Skip to main content

Remembering Anne Heche

I don't have thoughts on "Donnie Brasco" or the Harrison Ford rom-com, but Anne Heche did star in one of my all-time favorite movies, a movie I re-watch once per year--"Walking and Talking."


Heche is unforgettable to me for having played one deeply ordinary control freak, when she must have been still in her twenties. Heche is "Laura," a woman who isn't sure how she feels about her engagement. (Her fiance is Todd Field, the brain behind "In the Bedroom.") Laura begins flirting with other men, and she picks fights with Todd Field; for example, she really wants Field to have a certain mole biopsied. Laura's concern is nice, but it's also overbearing, and it begins to feel paranoid and even monstrous.

A fight gets out of control, and later, Field tries to apologize. He presents Laura with a small jewelry box--a mea culpa. But the box actually contains the tiny, biopsied mole. This is a terrible, clumsy joke--and it's also slightly mean--and the engagement crumbles, once again.

Anne Heche is a mess throughout the movie, struggling with tiny indignities: a bad makeup consultation, a misunderstanding about a ring, a series of mysterious prank phone calls. She is wildly irrational--she plans her wedding even after dumping her other half--and still she just keeps trudging along. It's so easy to connect with her.

We wouldn't have "Laura" without Anne Heche--so that's what I'm thinking about this weekend. I'm so glad Heche made this movie.



Labels:

Comments

  1. Adolfo ProfumoAugust 13, 2022 at 9:21 PM

    We say in my community: "May her neshama have an alyah" -- "May her soul be elevated" and, I would add, my she be sending us blessings from above now that her suffering on earth has ended and now that she is in The Light.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...
3 comments
Read more

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Anniversary

 What do gay men give each other, after seven years of marriage? Tickets: Bernadette Peters, in concert. Stephen Sondheim identified BP's "Sunday in the Park" performance as one of the three or four great achievements he himself had witnessed, in musical theater history. Other actors speak of Bernadette as a teacher. Andrew Rannells has described a wish to see BP in "Follies," alone, just on a quiet afternoon, when "BP might break my heart." Victoria Clark has written about studying BP--collecting insights--in the same way the novelist Jami Attenberg has borrowed extensively from "Olive Kitteridge," by Elizabeth Strout. No one is better at seeming wounded. BP has such extraordinary access to personal pain, you feel you're overhearing a private confession. I have loved her work from my high-school years onward. My spouse allowed me to screen a clip from "A Little Night Music"; he watched from start to finish, without fidgeting or...
Post a Comment
Read more