrow are especially engaging…Fiennes was overlooked come that award season and it’s a pity.

This is a great film, which stands up to multiple viewings. I've seen it several times, and learned that it is so sweet, endearing and layered, familiarity only accentuates the charm, energy and passion. When so many films are nonsensical products of assembly-line cynicism, "Shakespeare in Love" is a wonder to behold, and to cherish. If you watch her work in SILVIA and PROOF there is series artists here that commits to the inner life of the character that young actresses just don’t bother with. It’s rare gift, maybe passed down – maybe unique. This business is only nepotistic for that first role and then you have to prove yourself.

Finally, though, as always in romance, it's the stars, especially Paltrow, that carry the film. Fiennes, the younger brother of Ralph, has the burning eyes and brooding demeanor appropriate for a lover, and he and Paltrow, flourishing once again under a British accent and doing her best work - have a winning chemistry. It's no small thing to be completely believable as a besotted couple who can't keep their hands off each other, and that is what the pair accomplish here.

We need to forgive ourselves for being so cruel to Ms. Paltrow and that goes for you too Kathy Griffin – We need more young actresses to have Gwyneth’s integrity and grace and daring application system. Walking off in the end in the film – is parallel perhaps her walking away from Hollywood – as it were. I say, come back GP, come back!

GENA ROWLANDS as Mabel Longhetti in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

GENA ROWLANDS

GENA ROWLANDS as Mabel Longhetti in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Before there was Cherlize Theron in MONSTER or Hilary Swank In BOYS DON'T CRY there was only Gena Rowlands in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE. Thinking about this film I always have this image of John and Gena running around LA with their kids putting up movies posters cause they couldn’t afford proper marketing. And then I think of my mother. Who wasn't off the deep end as much as Mabel, but occasionally, seasonally, had moments that were very Mabel-esk. My mother was diagnosed, reluctantly later in life as bipolar and if Mabel would have ever went to a professional - she would have been labeled the same. I avoid this film at times. It's too familiar - too honest, doesn't cut away when I need a moment, it just keeps going. Unrelentingly honest and persuasive.

This film is a tough hard look at what lays behind low / middle to low income track houses and housewives.

Normally an actor would approach ‘crazy’ or any kind of mental illness with broad - generalized strokes and we can see it coming a mile a way. But Rowlands goes for ‘normal’ and bring us in slowly. We enter on a energetic – childlike woman who loves her kids and waves them off to school. Nothing wrong with that…She does the most innocent things with just a sprinkle of what dangers may lay ahead. Then her husband – played by the terrific Peter Falk (another under appreciated, Oscar worthy actor) bring home his co-workers for some breakfast. She makes spaghetti. Ok, not a normal early morning meal, but OK. With every line to the men, “want some Spaghetti?” seems like a tiny desperate cry form help. As if she’s saying ‘please take me away from all this’. Then she doesn’t remember the men, ut oh – or does she? We want, we need Mabel from the beginning to hold it together. As her world cracks so does ours. When she breaks, we break. I remember sitting outside the bathroom with I was seven. Inside my mother was taking a bath and crying. 'Hold it together mom' I would pray.

Mabel isn't gregarious, but, she tries. She tries too hard, and that's her problem. She desperately wants to please her husband, and when they're alone, she does. They get along, and they do love one another. But when people are around, she gets a little wacky. The mannerisms, the strange personal little ways she has of expressing herself, get out of scale. She's not sure how to act, because she's not sure who she is. "I'll be whatever you want me to be," she tells Nick, and he tells her to be herself. But who is that?

The film takes place before and after six months she spends in a mental institution. Her husband has her committed, reluctantly, after she begins to crack up. There have been some indications that she's in trouble. She behaves strangely when some neighbor children are brought over to stay for a while with her own, and the neighbor is afraid to leave his kids because of the way she's acting. But what, exactly, is "strange"?

Well she's insecure, hyper, manic. She laughs too much and pushes too hard. She's not good with other people around. So her husband does what he thinks he has to do and commits her. But what about him? What kind of a guy is he? It's here that this film and performance gets to be terribly complicated, involved and fascinating -- a true blue revelation. Because if Mabel is disturbed, then so is he. He's as crazy as she is, maybe more so. But because he's a man and has channels for his craziness, he stays at home and she gets sent away.

Said to have taken cues from a family friend and a mother of a childhood friend. This is a hard one for me to watch cause I have been there as my mother’s seasons had changed in her mind - I watched time and time again the sun go down and her depression and mania go up. It’s one of those performances I don’t like to talk about cause it’s too real – too vivid – too close to home. It’s coming from deep within but she’s playing a person we all know very well. A lonely innocent girl needing more love.

There's Gena Rowlands incredible command of her physical acting resources to communicate what Mabel feels at times when she's too unsure or intimidated to say. Just who’s crazy – one no understands the world of family or relationships except those directly involved – everyone else should mind their own business. Nothing wrong here. Brilliant. Hilary and Cherlize should hand over their Oscars and give them to Gena. Cause they it all to her.