Ponders the myriad pathologies of pop culture.
Obsesses about actressing at the edges.
Loves grilled cheese.
ARCHIVE OF SUPPORTING ACTRESS SUNDAYS & THE SMACKDOWN
When I had the bright idea to configure a poll to determine which Overlooked performance of 1988 I would feature in July, I had no idea I would be faced with the challenge of a now iconic animated character, voiced by not one but by two amazing actresses. (I added the film to the list of options in the spirit of inclusion, listing the performances that critics and audiences singled out in 1988 and in the years since.) But really. Leave it to my lovely readers to challenge my profiling abilities by requesting a performance like that of...
Jessica Rabbit is the the va-va-voluptuous wife of Toon star Roger Rabbit, the crazy kooky comedy star in an imagined Hollywood of the past (which looks and sounds an awful lot like Hollywood in the noir days of the late 1940s). When Rabbit is implicated in the murder of his boss, a gumshoe PI (Bob Hoskins) gets swept up in the internecine intrigues of Toon Town and Hollywood.
A plot summary is beyond me, but -- suffice it -- Jessica Rabbit is the mysterious bombshell who Hoskins's Valiant pursues to crack the case. A femme fatale in Vargas style, Jessica Rabbit blends elements of Hollywood's most revered damsels and dames, past present and future.
Jessica Rabbit's an extraordinary visual concoction, and her attributes contribute a welcome sense of focus to the generally manic picture. The gag is that all men stop to stare when Jessica arrives to the screen, and this running gag actually serves the picture in an important way by slowing the generally manic action just a little whenever Jessica's onscreen. The result? Not only is Jessica an extraordinary and pleasing presence, but it's also something of a relief when she takes the screen.
As voiced by an uncredited, wryly sexy Kathleen Turner (Amy Irving does the singing - also anonymously), Jessica Rabbit emerges as an surprising foremother to the many animated performances that, in the decades since Roger Rabbit, have been constructed around distinctive celebrity voices. Kathleen Turner's distinctive raspy alto -- itself one of the most talked about voices of the late 1980s -- combines with Jessica Rabbit's hyperbolically animated curves to create a character that's both larger than life and also curiously, plausibly real.
Jessica Rabbit's most famous line, perfectly rendered by Turner -- "I'm not bad; I'm just drawn that way" -- situates Jessica Rabbit in a kind of meta-reality that would become nearly run-of-the-mill in the computer animated era. Only through animation could Hollywood make those curves look so real.
Viewed in 2007, the green-screen seams of Roger Rabbit's construction do at time show. And some character choices (Jessica's scream upon seeing the Dip) do seem oddly "out of character." But screening Jessica Rabbit's "performance" now, I'm struck by how pivotal a character she is, not only within the narrative of the film but also in the ways animated features have come to appreciate the multiple dimensions of the "animated performance." (It's worth noting that three of the most legendary female voice artists have cameos in Roger Rabbit -- Mae Questel, Nancy Cartwright, and the incomparably brilliant June Foray -- which is oddly poignant, given that this film might well have marked the beginning of the now banal trend of using celebrity voices in animated features...a practice that has radically diminished the amount of work available for old voice acting pros like June Foray.)
So, thank you, lovely readers, for routing my attentions to this surprisingly significant supporting performance at the edges of 1988. I'm not sure I'd call it actressing but whatever it is, it's a wowza.
This week's Supporting Actress profile brings us to a vicious, cruel, internecine narrative of deceit and betrayal. Little wonder this quaint little portrait of emotional sadism been enduringly popular for centuries, having been retold and reinvented in so many many ways. And though the blithely conventional 1988 U.S. version is hardly my favorite (that honor belongs to the delicious 1999 adaptation), Stephen Frears's frilm does boast a few minutes of sheer transcendent brilliance at the very end, as well as the official arrival to "Serious Actressness" of one of the greater leading ladies of the last two decades...
Mme Tourvel's renowned virtue, in tandem with her extraordinary beauty, marks her an especial target for the lascivious gamesmanship of the viscount Valmont (John Malkovich, in a decorously sleazy gem of a performance), a notorious rake who stakes his reputation on the difficulty of his conquests.
Pfeiffer's Mme Tourvel is to be a crowning accomplishment for Malkovich's Valmont, a prize that will both secure his reputation as reigning cocksman and also (re)gain his access to the private graces of the Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glenn Close, in a perfectly calibrated portrait of refined desperation).
