Awards season is well upon us which means lists of our favorite performances and films. For many years I’ve had a “Ride or Die” performer who I would root for throughout all of awards season hoping they would get a longshot nomination. Last year my ride or die was Toni Collette for Hereditary, a performance that was criminally unrecognized -- the snubbing of said performance will leave me bitter for years to come. Several years before my Ride or Die was Benicio Del Toro’s haunting and hurting performance for Sicario. So as you can tell, my Ride or Die basically sums up performances that have no chance of winning or even being nominated for any major awards. Nevertheless they stay in my heart throughout the Globes, the SAGS, the Independent Spirit Awards and of course the Oscars.
A few weeks ago I attended a screening of Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica with a Q&A afterward with Elisabeth Moss and I realized less than eight minutes into Moss’ Becky Something launching herself into the scene like an unstable ball of light, that Moss was my Ride or Die this season...
Moss is like an electric and creative rabid dog in this film. You really don’t know if she’s going to let you pet her or if she’s going to take your hand off (or in the drummer’s case, try and cut you open). She gives a stare that could burn a hole through someone’s head (I was afraid for Cara Delevingne’s safety at one point). Becky Something is one of the most unhinged characters I’ve ever seen on a screen, but Moss doesn’t let her chew the scenery, and she knows that Becky really does have an incredible mind but it does get out of hand and she doesn’t know how to control it. She’s like Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain and Harley Quinn all rolled into one.
During the Q&A after the film Moss explained that Becky is “incredibly smart”, but she can’t reign it in and she feels the need to enhance it by doing what most rock and rollers in the nineties did: drugs. Moss was honest in the Q&A by saying that Perry had created such fantastic dialogue for this film and nearly nothing was improvised. It was some of the hardest dialogue she ever had to memorize but she said that she had so much fun being so free with this character that it was worth it. “I could literally do anything I wanted with her physicality, with her mannerisms-I could just go wild.” Moss also notes that this was a refreshing role after finishing filming season 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s kind of daunting to think about what would happen if we put June Osbourne and Becky Something in a room together…
Moss pulls no punches in this film but she never comes off as clownish or insincere. The shaky camera follows her everywhere like a moth to a really dangerous flame. And yet, for all of Becky Something’s wild behavior and antics, one of Moss’ best scenes comes when she is just a small, dwindling (yet sober) flame and decides to serenade her young daughter with a beautiful rendition of Bryan Adams’ “Heaven” on the piano. Becky is struggling. She doesn’t know what to do with her life now that she is a recovering addict. She doesn’t know if she has anything left to give the world as an artist. But when her daughter asks her to sing a song that reminds her of her, Becky can do that. She digs deep and gives all she can, for her daughter. And it’s that kind of love that gets her back on the stage by the end of the film, and then it’s the kind of love that makes her realize that she doesn’t need the stage to be fulfilled.
Extra kudos for Moss for learning how to play guitar and piano for this killer role. I just hope that IF Moss does miraculously get nominated for this comet of a performance, she wears a dress to the Oscars with a message on the back that reads “Sorry I’m late”.