I've usually enjoyed her comic movie roles (especially in the Don Roos films The Opposite of Sex and Happy Endings) though I was a little unnerved by what seemed to be an encroaching bitterness in her comic persona the last time couple of times we visited (Kabluey and Easy A). I was starting to miss "Phoebe"'s sunniness on early seasons of Friends.
But I had somehow never seen The Comeback (2005) which I watched this week (two episodes left... maybe I should save them). Its very brilliance probably doomed it as it's an exceedingly uncomfortable showbiz comedy. Its comic impulses have satiric bite... one might call it comedy with real fangs. I was squirming even while laughing loudly. Immediately after watching those I tried a few episodes of Web Therapy, which I am also super late to -- hey, I'm too busy with the movies-- and now I'm fully back on Team Kudrow which I had somehow slipped away from. I got so nostalgic for past Kudrow glory that I even ended up looking up what Jennifer Aniston & Courtney Cox were up to, which I assure you I have never purposefully done before, though I do watch and enjoy Cougar Town on occasion.
Kurdow laughing at Streep's guest role antics on Web Therapy
It's fascinating that Kudrow's big fame began with such a naive neo-Bohemian persona as Phoebe Buffay and now she so eagerly conquers these self-lacerating or unlikeable characters... It's almost like she's been morphing over the year's from Phoebe to Phoebe's misanthropic twin Ursula. Remember her?
My point is this: Lisa Kudrow is talented and underappreciated, even if she's not exactly underrewarded - hello gazillion$ in Friends residuals. She's probably only less of a mainstream presence now because her preferred style of comedy is of the take-no-prisoners variety.
Here's the first of the three most recent episodes of Web Therapy (episode #46) which starred Meryl Streep (as "therapist" Camilla Bowner) who is doing reparative therapy on Fiona Wallice's (Lisa Kudrow's) gay husband. Wickedly subtle humor courses under the less subtle verbal gags ... it's all in their nuanced line deliveries, reactive beats and funny expressions.
A delicious spoof of Meryl's 'who me?' tossed off perfection. Even the sweater made me giggle. Plus, it's blissfully short as all such jokes should be. Well done SNL. (But how did they keep it so brief? They usually overkill their good jokes.) *
"On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, an employee of a nuclear facility, left to meet with a reporter from the New York Times. She never got there."
And 34 years later, we still don't know exactly what happened to her, though anyone who has seen 1983's Silkwood probably has their suspicions. After all, the film brings the woman back to life in the form of Meryl Streep, at her most lifeforce-tastic, while depicting the manager whose lives she was making so difficult as a pasty, puffy, shifty sort of fellow, the kind who looks like he's constantly about to break into sweat. We don't have the slightest difficulty believing that he and his cronies are just the kind of people to take out a hit on a troublesome young activist, especially since Silkwood is always so engaging and easy to like, and darn it, just plain good, despite some troubling details about her personal life that keep creeping in, adding just enough ambiguity that we can't be absolutely sure that she wasn't maybe at fault for her supposed single-vehicle car crash.
I assume that everybody visiting this site knows why they, at the very least, ought to have seen Silkwood by now (I just finally did *cough* thismorning): Streep in one of the great performances of her early career (it netted her Oscar nomination #5), Cher's breakthrough as a "serious" actress, Kurt Russell's most nuanced dramatic performance ever. Certainly, the combined talents of those three actors, feeding off of each other and giving back so much intimacy, each member of the triangle driving the others to reach their peak, is enough to make Silkwood an excellent human-sized story; personal and observant in a way to make it far more than what the concept threatens to make it, another routine "social activist" picture in the Norma Rae mold.
Less obviously, but just as importantly, the film relies heavily on the careful handling by director Mike Nichols of Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen's fine script: Nichols was on his very best behavior here, opening up the characters through unstressed details and very delicate use of the camera frame to suggest the ongoing shift between the main characters, and their environment.
