Last week, we got the opportunity watch an artist play crazy and to watch a fool and his cult do the same.
Of the two experiences, the clear winner was the artist. In midtown Manhattan, at The Hayes Theater we watched Jessica Lange star as a human monster named Phyllis in Paula Vogel's MOTHER PLAY. She is amazing and you have a little over two weeks to experience her performance onstage. If you have HBO, you can experience her in THE GREAT LILLIAN HALL in which she plays a theater actress who is experiencing the onset of dementia. In both roles, she excels.
Not only that, she demonstrates why film went through such a fallow period. Jessica's training was unique and that should be one lesson here. She studied acting, yes. She also studied mime. And it's the latter, often ignored and/or ridiculed that may have given her the bedrock to build her many amazing performances on.
Her body tension is a thing to marvel over in many performances and it might even outdo Bette Davis' amazing use of body tension in JEZEBEL.
In a better period of time, Jessica would have been ranked with Bette and the other greats.
"Ava and C.I., Jessica has received two Academy Awards, three Emmys, five Golden Globes and a Tony."
She's won her applause. Other actresses have won applause as well.
But in the 80s and 90s, especially, and, to some degree since, they and other actresses were held in check by an overpraised hollow bunny.
Yes, talk Meryl Streep -- the most overpraised actor of her time because, yes, even a crazy fool can utter truthful statement from time to time.
For years, we used to argue that Meryl's talents didn't translate as well to the screen. Then we saw her in MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN and realized that, no, her onstage performances didn't any deeper than the superficial nonsense she does onscreen.
Meryl's career was protected and sculpted by a man, Sam Cohn, who understood an industry axiom: Hollywood wants what it can't have. Which is why he kept her out of California unless she was making a film or doing promotion (attending awards show is promotion).
Like Madonna, well groomed is usually the best that Meryl can hope for. She's never been attractive -- a detail Joe Queenan rightly pointed out decades ago. Cohn knew that he had to put 'special' into the Streep brand so instructed her to keep the film community at arms length. Otherwise? They might have taken a good long look at her and grasped she was not star material.
She and Cohn kept up the deception for decades but then Meryl got in a snit fit that she was not being paid as much as Ahnuld and others. Ahnuld was making $20 million and more a film in the 90s and the 'great' Meryl Streep was lucky to hit three million a role.
Maybe it was her preening ego or maybe she just doesn't understand math but the speech did not go over well. During the 90s, a box office bomb for Ahnuld was THE LAST ACTION HERO (a little over forty million in domestic ticket sales) and that this was what a 'hit' Meryl Streep film struggled to make. POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, for example, just made it into the forty million domestic box office and without a bare chested Kurt Russell and an amazing performance by Cher, SILKWOOD wouldn't have made $35 million in ticket sales. HEARTBURN -- a 'hit' for Meryl -- sold $25 million in ticket sales. PLENTY? Six million dollars.
Over end over, she failed to deliver ticket buyers. Over and over, a Meryl Streep film opened across the country to half-empty theaters over and over. And when she did have claim to a hit? No, not DEATH BECOMES HER. That film pulled in $75 million because they were smart enough to beef up Goldie Hawn's role (Goldie owns the film) and because a lot of Bruce Willis fans turned out for the film. But in something like OUT OF AFRICA, where she could have made it about the money the film made, she instead made it about her vanity. She did not enjoy working with Robert Redford and she whispered all over town. It's even in Cher's first 'autobiography' where Cher shares Meryl told her never to work with "R." She trashes everyone if she's in a hit -- she trashed Goldie after DEATH BECOMES HER, she trashed Dustin Hoffman after 1979's KRAMER V KRAMER, she trashed Robert after OUT OF AFRICA
There was often strong work in films she was in during the 80s and 90s but it wasn't strong work from her. Goldie's Helen Sharp remains a memorable character, Diane Keaton as the terminally ill Bessie in MARVIN'S ROOM, Shirley MacLaine's Doris Mann in POSTCARDS -- Jack Nicholson and Stockard Channing walk off with HEARTBURN. She just has no star power and her talents aren't developed.
She is a potato head. She's never in the body of a character. She does an interesting accent or speech tick and then tends to stand outside the performance with a aren't-I-cute attitude.
No, Meryl, you aren't cute and you've never been a cute.
You have come closer to destroying American films than any other performer. Imagine a real film actress like Debra Winger starring in SILKWOOD, for example. Or Sissy Spacek opposite Jack Nicholson in IRONWEED, Goldie Hawn in SOPHIE'S CHOICE, Charlotte Rampling in THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN, Jacqueline Bisset in STILL OF THE NIGHT, Diane Keaton in DEFENDING YOUR LIFE . . .
Or picture Anjelica Huston as Eva The Grand High Witch in THE WITCHES.
Oh, you don't have to on that last one.
Meryl turned down that role. And trashed it publicly. It was "anti-woman." And Anjelica triumphed in the role.
Every now and then, Meryl will sign on to play a bad woman, a bitch, someone evil. And then she'll destroy the script by refusing to play it. As with THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, she will repeatedly soften the character and destroy it. It's why her filmography is one mediocrity after another. Faye Dunaway has CHINATOWN, NETWORK, 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR -- memorable films, great cinema. Meryl? She's got PLENTY, A CRY IN THE DARK, THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN, FALLING IN LOVE, BEFORE AND AFTER, DARK MATTER, LION FOR LAMBS, HOPE SPRINGS, -- it's a long and sorry patch of film history. Didn't have to be that way. Real actresses might have saved some of those films -- they certainly could have improved them. But the actresses mentioned above were short changed as were Theresa Russell, Glenn Close, Angela Bassett, Sigourney Weaver, Kathleen Turner, Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lili Taylor, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Judy Davis, Melinda Dillon, Amanda Plummer, Laura Dern, Bridget Fonda . . . Imagine those women taking on one of the roles Meryl bumbled and imagine them delivering -- the whole history of cinema changes.
