Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1988

The Year is...

1988

And the Smackdowners for the 61st Annual Academy Awards are...

...reigning divas...
KEN of Canadian Ken On...
BRAD of Criticlasm & Fag Yer It

...former starlets on the comeback trail...
NEWLAND of As Bold As Brass
NICK of Nick's Pick Flicks

...an ingenue...
KEITH of In Which Our Hero

...an old biddy...
yours truly, STINKYLULU.

...and the evening's special entertainment...
NATHANIEL of The Film Experience
who gifts us with one of his beloved Nominee Montage Videos
click image below to be routed to video

1988's Supporting Actresses are...
(Each Smackdowner's comments are arranged according to ascending levels of love. Click on the nominee's name/film to see StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review.)

Joan Cusack in Working Girl
Nick - Oscar overlooks and underestimates comedy too often, but sometimes we overestimate comic performances, too. I don’t see anything difficult about Cusack’s serviceable and audience-friendly turn, and she adds no surprising layers to a broad archetype...
Ken - Nothing earth-shaking. But Cusack pulls her weight here – and the role could’ve been just a throwaway. Her real accomplishment’s making us believe she genuinely cares about Tess. So it actually makes sense that Tess values her friendship with the person under all that gung-ho hair and makeup....
Brad - Manages to be realistic and funny – the character we would probably want as a best friend, too. Lightens the proceedings but still manages to ground them as well. Nom-worthy? Still unsure, but I sure like the perf. And that she manages to overcome the clown makeup? Well...
Newland - Cyn is the kind of role and Cusack the kind of actress we should see more often in the supporting category. As a big-haired Jiminy Cricket, she has a couple of great scenes, but the role is too insignificant to deserve more than a nomination....
StinkyLulu - Cusack's Cyn is an architectural marvel of visual artifice, but Cusack wears it well, crafting a brilliantly funny performance that's radiantly human besides. It's a simple, elegant character arc festooned with heart-stopping eyeshadow....
Nathaniel - The first instinct – to label this a nod to a scene stealer – is wrongheaded. It's an ideal supporting performance. Very funny, true, but completely authentic, scene lifting and surprisingly humble in its second banana joking....
Keith - Cyn could have been just a cartoon, but Cusack brings beautifully subtle shadings to the role. When she finally is handed a scene that calls for some emotional oomph, she nails it beautifully, without ever losing the wit or the humor....

TOTAL: (22)

Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist
StinkyLulu - With broad declamatory strokes, Davis easily nails the character’s kooky verve and sweet bravado, but before long the whole project starts to stink of a carefully contrived quirk. By focusing so on the character’s lighter aspects (at the expense of her darker shadows), Davis diminishes Muriel’s true sparkle...
Ken - A perky stalker – with the perkiness even more off-putting than the stalking. Davis goes for cute’n’kooky, smugly launching non-sequiturs from little mini-catapults. But her voice and talent seem uncharacteristically thin here. I’m tempted to call the performance a miscalculation. Unless, of course, what she wanted was an Oscar...
Newland - I can’t believe she won. Davis is not bad per se, but she’s not even the best supporting actress in her film, let alone the best in 1988. A little bit of quirk never hurts in this category, but if quirkiness is the only asset your performance provides, you’re in serious trouble...
Brad - Has "I'm quirky" written all over it, much to the detriment of the character. From the facial quirk, to the oddly unflattering clothing, we're asked to believe that Davis doesn't look like a model, and that Hurt's character is so grief-stricken he's not aware of the obviousness of her goal to get him. Just obvious characterization in an obvious movie. Would've gone for Turner or Amy Wright myself....
Keith - Davis never answers the riddle of Muriel Pritchett -- what the hell does she see in Macon Leary? -- and so despite Davis's immense charm and warmth, Muriel remains merely a lovable mountain of quirks and eccentricities, never becoming a complete human being...
Nathaniel - A triumph of star charisma if not quite great acting. Impossibly Quirky "life force" character is almost made flesh and blood. Not Davis's best performance but effectively fills the movies large demand...
Nick - Very warm and engaging, even when the eccentricity verges on pure mannerism. Davis gets Anne Tyler better than her co-stars do, and she finds the rhythms of Muriel’s distractions and non sequiturs without making her self-involved or obtuse. Coulda gone deeper, but coulda crashed and burned, too...

