Close's next movie, "The Wife," comes out this Friday. There is Oscar buzz. When that happens so early in the season, I worry. Once upon a time, everyone seemed really, really certain that Sally Hawkins would win the Oscar for "The Shape of Water."
-Ms. Close is the living person most-nominated for Oscars who has never actually won the Oscar. She does share this record with (dead) Deborah Kerr, who was so enchanting in "Bonjour Tristesse." If Close doesn't win for "The Wife," she will charge ahead with her film adaptation of ALW's adaptation of "Sunset Boulevard," and this, to me, seems to be a good strategy. As Ms. Close has observed, she has been in "this business" for over 40 years. The lady is tough; she has stamina. I want her to campaign, campaign, campaign.
-Everything Ms. Close says is brilliant and scintillating, all the time. In a recent issue of "People," she was effortlessly captivating. So many nuggets. To play Cruella in "101 Dalmatians," she went back to the book and discovered that Cruella is very closely related to Satan; whenever you see Cruella, she is paired with a fireplace, to make the connection clear. Close recalls the original ending of "Fatal Attraction," where she murdered herself and staged it to look as if Michael Douglas had done the deed. "Audiences didn't like that. They needed to believe that MD had a chance with his family. They needed catharsis, so my blood had to be shed." (Notice that Close does not explicitly say that she feels the revision was a good thing.)
-To appear in "Garp," a late film debut at age 35, and a debut for which she earned an Oscar nomination, Close realized she needed to "tamp down" her theatrical intensity. She had been doing stage work for years; she had been pulling Liza Minnelli stunts, playing to the back rows; all that had to stop.
-What is "The Wife"? I'm halfway through the novel. It's about a woman who has more literary talent than her husband, and she represses that talent to help her "man" make his way in the world. It's about how some straight white men tend to feel they're entitled to the universe; it's about how these men pick up pens and spill their guts out because it never, never occurs to them that a particular reader might feel uninterested in their thoughts. The "wife" is somewhat complicit in her own tragedy; she could have insisted on shouting on the page, book after book, regardless of the world's sexism, regardless of low sales. And she knows this, so a good deal of her fury is a way of not thinking about the disappointment she feels toward herself. Close says she took the role because it's unusual for her to play someone so introverted; she doesn't like to repeat the same "emotional terrain" from one film to another. (Somehow, we can't imagine Jennifer Aniston or Julia Roberts making a similar remark.)
-Great acting is partly about gestures. It is--as Colin Firth has said--about "catching lightning in a bottle." A great actor doesn't give us predictable gestures; she isn't clenching her jaw when we anticipate, ah yes, she will just clench her jaw here. A Glenn Close gesture I worship is the sphinx-like smile. You see it in "Fatal Attraction," her best movie (and one she deserved the Oscar for). It's maybe my favorite scene in all of moviemaking: the seduction. "Are you discreet?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9r9GRFUkLQ
-In this scene, MD tells a long, silly story about his mother attempting to get him to represent her in her divorce from her husband, MD's father. ("But I don't practice family law!" A little slice of ancient Greek family dysfunction. And this will be a Greek-ish tragedy we witness in the next two hours, with a knife-wielding, bunny-boiling Medea at the center.) Glenn must steer the conversation toward the sex she wishes to have, so she invents a line about "being a lawyer must mean that you're very discreet." You can feel the conversation shift gears; pulses quicken. Glenn leans in and lets her voice drop by an octave: "Are you? Discreet?" As she awaits MD's answer, she dips her cigarette into his flame--visual metonymy for sex. She knows what the answer will be. (And MD is every bit as stunning as GC in this scene, particularly when his throat tightens and he can just semi-audibly whisper, "Let's the get the check." You know what is happening in his pants. And GC's eyes--which radiate sexiness and craziness, sometimes together at once--belong in a Movie Gaze Hall of Fame.)
-Another terrific scene in this movie: When GC says, "I will not be IGNORED, Dan." The way she emphasizes "IGNORED," as if it hasn't occurred to her before that this will be Dan's strategy. The way it must twist itself in Dan's guts, like a knife. And the way GC makes you *feel* for her character, who has a valid point, and who, with a less skilled actor, might have simply come off as a comic book character. Have you bought your ticket to "The Wife" yet? Every move Glenn Close makes is a national event. Plan your outfit carefully.