But the hollow marionette could only fool the people for so long. Jessica Lange is great as Lillian Hall but, guest what, Meryl Streep was supposed to have played the part. She didn't. She's been exposed as a very limited talent which is why she's a supporting player on HULU's ONLY MURDERERS IN THE BUILDING. Supporting player. That's how low she's sunk.
She brought it on herself. Along with her failure to ever truly burrow into a character in one film after another, she had two other things against her.
Harvey Weinstein.
That's was the first strike.
Rose McGowan was detailing what happened to her at the hands of abuser and rapist Harvey.
Meryl owes a lot of her career to Weinstein and she immediately stuck up for him. Ronan Farrow details just a tiny bit of that in his book on Weinstein -- CATCH AND KILL: LIES, SPIES, AND A CONSPIRACY TO PROTECT PREDATORS.
Rose had called Meryl out online and Meryl was apparently too stupid to grasp that Rose and Ronan were communicating constantly. In his book, Ronan gave a very watered down version of the exchange -- where Meryl tries to get him off the story of Harvey's abuse by insisting that Harvey's done so many great things for the Democratic Party. Rose knew about that before she Tweeted and she knew the full exchange that took place -- an exchange that would kill whatever following Meryl has in the public. It's what's killed the industry's interest in hiring her.
Strike two brings us to the other main fool we're noting in this piece: Donald Trump.
Like the child in THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES, dunce Donald stated a bit of truth when he called Meryl the most overrated actress of all time.
There was an immediate effort to circle the wagons but there was also the knowledge that, hey, on this, Donald's right.
It didn't help Meryl's case that she was now an exposed cover up artist for Harvey's abuses, assaults and rapes. But it also didn't help her that she tried to make it a free speech issue as she promoted THE POST. Not only was THE POST an awful film and her acting even more barren than usual, but there was also her need, in 2017, to present THE WASHINGTON POST as something to praise. It was heroic, Meryl wanted the world to know.
The world shot back: THE WASHINGTON POST sold the Iraq War.
And Donald Trump sold the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt against the United States. It was a failed coup but an attempted coup none the less. The ultimate punishment for such an action (treason) is the death penalty.
So it was interesting to watch his reaction and the reactions of his cult to last week's verdict in the hush money case. Donald was found guilty on all 34 counts.
Long noted for her portliness, defector (to Russia) Tara Reade wanted the world to know this was "lawfare." And, no, that's not arguing fair law. It's the claim that the law is being used unfairly to persecute the disgustingly obese Donald Trump.
When she can put her leg of Pacifica Walrus down long enough to speak without food in her mouth, Tara and her crowd will insist that this has never, EVER, happened before!
Apparently, their 'argument' (lament) is that no one ever even tried to convict Abraham Lincoln when he bribed his porn star to shut up and then hid the bribe as an election expense?
This is how Amy Goodman reported it on headlines for Friday's DEMOCRACY NOW!:
Guilty. After three weeks of testimony and less than 12 hours of deliberation, a Manhattan jury has found former President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony charges of attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election by falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment. Sentencing has been scheduled for July 11, just four days ahead of the Republican National Convention.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony. The maximum penalty is four years in prison, though Judge Juan Merchan could decline to send Trump to prison and instead impose a fine, probation or supervision. Trump is expected to appeal. He spoke to reporters outside the Manhattan courtroom after the verdict was announced.
Donald Trump: “This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt. It’s a rigged trial, a disgrace. They wouldn’t give us a venue change. We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area. This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people. And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here. You have a Soros-backed DA. And the whole thing, we didn’t do a thing wrong. I’m a very innocent man.”
We’ll have more on the historic conviction of Donald Trump after headlines.
Here's reality for Donald's cult: He broke the law and he got.
He broke a lot of other laws and walked on them (at least so far). Yes, but mobster Al Capone was put away on tax evasion. You go with the charges you can make stick.
Still Donald and every crackpot from Tara Reade to Naomi Wolf wails, "This has never happened before!"
Oh, we're sorry. You mean they didn't convict Abraham Lincoln of trying to bribe the porn star he had an affair with?
Instead of pretending others got off for the same thing, grasp the reality that as bad and as trashy as some of our previous presidents were, none was so filthy and full of so much garbage that he dragged a circus show behind him into the White House.
New laws were not created for this case. These laws were on the books. And they weren't just passed and applied retroactively. The cult can't stop lying and pretending that the fat stooge they follow got convicted from crimes he committed.
So then they start trying to pretend this is just like the show trials.
Excuse us, the big problem with the Moscow show trials wasn't a trial by jury. Donald had a jury trial and a jury came to a verdict. Donald also didn't behave like he was at a show trial -- with his nodding off, his constant farting and his refusal to testify.
Donald's not a convicted felon -- thirty-four times over.
At the end of the day, that's all on him.
And while the reviews for Donald's crazy aren't glowing the way the reviews for Jessica playing crazy are, the verdict is. On Sunday's FACE THE NATION, Margaret Brennan noted, "Our new CBS News poll finds that 57 percent of Americans think the jury
reached the right verdict, with virtually the same share, 56 percent,
saying he received a fair trial." It's not a Tony nomination, but it's an accolade all the same.