TOTAL: (15)

Frances McDormand in Mississippi Burning
Keith - My lord, how McDormand works, trying desperately to create something from nothing. There are lovely individual moments, and some impeccable physical choices, but the script simply doesn't provide a character for her to play....
Nick - Kudos to McDormand for rescuing interesting notes from a dire script and meretricious direction. Still, she’s palpably smarter than the movie or the character, and her liveliness with Hackman offers a marked contrast to her underutilization (or is it boredom?) elsewhere....
Ken - The picture? Politically correct. Cinematically conventional. But McDormand approaches her cliched role with the expected commitment and professionalism. And in an early kitchen scene creates (with Hackman) a special space – intimate, palpable. When another voice breaks the spell, McDormand does a triple take – complex, seamless, breath-taking. A momentary triumph of talent, technique and inspiration...
StinkyLulu - Somehow McDormand survives her miscasting in an utterly lame role, with generally idiotic dialogue, to craft a living, breathing characterization – the closest thing there is to a "person" in the whole movie. Yet, it remains more an extraordinary accomplishment than a great performance...
Nathaniel - Her racism monologue is moving if transparently Actorly. Still she's magnetic throughout and easily strongest in her reactive moments, blooming a little like a neglected flower while mundanely washing dishes...
Brad - Does a lot of extratextual work with Hackman and the attraction between the two, but her native intelligence still made it hard for me to believe she's a woman who would've married a man in HS just because he made her laugh. Park Overall, maybe, but she's more like Carson McCullers...
Newland - This is one of those performances in which the actress conveys much more in what she doesn’t say than with what she actually says. McDormand lets us into the complex psyche of her character through a subtle performance that gives more than the script contemplates...

TOTAL: (21)

Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons
Nick - [In a cowering whisper] Maybe the least effective performance of Pfeiffer’s career, because Frears only wants her as an emblem of beauty and then of gorgeous suffering. Bravo to her impeccable bone structure, but Michelle has no genuine ideas about this perplexing woman. She looks cowed and under-directed...
Keith - A fabulous gift of a role, and Pfeiffer gives us nothing but unconvincing tears and a heaving bosom. Where's the emotional torment, the passion, the grief? It's all hidden behind Pfeiffer's blank beauty. She's out-acted by Uma (who deserved the nom far more) and out-prettied by Keanu...
Ken - The picture constricts Pfeiffer like a corset. She’s competent. But poorly cast co-stars, a hollow smarty-pants script and (who knows?) maybe the actual corsets - all these things impede her. I found myself proceeding to Pfeiffer default mode (ie. idly wondering why nobody ever came up with a daughter-mother gig for her and Barbara Bain)...
StinkyLulu - Pfeiffer’s performance captures Mme. Tourvel’s incandescent guilelessness, which makes her stunning evisceration a heartbreaking spectacle. But... Pfeiffer’s glimmering mélange of terrors gets muddy at the most essential moments. A worthy nomination, but an incomplete performance...
Newland - She’s beautiful, she’s virtuous. She’s the ultimate ice queen, melting under the influence of Valmont. Pfeiffer aptly conveys the emotional roller coaster Mme Tourvel undergoes, but the performance lacks passion. Efficient, but the meltdown is not completely satisfying...
Brad - Servicable and beautiful, but even within this act-y film I am aware of her acting for some reason. I never quite buy her betrayal--I get it's real pain, but not about what it purports to be. It lacks mystery to me, but then again the moment is designed to illuminate his character more than hers...
Nathaniel - Dehumanizingly referred to as "the other one" / "that other matter" – and Pfeiffer's turn also betrays fuzziness of character. Does Tourvel even know herself? She masters the tricky combo of deer caught by predators alarm and heavy lidded surrender...