And it's that ending where Nichols does some of the best work of the film- nay, of his career. With the script rightfully refusing to conjecture what happened that night, Nichols finds an uncanny way to clearly indicate what he wants us to think, while steadfastly maintaining ambiguity. The tension-raising long shot of a car following Karen on a lonely road, which in one steady take shows the lights of that car slowly appear and then draw painfully near, suggests a lot, but it shows absolutely nothing, other than Karen's panic and paranoia. Or the quick insert of Cher's Dolly, Karen's best friend and possible betrayer (foreshadowed in another directorial coup on an airplane), silently crying: it tells the viewer nothing, but creates a feeling of intense foreboding.
Does Silkwood assume, for the sake of drama, that its heroine was murdered? Absolutely, and yet there's not a frame of the film that I can use to prove it. It's that same haunting ambiguity that made the circumstances of Karen Silkwood's death so compelling in the first place; and the filmmakers' ability to honor both her memory and the known facts at the same time is one of the surest reasons that this movie is one of the great true-story thrillers of its decade.
In an off blog e-mail correspondence earlier this week, one of my fellow movie bloggers said to me "The best thing about this year's Best Actress race is that Streep isn't in it." That's funny. It's true that her ubiquity can be exhausting. It must especially feel like a relief for other Tinseltown goddesses in those rare years when she isn't in play. More room for them. But since Streep at 60, a web series we started over a year ago, needs to wrap up, let's discuss her final (to date) nominations.
In the past two years Streep put yet more distance between herself and her nearest competitors. Her two closest Oscar rivals, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, are long gone from planet earth. Streep's similarly aged / Oscar friendly peers (Lange, Close, Weaver, Sarandon, Spacek & Field) have faded from the movie spotlight, comparatively speaking, robbing them of Meryl's abundant Oscar-tallying opportunities.
We suspect Streep's "most nominated" record will stand forever unless, and it's a longshot, Kate Winslet's career (she's only 35) has similar curves, reinventions and renewals: When Streep was 35 (circa Falling in Love) she had collected 5 nominations and 2 wins; Winslet has collected 6 Oscar nominations and 1 win.
2008.
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married*Nathaniel's vote*
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River *Nathaniel's second choice*
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Other women for context Probably Came Close: Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky) and Kristin Scott Thomas(I've Loved You So Long); Traction Trouble: Emma Thompson (Last Chance Harvey) and Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)... I suspect they just needed a break with the latter since they loved the film; Low Impact: Nicole Kidman (Australia -just discussed), Keira Knightley (The Duchess); Box Office Queens:Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!), Kristen Stewart (Twilight), Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex & the City) and Reese Witherspoon (Four Christmases)
2009.
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education *Nathaniel's second choice*
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire *Nathaniel's vote*
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Other women for context Probably Came Close: Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria) and Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones); Traction Troubles: Abbie Cornish (Bright Star) and Tilda Swinton (Julia); Low Impact: Julia Roberts (Duplicity), Hilary Swank (Amelia); Box Office Queens: Sandra Bullock (The Proposal) and Meryl Streep (It's Complicated) a rare case of the main Oscar rivals also being big bank in separate films within the same year.
So...
IMPORTANT NOTE: These last two years of the Best Actress category have been very polarizing battles with the winners beloved & loathed in seemingly equal measure. Let's NOT discuss those divisive wins again but the fields in general. Stay Positive. It'll allow new discussions to unfold.
Answer me these questions, four
Which performance has grown on you?
Who do you think landed in the dread six-spot in both years?
Concerning the newbies (Mulligan, Sidibe, Hathaway, Leo, Bullock)... which do you think will return to the race and how soon/often? [Keep in mind that most don't. Approximately 67% of acting nominees are never recognized with a second nomination.] and...
Meryl Streep's Julia Child offers to cook you dinner. But only if you eat it at the table with Sister Aloysius icily judging you with every bite, chew and shallow. Do you accept the offer?
