Responding to an Invite

I am not the first commentator to compare The Invite to Edward Albee’s classic drama, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Actually, there’s a whole theatrical genre of what I call couch plays—stories that unfold almost entirely within a living-room set, featuring two married couples who meet, mingle, clash, and maybe flirt before ultimately going their separate ways. See, for example, the play and eventually the film God of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza. But that work focuses on the two couples’ status as the indignant parents of (unseen) brawling schoolboys. The Invite,  by contrast, hews much closer to Virginia Woolf territory by dedicating itself to the sexual side of marriage.

 This was originally a Spanish play and film, but it works perfectly well in its cinematic transfer to yuppie San Francisco. The first character we meet is Joe (Seth Rogen), a forty-something failed musician who now uncomfortably leads the jazz ensemble at a mediocre local music conservatory. He is, it turns out, uncomfortable about a lot of things, including a marriage that has over time become contentious. His wife Angela, played by Olivia Wilde (who also smartly directed this piece) is a stay-at-home hausfrau who has recently poured her artistic skills into an extensive renovation. She’s neurotic and controlling; he’s neurotic and wants nothing more than to be left alone. But tonight that won’t work, because she has unexpectedly invited over the rather glamorous couple upstairs, who have made a big impression at odd hours of the night with their wild sexual antics. So Angela is first seen obsessively fussing over a charcuterie arrangement and worrying about which wine to serve, while Joe bemoans his bad back and his disinclination to hobnob with strangers.

 The guests, when they arrive, seem determined to be charming. Basically, they want to charm the pants off their hosts.  Hawk and Piña (Edward Norton and a platinum-blonde Penelope Cruz) are about a decade older than their hosts, and have clearly had a more varied life experience. They apologize profusely for the noise that has disturbed their neighbors’ sleep, but explain that they might not have been the guilty parties. You see, they like to invite friendly folks over for an evening of group sex. And, hey, would Angela and Joe care to partake?

 What follows is a series of revelations in which we come to know all four of these neighbors better. Joe and Angela’s strained marriage comes in for scrutiny, but we gradually discover that Piña and Hawk—despite their freewheeling sexuality—have their own twisty past lives and are experiencing their own tensions.  

 Far be it from me to disclose how the film resolves itself. Suffice it to say that the mood keeps shifting—from distrust to fascination to hilarity to something far different—leading to a coda that leaves us at least a bit hopeful for the future of these complicated folks.

 If you’re tired of cast-of-thousands movies, and prefer those with stories that are intimate, psychologically acute, and occasionally very funny, The Invite has much to offer. All four actors are at the top of their game, and seem to be ready for anything. Seth Rogen, in particular, is both exasperating and hilarious, and I personally loved spending a fraught evening with him and the neuroses that just won’t quit. Then there is Olivia Wilde’s jittery eagerness to please, Edward Norton’s deceptively cheery bonhomie, and Penelope Cruz’s take-charge smarts. The ending of The Invite may contain a touch of Virginia Woolf, but these four are definitely not imitations of Edward Albee’s characters. Instead, they’re fully (and fascinatingly) themselves.  

 

Sybil: The Many Faces of Sally Field

It’s been a very long time since a barely twenty-one-year-old Sally Field soared as the Flying Nun. For years she was defined as a “cute” TV actress, a girl-next-door type, but her determination to be taken seriously sent her to the Actors Studio for intensive training with the noted drama coach, Lee Strasberg. Soon thereafter, she auditioned for a TV movie based on a true-life story that had mesmerized the American public. Sybil was the written account of a young teacher caught in the grip of what was then known as “multiple personality disorder.” (The condition, exceedingly rare, is now called dissociative identity disorder). Sybil, the product of a ghastly upbringing, was apt to morph without warning into one of thirteen alternate personalities. But a kindly therapist managed to help Sybil reintegrate herself into a functioning adult, so the story ultimately ended in triumph.