TOTAL: (16)

Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl
Nathaniel - Works many variations on self-absorbed humor "I am after all, me" . The faux camarederie she suggests with hugs and head tilts is truly repulsive/hilarious. Occassionally inspired but a total cartoon...
Keith - It's a nice performance, strongest in the precisely calibrated ambiguity of the opening scenes and the desperate scramble for a shred of dignity in the closing. But Weaver overplays the ogre in the boardroom scene, and it's a performance that any of a dozen actresses could have given...
StinkyLulu - As a vaguely plausible Big 80s gorgon, Weaver – through a finely calibrated mix of near perfect timing, a couple genius line readings and just enough slapstick – makes her Katherine an utter hoot. With a little high camp, and a lot of high style, Weaver knows exactly what’s she’s doing and she does it very very well...
Nick - I love Weaver’s radiant, we’re-just-two-girls-chatting unctuousness, and she has a great, silent moment of ignoring that enormous ski-boots don’t match her silk blouse and tailored skirt. She makes a big impression with fewer scenes than I remembered, but she’s hesitant about farce (nervous, perhaps, about capitulating to the script’s misogyny?) and, like everyone else in the movie, lacking in crucial energy...
Ken - A wonderfully accomplished take on the big business dragon lady. Expansive but never overstated. And what an entrance! Her benevolent despot act’s pure delight. You’d grin and thank her while she twisted the knife. And I love her crazy/elated high as she tosses Griffith that gorilla in the mist...
Newland - The role of Katharine Parker gives a charismatic Weaver the unique chance to be funny without playing funny. In a mesmerizing turn, she gracefully avoids the sketchy über-bitch role and delivers a winning performance that leaves you craving more...
Brad - A caricature that never goes over the edge. Plays into a strength of Weaver's – stylistic comedy that balances on the razor of parody. We never question how anyone is taken in by her act (which is key), but it's also kind of delicious to watch her squirm when she's exposed as a fraud...

TOTAL: (25)

Oscar chose...
Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist!
But the SMACKDOWN gives it to:
Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl!

So, lovely reader, this Smackdown brought the greatest diversity of opinion of any to date. Add your opinage to the mix & tell the Smackdowners what YOU think!

Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl - Supporting Actress Sundays

One of the things that big Hollywood movie actors tend not to appreciate is style. No, I'm not talking about fashion or flair - duh - but the qualitative differences between what's needed in terms of vocality, affect, timing, etcetera when doing a Western versus a gross-out comedy versus a romantic comedy. Hollywood tends to want its actors to be exactly the same wherever it puts them, and plenty of Hollywood actors are perfectly pleased to do just that (egregious contemporary example 1, 2 & 3). Of course there's a chameleonic exception or two in each generation, as well as those who work their particular angle very very well, but it can get tedious watching a truly talented and versatile performer getting rutted into repeating the same schtick/different scenario shell game over and over again. That's why it just makes StinkyLulu haphaphappy to see a successful commercial film actor seek out the opportunity to toy with "style" -- makes me an almost immediate fan (delightful contemporary example 1, 2, & 3). And that might be why I've always found myself so captivated with...

...Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl (1988).

approximately 21 minutes and 40 seconds
17 scenes
roughly 21% of film's total running time

Sigourney Weaver plays Katherine Parker, a rapidly rising executive in the cutthroat world of Big80s big finance...with the shoulderpads to prove it.

Weaver's Katherine is a privileged, powerful woman, edging from her twenties with her keenly acquisitive gaze trained on what she wants in her thirties: more fame, more power, and more Harrison Ford. Working Girl complicates Katherine's life by assigning her Tess (Melanie Griffith in perhaps her only great performance) as a secretary. Tess may not want as much as Katherine, but she certainly wants it more.

