Showing posts with label Bruce Willis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bruce Willis. Show all posts

Sunday, December 31, 2017

MORTAL THOUGHTS 1991

Warning: Spoiler Alert. Care has been taken to conceal as much as possible, but as this is a critical essay and not a review, some plot points are referenced for the purpose of analysis. 

“Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty!”    Lady Macbeth

Just as we know, with reasonable certainty, that Shakespeare didn’t have in mind two New Jersey hairstylists when he wrote Macbeth in 1606; it’s also an odds-on bet that said beauticians Cynthia Kellog (Demi Moore) and Joyce Urbanski (Glenne Headly), the morality-challenged friends at the center of Alan Rudolph’s skittish Mortal Thoughts, wouldn’t recognize a Shakespearean quote if it was set to music and sung by Billy Joel.

Yet Lady Macbeth’s impassioned plea to the gods to divest her of her feminine compassion and intensify her ruthlessness—the better to realize her homicidal musings—has within it the self-same dueling conflicts of violence/guilt/gender aggression/betrayal/loyalty/survival and desperation fueling the tinpot stratagems that set into motion the fatal events in this nifty ‘90s neo-noir. The castles of medieval Scotland may have nothing in common with the brownstones of 1990 New Jersey, but when it comes to survival, woe betide the woebegone male who dares underestimate what a woman is capable of when her thoughts turn to matters mortal.
Demi Moore as Cynthia Kellogg
Glenne Headly as Joyce Urbanski
Bruce Willis as James "Jimmy" Urbanski
Harvey Keitel as Detective John Woods
John Pankow as Arthur Kellogg 
Billie Neal as Detective Linda Nealon

Mortal Thoughts is an atmospheric suspenser of doggerel Shakespearean plotting and betrayals played out in the baseborn haven of Bayonne, New Jersey. Robert Altman protégé Alan Rudolph, who engagingly contemporized the tropes of film noir in his films Remember My Name and Trouble in Mind, again delves into the realm of the character-quirk crime thriller. This time using dark thoughts to motivate the actions of a motley assortment of essentially non-thinking characters, each a late-1980s time-piece artifact depicted in finely-observed detail and only the most garish of local colors.

Mortal Thoughts evokes classic film noir in both the use of a narrative framing device recalling Mildred Pierce (a loutish man is found dead, a woman interrogated, a mystery unfolds via flashback) and in the cunning application of a crisscross murder threat redolent of the unarticulated alliance that got Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train off on the right track (an amusement park even figures significantly in both films). But for all its shrewdly effective nods to the tropes of the genre, Mortal Thoughtsin training its lethal eye on the relationship of its two female protagonists, achieves—much like that other, significantly more popular 1991 release, Thelma & Louise—a kind of mordant unpredictability.
There’s a lot of tension and wit in the convincingly conveyed cronyism of Demi Moore and Glenne Headly (the latter, hands-down, this film’s MVP), making Mortal Thoughts feel like a welcome female-centric variation of all those macho “neighborhood buddies who go way back” crime thrillers of the sort beloved by Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes (whose Mickey & Nicky this film recalls). 
"Your wedding was great. Except your husband...is such a...I don't know.
 I mean, what groom sells tools at his own wedding?"

Cynthia and Joyce have been friends since childhood. Each now married, they work together at a beauty salon where, along with several pounds of permed hair and shoulder pads, they balance friendship, husbands, work, and children. 

Amiable opposites, Cynthia (Moore), the level-headed one, is married to Arthur (Pankow), a wheel-spinning go-getter type always on the hustle. Arthur is a kind and considerate spouse, but casually dismissive of Cynthia in that way common of fast-track husbands more in need of a “supportive wife” than an equal partner in life. One senses Arthur tolerates Cynthia more than he understands her, an observation driving home the equally strong impression that Cynthia’s always-in-tow children are where her chief familial priorities lie.