I'm sure it was because I lived in Michigan in the 1980s and that's when John Hughes movies were always in theaters but it seemed (to young me) that the Midwest was Hollywood-Hot back then. So this one goes out to all the Midwestern readers and to four fine actresses who are often associated with the 1980s though one of them has clearly transcended our puny mortal concepts of time.
So we'll start with her...
Indiana If you're a Meryl Streep fan -- and who isn't? -- and you live anywhere near Indiana University you should know that there's a free "evening with Meryl" at the college next month. (Why Indiana? Her husband Don Gummer studied there in the 60s). Free tickets for the public are available on November 3rd in the morning (for the Nov 12th event). I'm sure the lines will be long to snag one but Meryl will be discussing her career with IU alumnus Jane Pauley and there's even a Q&A afterwards.
Missouri Cinema St. Louis just honored Kathleen Turner with a lifetime achievement award on Sunday and We Are Movie Geeks was there to tell you about it. Can any Missouri-located readers answer me this: Does the Cinema St. Louis always have such good taste? Kathleen is in Missouri with her new play "High" which co-stars Broadway great Michael Berresse (Tony nominee, Kiss Me Kate). Kathleen was born in Missouri sowhile she's in town, why not throw an event in her honor?
Inset: in St. Louis for her lifetime achievement prize, Oct 2010. Main: at the AFI Michael Douglas night (with CZJ) in June 2009.
I love Kathleen nearly as much as Roger loved Jessica Rabbit so I mean this with the utmost fondness, but she just so doesn't care about things that celebrities are supposed to care about. Note that she wore the EXACT SAME OUTFIT to this event that she wore to the AFI Michael Douglas event. Oh, Kathleen. You're just not even trying to be "showbiz". It's all about the art of the theater for Kathleen now which I'm not knocking. Her "Martha" in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was one of the greatest performances my eyes have ever witnessed and my ears have ever heard.
Michigan & Illinois Teri just wanted to say "Hey."
Upon discovering that she didn't have her own label at TFE she let out a torrential stream of the brown word that we haven't heard since her multiple "sh**" freakouts in Tootsie ! No one speaks of Teri Garr anymore but I've always respected her as one of the only Hollywood types to publicly bitch about Category Fraud at the Oscars. You'd bitch about it too (at least in private) if you thought you could have won if the co-lead of your movie weren't competing in your category.
The dearly departed blog StinkyLulu once did a smackdown about the 1982 Best Supporting Actress race. Oscar went with Jessica Lange but Teri was hilarious in that movie and the Smackdown made it a tie. Still, my imaginary retrospective Oscar vote will always belong to Lesley Ann Warren in Victor/Victoria.
According to The Movie Timeline, which I like to visit on occasion, Helen (Goldie Hawn) drank that potent boob &butt lifting potion in Death Becomes Her (1992) on this very day, October 26th, back in 1985! That scene isn't included onscreen but we do get to see Madeline (Meryl Streep) follow in her footsteps years later. And, anyway, I'm always up for an excuse to celebrate a 25th anniversary!
Slow and steady tortoises may win races but sometimes we have to stop to celebrate the hares that sprint. In the case of Angela Lansbury, who celebrates her 85th birthday today, we can do both.
<--- Angela in her Tony nominated role from A Little Night Music last season on Broadway. She's won 6 Golden Globes and 5 Tony Awards. Emmy (18 nominations) and Oscar (3 nominations) have eluded her.
Slow and Steady. She's been acting for 66 years and her longterm success is such that she means different things to different generations and may even mean different things to you at different times in your life. For example, when I was a wee lad I thought exclusively of Bedknobs and Broomsticks and as an adult, say "Lansbury" to me and it's like a switch has been flipped and I'll start talking about how great she is as Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate. Other people will think of Murder She Wrote or her stage work or something else entirely.