The plot requires Weaver's Katherine to create an indelible impression in a handful of early scenes, disappear for the bulk of the movie, and then return toward the end for a few really big scenes. In the first few scenes, Katherine must be a thrilling and terrifying creature, kind of Tess's Willy Wonka, in these early scenes -- but she must also lay a villainous foundation for the evil boss turn in the movie's final act (when she must become the anti-feminist corollary of 9 to 5's Mr. Hart). It's not necessarily a difficult role. Probably anybody with a modicum of wit could have made Katherine Weaver a vaguely plausible big80s gorgon.

But what Weaver does is something a little more delicate: she makes Katherine Parker likable. Noxious, offensive, arrogant- yes - but somehow also charming, charismatic and almost appealing. Weaver accomplishes this by simply allowing her Katherine to believe her own hype. Rather than fixating on the character's selfishness and greed, Weaver's performance recalibrates things so that such behaviors are mostly tertiary traits of Katherine's totalizing self-interest, hubristic self-distraction at its most farcical.

That Weaver gets this -- and enjoys playing it -- making her Katherine Parker an often giddy delight.

At some delicious level, Weaver's Katherine is Nellie Oleson moved from mercantile to Wall Street...and she's an utterly gratifying hoot. What's better is that Weaver's performance calibrates a refined set of comedic gifts (near perfect timing, a couple of genius line readings and just enough slapstick) to keep things at edge. Weaver never tips too far into mustache-twirling villainy (though she has those moments too) to lose the sharp edge of wit that coordinates her performance.

I'm inclined to think that Weaver's turn in Working Girl, in tandem with a certain sequel she did a year or so earlier, might have been the one-two punch that announced that she would remain among the most formidably interesting (if undervalued) actresses of the next several decades. And it's all because she knows style. In these genre pictures -- romcom or scifi action or whatevah-- Sigourney Weaver knows what she's doing and, as a rule, she does it very very well.

"Intended to Correct this Cultural Deficiency" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from VIM: The Magazine for Vigorous Living.
October 1964, page 50.
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify

Betty Buckley in Another Woman (1988) - The Overlooked Supporting Actresses, by request...

Leave it to y'all, lovely readers, to present Supporting Actress challenges that push my profiling abilities. With your first choice, y'all hit me with an animated character. Now, y'all's second choice brings a slew of enthralling women assembled in curious chorus before Woody Allen's meditative lens. I've profiled an ensemble of supporting actresses before, and an assemblage of female performances has even "won" a smackdown. But the challenge here is different, for -- among all the amazing women eligible for consideration this week -- what seizes my heart, imagination and attention in this film is the 90 seconds of bravura actressing by...

...Betty Buckley in Another Woman (1988).

approximately 1 minute and 35 seconds
1 scene
roughly 2% of film's total running time

Betty Buckley plays Kathy, an unexpected arrival to the engagement party thrown for her ex and his new love, Marion (Gena Rowlands, in a fascinating oblique performance as the protagonist of this strange film.)

Buckley's Kathy appears only in this one scene, and her role does not meet the "5%" standard that seems to be the intuitive minimum rule of thumb for Supporting Actress nominations. So you may be asking, lovely reader: why Buckley from a film that boasts solid, interesting work from Mia Farrow, Sandy Dennis, Blythe Danner and Martha Plimpton? Well, lemme tell ya. I almost went with Plimpton, but -- upon reflection -- was forced to acknowledge that she, like Danner, gives an entirely effective but ultimately unremarkable performance in an underconceptualized role. On the other hand, Another Woman's clearest, most conventionally Supporting Actressish parts are those played by Mia Farrow and Sandy Dennis. But, even here, both women are merely adequate. Mia's doing her standard mildly befogged fragility, and Sandy's fluttering with constipated angst as usual. (From here on out, I'm just gonna call that Sandy Dennis style "angstipation" -- she's hardly the single offender, plenty of actors with a skosh of Actor's Studio in their system are predisposed to it...) It's too bad, really. Plimpton would have likely been brilliant in Farrow's role as the ambivalent pregnant woman, and Buckley would have surely rocked in Dennis's role as the estranged and embittered best friend. But interestingly enough, Another Woman's most haunting and effective performances come from single scenesters like Buckley and Frances Conroy (who, as Marion's aggrieved sister in law, gives the protagonist more to play against in 45 seconds than any other actor in the entire film). And so it's Betty Buckley's distillation of a complete character arc into a 90 second performance that truly amazes.