The emotionally volatile Joyce (Headly) has an obvious taste for Bad Boy types, explaining but not excusing, her explosive marriage to James (Willis); a physically abusive, drug-dealing, macho hot-head. An accident waiting to happen, Joyce and James, who can't even make it through their wedding day without a fight, are one of those couples for whom passion and erupt-at-any-moment violence are but interchangeable sides of the same dysfunctional coin. It’s in their marital DNA. So frequent and public are their contentious outbursts, the patrons of Joyce’s Clip ‘n’ Dye hair salon, situated just below the cluttered apartment Joyce and James share with their infant son, barely bat an eye when granted ringside seats to the duo’s regular-as-clockwork bouts. 
About now Joyce's thoughts are turning to ways of unsexing James with a pair of thinning shears

Events reach a crisis when Arthur, impatient with Cynthia’s de facto role as peacekeeper to the dysfunctional duo (and none too fond of the battling Urbanskis to begin with), begins pressuring his wife to stop spending so much time with her erratic girlfriend. Cynthia, feeling the stress of playing moderator, conciliator, and referee both at home and in the workplace, responds by doing more of what she already does far too much of...spreading herself thin trying to appease everyone. Meanwhile, nobody seems to have taken notice that Joyce’s once easy-to-laugh-off threats to kill her husband appear to be graduating from thought to action.

Mortal Thoughts, in depicting the female side of all those urban buddy movies, does a good job of subtly drawing attention to the boys’ club network of protection that makes abused wives feel they have so few options. Call the cops--they have no interest in punishing a man for what they see as “letting off steam”; appeal to the husband’s relatives--they see him as a good boy with a wife who provokes him; leave or get a divorce--invite stalking and jealous retribution.

The picture painted is bleak, but as many noir films have illustrated in the past; a woman without power is not necessarily a woman without recourse.
“An accident, Dolores, can be an unhappy woman’s best friend.”  
Dolores Claiborne - 1995


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE
Mortal Thoughts lets us know from the outset that someone has been killed, but only by the 30-minute mark do we discover who it is (no big surprise there, nor do I suspect it’s supposed to be). The lengthy setup is devoted to establishing the characters, relationships, and setting (late-‘80s working-class New Jersey lovingly, painstakingly captured in all its stone-washed, cringe-inducing glory); the remaining body of the narrative devoted to unearthing the reverse-order specifics of the crime: the motive, the means, the when, and by whose hand.
In the book Flashbacks in Film: Memory & History, author Maureen Turim cites film-noir flashbacks as being of two basic types: the confessional and the investigative. The confessional (as exemplified by the films Sunset Blvd. and Detour) has the lead character looking back over the chain of events which led them to their current (often dire) circumstances. The investigative (Laura, A Woman’s Face) has a law official piecing together the puzzle of a crime through means of examination and interrogation.
Mortal Thoughts employs both methods. In present-time, narrative flashbacks are triggered by the questions posed by two investigating detectives (Harvey Keitel and Billie Neal) to the fidgety, on-the-defensive Cynthia regarding the murder in question. 

Keitel’s Detective John Woods makes a big show of being the good listener, simply there to take down whatever Cynthia has to tell, but his piercing eyes (taking on a mischievous glint when one of his verbal snares finds its prey) tell another story. He’s conducting a full-scale murder investigation without leaving his chair.  

With a video camera trained on her anxious face, Cynthia gives what can best be described as cathartically frank answers to their questions, these somewhat guarded responses delivered with a studied directness intended (one assumes) to convey an eagerness to unburden herself.
Unfortunately, Cynthia’s recollection of events, while superficially appropriate of an individual claiming innocence and who, as she puts it, “Didn’t do anything to need an attorney,” has a nagging habit of getting away from her. In attempting to provide the detectives with “just the facts” objectivity, Cynthia's subjective impulse to protect and/or conceal tends to result in her providing considerably more detail and backstory than necessary. Always volunteering a little more than she’s asked, Cynthia’s testimony takes on an involuntarily confessional tone, her account of the past frequently being at odds with what we’re shown.
Cynthia, distracted by troubling thoughts

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
It’s precisely when Mortal Thoughts tipped its hat to the unreliability of Cynthia as its narrator (especially since hers is the sole perspective we share) that the film really clicked for me. The doubt cast on the veracity of events depicted had the effect of shifting my focus from the story to the storyteller, at which point I found myself enjoying Mortal Thoughts not only as a mystery thriller, but as a sly dramatization of the threat of female alliance.

