Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton (2007) - Supporting Actress Sundays

In the two years I've been doing Supporting Actress Sunday profiles, I've come to feel that there are several external features that go into making an "ideal" supporting actress performance. Now, I'm not talking about the especially baity stock character types who appear again and again among nominees in the category. No, I'm talking here about some key structural elements -- the features I would emphasize to any writer, director or actor seeking to construct a "perfect" nominate-able performance. It's all about appropriate proportions with maximum possibilities. First, the perfect Supporting Actress role must be both a legitimately supporting character and also absolutely essential to the narrative; ideally, she should instigate crucial developments in the main plot or central characters while also never edging too close to the spine of the story. Second, the character must have her own moments; she should possess a genuine autonomy, neither simply ancillary or ornamental nor so distracting as to overshadow the central performances. Finally, the character should be a part that almost any good actress could play well while also being a role textured with enough roomy contours to enable a better actress to be truly great. It's a simple -- but elusive -- set of features indeed. Yet I am pleased to offer as example of such a "perfect" Supporting Actress role the one portrayed this year by...

...Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton (2007).

approximately 18 minutes and 36 seconds
14 scenes
roughly 16% of film's total running time

Tilda Swinton plays Karen Crowder, a powerfully ambitious attorney who, having just taken her greatest leap up the corporate ladder, has also just stepped in a steaming pile of corruption.
Swinton has perhaps the most vivid first scenes of any of this year's nominees. After a crabby Sidney Pollack hollers "Where the **** is Karen Crowder?," we discover Swinton's Karen experiencing a pit-staining panic attack in a stall in the ladies room. In this brief, electrifying scene, Swinton wordlessly conveys the full depths of an as yet unknown despair (one that the audience will slowly, steadily, come to appreciate as the film's slow burn finds its boil).
And what does Swinton do as follow-up to her flopsweating bathroom break? Only the most exhilarating bit of screen acting StinkyLulu encountered in 2007. Swinton's Karen, in one moment, is rehearsing her answers to the set of questions she'll be answering at a press conference later that day while, in the next moment, she's offering more polished versions of the same answers to the cameras.
Karen's stuttering monologue both establishes the fact of Crowder's recent promotion to Chief Corporate Counsel while also providing necessary exposition about her company. But it's not simply the brilliant intercutting that anchors the tension of this sequence; it's also Swinton's adeptly crafted continuities between the rough and final drafts of Karen's self-obsessed performance of herself. Within this utterly banal corporate speak, Swinton gives us a fully textured portrait of Karen: a workaholic whose entire identity has become collapsed with her ability to do, and be praised for, her awful job.
In these two opening scenes -- at opposite ends of the narrative, thanks to Michael Clayton's savvily looping flashback structure -- Swinton provides a palpably emotional underpinning for all that is yet to befall Karen, a corporate automaton built to destroy.
In building a frighteningly unstable emotional foundation for Karen (we're always on the edge , wondering if her shell will just crack at any second), Swinton is able to make zippy work of the corporate intrigue required by the plot.
Whether misreading Clooney's Michael Clayton as a negligible hack...
Or contracting with a shady operation to do some dirty deeds...
Swinton maintains a simple clarity. For Karen, her job -- and everything related to it -- is more than a matter of life and death. It's not just that she has some daddy issues with her boss. It's not just that she has no life outside her own head. It's not even that she can barely dress herself. Rather, it's something simpler, something simply terrifying: without the carefully constructed illusion of her exceptional competence, Karen is nothing. For behind that mask, Swinton's Karen knows she has no self, no soul, no nothing. And it's from the threatened revelation of this fact that Swinton's Karen so desperately flees.
Almost any decent actress could have made Karen Crowder workable, even memorable. But where Swinton elevates the role is in distilling Karen's motivations to their essence. Instead of crafting some subtextual psychological alibi for Karen's workaholism (as most very good actresses might have done), Swinton smartly chooses to play the character's desperation as purely elemental, an animal need for survival. All of which makes the grim pleasure of Karen's actual devastation all the more thrilling.
In her final confrontation with Michael Clayton (George Clooney, better than he's ever been), Swinton's Karen Crowder does truly get hers. But rather than making Karen's downfall a simple act of spectacular humiliation (yank the dragonlady's wig and watch her squeal!), the film takes a smarter, scarier path: Karen's forced to understand how badly she's miscalculated her adversary.
And it's through Karen's abjection -- collapsing in a blur ("see if the she needs medical attention") -- that Swinton's Karen underscores the overarching/underlying principle of this post-modern passion play: the incalculable cost of selling one's soul for the promise of power. (In this excellent final scene, the morality play dimensions fall into focus: Clooney's Michael is Everyman; Wilkinson's Arthur is the ascending angel; and Swinton's Karen is hurtling into hellmouth.)
It's a really good part in a finely crafted film. But what Swinton brings is astonishing actressing at the edges. Indeed, Tilda Swinton's Karen Crowder might just be one of the greater nominated Supporting Actress performances. We'll just have to see whether Swinton's expert work brings Karen's redemption in the form of a little gold statue...

