Back again. So losing track of time lately. Fridays as Mondays. Thursdays as Fridays. When am I? Saturday AM? What? But here's the promised second part of the Q&A column. I loved the James Dean question and the Spice Girl question but I'll have to give them their own post or something later because my brain can't deal with their enormity tonight.
Here are a few more questions I wanted to / could answer. As always, I love to hear your answers to the same questions or your responses to mine in the comments.
MATTHEW: Choose three Oscar-nom'ed/winning actresses from the Aughts whose careers are most in need of redirecting and explain how you would help get them back on track.
I would've said Charlize Theron a year ago but -- yay -- totally back on track these days.
I want to start with Ellen Page. She gets work regularly but Whip It, her last vital role, will soon be three years old and it seems like we should be hearing her name more often in the 'who is up for what part' sweepstakes. I worry that Hollywood doesn't think she's "sexy" -- maybe it's the somewhat butch energy? -- and therefore doesn't consider her for the parts that they keep divvying up between Evan Rachel Wood, Carey Mulligan, Abbie Cornish, and the like. I think she should embrace the androgyny and do something harder-edged with a confrontational or casual sexiness. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo would've been a great move for her. But alas...
Hilary Swank. I know I've been rough on her over the years... but it's not like she's without talent (though her line readings in the New Year's Eve trailer are truly lumber yard ready. Yikes!). I think the extraordinary early success misdirected her career and she ended up playing all these Movie Star roles she wasn't suited for and doing all these genres she's terrible at. She needs to stick with contemporary drama and maybe look for a challenging memorable character in a strong ensemble piece. The only way she's getting a third Oscar nominations is a vivid supporting part.
Mo'Nique. The only problem with her career is that she doesn't work enough. When you can do what she did in Precious you kind of owe it to the world, if you ask me. (You'll notice I didn't even mention the vanishing act that is Joan Allen's career. I can't even talk about that lest I burst into tears.)
Sir Ian His AwesomenessSMG: Who are your favorite real-life gay actors? gay characters?
Y'all have to start narrowing down your questions! Characters? This sounds like a top 100 list waiting to happen so I can't do it in this format. As for gay actors, I have total organic fondness for any public figure brave enough to come out of the closet. People are always saying "oh, it's personal. leave them alone. etcetera" but basic sexual orientation is not a private matter -- sexual preferences in the bedroom, sure, but not orientation. Look around you and you will see evidence of sexual orientation EVERYWHERE. The "stay in the closet if it's what's best for you" is just heteronormative societal pressure and the thing people are always telling actors "don't come out because it'll kill your chance to become an A List movie star like ____" is sick. As if people should lie about their life for their whole lives for the sake of a lottery ticket! That's just the dark side of our capitalistic 'every man for himself' / 'dog-eat-dog' thinking. Notice how each year it gets easier for gay actors and actresses and it's becoming less of an issue. Why? Because people before them were altruistic and brave enough to come out and have opened the doors. The world is a better place post Ellen Degeneres and post Ian McKellen and post everyone-else. We can pretend we all live in bubbles but we don't. Our actions affect other people; we live in a continuum.
Politics aside, some workign gay actors I'm extra fond of in that I usually love their work and always perk up when I see them (no offscreen / offstage kinship required): Lily Tomlin, Sir Ian McKellen, Cheyenne Jackson, Miriam Margolyes, Fiona Shaw, John Benjamin Hickey, Jonathon Groff, Udo Kier (I'm still giggling remembering his bit in Melancholia), and Alan Cumming. That's off the top of my head.
Lily Tomlin in Nashville's "I'm Easy" Sequence
JOE K: Pick three performances in Nashville which you think are the most impressive that aren't Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakley.
Nashville! One of the best topics in all of cinema. I'll name my choices and answer a drama/musical question and a first actress crush diary after the jump.