It’s telling that Mortal Thoughts is bookended by home movie footage depicting the friendship of Cynthia and Joyce from toddler to teens. These women grew up as sisters. They are closer to each other than they are to their husbands. At first glance, it appears as though the film’s central conflict is the detrimental effect Joyce's toxic relationship with James has on the marriage of Cynthia and Arthur, but one is reminded that neither woman is in a marriage they deem particularly satisfactory.

No, the most intimate relationship in the film is the sisterhood friendship of Cynthia and Joyce. With this established, dramatic tension arises out of the film’s many subthemes: the inequity of marriage; macho as the flip side of male inadequacy; how women’s relationships are devalued by menand how easily women internalize these attitudes—and how they relate to the film's central conflict: the threat female solidarity represents to the male.
“I fear for my life when the two of you sit down together.”  

By way of example: James and Arthur both have scenes where they vent their jealousy over how close Joyce and Cynthia are, each resentfully alluding to their wives prioritizing their friendship above their marriages. These scenes are echoed in additional sequences wherein the men are shown undermining the women's loyalties or encouraging one to betray the another (Cynthia’s rebuff of James’ crude sexual advances is met with “What are friends for?”).

For centuries men have benefited from pitting women against one another for the same reason the rich benefit from convincing the poor that other poor people of a different color are their barriers to The American Dream: there’s power in division. Misogyny is rooted in the male anxiety of the disposable (castrated) man, and many noir films exploit this fear. I mean, what is the noir femme fatale if not the embodiment of men’s terror of women operating under their own agency? Mortal Thoughts plays on society's limited, dual image of women, Cynthia behaving in the maternal, care-giving manner that reassures, Joyce (the breadwinner in her household) acting as feminine aggression personified. The trick up the film's sleeve is that it dares us to assume we know what’s really going on. 
“Everyone knows a woman is fragile and helpless. Everyone’s wrong.” 
Remember My Name -1978


THE STUFF OF DREAMS
A number of critics took issue with the brooding, almost operatic visual style of grand tragedy applied to Mortal Thoughts (dramatic events play out with lots of slow-motion and choral accompaniment), citing the incongruity of solemn gravitas applied to what is arguably a shabby homicide set in a garish world of unsophisticated people. But the film’s baroque overemphasis on kitschy ‘80s details (and truly, you’d have to look far to find a wittier application of hair, costume, and production design) feels like the intentional over-amplification of small lives.

There’s nothing noble, high-born, or honorable about any of these characters. They are human in the most base, fundamental sense. But in Greek mythology, when the Oracle of Delphi cryptically exhorts humans to “Think mortal thoughts,” this ethical maxim to be heedful of one’s human limitations reminds us how often in tragedy, characters pay a dear price for thinking they are above their mortality. In other words, to act like gods, believing one has the right to take a life or decide who lives.
That these larger-than-life themes play out in the small-scale environs of Hoboken, New Jersey, makes Mortal Thoughts one of the most intriguingly entertaining and off-beat neo-noirs since Alan Rudolph's Remember My Name



PERFORMANCES
My fondness for the work of director Alan Rudolph (Choose Me, Afterglow, Welcome to L.A.) is what initially drew me to Mortal Thoughts. But unlike most of his other features, Rudolph was not involved in either its writing or creation, having been brought in on the project with only five days’ notice after original director Claude Kervin (who wrote the incredible and incredibly funny screenplay with William Reilly) was fired two weeks into production.
That being said, it’s difficult to know how different Mortal Thoughts would have been had Rudolph been involved from the start, for much of it plays out like a more coherent version of any number of his always-fascinating, albeit occasionally jumbled, character pieces.