This Week in Supporting Actressness

Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles (1974) on AMC
Cate Blanchett in The Aviator (2004) on FX
Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960) on TCM
Holly Hunter in Thirteen (2003) on Lifetime
Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull (1980) on TCM
Talia Shire in The Godfather, Part II (1974) on AMC
Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) on TCM
Agnes Moorehead in Johnny Belinda (1948) on TCM

Martha Hyer in Some Came Running (1958) on TCM
Jean Simmons in Hamlet (1948) on TCM
Ruth Hussey in The Philadelphia Story (1940) on TCM
Anne Ramsey in Throw Momma from the Train (1987) on AMC
Anne Archer in Fatal Attraction (1987) on Lifetime
Wendy Hiller in A Man for All Seasons (1966) on TCM
Una Merkel in Summer and Smoke (1961) on TCM
Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias (1989) on TCM

Ethel Barrymore in The Paradine Case (1947) on TCM
Judi Dench in Chocolat (2000) on E!
Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck (1987) on TCM
Piper Laurie in Carrie (1976) on A&E
Celeste Holm in All about Eve (1950) on TCM
Piper Laurie in Children of a Lesser God (1986) on TCM
Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) on AMC

5 Stinky Thoughts on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew - Episode 5: "Retreat"

Each week I offer a quick recaplet on the latest episode of the new VH1 experiment in candid celebreality, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. The fun continues this week with episode 7, "Retreat."

Thought #1: How 'Bout That Chaos?
Just one week after what might have been the most effective episode of the series -- last week's concentrated depiction of the challenges wrought by the "Friends and Family" weekend -- this week's episode, brings things back into the generalized chaos of a reality series trying to cram too much drama into too few episodes. Several notable things happened in this week's ep, each of which -- with a better production company/contract or a longer run -- might have enough to focus an entire episode. There was Ricco's admission to his core addiction: gambling. (Ricco's being a thrill-seeking adrenaline-junkie makes absolute sense. Drugs and alcohol are amplifying/medicating accessories; the grandiosity and "terminally unique" secrecy are self-protective rationalizations. His real high is the "how much can I get away with?", a whole 'nother kind of scary.) Ricco's stuff could have made for a whole episode, as could the idiotic Catalina venture (which, in contrast to the sober living coffee house talent show, was just full of bad behavior). And then there was Jeff's departure, which was nothing interesting in and of itself (everyone had seen it before and was now done with trying to convince him to stay) but which seemed to have interesting consequences in terms of chaos. (Like, for example, the idiocy of the foodfight which occasioned one of the more astonishing visuals from the entire series: An overhead shot of Shifty play-snorting a pile of Cap'n Crunch from the surface of a picnic table emblazoned with a "Celebrity Rehab" tag.) Might have been nice to see how the group dynamic actually recalibrated once the "real addict" in the house left. There was a lot going on in this episode and, unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of it because everything was happening too fast to clear the deck for next week's finale.

Thought #2: Severe Chronic Assholism, Exhibit F.
A few contenders here. Ricco's "Jump Off The Boat & Giggle When Four Law Enforcement Agencies Arrive" schtick. Shifty's "Food fights are fun, fuck the cleanup" nonsense. Utterly typical displays of the addict's basic adolescent immaturity, their thoughtlessly self-serving actions effecting others in ways they neither know nor care about. But I think I must give this week's "Severe Chronic Assholism" nod to Jessica's aggrieved adolescent act that hit full-throttle this week as "what's next" began to loom on the horizon. To be sure, Ricco, Shifty and Jessica were all behaving like immature brats. What distinguished Jessica's actions this week is how much work she did to make sure everything was everyone else's fault. It's a noxious ploy: to manipulate the circumstances so that it's everyone else's fault that that you choose to use. CounselorBob and DrDrew called her on this poop but, amidst the many tangled narrative threads of this episode, Jessica's assholism seemed on near constant display.