I think Lily and Ronee are clearly the MVPs (after Robert Altman himself of course) so Oscar made wise choices there. But my favorite (i.e. the one I feel the most affection for, though I'd place her third in "best" honors) is Barbara Harris as "Albuquerque". I think Harris is great in everything, one of the most undersung actresses of the 60s through the 80s... probably because she was never really a big star. That wandering, panicky but utterly confident ending, she totally mirrors with both her physicality and singing, until the movie lifts right up into the heavens. If you've never seen Nashville, rent it immediately. Turn off your phone, turn out the lights, and just soak it up in one sitting, all 159 glorious minutes of. No pausing. It's the only way to watch something that brilliantly cumulative and atmospheric.
♫ you may say that I ain't free, it don't worry me ♪
After her, I'd say Keith Carradine who radiates such perfect sexual ease as if he's never had to make much effort. He keys right into the way that self-possessed or sexually magnetized people can flutter cruelly (but not sadistically) in and out of connection with the people around them, as if it never once occurred to them that they might lose the attention or affection should they mentally (or physically) wander. And "I'm Easy" is one of the greatest scenes in the 100+ year history of the cinema, of any kind.
Everyone else is tied for me after those four -- I love the whole cast -- so I can't say. But I will say that every time I see Shelley Duvall in an Altman movie, I feel overwhelming joy. She's such a glorious oddity and only Altman understood the glorious part.
SEISGRADOS: Since we are almost from the same generation, I always wondered who was your first actressexual crush growing up. Mine was Farrah Fawcett, I was a rabid fan since I was 12 just when I started watching Charlie's Angels. I couldn't stop drawing her and collecting pictures. My parents were even a bit concerned. LOL.
Since I was alive in the 70s (shut up!) I do remember the massive Fawcett Fixation of planet earth. That damn red bathing suit poster! The sales figures of 12 million for that thing strike me as lowball since I swear to god I saw it a million times growing up and that was just in Michigan. The first actress fixation I remember having was Natalie Wood since I loved watching her old movies on television as a little boy. But the tidal wave of in the moment fixations hit in 1984 when I went completely off my chair for Molly Ringwald, and for Daryl Hannah in Splash (I think it was the crimped hair that did it. LOL) and Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone (I think it was the everything that did it. God, what a woman.) They were like training wheels for what happened next (a.k.a. you know who.)
But it was the Oscar Diva Hydra Monster of 85-94 (Pfeiffer Streep Sarandon Close Weaver Huston Hunter Thompson) that made me the crazycuckoo person that I am today. So happy that most of them are still working even if the roles are smaller.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
DYLAN: What super dramatic film would you remake as a musical and vice versa?
This is such an interesting question because it immediately throws into sharp relief how limited our modern perceptions of the musical genre are. Every answer I thought of I was second guessing myself "people won't go for this! They'll think I'm crazy!" because, in general, the only thing we accept as "musicals" on film anymore are musical comedies. But musicals can be piercingly dramatic and heartbreaking and super serious. But they only do that on stage now. Like, say, Caroline or Change which spins its potent song spell through racism, religious intolerance, generation gaps, American history, and socioeconomic disparity. It's super serious.... and super amazing, seriously.
I only looked back over the past 15 years or so but I thought of several that would be really fascinating provided they had genius composers. (Otherwise... disaster! But that's always the case with tricky genres. Which is why one must choose creative teams so so carefully). For a good musical, you need heightened stories so that breaking into song feels natural and not like overkill. I was going to say The New World but we already had Pocahontas (I love both. Malick & Disney double feature. BAM). Imagine what some crazy mad composer could do with choral numbers in Dogville !!! I think Vera Drake might work but I could see 100 ways it could go wrong if it were too whistling and twee but I see it like one of Sondheim's two act constructions where the first half is cheery and when you come back after intermission he's all rubbing his hands with malevolent glee; he will destroy you with that second act.
My final answer is going to be Atonement. It's big bold sprawling and definitely heightened, emotionally speaking. Think of the neat things they could do with reprises or multiple casting trio songs for Briony alone.
Briony's 11th hour apologia would be epic epicness.
P.S. I wouldn't do the vice versa part (musicals to dramas) because musicals are perfect the way God made them. Baby they were born that way.
Your turn. Which drama should be a musical? Who was your first actress crush? And have you seen Nashville and if not... will you? (You will!?! That's so good to hear.)