For a director so skilled with actors and the intricacies of character, Rudolph has an impressive understanding and respect for the suspense thriller genre. He understands the importance of taking the time to establish atmosphere and mood, he knows how to build suspense, and (like Polanski at his best) he isn’t afraid of using humor even within the most intense scenes.  I like films with strong women protagonists, and I like mysteries; so it’s no surprise that I found Mortal Thoughts to be a slick, riveting suspense film with plenty of twists and emotional tension to spare. All bolstered by a uniformly excellent (and exceptionally well-utilized) cast.
The always welcome Frank Vincent appears as Dominic, Joyce's father

I’ve never been much of a Demi Moore fan and guiltily admit to never having seen her biggest hit Ghost (even after all this time I’m genuinely hard-pressed to think I’m missing anything), but she's absolutely terrific in this, and gives a top-notch performance. With her raspy voice (I even like her Joi-zee accent), sardonic wit, and sharp-eyed common sense, she’s like a real-life Wilma Flintstone; a pillar of rational-thinking stability standing in contrast to her not-wound-too-tight best friend, Joyce.

As embodied by the late Glenne Headly (who passed away in June of 2017), Joyce is the quintessential Dangerous Woman. An outspoken trouble magnet, Joyce is a woman who not only knows how to take care of herself, but how to get things taken care of. She's both the toughest and most vulnerable person in the film. Headly, a remarkably resourceful actress, is a marvel to watch from start to finish (not to mention listen to…her delivery and timing are priceless) and achieves the miracle of making her paradoxical character make absolute sense.
Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were still married when Mortal Thoughts was released, and while both were a bit off my radar at the time, my biggest recollection of them is as Hollywood's most annoying "power couple." Both were riding high on recent successes: Moore exercising her clout by serving as producer on this film, Willis, hot off of two Die Hard movies (the flop of Hudson Hawk waiting in the wings), was working off a lot of public ill-will (bad buzz from his offscreen Moonlighting behavior, a couple of ear-bleeder vanity records, and those excruciating wine cooler commercials) by taking on an against-type role in his wife’s film that dispensed with trying to make him appear either charming or likable. 

It's a savvy industry ploy for resuscitating careers of beloved onscreen personalities who prove themselves not so lovable offscreen: disliked celebrity plays the heavy or takes on self-deprecating, self-referential role thereby allowing the public to work off its animosity. Bingo! Career clemency. Willis, plagued by negative press, was wise to take on a role that played on unsavory aspects of his public image. This sort of “Give the audience permission to hate you and they’ll love you" stuff may be cynical, but I confess that I really do enjoy hating Bruce Willis in this.
Quick shout-out to personal fave and scene-stealer Harvey Keitel who does
wonders with his small role.  Never disappoints

Mortal Thoughts didn’t perform well at the boxoffice, but to me, it’s an underrated, undiscovered gem. It’s a smart, well-acted crime thriller that not only delivers in the suspense category, but invites the repeat viewing to appreciate the rich characterizations, vivid production values, and razor-sharp execution. (Heh-heh.) 
Really, one of my favorites.


The film's first line of dialogue is also its last

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 -2017

Saturday, December 31, 2016

DEATH BECOMES HER 1992

In today's digitized, high-definition world—in which real-life, flesh and blood humans from the most mundane walks of life willingly subject themselves to near-medieval levels of torture in an effort to achieve the burnished, robo-mannequin sheen of Photoshopped magazine covers—I don't think it's possible to lampoon our culture's extreme youth-addiction and obsession with physical perfection. 
Happily, in1992 (ten years before Botox, and back when Cher and Michael Jackson were the reigning poster kids for plastic surgery excess), director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forest Gump) made this demented and dark comedy which broadly burlesques contemporary society's two most dominant religions: the worship of beauty and the fear of aging.
"Wrinkled, wrinkled little star...hope they never see the scars."
In the original screenplay, the line was "Wrinkle, wrinkle, go away, come again on Doris Day."
The exact words Elizabeth Taylor said to her reflection in The Mirror Crack'd (1980).