-Ms. Close is the living person most-nominated for Oscars who has never actually won the Oscar. She does share this record with (dead) Deborah Kerr, who was so enchanting in "Bonjour Tristesse." If Close doesn't win for "The Wife," she will charge ahead with her film adaptation of ALW's adaptation of "Sunset Boulevard," and this, to me, seems to be a good strategy. As Ms. Close has observed, she has been in "this business" for over 40 years. The lady is tough; she has stamina. I want her to campaign, campaign, campaign.
-Everything Ms. Close says is brilliant and scintillating, all the time. In a recent issue of "People," she was effortlessly captivating. So many nuggets. To play Cruella in "101 Dalmatians," she went back to the book and discovered that Cruella is very closely related to Satan; whenever you see Cruella, she is paired with a fireplace, to make the connection clear. Close recalls the original ending of "Fatal Attraction," where she murdered herself and staged it to look as if Michael Douglas had done the deed. "Audiences didn't like that. They needed to believe that MD had a chance with his family. They needed catharsis, so my blood had to be shed." (Notice that Close does not explicitly say that she feels the revision was a good thing.)
-To appear in "Garp," a late film debut at age 35, and a debut for which she earned an Oscar nomination, Close realized she needed to "tamp down" her theatrical intensity. She had been doing stage work for years; she had been pulling Liza Minnelli stunts, playing to the back rows; all that had to stop.
-What is "The Wife"? I'm halfway through the novel. It's about a woman who has more literary talent than her husband, and she represses that talent to help her "man" make his way in the world. It's about how some straight white men tend to feel they're entitled to the universe; it's about how these men pick up pens and spill their guts out because it never, never occurs to them that a particular reader might feel uninterested in their thoughts. The "wife" is somewhat complicit in her own tragedy; she could have insisted on shouting on the page, book after book, regardless of the world's sexism, regardless of low sales. And she knows this, so a good deal of her fury is a way of not thinking about the disappointment she feels toward herself. Close says she took the role because it's unusual for her to play someone so introverted; she doesn't like to repeat the same "emotional terrain" from one film to another. (Somehow, we can't imagine Jennifer Aniston or Julia Roberts making a similar remark.)
-Great acting is partly about gestures. It is--as Colin Firth has said--about "catching lightning in a bottle." A great actor doesn't give us predictable gestures; she isn't clenching her jaw when we anticipate, ah yes, she will just clench her jaw here. A Glenn Close gesture I worship is the sphinx-like smile. You see it in "Fatal Attraction," her best movie (and one she deserved the Oscar for). It's maybe my favorite scene in all of moviemaking: the seduction. "Are you discreet?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9r9GRFUkLQ
-In this scene, MD tells a long, silly story about his mother attempting to get him to represent her in her divorce from her husband, MD's father. ("But I don't practice family law!" A little slice of ancient Greek family dysfunction. And this will be a Greek-ish tragedy we witness in the next two hours, with a knife-wielding, bunny-boiling Medea at the center.) Glenn must steer the conversation toward the sex she wishes to have, so she invents a line about "being a lawyer must mean that you're very discreet." You can feel the conversation shift gears; pulses quicken. Glenn leans in and lets her voice drop by an octave: "Are you? Discreet?" As she awaits MD's answer, she dips her cigarette into his flame--visual metonymy for sex. She knows what the answer will be. (And MD is every bit as stunning as GC in this scene, particularly when his throat tightens and he can just semi-audibly whisper, "Let's the get the check." You know what is happening in his pants. And GC's eyes--which radiate sexiness and craziness, sometimes together at once--belong in a Movie Gaze Hall of Fame.)
-Another terrific scene in this movie: When GC says, "I will not be IGNORED, Dan." The way she emphasizes "IGNORED," as if it hasn't occurred to her before that this will be Dan's strategy. The way it must twist itself in Dan's guts, like a knife. And the way GC makes you *feel* for her character, who has a valid point, and who, with a less skilled actor, might have simply come off as a comic book character. Have you bought your ticket to "The Wife" yet? Every move Glenn Close makes is a national event. Plan your outfit carefully.
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