In Mme Tourvel, Pfeiffer is charged with what is perhaps the most difficult role in Dangerous Liaisons: the only character in the piece who is intrinsically good. Mme Tourvel is neither naif nor cynic, neither stupid nor especially smart. She's alert to the workings of the world, but has chosen -- out of either integrity or self-preservation -- to avoid any whiff of sordidness in her life. Most fatally, Mme Tourvel is utterly incapable of guile amidst a social economy riven with casual deceits and intimate manipulations. And this unsophistication proves her ruin.
Playing "good" is never particularly easy, and Pfeiffer struggles somewhat in the role. Pfeiffer's Mme Tourvel captures the character's incandescence -- the radiant beauty which is to be a beacon of the beauty within. Likewise, Pfeiffer nails Mme Tourvel's exhilaration and terror at the thrill of being caught so within Valmont's magnetic sights.
But where Pfeiffer falters is in conveying the precise nature of Mme Tourvel's fear: Is she afraid of succumbing to true erotic sensation? Of losing her identity to the unknown? Of sacrificing the reputation she's so carefully built? Of discovering that true love is a lie? Each of these terrors flicker in Pfeiffer's performance...but fleetingly. Because Mme Tourvel's goodness is so strong, so clear, the role requires similar specificity in conveying its corruption. The glimmering melange of terrors that Pfeiffer provides, unfortunately, muddies Mme Tourvel at her most essential moments.
And while Mme Tourvel's love does break Valmont's heart, in the way that Valmont's abuse of her love broke Mme Tourvel's spirit, the fact that Pfeiffer doesn't really clue us into the precise nature of her sacrifice ends up cheapening the character. Was Mme Tourvel's incandescent goodness really so frail as that? Such ambiguity may be a failing of the piece (though the script does suggest that Mme Tourvel believes her beauty to be a moral challenge from God), but its lack of specificity becomes Pfeiffer's failure in performance.
When first screening Dangerous Liaisons upon its original release, Pfeiffer thrilled me, her beautiful devastation a heartbreaking spectacle. And Pfeiffer's depiction Tourvel's stunning evisceration remains moving. YET. While Pfeiffer's work abundantly conveys that Tourvel has lost everything when Valmont rebukes her, I'm left wondering what Tourvel's "everything" was...
Pfeiffer's nomination is clearly worthy, but the performance is -- just as clearly -- incomplete.
After pausing only briefly to contemplate my candidates for "The Performance That Changed My Life," one performance kept stealing focus -- a fleetingly brilliant bit of work that provided some of my first cues that the actressing at the edges might be what StinkyLulu loved best about the movies. Which performance? Why, of course...
The role of Sherwood is a quintessential "actressing at the edges" kind of part, for Sherwood is essential to Fame's dramatic arc only insofar as she amplifies the narrative thread of one of the principal characters, Leroy (Gene Anthony Ray) -- the thug-cum-dancer who can dance better than anyone but who can't read. Indeed, the character of Sherwood operates almost exclusively as Leroy's obstacle. Leroy's got the talent, but will he have the discipline and maturity to play by society's rules?
Meara's task, then, for much of the role is merely to be a formidable, hard-ass bitch-on-wheels. Meara's Sherwood cuts Leroy no slack and backs down from few confrontations, requiring Leroy to make the bed in which he must lay. She snarks on Leroy -- humiliates him even -- in front of the class, refusing to buckle even when he explodes in a kinetic blaze of profanity and violence.
Until of course the kicker scene. When Leroy (suddenly terrified that his grade in English might actually be important now that his invitation to join a major dance company is contingent on his successful graduation from high school) seeks Meara's Sherwood out at the hospital where her husband is undergoing some unnamed "serious" procedure. Meara's Sherwood is at first firm but dismissive when faced with this self-involved student come, to the hospital, for a little friendly grade grubbing. Then when Leroy pushes on her, accusing her of having it in for him, Meara's Sherwood explodes with sheer, agonizing fury. Her rebuttal ("Don't you kids ever think of anyone but yourself!?) stops Leroy cold, allowing him to show Sherwood a quiet gesture of empathy and consideration (thus completing his character's final step in his overcoming her as obstacle).