Sprint. Lansbury wasn't always 85 and she was no late bloomer either. She actually holds the acting record of Youngest Actor (either sex) to become a Two-Time Oscar nominee. To make that record yet more impressive and an example of "sprinting" she had achieved that within her first three movies!
Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
We've been in a trivia / statistical mood for days now so here's some more "got there first!" Oscar sprinters. We're limiting it to the Actresses today. But more stat posts are coming. Wheeeee
OSCAR RECORDS "Youngest" Actress to Become...
a winner: Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon when she was 10. runner up: Anna Paquin, The Piano at 11.
a 2 time Oscar winner:OOPS. I said it was Jodie Foster who won her second for Silence of the Lambs at 29. But Luise Rainer actually still holds this record. She won her two Oscars back to back at the ages of 27 (The Great Ziegfeld) and 28 (The Good Earth). Jodie, then, is runner up.
a 3 time Oscar winner: Ingrid Bergman won her third for Murder on the Orient Express at 60. runner up: Katharine Hepburn won her third for Lion in Winter at 61.
a 4 time Oscar winner: Katherine Hepburn won her last for On Golden Pond at 74. runner up: aint no such thing.
youngest winner & the second youngest double winner
a nominee: Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon by the time she was 10. runner up: Mary Badham for To Kill a Mockingbird was also 10 but a month older.
a 2 time nominee:Angela Lansbury for Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray by 20. runner up:Kate Winslet for Sense & Sensibility and Titanic by 22.
a 3 time nominee: Teresa Wright for Little Foxes, Pride of Yankees and Mrs Miniver by 24. runner up: Natalie Wood for Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass and Love with the Proper Stranger by 25. Neither Teresa nor Natalie were ever nominated again. Too much too soon?
a 4 time nominee: Jennifer Jones hit #4 with Duel in the Sun by 27. runner up: Elizabeth Taylor for Butterfield 8 when she was just turning 29. (Kate Winslet also won her 4th nomination at 29)
a 5 time nominee: Kate Winslet for Little Children at 31. runner up: Olivia DeHavilland for The Heiress at 33.
a 6 time nominee: Kate Winslet for The Reader at 33. runner up: Meryl Streep for Out of Africa at 36
from this number on... It's all about Oscar's three all-time favorite women. There are a few other women with 7 nods or more but aside from Streep only Jane Fonda is still with us.
a 7 time nominee:Bette Davis for Mrs Skeffington at 36. runner up: Meryl Streep for Ironweed at 38.
a 8 time nominee:Meryl Streep for A Cry in the Dark at 39. runner up:Bette Davis for All About Eve at 42.
a 9 time nominee: Meryl Streep for Postcards from the Edge at 41. runner up: Bette Davis for The Star at 44.
a 10 time nominee: Meryl Streep for The Bridges of Madison County at 46. runner up: Bette Davis for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? at 54.This Letter to Daddy was the last she wrote with Oscar.
an 11 time nominee: Meryl Streep for One True Thing at 49 runner up: Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter at 61.
a 12 time nominee: Meryl Streep for Music of the Heart at 50 runner up: Katharine Hepburn for On Golden Pond at 74.
a 13,14,15 and then 16 time nominee? It's only MERYL STREEP from there on out.
<--- Saoirse Ronan is 16. She's already been nominated once for Atonement. She'll need a second nomination by January 2014 to beat Angela's record. Can she do it?
All of this is a long way of saying... Winslet better get back to feature work if she wants to truly challenge Meryl Streep. And Saoirse Ronan, Dakota Fanning and the other teen drama queens of Hollywood had better work fast if they want to steal Angela Lansbury's "fastest to two noms!" crown away from her. She's held that record for an incredible 65 years.
So, um, happy birthday Angela Lansbury!? I get distracted, I do.