When Buckley's Kathy crashes her ex's very very civilized engagement party, she's unannounced and uninvited, with a lamely assembled box of objects as alibi for her presence. Whether she knows it or not, Buckley's Kathy has arrived to create a scene.

Buckley lets Kathy begin in a kind of pathetic abjection, fumbling for rationalizations and awkward self-abnegating asides, before the raging tiger within begins lashing out, hurling accusations at both her ex-husband and his guests ("some of these people used to be my friends to.") Having mustered this little bit of strength, Buckley's Kathy composes herself with serene malice to ask: "Which one of you is Marion?"

Buckley delivers this question as a tacitly terrifying challenge and, for her part, Rowlands -- fascinated by the spectacle which has brought her chatty party to a screeching silent halt -- replies with an almost giddy curiosity. But before either woman can say whatever it is she might have long rehearsed for just this moment, the ex (Ian Holm, wan but effective as the priggish prick) intervenes. His interruption infuriates Kathy all over again who then lets tumble a raw, vicious, sarcastic blur of incriminating details. When Kathy stops speaking, she's spent, devastated, humiliated anew...and easily forced from the room, allowing the party to continue.

Buckley's is a brave and efficient performance. Kathy's single scene haunts the rest of the film, reverberating as the only true flash of emotion either witnessed or experienced by Rowlands' Marion. And though the part is way too small to warrant a trophy (save, perhaps, for The Film Bitch Cameo prize), Buckley's performance as Kathy offers a choice bit of actressing at the edges and provides a pungent reminder of just how powerful LaBuckley can be on screen.

Thanks, lovely readers, for this challenge!
I'll try "The Overlooked - By Request" again in August.
Stay tuned...

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: TURN CHARTREUSE...
...with envy again, this time as The Stinkys join the revels at a concert performance by a certain D-List celebrity. We're sitting in Row Q. Wonder if that's a special section for "The Gays"...

___ Item 2: TUNE IN...
...to HGTV for the national television debut of StinkyLulu's old ABQ friend, Kenny Chavez, as a featured craftydude on this episode of the strangely entrancing series, That's Clever!

___ Item 3: DETERMINE...

...whether these crimes are Scooby Doo or Real?...

___ Item 4: CONSIDER...

...making your voice heard...

___ Item 5: DISCUSS whether...
...this new Fall CW series is potentially brilliant? Or obviously racist? Opine in comments... (via bluegum)

___ Item 6: RETURN...
...on Sunday for the 1988 Supporting Actress Smackdown, featuring an all-star Smackdown panel, including Ken, Nathaniel, Nick, Brad, Newland & welcoming Keith!

Have at it, lovelies...

Frances McDormand in Mississippi Burning (1988) - Supporting Actress Sundays

In some ways, screening Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning upon its original release marked the last gasp of my moviegoing innocence. 'Twas a big Oscar baity picture, addressing a historical topic for which I had recently discovered a true passion (cultural history of race in U.S.), and directed by the director of my favorite movie ever. But boy howdy what a stinker. Walking out of that theatre, I still remember trying to reconcile my high hopes for Hollywood with my roiling disgust at how much the film had gotten so cruelly wrong. 'Twas a crisis of faith, actually. See, I was still in the habit of meticulously adjusting my opinions to match a picture's critical praise, obliging myself to live up to the Hollywood hype. With Mississippi Burning, though, I was forever done with such nonsense and ready to move off the Hollywood grid entirely. Still, though, I felt I had to retrieve something redemptive from the experience I had just suffered. And so 'tis little surprise that I gratefully claimed...