In this self-professed nod to Tales from the Crypt (the comic-book-based HBO anthology series for whom Zemeckis co-produced and occasionally directed), Death Becomes Her is a comedy-of-the-grotesque cartoon that posits the dream of eternal youth as an upscale zombie nightmare. Set in a baroque,  just-barely exaggerated vision of Beverly Hills where the thunderclaps and lightning flashes all hit their marks and know their cues, Death Becomes Her spans 51 years (1978 to 2029) in chronicling the ongoing competition between two college frenemies. A bitter rivalry every bit as combative and twice as deadly as Batman vs. Superman…only with better dialogue.
Meryl Streep as Madeline Ashton
Bruce Willis as Dr. Ernest Menville
Goldie Hawn as Helen Sharp
Isabella Rossellini as Lisle Von Rhuman
Former Radcliffe classmates Madeline Ashton (Mad for short) and Helen Sharp (Hel for keeps) are the kind of friends that only a shared alma mater could produce. Though we ultimately come to learn that they are but two antagonistic sides of the same counterfeit coin, when first glimpsed, the artificial Madeline and the apprehensive Helen couldn't be more dissimilar, appearing to be friends in name only. 
Plain-Jane Helen, an aspiring author of diffident, soft-spoken character, unconcerned with appearance, has a history of having her boyfriends stolen by the ostentatiously glamorous Madeline. Madeline, an obscenely shallow, superhumanly self-enchanted actress of questionable talent, is all surface charm and charisma, but otherwise appears totally devoid of a single redeeming character trait. She concerns herself with looks and appearances to the exclusion of all else. 
"Tell me, doctor...do you think I'm starting to NEED you?"
The women's heated rivalry temporarily assumes the guise of a romantic triangle when beginning-to-show-her-age Madeline sets her sights upon (and effortlessly steals) Helen's fiancé, the bland-but-gifted Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Ernest Menville. Of course, there's no romance to this romantic triangle at all, what with Madeline's interest in the colorless dolt being solely of the self-serving variety (she gets to assert her desirability superiority over Helen while simultaneously securing a lifetime of free nip/tuck services); but this last-straw betrayal by both fiancé and friend proves enough to send poor milquetoast Helen right over the edge. 
What's The Matter With Helen?
Cue the passage of fourteen years. Everybody is miserable, and nobody winds up with what they thought they wanted. Madeline, career and looks in decline, is blatantly unfaithful to husband Ernest, and goes to Norma Desmond extremes to stay young. Meanwhile, emasculated Ernest has succumbed to alcoholism and is reduced to plying his surgical skills on corpses. 
But it's Helen who rises like an Avenging Angel from the doughnut-crumbed, canned-frosting ruins of her nervous breakdown. Magnificently svelte, newly glamorized, channeling her inner Madeline, and, after several years of therapy, imbued with a Dolly Levi-esque sense of purpose ("For I've got a goal again! I've got a drive again! I'm gonna feel my heart coming alive again!"). Naturally, Helen's goals aren't near as lofty or honorable as those of that musical matchmaker: Helen's newfound purpose is to reclaim her life by eradicating Madeline's.
Hel Goes Mad and Dedicates Her Life To Making Mad's Life Hell
Alas, Helen's strength of resolve is all well and good, but homicidally speaking, the best-laid plans of mice and men are doomed to failure when the man in question (Ernest) is an indisputable mouse. By the same token, it's not the best idea to wage a to-the-death battle when both combatants, thanks to the supernatural intervention of a raven-haired sorceress and her immortality potion, can't really die.
I saw Death Becomes Her for the first time on cable TV in the mid-'90s, and I immediately regretted never having seen it in a theater. I thought it was outrageously funny, and I imagined seeing it with an audience would have been an experience similar to my first time seeing What's Up, Doc?: the laughter being so loud and continuous, you have to see the film twice to pick up all the lost dialogue. I've no idea if public response to Death Becomes Her was anywhere near as vociferous (it's a weird little film), but I found it to be one of the most consistently funny comedies I'd seen since the '70s heyday of Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, & Madeline Kahn.