 Having admired Field’s work as a fairly young actress (1979’s Norma Rae).and a fairly old one (2026’s Remarkably Bright Creatures), I was curious to see her in the role that elevated her into Hollywood superstardom. The two-disc DVD edition of Sybil I got from my local library contains fascinating behind-the-scenes interviews with the film’s screenwriter and others. I was fascinated by the presence of Joanne Woodward, who had won an Oscar for starring as three distinct personalities in a 1957 film on a similar topic, The Three Faces of Eve. In Sybil, Woodward plays not the patient but the warm and nurturing psychiatrist who makes the young woman whole again. Woodward’s explanation of how she came to play this role is a fascinating example of the way Hollywood works. The TV network behind the project was apparently eager to attach a major star to it, maybe someone of the caliber of Audrey Hepburn or Natalie Wood. Woodward, as a close friend of the screenwriter, knew all about the project, and wanted to see it go forward. That’s why she proposed herself as someone with enough credentials to (perhaps) attract a viewing audience. It worked, and she gave a lovely performance.

 But of course a project called Sybil must have a really strong actress in the title role. Screenwriter Stewart Stern remembers seeing a number of young hopefuls parade through the casting office. Eventually lunchtime came and went, and everyone was more than ready to take a break. That’s when Sally Field entered, and to everyone’s total surprise BECAME the character in all her complexity. From that point on, no one else was considered, and Field’s on-screen 1976 triumph won her both an Emmy and the industry’s full respect.  Within three years she won her first Oscar for Norma Rae, and the second one—for Places in the Heart—followed eight years later. Then Steven Spielberg eventually cast her opposite Daniel Day-Lewis as Mary Todd Lincoln, surely no one’s idea of a cute ingenue. (She’s said she DEFINITELY has no desire to play Mrs. Lincoln again via Cole Escola’s outrageous Broadway hit, Oh, Mary!)    

 In reading up, after the fact, on Sybil, I had a bit of a shock. It seems that in a 2011 book called Sybil Exposed, author Debbie Nathan uncovered the fact that the real Sybil—actually named Shirley Mason— later in life admitted to deliberately concocting the multiple  personalities she claimed were taking over her body. This was, apparently, her way of keeping her therapist, Dr. Connie Wilbur, deeply involved in her case. So in a sense, we’ve all been bamboozled, right? I’d love to see Sally Field  next play the real-life Dr. Wilbur, taken in by the masquerade concocted by her patient.

 

 

Remarkably Bright Actress: Sally Field

Not long ago, I read Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus, a 2016 non-fiction study of one of the most fascinating of all sea creatures. Montgomery’s book, based on the author’s years of interaction with giant Pacific octopuses at the New England Aquarium, gave me a new respect for an undersea critter with eight limbs, several hearts, and a good deal of intelligence. One of Montgomery’s many fans is Shelby van Pelt, whose debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, became a worldwide best-seller. One of its unusual features: an octopus named Marcellus serves as its narrator.

 Van Pelt’s novel has evolved into a new Amazon made-for-TV drama that’s now nominated for two Emmy awards, including Outstanding Movie. Moreover, star Sally Field is up for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Despite her two Oscars and multiple other prizes, Field is by no means a shoo-in: also in the running are such bright—and much younger—Hollywood stars as Claire Danes (The Beast in Me) and Carey Mulligan (Beef).

 But for Emmy voters, Field will be hard to overlook. In a poignant tale that somehow avoids being cloying, she’s a widow living in a small costal town of what looks to be Washington State. Having survived her son’s death and other heartbreak, she has turned inward, taking an after-hours job as a cleaning lady at the local aquarium where she identifies with the frequently on-the-loose Marcellus. Though she resists most human relationships, she remains spunky (in that irresistible Sally Field way), even after she’s sprained her ankle and seen her janitorial job claimed by an unhappy young musician. Cameron, a drifter, is on the lookout for the father who’s missing from his life. Of course Field’s character, Tova Sullivan, ultimately gets involved with his quest; both eventually find rewards in unexpected places. At the end it all ties together, perhaps too neatly, but the sincerity of everyone involved comes through . Kudos to Alfred Molina who gives the octopus an acerbic, authoritative voice, and to all the technical wizards who make a sometimes puppet/sometimes CGI cephalopod seem to have a life of its own.  

Field’s career has been one of Hollywood’s longest, starting off when she was barely out of her teens with such lightweight TV fare as the title roles in Gidget and The Flying Nun. Trying to break away from these “cute” performances, she fought for the role of a young woman with multiple-personality disorder in the acclaimed TV film, Sybil (1976), winning her first Emmy. She went on to win two Best Actress Oscars, one for her role as a spunky union organizer in Norma Rae (1979)) and a second for her portrayal of a (yes) spunky Texas widow in Places in the Heart (1984). Always tiny and youthful-seeming, she gradually evolved into a mature on-screen wife and mother, notably as Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Spielberg’s 2012 Lincoln. For this highly dramatic performance she was yet again Oscar-nominated, but lost out to Anne Hathaway for Les Misérables.