...Frances McDormand in Mississippi Burning (1988).

approximately 14 minutes and 3 seconds
15 scenes
roughly 11% of film's total running time

Frances McDormand plays Mrs. Pell, the wife of a sheriff's deputy in a hick Mississippi town. Mr. Pell (Brad Dourif, in one of the few effective male performances in the film) is a dimwit racist bully, who's too busy beating down black folk and setting fire to their shackalack homes to notice that (a) his wife is bored in their marriage and (b) that she loathes his every racist step.

McDormand's Mrs. Pell (we never learn her first name) is an extraordinary creation. Forget about spinning a hay into gold, sewing a silk purse from a sow's ear, turning water into wine...THIS performance is a supporting actress miracle.

The role is an idiotic Hollywood fantasy: the "simple Southern white woman" who knows well the racist logic of her community's ways, who's mindful of the violent predisposition of her male relations, and who does a teensy little thing that (in the logic of the film) becomes an extraordinary act (which also instigates the resolution of a lumbering plot). We've seen this character's flip side in Smackdowns before -- remember Cara Williams' "The Woman" in 1958? -- same character-slash-plotdevice, different moral register.

But somehow McDormand survives her miscasting (I say switch Park Overall into this part) in this lamely constructed role (she always just happens to be there), rising above the generally stupid dialogue (postcards from Des Moines?! wha?!) and the incomprensibly oblique romance between McDormand's Mrs. Pell and Hackman's freakishly implausible Rupert (they have about as much chemistry as two headless department store mannequins).

Amidst the crashing embers of Parker's film, McDormand's Mrs. Pell emerges a living, breathing characterization -- the closest thing there is to a "person" in the whole movie. What's more, McDormand seems to accomplish this almost independently, with little legible support from the surrounding apparatus of white machismo that animates this film.

McDormand's accomplishment is not so much that she's especially good in this part. Rather, McDormand's achievement is just how good she is when given so little to do. The movie's a simple-minded melodrama with stick puppet characters and a big fire budget (did Parker have to take the title so literally?). But somehow McDormand finds a strand of emotional reality and holds onto it for dear life. And, in so doing, McDormand's Mrs. Pell becomes as a life-preserver to which a desperate audience might cling while trying to survive this awful awful awful movie.

It's more an extraordinary accomplishment than a great performance, but hey -- Franny's actressing at the edges here definitely proved a beacon of just how formidable a screen performer McDormand would soon become.

"A Sensation Maker For The Free Spirit" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from HONCHO: The Magazine For The Macho Male.

September 1984, page 57.
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify.

"Not Mine, But Somebody Else's" (PhotoQuote of the Day)

from Marie Claire

via Electronic Cerebrectomy
click image to be routed to full post

Oopsie Doodle

You know how I promised to profile an overlooked 1988 performance today? Well, I lied. Didn't meant to, but still. So...oops. (Mebbe laterz.)

















click image to be routed to full post at I Can Has Cheezburger?

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: CHECK BACK...
...on Wednesday for another "Overlooked Supporting Actress" profile. This one ain't by request necessarily (ranked 4th or 5th in the voting), unless you count StinkyLulu's executive authority as a request. But devoted voters, don't dismay: your 2nd Place request for the Overlooked series will be up next Wednesday.

___ Item 2: WITNESS...
...the unrelenting intelligence of Rachel Maddow. StinkyLulu's inner lesbian just gets all, ahem, riled by that Rachel.

___ Item 3: SPANK...

...the always deserving JA at My New Plaid Pants. And while you're there, be sure to check out his bit of birthday genius.

___ Item 4: CONTEMPLATE...

...the bluegum's incisive discussion of The Magic Negress...

___ Item 5: DISCUSS the following proposition...
...Parting Glances is the best gay movie ever. For reference see Ernest Hardy and Fag Yer It. Support your position with specific examples from gay cinema - past, present and future. Feel free to have this discussion in comments, when out with friends, during pilates class, while in line at the DMV...

___ Item 6: VOTE...
...for August's Supporting Actress roster in the column at top right...

Have at it, lovelies...

VOTE: AUGUST's Supporting Actress Sundays!

