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.

"And I Thought It Wouldn't Last" (PhotoQuote of the Day)

via my new favorite site Planet Hiltron
(devoted to creative demonstrations of the 21st century principle
that PhotoShop is the gift that keeps on giving)
click image to be routed to full post

And just cuz she proved herself so popular last week...