Incorporating comic book sensibilities and B-horror movie tropes into a dark satire of those frozen-in-time animatronic waxworks endemic to the environs of Beverly Hills, Death Becomes Her provides director Robert Zemeckis an ideal vehicle to indulge his fondness for absurdist special effects. The screenplay, a best-of-both-worlds/Frankenstein collaboration between TV sitcom writer Martin Donovan (That Girl, The MTM Show) and action/adventure writer Martin Koepp- (Jurassic Park, Mission impossible), deftly maintains a balance of broad action (think Tex Avery cartoons or Bugs vs. Daffy Looney Tunes) and oversized characterizations.  
Late-director Sydney Pollack (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?)
contributes a hilarious unbilled cameo 

Which brings me to Death Becomes Her's most vital attribute: its cast. Streep, Hawn, and Willis—talented professionals all—had, at this stage in their careers, fallen into that movie star rut of delivering precisely what was expected of them, nothing more. A look back at their film output during this time reveals each actor contributing reliable-but-unexceptional performances in so-so films. Professional, journeyman-like performances devoid of either spark or surprise.
But Death Becomes Her—in casting against type—taps into something fresh in each of them. With abandon, they lose themselves in the outlandish, outsized characters they're called on to play, blowing away the cobwebs of predictability from their individual screen personas. Together they form an unholy trinity of bad behavior while treating us to the liveliest, most unexpected, enjoyably over-the-top emoting of their careers.
Madder' n Hell
(Mad, Ern, & Hel)

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
When television broadcasts changed from analog to digital, and I purchased my first HDTV, one of my strongest recollections is of how dazzlingly crisp and clear it the images were. Simultaneously, how clinically unforgiving it was to human beings.
Television programs I had grown used to watching in their natural, fuzzy state were suddenly all so clear! The images so sharp I could make out the weave knit twill fibers in Fred Mertz's jacket.
But my lord, the havoc it played with people's faces. It was like you were looking at everyone through a dermatologist's magnifying glass—bringing to mind that line from Cukor's The Women "Good grief! I hate to tell you, dear, but your skin makes the Rocky Mountains look like chiffon velvet!" 
Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep- two longtime favorites of mine,
really come alive as zombies
I don't know what it was like elsewhere, but the cumulative effect HDTV had on local Los Angeles newscasters and even minor TV personalities was to have men and women scrambling to the plastic surgeons in a mad rush reminiscent of the final reel to The Day of the Locust
Over the last decade or so, the already youth and looks-obsessed entertainment industry has seen a normalization of the kind of rampant surgical restructuring that once caused Mickey Rourke and Cher so much tabloid grief. The artificially enhanced appearance has now grown so common, it has become its own aesthetic.
What Price Beauty?
And while everybody seems fine with health-related elective surgeries like dental and Lasik, people still harbor strong opposing opinions about those who turn to medical science in order to turn back the clock, retard the aging process, or sculpt and reconfigure themselves to fit a particular beauty standard.
Death Becomes Her is no serious treatise on our culture's preoccupation with youth and slavish devotion to beauty, but by addressing these hot-button issues in a comical, larger-than-life framework—it manages to be one of the sharpest and to-the-point commentaries committed to film.


PERFORMANCES
Broad, farcical comedy of the sort employed in Death Becomes Her is awfully hard to pull off (1991's Soapdish comes to mind…unfavorably). In fact, the main reason I didn't see Death Becomes Her when it was released was because the trailer so turned me off. Not only did it look far too exaggerated and silly (it recalled Streep's She-Devil, a film I absolutely hated), but in addition: I never much cared for Bruce Willis; Goldie Hawn's post-Private Benjamin output had grown increasingly derivative, and the continued forays into comedy by Streep-the-Serious (Postcards from the Edge, Defending Your Life) had the effect of subduing her talent, not showcasing it. 
It surprises me a bit to glance over Bruce Willis' long list of credits on IMDB and come to the conclusion that Mortal Thoughts (1991) and Death Becomes Her are the only films of his I like. He's so good here. Funny and touching, he provides a grounded emotional contrast to his co-stars' magnificent maliciousness