Now almost 80, Field seems in interviews both as sweet and as spunky as ever.  Which doesn’t stop her for being convincingly crochety as Tova Sullivan. There’s an ornery side to this character that stops her from appearing overly twee, and we’re meant to recognize that at times she can be totally exasperating. No wonder that the hyper-sensitive Cameron, well-played by Bill Pullman’s son Lewis, at first considers her merely a pain in the neck. Marcellus the Octopus, though, is smart enough to see Tova as the caring friend she is.

 

“The Accused”: Alumni from the Roger Corman School of Directing

One of the late Roger Corman’s many claims to fame is his knack for sniffing out talented future directors. Some of his most notable discoveries—Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich—entered Cormanville long before I did. But when I joined the staff of Corman’s New World Pictures in 1973 I met some eager young chaps who’d do just about anything for a chance to direct a low-budget genre flick. In those days Joe Dante (who’d go on to make such pop culture landmarks as Gremlins) was Roger’s trailer cutter, a quiet fellow who hardly seemed capable of commandeering a film set. And wandering the corridors of New World Pictures you’d find many a scruffy wannabe, each of them hoping for his big break.

 I especially remember Jonathan Demme, a shaggy-haired writer-type who favored brown-and-white saddle oxfords and would cruise the halls with his very tall wife in tow. (In later years he’d shed the wife and adopt a more blow-dried look.) When I first met him, he was just back from the Philippines, where he’d directed for Roger a classic women-in-prison opus, Caged Heat. Later he moved on to much better opportunities at much bigger companies, eventually winning an Oscar for directing a 1991 blockbuster, The Silence of the Lambs. I also fondly remember Paul Bartel, a wildly eccentric sometimes-actor whose 1975 directing debut for Roger, Death Race 2000, led to such indie triumphs as the hilariously gruesome Eating Raoul (1982). And then there was Jonathan Kaplan, who graduated from sexy Corman nurse movies (Night Call Nurses) to action flicks (White Line Fever, 1975).

 Kaplan’s career hit the skids after years of being offered only the same kind of projects he’d already mastered, what he described as "boy meets truck, boy gets truck, boy loses truck and boy gets truck again." But in 1988 he bounced back with a powerful drama that helped Jodie Foster win her first Oscar. The movie was The Accused, a moderately-budgeted legal thriller. The top-billed star was Kelly McGillis, who had recently grabbed attention as the beautiful Amish widow in Witness, and followed that up by  playing Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in Top Gun. In The Accused, McGillis  was a hard-driving district attorney determined to prosecute the young men who joined in the gang assault on her client, a small-town waitress. It was by no means a given that Foster would take on the role of the rape victim. Due to the film’s graphic nature, the part of Sarah Tobias was turned down by a number of rising actresses. Foster at this point had largely backed away from acting, focusing on her studies at Yale, and there were some who felt she lacked the blatant sexuality the role demanded.

 When I watched The Accused, I didn’t know quite what to expect. The film starts just after the hideous doings in the back room of a scruffy bar. Foster’s Sarah escapes from her tormentors and ends up at a local clinic, shell-shocked. It’s the opposite of the spunky performances we usually associate with Foster. But gradually, as the legal proceedings move forward, we watch her character regain her sense of self—her cockiness, her anger. The rape sequence itself is held until near the end –-as a flashback mirroring goings-on in the courtroom—and it’s clear to see what’s triggered it: Sarah boldly flaunts her sexuality, until the moment when she discovers it’s too late to say “No.” The whole grotesque business, with looky-loos egging on the perpetrators, is hard to forget. Score another triumph for a Roger Corman director-in-the-making.  

 

Pretty in Black and White

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, after viewing several vintage Anne Hathaway films, about how often Hollywood has focused on stories of young women emerging to take over their lives. Obviously, such plot lines are meant to appeal to youthful female audiences, who hope that they too will burst like butterflies from the drab cocoons that have long been holding them in. Think Cinderella turning from a scullery maid to a princess. Think Eliza Doolittle casting aside her Cockney upbringing and her native speech patterns to go to the Embassy Ball and be mistaken for royalty. Think, more recently, of Pretty in Pink (representing other Eighties films of John Hughes) in which Molly Ringwald crosses from the wrong side of the tracks to wow her classmates at her high school prom.