Thought #3: Moments of Clarity with NurseShelly.
Alas, overstuffing this episode had the devastating consequence of nearly cutting NurseShelly out entirely. Some of our few glimpses comes during wake up calls. Sad sad sad. Proving one of the simple truths of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew: an episode without NurseShelly is an episode without serenity. Luckily, NurseShelly does show up briefly to give Jeff a little reality check grimace when he confirmed that Vikki would not be adjusting her drug use when Jeff returned home. Thank you, Nurse Shelly. (We also got a cute moment of clarity from NurseIcyHot -- bringing up the rear as he tends to do. As the rehabitants were dancing like crazed "self-willing" monkeys during their food fight, NurseIcyHot noted how much he loved them. I'm sure they love you too, NurseIcyHot, I'm sure they love you too. I just love NurseShelly more.)

Thought #4: What I Didn't Need To See.
Jessica singing. The number at the coffee house was one thing. (Didja happen to notice how much Shifty loved Jessica's song? And what did MaryEllen and Jaimee perform? If they performed monologues from one of their movies and VH1 didn't air their dramatic arts, I'll be really peeved. I mean, they took a curtain call -- what did they perform?) But, no, the most uncomfortable spectacle of the episode was perhaps Jessica singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall". In a tiny cabin on the boat to Catalina. To herself in the mirror. I might just have discovered a new feature of my own personal vision of hell. AI also-rans singing campsongs in perpetuity... Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Thought #5: Celebrity Rehab's Lessons in Sobriety.
This episode, at some level, is all about the addict's inclination toward self-sabotage -- how one of the hardest things about sobriety is learning to live a different way without one's drug of choice. Because sobriety (and the emotional clarity it brings) is stark, new, and absolutely terrifying, an addict often lapses to the familiarity of the same old cycle of addictive bullshit. Your life may be a giant swirling pot of suckage, but at least it's YOUR swirling pot of suckage -- a giant swirling pot of suckage you know well. It's sad to watch the rehabitants freak out and make lame, occasionally dangerous, spectacles of themselves but it's par for the course... And it looks like the drama just escalates in preparation for next week's finale (when, it seems, both Dr.Drew and NurseShelley cry -- I can't wait!)

But please share your drama in comments, beloveds.
SEE ALSO previous "Stinky Thoughts" on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew:
Episode 1 ("Intake")
Episode 2 ("Detox")
Episode 3 ("New Arrival")
Episode 4 ("Sex & Trauma")
Episode 5 ("Bye Bye Baldwin")
Episode 6 ("Friends and Family")
And be sure to tune in next week for every addict's favorite thing: MORE!!!

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: PITCH SOME PENNIES.
Nathaniel of The Film Experience is unceasingly generous -- writing some of the most reliably entertaining movie comment on the web...on a daily basis...for free. Now it's time for some reciprocatin'. He's got a usurious bandwidth bill nipping at his heels and he needs your help. Pitch a penny or two in the pot and show your love for one of StinkyLulu's most treasured blogbuds. Even better, I've just pledged $5 for every accurate prediction that Nathaniel makes for this weekend's awards. I challenge you, lovely reader, to follow suit. Pledge a quarter, a dollar, a five, a ten, a grand -- pledge a share of your Oscar pool -- pledge what you can. Then, join me this Sunday as I watch the Oscars and do my part to relieve Nathaniel's financial misery at the same time. (I've also tossed in some of StinkyLulu's Special Services in the fundraising mix as donation swag; the rewards might be of special interest to StinkyLulu aficionados.) So, show your love. Nathaniel's earned it.

___ Item 2: FILL OUT THE GAY LATINA DIVA SCORECARD.
You didn't know there was such a thing? Well, now you do. And, yes, I do have those pants. In mauve. Caliente! (via Guanabee)

___ Item 3: MEET COTTON McCAIN.
My New Plaid Pants explains it all for you. But be warned; your view of the presidential campaign will be forever changed. (And if you want to shake the image from your mind, click over to JA's amazing ode to the "Doe Me Doe Duds" of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T -- good times.)