In most ways, Meara's Sherwood is a thanklessly supporting performance. Everything she does is in support of Leroy's character arc. But Meara mines every moment for its depth, humanity and humor. The accent, the timing, the shrieking vocality -- Meara uses it all to convey the simple fact that this woman is really good at her job and Leroy is but one of her more difficult pupils. She's neither the saintly superteacher, nor the inhuman gorgon. She's just a teacher in the NY Public School system trying to get through another day.
But what changed StinkyLulu's life was noticing the silent, stealthy intricacies of Meara's performance as Sherwood. Meara textures Sherwood's screaming fits with wordless silent moments. The flash of fear rippling her stern facade when Leroy physically erupts. The heart buckling devastation when Leroy tears into her with the oblique epithet "You people..."
Meara's performance provided one of StinkyLulu's first real lessons in the "no small parts" maxim. Hers is a charged performance that knows the soul of this character, and her work at the edges allows Sherwood to become a vivid presence that infuses the film. Indeed, when lil Lulu fantasized about potential sequels, what happened next to the Famers... Meara's Sherwood almost always showed up. (So imagine Lu's shock and dismay when defanged Sherwood actually did show up, all pretty and magnanimous, in the televisions series. Feh!)
Meara's Sherwood prolly taught little Lulu lots more than she ever knocked into Leroy's noggin. And StinkyLulu will be ever grateful to Ben Stiller's mom for crafting the character of Sherwood so intelligently and so generously -- and, in so doing, redirecting Lulu's movie obsessed gaze to those other actresses at the edges of Fame, especially those actresses at the edges of fame itself.
Thanks, Ms. Meara.
from DRUMMER: America's Magazine for the Macho Male.
The Alberto Ramella image above features performer Misstress Formika -- NM native, drag goddess extraordinaire, and high school friend of StinkyLulu. The complexity of the image conveys some of StinkyLulu's contradictory feelings on this holiday.The roster for July is in -- 1988 -- one of the few rosters of Supporting Actresses from which all the nominees, especially the newbies, survived to thrive in dynamic, interesting careers. Another something all of 1988's Supporting Actresses share? Each of their movies are, to greater and lesser degrees, about "class." Even more, the socioeconomic station of each Supporting Actress character instrumentally informs each plot. Of all four movies, though, Lawrence Kasdan's romantic drama The Accidental Tourist most reflects American culture's stubborn denial about the realities of social class in the United States. Kasdan's film relies on class differences to amplify the will-they-or-won't-they conflict that impels the film's narrative, even as the film depicts such differences obliquely, as mere decoration. This denial finds tidy embodiment in the performance of...
Davis's Muriel alights into Macon's life by happenstance (she works at a kennel; Macon needs a dogsitter) and it's "MINE!" on first sight, at least for Muriel. As scenes proceed, Muriel's glib tenacity in placing herself squarely in Macon's path creates the circumstances of -- in the best romcom tradition -- an entirely implausible (and thus life-altering) romance. Davis's Muriel chatters and cheers, Hurt's Macon winces and whines, and true love is found.
Davis's best scene is her quietest, where she says little and instead listens to Hurt's Macon describe the depths of his despair. Only in this scene, with little makeup and no "outfit," does Davis provide a hint of Muriel without the bells and whistles, a fleeting glance into Muriel's "bashful" side. Granted, this scene is the only one to script Muriel's quietness, but part of the challenge of actressing at the edges is crafting the bridges between the scripted moments. Muriel's complexity exists beneath and between her lines, and Davis's proclamatory approach to the character tends to race toward the next line reading and right past whatever's in the in-between.
Likewise, Davis's characterization does not address the not-so-subtle mercenary aspects of Muriel's attraction to Macon. Yes, she wants a man in her son's life. Yes, Macon needs what she has to give. But...does Muriel do this often? Does she stalk every man with a credit card who comes into her shop? Davis glibly skips over whatever shadows might be found in the character in order to make Muriel a radiant beacon of hope for Macon. The problem? This is almost more frightening. Muriel, at times, seems like the energizer bunny, a perpetually happy clown who only wants to turn Macon's frown upside down...or else.
This much is clear: Geena Davis memorably nailed certain aspects of this character -- the verve, the kookiness, the sweetness, the bravado -- but she crafts only a partially brilliant performance. By focusing so exclusively on Muriel's light (to the exclusion of her shadows), Davis's Muriel diminishes the character's dimension, her scale, her humanity...her true sparkle.