The news, which isn't actual news yet so much as 'in talks' talking-points (the bulk of online movie articles), is this: Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts will take the plum Oscar bait roles of the pill-popping abusive matriarch Violet and eldest control-freak daughter Barbara in August: Osage County. The new (to feature directing) John Wells will sit in the director's chair instead of Mike Nichols as previously rumored. It seems quite risky to give a project this complex and fraught with ways in which it could go wrong to a newbie but maybe his debut film (The Company Men) is unexpectedly rich?
One of the most popular posts in the history of The Film Experience was our discussion of the casting of this genius actress-heavy play. It's THE stage-to-screen project to watch for any actressexual out there since the cast that matters is all female and the roles, to a one, are juicy with extra pulp. (The supporting female roles could put Oscars on shelves, too.)This news, if it does become actual news, is a weird sort of exciting/disappointing.
As many of you have gleaned I am something of an über Streep fan but I think she's wrong for this part. Streep has a glorious earthy warmth as a performer and Violet needs the opposite. Streep's most successful "cold" performances were in A Cry in the Dark (which came during the amazing chameleon years) and The Devil Wears Prada (see previous post) which came during her comedic ascendance. To do justice to Violet, she'd need to be as good as she was in both pictures... simultaneously. And sometimes when Streep goes cold (Doubt, The Manchurian Candidate) she pushes too much. Violet is more complicated than either the Prada or Cry roles and requires both jagged comic steel and dormant volcanic drama ... and both need to be channelled through a druggy fog for the entire film. In short: it's an A+ dream role, better than many whole Best Actress rosters combined.
I like Julia Roberts.
If Julia works as hard for August as she did for Erin Brockovich or Closer than she might absolutely nail the role of exhausted controlling Barbara. But how often does Julia work as hard as she does in those two movies? When you're a massive star with more innate charisma than most performers can muster over the entirety of a career, coasting is an ever present danger. If she coasts at all, you'll lose the electricity of the play. The play just crackles with the stuff. Any loss of that and you could have a disaster on your hands.
Streep is such a consummate performer that, whether miscast or not, many people will demand she win a third Oscar because she will be so spectacularly watchable in the end. Even if it's not quite what the movie needs. (We'll see. I can't say how badly I hope to be wrong.)
I watched the 3 hour play from the edge of my seat and loved-loved-loved. I will anxiously await the movie. But both casting decisions feel like the kind anyone could and would make without actually knowing anything about the play, the roles, the tone or what kind of movie it would need to be to be a great one. It reeks of corporate laziness. They are rather inarguably the most famous senior citizen actress and the most famous middle age actress; "STREEP | ROBERTS" will look great on a marquee. But it's sad to cast source material this magnificent with no regard for the actual source material, and all eyes towards some imaginary marquee.
Movies should come first, not their ad campaigns. *
The following article was originally published in January 2007. It's slightly revised below.
It didn't take Meryl Streep long. By 1987 at the very latest, just ten years into her career, we knew that she could do everything. We'd already heard the accents, seen the funny, witnessed the sexy, fallen in love, had our hearts broken and heard the magnificent singing voice. If she were less endearing and emotionally attentive as a performer her technical range would be just hateful, a thing to curse as she popped up again and again in films. But this woman has it all. She is, put simply, the most consistent versatile actor in the movies.
So what is there left for Meryl Streep to do? It turns out quite a lot.
The joy of watching her now, thirty plus years into a great filmography, is seeing which actors' muscles get flexed for each new project and seeing which past performances are its predecessors. There's also a communal thrill in watching her surprise both herself and us in each performance since there's nothing left to prove. Can you name another movie star who so regularly seems to be having a grand ole time while they're acting? Can you name another actor who is so technically accomplished but still regularly manages moments that feel spontaneous onscreen? I can't.