___ Item 4: VISIT STINKYLULU'S DREAM HOME.
Here's to getting all the details just right, including the name (?!). (via Fabulon)

___ Item 5: GRAB A GIGGLE.
Why-I-Love-The-Interwebz, Item #21908: Fartman! Gotta love the talcum powder. (via LadyBunny)

___ Item 6: SPOIL THE SURPRISE.
It's the biggest weekend of the year. At least in StinkyLuluLand. And though StinkyLulu's not running an Oscar pool this year, this doesn't mean that I'm not willing to guesstimate. I'm awful at prognosticating, so I ask you: where you think we'll see the biggest surprise in this weekend's broadcast? Share your thoughts in comments. (And I'll try to come up with a nifty prize for the best accurate surprise prediction...)

Have at it, lovelies!

Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone (2007) - Supporting Actress Sundays

I hated most of Mystic River (Clint Eastwood's cartoonish morality fable from a few years back) and found The Departed (Scorsese's trophy snagging triumph) to be occasionally diverting but generally dull. So, when MrStinky's boyfriend Ben Affleck came along with his feature film directorial debut, I was, um, nonplussed. "Oh yay," I thought, "Another missing child/corrupt cop drama in which 'Boston plays a character'..." But then the reviews kept turning up stronger than expected, with MrStinky's Boyfriend Ben emerging fairly triumphant. (Indeed, though he'll likely never be Scorsese, Affleck might just be on his way to being his generation's Eastwood, heaven help us.) But what got me to the googaplex to actually screen the picture? Only what is perhaps this year's most uniformly acclaimed female performance...

...Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone (2007).

approximately 13 minutes and 47 seconds
14 scenes
roughly 12% of film's total running time

Amy Ryan plays Helene McCready, the mother of an abducted child who finds herself at the center of a rapidly amplifying mystery.
Ryan quickly establishes Helene as a woman inclined to bad decisions, for whom her daughter's abduction is but another bit of damage to add to the steadily growing pile of wreakage already accumulated in her recent past.
Ryan's Helene also -- somewhat startlingly, given the circumstances -- wears a prideful defiance, disregarding conventional wisdom and authority with an adolescent zeal. Indeed, whether bridling rebelliously under her sister-in-law's watchful reprobation or giddily bantering about "faggots" from the backseat, Ryan's Helene seems more like a surly fifteen year old girl than a mother who's child is missing.
This mix of adolescent defiance and selfish cluelessness proves to be the foundation for Amy Ryan's deceptively simple work in crafting Helene. The characterization requires that Helene must make a vivid brief impression in anticipation of an extended sequence of scenes in which she slowly begins to apprehend the gravity of her missing daughter's situation, to be followed by a set of quick shots under voiceover or in flashback, and concluding with a haunting coda.
But the main task for Ryan? To demonstrate that Helene is perhaps the single character in Gone Baby Gone to remain fundamentally unchanged by the traumatic circumstances her daughter's abduction. So, Ryan must craft a character who doesn't actually change even as the bulk of her work on screen depicts her slowly shifting consciousness about the reality of the situation. And to her credit, Ryan accomplishes these seemingly contradictory arcs with clarity, ease and a wicked Boston accent.
The script needs Helene to be just awful -- selfish, arrogant, irresponsible, unappealing, tacky -- and Ryan definitely hits those marks. But rather than simply playing everything to one or another hilt, Ryan's Helene maintains a level of complexity that permits the story to work. Even though everything she does is utterly unsurprising in its beastly selfishness, somehow Ryan is able to sustain Patrick's (Casey Affleck) -- and, by extension, the audience's -- naive hope that she'll pull it together and do the right thing.
All told, the only real fault I find with Ryan's performance is that, in crafting Helene's broad affect, she neglects to visibly score the nuances of terror -- the history of abuse and trauma -- that Helene's almost certainly experienced previously, against which her garish façade serves as pathetic defense. Ryan nails the lame bravado, but skimps on whatever's underneath. I'm sure the texture's in the performance; we just don't get to see much of it on screen.
Helene is, in many ways, a perfect Supporting Actress role. Helene dominates her every scene, even looming over many in which she doesn't appear; moreover, the mere idea of Helene motivates almost every other character's action in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan's work in this perfect storm of supporting actressness efficiently crafts both Helenes -- monstrous phantom and messed-up person -- with integrity, clarity and zeal. An absolutely worthy contender for this year's trophy...