It's that time again...

What year deserves the focus
for AUGUST's month of
Supporting Actress Sundays?

Your nominees for AUGUST are:

• 1944: Ethel Barrymore in None But the Lonely Heart, Jennifer Jones in Since You Went Away, Angela Lansbury in Gaslight, Aline MacMahon in Dragon Seed, Agnes Moorehead in Mrs. Parkington.
• 1953: Grace Kelly in Mogambo, Geraldine Page in Hondo, Marjorie Rambeau in Torch Song, Donna Reed in From Here to Eternity, Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street.
• 1971: Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge, Ellen Burstyn in The Last Picture Show, Barbara Harris in Who is Harry Kellerman, and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me?, Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show, Margaret Leighton in The Go-Between.
• 1980: Eileen Brennan in Private Benjamin, Eva Le Gallienne in Resurrection, Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull, Diana Scarwid in Inside Moves, Mary Steenburgen in Melvin & Howard.
• 1989: Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot, Anjelica Huston in Enemies, a Love Story, Lena Olin in Enemies, a Love Story, Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias, Dianne Wiest in Parenthood.

The choice is yours...

Let your voice be heard by voting in the column at right.

Joan Cusack in Working Girl (1988) - Supporting Actress Sundays

In its preference for divas, dames and sweet young things, the category of Supporting Actress doesn't have a great track record for noting the broadly stroked sublimity of unapologetically comedic performances -- especially those submitted by performers who were both beyond puberty and pre-menopausal. Indeed, Oscar has tipped his hat to comparatively few funny younger women. Lucky for Lulu, one of the exceptions proving the rule arrives in the form of...

...Joan Cusack in Working Girl (1988).

approximately 8 minutes and 50 seconds
10 scenes
roughly 8% of film's total running time

Joan Cusack plays Cyn, the loyal and protective best friend to the protagonist of Mike Nichol's astonishingly effective romantic fantasy, Working Girl. (That this playful Big80s confection works better 20 years later is yet another testament to Nichols's particular genius.)

Cusack's Cyn is salt of the earth. The only thing bigger than Cyn's heart is her hair, and she has the accent, earrings and shoulder pads to match. (And as MrStinky's a Staten Island native, Lu's come to appreciate some of the nuances of Staten Island-ese -- at least a few of which Cusack captures pre-cise-ly, mining the vocal dimensions for both humor and empathy.)

Cusack's Cyn is not infrequently just hilarious, tossing in line readings ("And it's not even leath-uh!") and facial expressions that reverberate through the picture. (Click each image below to enlarge.)

Cusack's Cyn is an architectural marvel of visual artifice, but Cusack wears it well, allowing us to see Cyn's own conflict upon witnessing her friend Tess's transformation. Cusack ably conveys Cyn's escalating anxiety that, as Tess experiments with a new life, she may also leave Cyn behind. It's a simple elegant character arc festooned with heart-stopping eyeshadow.

And while Cusack's might seem a surprising nomination, it's not at all unearned. Cusack's Cyn -- more than any other character in the film -- anchors the narrative. Emotionally essential to the film's opening and concluding scenes, Cusack's Cyn provides the moral and emotional compass for the piece, while also goosing things every now and again with a blast of broad comedy that helps keep the tone this genre-swirl of a piece on pitch. Any number of actresses could have made the role absolutely funny, but the part requires a comedic actress of uncommon charisma and humanity. Cusack delivers these intangibles with preternatural ease, thus investing Cyn with a texture and significance well beyond the occasional guffaw. (Note that it's Cusack's Cyn to whom Nichols turns to confirm the narrative's moment of transcendent triumph.)

Cusack gives a brilliantly funny performance that's radiantly human besides. It's the brand of actressing at the edges that StinkyLulu loves best: delightful work that's easy to glide past without noticing just how essential it is to the success of the film.

But, then again, who can really glide past Cusack's Cyn...

"Tell The World" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from MANDATE: The International Magazine About Men.

July 1982, page 66.
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify.