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.

 

Confronting “The Beast in Me”

Since around the time that my Roger Corman biography came out, I’ve been part of a lively group called Biographers International Organization. This group, officially founded in 2010 by the indefatigable James McGrath Morris and some of his biographer peers, is devoted to the art and craft of biography. BIO’s advisory council has included a who’s who of famous biographers (including Pulitzer Prize winners like Debby Applegate, Robert Caro, Ron Chernow, and Stacy Schiff), but anyone who finds biography of interest is welcome to join for a nominal fee. Perks include an annual conference, an informative monthly newsletter, and Zoom gatherings galore. And, of course, a Facebook group in which biographers from around the globe trade info, cheer one another on, and generally stay in touch.   

 I bring this up here because of a hot recent topic on the BIO Facebook page: the limited Netflix series called The Beast in Me. The dauntless biographer Carl Rollyson (who’s credited with almost as many books as Heinz has varieties) was, I believe, the first to encourage his fellow members to check out the eight-part series. It’s a cracking good thriller, featuring two of filmdom’s finest, Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a best-selling author grieving the loss of her young son in an accident involving a drunk driver. Rhys (a Welsh actor who speaks flawless American English in this series) plays Nile Jarvis, a wealthy entrepreneur notorious in the press because of the mysterious disappearance of his wife.

 One reason Rollyson and other serious biographers are keen on The Beast in Me is because Aggie’s fame comes from her publication of a non-fiction book about her late father. When the series opens, she’s struggling to move ahead on a joint biography of two recent Supreme Court justices, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were both courtroom adversaries and personal friends. A fertile topic for a book, perhaps, but maybe not one that Aggie’s equipped to handle. So when her new neighbor, the cheerfully sinister Nile Jarvis, proposes himself as her new biographical subject, she pays attention. Next thing you know, they’re having long tête-à-têtes in which, while proclaiming himself innocent of serious crimes, Nile Continues to find ways to get under Aggie’s skin.

 The series is riveting, though maybe its wrap-up is not quite as effective as it might be. It’s exciting to see Danes (who surpasses even Keri Russell of The Diplomat in looking worried and disheveled) struggling to know how to handle the disarmingly chummy new next-door pal she’s pledged to present to the world on the page. As Carl Rollyson has pointed out to his fellow authors, biography can also be seen as autobiography. The way a biographer approaches his or her subject is very much a secret glimpse into that biographer’s own psyche. Aggie, for instance, must ultimately admit to seeing in herself something resembling Nile’s cold-blooded approach to the world.

 I agree completely. I’d even say that my three books reveal to the reader three very different aspects of my own path through life. Writing about my longtime boss, filmmaker Roger Corman, I was something of a cynic: sassy and even snarky. My Ron Howard bio brought out the optimist in me. Suddenly I was hopeful about the human capacity for goodness. My 2017 study of The Graduate, officially titled Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, saw me as a member of a youthful generation  hugely influenced by this smart little comedy, but also—fifty years later—as someone who had learned a great deal about life as the decades wore on.

 

 

 

Juliet . . . & (eventually) Romeo

Methinks that every generation has its own Romeo and Juliet, in which the tragic lovers reflect the concerns of the day. The 1936 film directed by George Cukor came out in the midst of the Great Depression. This was a time when young people going the movies craved glamour and sumptuous production values, things they couldn’t find in their own daily lives. Cukor’s MGM-based production featured major (though overaged) stars. Leslie Howard, as Romeo, was in his forties, and Norma Shearer, who played Juliet (and was married to studio honcho Irving Thalberg), was about 34, more than double the age of Shakespeare’s teenage heroine. The film was shot decorously, on elaborate sets, and given the full prestige treatment, complete with splashy roadshow engagements where illustrated programs were sold. (Yes, my mother bought one, and saved it for many decades)

 More than 20 years later, in 1957, a much-updated version of Romeo and Juliet became the toast of Broadway. This of course was West Side Story. The Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim musical reimagined the star-crossed lovers as recent New Yorkers from rival cultural backgrounds, with Tony as a Polish-American founder of a street gang called the Jets, and Maria, newly arrived from Puerto Rico, as naturally affiliated with the Sharks. The hit play became in 1964 a mega-hit film that gobsmacked everyone at my high school. We were much taken, in that era, with the promise of social justice for all, and the tragic story of lovers unable to transcend the enmity all around them hit us hard. (Steven Spielberg’s 2021 rethinking of the same musical has its merits, but its box-office reception was far less overwhelming, probably because the concerns of moviegoers had much changed in the intervening fifty-plus years.)

 What I consider MY Romeo and Juliet was the Franco Zeffirelli version that came out in the fraught year 1968. It was filmed on location in medieval Italian towns, and was the first cinematic version to feature actors close in age to Shakespeare’s actual characters. Zeffirelli apparently considered casting Paul McCartney and other rock gods of the era, but ended up with two unknowns, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, who were cast when they were 16 and 15, respectively, but aged a year in the course of filming. We college students of the era, many caught up with our own first big romances, watched this movie in a sort of swoony daze, fully understanding the erotic passions of the two young lovers.

 Leave it to Baz Luhrmann to jazz up the Shakespearean story, giving it a kind of hipster sensibility. The year was 1996, and the stars were Leonardo DiCaprio (then 21) and Claire Danes (about 17). The feuding families were played as 20^th century Miami mobster types, with the Capulets now having some Latin roots. The setting was Verona Beach, and one key scene was played in a swimming pool. There’s still some well-spoken Shakespearean poetry, but also guns and party drugs.

 I’m reminiscing about all this because I’ve just seen the L.A. stage production of & Juliet, a London and Broadway hit musical that posits Juliet (waking in the tomb beside the dead Romeo) deciding not to kill herself for love. What follows is a riotous comedy in which pop songs from Max Martin are incorporated into Juliet’s romantic adventures in Paris. (Brittany Spears’ “Oops!... I Did It Again” becomes an acknowledgement that Juliet falls for cute guys a tad too quickly.) The many teens in the house cheered for Juliet’s developing feminist consciousness and for the “woke” gay empowerment motif that predominates. Me? I just felt rather old.