But what always brings me back to rewatching Death Becomes Her is how all the elements gel so smoothly. Everyone from composer Alan Silvestri to the film's vast army of FX wizards are all on the same darkly comic book page. Best of all, the actors and their pitch-perfect performances are never dwarfed by the dated but still-impressive special effects.
The comedy is perhaps too dark to be to everyone's taste, likewise the tone of exaggerated non-reality. But for me, all these disparate elements coalesce to create a howlingly funny film that feels like a major studio version of those reveling-in-bad-taste underground/counterculture comedies like Andy Warhol's BAD or John Waters' Female Trouble (which could serve as Death Becomes Her's subtitle).
The arresting Isabella Rossellini is a special effect all unto herself.
Alluring and dangerous, she is a dynamic, indelible force in her brief scenes.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
A major highlight of Death Becomes Her is getting to see the great Madeline Ashton in full diva-fabulous mode appearing onstage in a misguided musical version of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. A play, appropriately enough, about an aging star making a comeback. The time is 1978, and, as described in the screenplay, our first glimpse of 40-ish Madeline is of her "Singin' and dancin' up a storm seemingly without benefit of training in singin' or dancin'."
The song she's singing is a riotously vainglorious paean to self, titled "Me," and the accompanying dance production number is a garish compendium of every star-gets-hoisted-about-by-chorus-boys Broadway musical cliché in the book. The number is terrible—from the song itself to the costuming, choreography (they break into "The Hustle" at one uproarious point), and the over-emphasized "stereotypically gay" voices of the chorus boys—and therefore, it's also absolutely brilliant.
What's great about the number is that without benefit of inserting any intentionally comedic elements (save for a ceaselessly shedding feather boa), it manages to be side-splittingly funny and cheesy as all get-out merely by channeling any number of '70s variety shows. As a quick glance at YouTube will attest, this isn't a spoof or parody at all. Nothing about Madeline's dance routine would be out of place on an episode of The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show, or take-your-pick Mitzi Gaynor TV special.
Although Madeline is supposed to be awful, Streep is actually quite marvelous. Her musicality and phrasing are spot on. Her movements are sharp, she never misses a beat with any of her gestures, and there's an effortlessness to the number of small bits of comic business she's able to insert into the performance without ever losing her stride. What really makes the number so hysterically funny is the level of Las Vegas showroom self-satisfaction Madeline radiates throughout. In her mind, she is clearly laying them in the aisles. The joy she takes in her own wonderfulness and sincere obliviousness to just how ridiculous the number is makes for a priceless moment in wince-inducing musical cinema.
The first time I saw Streep perform "Me," what immediately popped into mind was the 1986 Academy Awards telecast. That was the year Teri Garr opened the show with a truly cringe-worthy production number around the song Flying Down To Rio that was every bit as atrocious as Madeline's First Act closer (even down to the same tearaway skirt and hyperactive chorus boys). Further cementing the recollection: Meryl Streep, who was nominated that year for Out of Africa, when interviewed about the show afterward, expressed her enjoyment of Garr's performance and her wish to someday be invited to sing and dance in a production number like it. She got her wish.
Late actress Alaina Reed (Sesame Street, 227) as the psychologist
who inadvertently sets Helen on her murderous course 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Like Sweet Charity, Fatal Attraction, and the musical version of Little Shop of Horrors, Death Becomes Her is a film whose original ending was jettisoned due to unfavorable preview response.
Grotesquely disfigured and unable to maintain themselves with any level of precision,
Madeline & Helen attend Ernest's funeral in the year 2029
In the original version, after escaping from Lisle's, Ernest fakes his death. He runs off with Toni (Tracey Ullman, the entirety of whose footage ended up on the cutting room floor), a sympathetic owner of a local bar he frequented. Jump ahead 27 years, Madeline and Helen, still beautiful and perfect, are in the Swiss Alps, bored with life and each other's company. In the distance, they glimpse an old, hunched-over, toddling married couple. Madeline comments on how pathetic they are; Helen, as she watches them walk away, hand in liver-spotted hand, is not so sure. We learn that the couple is Ernest and Toni, now very old, but very much in love. Fade Out.

I absolutely adore that ending! Test audiences claimed the more poignant conclusion didn't fit the more cartoonish flavor of the rest of the film, so rewrites and reshoots resulted in the very good, very funny ending currently in place. It's not a bad ending at all, and based on the success of the film, it is perhaps more in keeping with the tone established at the start; but honestly, I just love the idea of the jettisoned ending. I think it would have provided the perfect coda for a wonderful film.
Helen and Madeline, talons sharpened, have become living gargoyles


BONUS MATERIAL
Goldie Hawn discusses her preference for the film's original ending HERE

The original theatrical trailer features many scenes that never made it into the final film. HERE

 
Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2016