 In many of these films, the focus is on the young protagonist discovering her physical beauty, or maybe demonstrating that she has learned the social skills that will help her navigate the adult world. But there’s a classic 1950 black-&-white comedy (somehow characterized by the often obtuse Golden Globes folks as a drama) in which the female protagonist blossoms, but not because of her improved looks or social manners. Instead, Born Yesterday is a comic paean to the way that political education can change a gal’s life.

 Born Yesterday, based on Garson Kanin’s hit Broadway play, stars the inimitable Judy Holliday as a former nightclub cutie with a New Yawk accent that won’t quit. Though basically a chorine with pretensions—she once spoke three lines on stage—she has long been the sidepiece of Harry Brock, a crude and very rich junkman with his eye on a shady deal involving a U.S. Congressman. (He’s played in the film by Broderick Crawford, who’d just nabbed an Oscar for his lead role as a Huey Long-type in All the King’s Men.) Harry loves Billie Dawn, when he isn’t busy abusing her, because she accepts her own ignorance and never pries into his sordid business affairs. But now that he’s arrived in Washington DC, he figures her uncouth social behavior may become a liability. So he recruits a straight-arrow local reporter named Paul (William Holden) to give Billie a smattering of education.

 Squiring Billie around the nation’s capital, Paul gives her some serious tutelage about American ideals and principles (something we could surely all use today). Though her vocabulary is limited and her shrill voice seems capable of shattering glass, she discovers in herself a thirst for knowledge, as well as a firm determination to no longer be anyone’s patsy. Needless to say, this change in attitude makes an ongoing relationship with Harry Brock untenable. And the smart, well-educated Paul (perhaps savoring his role as her Pygmalion) comes to love Billie’s oddball combination of budding idealism and street smarts.

 George Cukor was known, perhaps unfairly, as a women’s director. He certainly knew how to transfer Holliday’s acclaimed stage performance as Billie Dawn to the silver screen. The voice, the dimples, and the would-be haughty walk are all captured for moviegoers to enjoy. Holliday’s characterization is both funny and lovable, which is perhaps how she remarkably beat out Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter (All About Eve) for the Best Actress Oscar of 1951. It was the great triumph of a brilliant but sadly short career. Born in 1921, she died of breast cancer in 1960, just a decade after her greatest triumph. Her last role was a musical performance in another Broadway transfer, Bells are Ringing, in which she was once again irresistibly adorable.

 Dedicated to the memory of Dolly Parton, another adorable blonde who was smarter than she sometimes let on.

 

 

Hayden Panettiere: Showbiz Kid

I’m not exactly a Hayden Panettiere groupie. Truth be told, I never saw the TV series for which she was best known: Nashville and Heroes. Yes, I watched her childhood performance in Remember the Titans, but couldn’t tell you anything about it. So I was surprised by the outpouring of public grief that has followed Panettiere’s sudden death this past week at the sadly early age of 36. I read with great interest that—following a broken engagement, severe post-partum depression, and a long sad history of substance abuse—Hayden had published in May of this year a memoir titled This Is Me: A Reckoning. In it she owned up to a difficult coming-of-age and an ongoing struggle with mental health issues.

 All this meant something to me because, while writing for the Hollywood Reporter, I had interviewed a newly eleven-year-old Hayden (and her mom) for a special “showbiz kids” issue that featured the young actress as “one to watch.” We spoke on the telephone, and both mother and daughter sounded intelligent and serious about the complexities of a life lived on soundstages. Mom Lesley, once an actress herself, talked knowingly about casting sessions and about gauging her daughter’s comfort level when she was introduced to challenging material. Lesley clearly saw herself as a serious protector of Hayden’s physical and mental well-being.

 Hayden, who began her career doing commercials when she was a mere 8 months old, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her on-set adventures. She proved herself a trouper, even when expected to perform difficult stunts like (in an historical drama called The Affair of the Necklace) jumping out of a moving carriage while carrying a heavy pretend-baby on her back. When we spoke, she seemed well aware that as she matured there would be new expectations to manage. Said she, “I’m sure when the kissing scenes come along, I’ll be very uncomfortable.” Giggling, she speculated on what it must be like to smooch in front of the cameras, with a director on hand to call the shots.

