Wednesday
Apr112012
Happy Birthday, Louise Lasser
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 4:55PM 
"I wish you had done this twenty years ago.Now I'll have to get another fucking face-lift!"
JA from MNPP here. Because I'm too young to have seen Mary Hartman Mary Hartman or the Woody Allen movies she starred in (she's brilliant in Bananas) until recently, whenever I think of Louise Lasser my first thoughts are of her scenes in Todd Solondz's masterpiece Happiness (watch the above scene here), and also that time she dyed Ellen Burstyn's hair - "If this is red, I wanna know, what's orange?" - in Requiem For a Dream. What do you think of when you think of Louise Lasser?
tagged Birthday, Darren Aronofsky, Ellen Burstyn, Woody Allen
Birthday, Darren Aronofsky, Ellen Burstyn, Woody Allen
Reader Comments (7)
I think of what you just say
If this is red I wanna know what's orange. But it's strange that that's the recall given the Woody Allen films.
i wasn't even really aware of who she was until i went to my friend tom's show 'meet the lady' at the tribeca y:
http://thefilmsthething.blogspot.com/2011/12/evening-with-louise.html
she was married to woody allen! who knew?!
abstew -- I hadn't heard of MEET THE LADY but it sounds like such a good time. I should attend.
What an underrated actress. She is note-perfect in Happiness.
nathaniel-
you should totally go! the next one is on the 27th and the theme is cat women- women changing into cats on film. you. love. cats. and there's sure to be some pfeiffer in the mix...
http://www.92y.org/Tribeca/Event/Meet-The-Lady--Cat-Women.aspx
If you want some good Lasser watch her SNL episode on Netflix! It's pure comic gold! Rumor has it she was a drug addicted mess during the filming only wanted to do her sketches with Chevy Chase.
I talked to Louise about this, and got the impression that the problem was basically that, writing-wise, SNL at the time was a male-dominated stoner's den (I don't really doubt this) and that they weren't used to dealing with guests who actually wanted to write a lot of the material (as opposed to just perform what was written for them). Plus, I think Louise had a pretty intense work ethic, and wasn't too impressed with their super casual approach to Getting Things Done. So, there was a real creative tug-of-war going on the entire time. She told me they were also dismayed because she vetoed some of the raunchier jokes. I can see why they assumed she'd be up for whatever, but at the time she was best known for a single character and she felt that she had Mary's image to protect as well as her own.