I've seen nearly all of her filmography which could explain why I prefer her comedic work. There's less of it so you have to hold it closer. Plus the thing I love most dearly about Meryl Streep (her joy in acting) bubbles right to the surface when she's asked to joke about. The Streep performance I cherish most on a personal level is her work in 1990's Postcards From The Edge wherein she also joked, sang, and played an entertainer. And all of this, if you'll excuse the breathless intro, is a very long way of saying that I was thrilled to see her comedic and musical chops get a work out again as "Yolanda Johnson" in A Prairie Home Companion.
Yolanda (Streep) is part of a singing group "The Johnson Girls" that once had more members but now includes just herself and her sister Rhonda (Lily Tomlin). For the first half hour of the film we get to know Yolanda in a series of brief sequences backstage. In the first she enters the theater where A Prairie Home Companion will hold its last broadcast (please note: this is a fictional film about the still running radio program) with her sister and daughter (Lindsay Lohan). She is holding too many things and nattering incessantly mostly to herself but ocassionally to others. Streep gives her character a quick easy laugh and a fluid temperament. As this sister act prepares for the show, Streep fills you in on the rest of Yolanda.
Yolanda's body language is a little fussy but also slow and open. She's often got her arms outstretched. She has a welcoming folksy presence but you get the immediate sense of fatigue from both age and a life on the road. There's also a weird dichotomous specificity of feeling that Yolanda is both a nervous girl and an old woman entirely at ease with her lot in life. Regarding the latter: several verbal remarks indicate otherwise but Streep plays them more like canned instinctual responses; They come from the character's simple humor and are uttered primarily for her sister Rhonda's benefit.
It's Rhonda who harbors more illwill toward their showbiz history. The famous Altman overlapping dialogue aids Lily and Meryl in detailing this sister act. Yolanda and Rhonda have spent their entire lives together and the actresses ably sell this. They're constantly talking to each other, but it's a well rehearsed decades-long togetherness: their minds are free to float elsewhere knowing that they'll always return to one another.
Yolanda's primary concerns are her death-obsessed daughter (whom she clearly worries about but takes joy in) and Garrison Keillor, the host of the show. You realize through her shift in demeanor with the host that she has either loved or romanced him before the events of the film takes place --Streep shows you this with simple glances even before the dialogue confirms your suspicions. She makes this dead romance her best running gag in the film, mining it for abundant laughs that a lesser actor wouldn't even know where to find let alone amplify.
By the time Streep hits the stage you're already completely aware of this woman's personality and her circumstantial simplicity (this life as a midlevel sister act is the only life she's ever known.) And, then in her vocal performances onstage she just keeps on deepening those initial impressions while giving a musical performance, full of idiosyncratic feeling and beauty.
As in all the best ensemble pictures, the performances of other actors inform each individual turn as well. In a great moment backstage Yolanda, realizing Rhonda is upset about a story they've been retelling, sings an old familiar tune and embraces her sister. When the tune ends, Rhonda tearfully says "singing is the only thing that ever puts me right". She's talking about herself but in Meryl's exuberant, silly, and vocally powerful stage performance that follows, you realize the same is true for her. They're peas in this showbiz pond. Singing also puts Yolanda right.
In so many melancholy and bittersweet ways Robert Altman's last film was a farewell. Casting America's most enduring Great Actress in this role made it sweeter. In the film's last scene the sisters and friends gab around a table about the departed radio show. Yolanda, giggling and reminiscing, is determined to jumpstart a farewell tour...
I love doing that last show. I just wanna do one last show and then another until I'm in a wheelchair. I just wanna keep doing 'em.
The Angel of Death (Virginia Madsen) enters this final sequence and smiles benevolently at these principal players corking Yolanda's infectiously loud joy. You realize immediately that one day all of us will give our last performance. One day all of these actors will be gone, even this beloved goddess of the cinema. Feel free to tear up. It's a testament to the film that the feeling is still somehow a good one.
Meryl Streep is now in her early sixties. She's been knocking her performances out of the park for thirty plus years and there's no reason not to hope for thirty more. She'll keep giving one last great performance until they put her in a wheelchair. She's gonna keep giving 'em.