 I asked how well she fit into her home environment when she was not busy filming. She admitted that having friends was a bit complicated: “They judge me by my acting and not by me.”  Nonetheless, “I don’t think of myself as anybody special. I think of myself as just another kid.” 

 When writing my article about showbiz kids like Hayden, I consulted with Dr. Charles Portney, a psychiatrist who focused on adolescents. In his SoCal practice he treated many former young actors who were now finally able to speak for themselves. In some cases, patients who had played the role of crime victims suffered years later from “delayed onset” trauma. Another danger, he told me, was that kids might come out of their Hollywood experience “precocious and cynical. It’s too big a dose of reality at too young an age.” In the long term, they “can have problems, because your childhood is supposed to prepare you for adulthood.”

 Dr. Portney made clear that “there are many [showbiz] parents who try very hard to do a good job.” Still, you can only protect  your child up to a point. In the long run, showbiz kids are “oriented toward giving a performance, not preparing for adulthood.” When kids are too precocious, it’s at the expense of normal childhood experiences. This can affect future romantic and intimate relationships.  

 Some young actors, whether through good parenting or good luck, survive beautifully: look at Jodie Foster or Ron Howard. For Hayden Panettiere and others, though, truly adult coping skills are delayed until too late.

 

 

 

 

Anne Hathaway: Once Upon a Princess

A long airline flight always gives me a great excuse to check out movies old and new on my seat-back screen. Sometimes there are surprises: flying over the Atlantic in a plane full of sleeping passengers, I decided to watch an oldie: Astaire and Rogers in 1939’s The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. It’s the true tale of a famous dance duo hugely popular just before World War I.  I hadn’t realized, until I saw the film, that the historical Vernon, who had patriotically joined the Royal Flying Corps, died in a plane crash. Uh oh—not a nice thing to think about while aloft in the middle of the night.

 A recent cross-country trip allowed me to watch the new sequel to a comedy favorite of mine, The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Now, twenty years later, filmmakers have gathered the original cast—Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci—to update the story of an ambitious young journalist who finds herself taking orders from the imperious editor of Runway magazine, played by Streep with memorable sangfroid. In the original film, Hathaway’s Andy Sachs was a smart but naïve young college grad who thought she could handle the complexities of a job in the fashion industry while dealing with the demands of the capricious editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly. Ultimately Andy learned . . . and triumphed (mostly) on her own terms. I had heard that the 2026 sequel would take an updated look at the waning role of the print medium within today’s fashion industry, and so it does. Andy is now an award-winning journalist with a new, and much more impressive, job at Runway, and Miranda is now threatened by unexpected forces that want to push her out of her top-dog position. That being said, not a lot has changed in terms of the film’s central relationship. Miranda is still icy; Andy is still puppy-dog eager. (Actually, it’s supporting player Blunt who makes the most striking evolution in the course of the story.) 

Having mildly (but no more) enjoyed this return to the ladies of Runway, I decided to check out the film that first put Hathaway on the map. She was not yet 20 when she starred for director Garry Marshall in Disney’s The Princess Diaries (2001), a family-friendly tale of a girl who makes the most romantic of transformations. Mia, played by Hathaway, is a San Francisco kid with a bohemian mom and very few friends at her trendy prep school. When she first appears on screen she’s almost unrecognizable in her requisite uniform: her hair is a frizzy mop and she wears thick spectacles. Beyond this, she’s gangly and awkward, and  clearly not the greatest of students. But life has a surprise for her, which comes in the form of a soignée Julie Andrews, who turns out to be Mia’s long-absent paternal grandmother—and the reigning monarch of the tiny European kingdom of Genovia. Now Mia, because of her father’s recent death, is next in line for the throne . . . and therefore must learn to conform to royal standards of looks and behavior. Hilarity ensues, as the ugly duckling is (with her grandmother’s loving help) transformed into a swan. It’s the Disney Princess version of Andy Sacks discovering how to dress, how to behave, and how to thrive in the fashion industry.

 Come to think of it, movies are full of these Cinderella stories, in which the drab or gawky young girl metamorphoses into some sort of princess.  I’m thinking, for instance, of Gigi, but YOU may have other examples in mind.