You know The Chair and Holly have been dealing with A LOT in the last few weeks when events in our REAL LIVES prevented us from weighing in on the Oscar nominations.
It’s been… a lot
But rest assured both Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie will be just fine, and have probably already recovered from not receiving nods in the directing and lead actress categories for this year’s unprecedented worldwide box-office champ ($1.44 billion and still counting) – Barbie.
In fact, they can add the nominations they did receive this year for best picture (Robbie as producer) and best adapted screenplay (Gerwig and Noah Baumbach as co-writers) to the ones they previously received from the Academy in the last few years for directing (Ladybird) and acting (I, Tonya and Bombshell).
winners no matter what
This, of course, is already old news because it fails to address the big, fat watchable mess of a limited series that debuted THIS week on FX from producer Ryan Murphy, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.
If you thought it couldn’t get any gayer, campier or more salacious than the Academy Award nominations, well….of course you knew it could!
The poster image alone is a gag
We’re not sure exactly what director Gus Van Sant and writer Jon Robin Baitz were thinking when they signed up for this – a new summer home? A Tesla prior to X? But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Truman Capote and the society dames he once upon a time betrayed are given an array of bitchy, though not quite witty or wise enough dialogue, and a cast of talented middle-aged actresses we don’t get to see co-starring in high profile projects often enough (Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloe Sevigny, Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald) seem to be enjoying themselves immensely.
Admittedly, it’s hard to look away even though midway through the first two episodes one sort of wonders, when will this pathetic, superficial debauchery all end? Yet after the final credits of that week’s installment are done one also finds oneself pissed off that it’s going to take a whole week of waiting to discover what they (Capote, the Swans AND the cast and crew) will do next.
We’ll be watching
Such are Ryan Murphy and company’s perverse talents – making us miss something we don’t even much like.
Speaking of which, Sunday, February 4th marks the arrival of what promises to be the very wet Grammy Awards in rainy L.A. on CBS. So many artists so many baby boomers and Gen Xers do not listen to yet claim to know. Well, this is the one night of the year we – okay I – can catch up!
Besides, Joni Mitchell will be there singing for the first time….ever.
As will we next week since, truly, there is only so much real life we can take.
It’s been said many times that everyone has a price.
What this means is that people will do anything if they are paid enough money or given what they want.
So the question we all need to seriously ask ourselves during these very turbulent times is:
What is YOUR price?
Is it safety from real or imagined enemies, foreign or domestic?
That is to say, doing whatever it takes to bar morally unknowable immigrants (Note: nee…all of them?) from entering our country? Or is it prohibiting any morally questionable person in support of such a policy from dining in your restaurant, not to mention, continuing as president?
Perspective
What is YOUR price?
Is it about ensuring our country thrives financially, as well as ethically?
That is to say, making sure you have a president whose first priority is cutting taxes, creating old-fashioned jobs for the long ignored and appointing Supreme Court justices who will once it again make it difficult or illegal for women to get an abortion? Or is it ceasing communication with family and now former friends who believe in all of the above, while screaming at the top of your lungs in their faces, or from the rooftops or on our airwaves, to counter their selling out our most precious American ideals of freedom, equality and democracy for all?
What is YOUR price?
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
You see where this is going. I had planned on continuing but the list and the metaphors could be – and are – endless as we approach July 4, 2018 – the 242nd anniversary of American independence.
Several days ago I watched What Price Hollywood a 1932 film directed by George Cukor about a spunky waitress who serves drinks to a charming, drunken Hollywood director that gives her a bit part in his movie, guides her to stardom and then dissipates into a state of alcoholic disrepair as her life blossoms.
The plot has since been appropriated by numerous movies, including the many versions of A Star Is Born (Note: The new Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga one opens Oct. 5, and yes, I’m counting the days). Still, this does not mean it is any less ironic or timely.
Click for the OFFICIAL countdown (to the minute) #really #REALLY
There is no reality where you can get everything you want without it costing you something. It wasn’t the waitress’ fault the director became a hopeless alcoholic and ruined his life but because he was such a great mentor and friend it breaks her heart. That is the way the drama works because that is the way the world is – we achieve things and the norms and/or people we counted on and loved quite suddenly, at least to us, fall by the wayside.
A more contemporary comparison might be Indecent Proposal, a 1993 film where billionaire Robert Redford offers happily married Demi Moore a flat $1,000,000 to spend the night with him, no strings attached. After discussing it with her high school sweetheart husband, the financially strapped Woody Harrelson, and reassuring him of their forever love, the couple agrees to the Faustian bargain and… well… it goes as Faustian bargains go if not for test marketing and a somewhat tacked on Hollywood ending.
Girl how did you think this was going to pan out? #dowagergetsreal
Meaning, if someone is going to pay you $1,000,000 suffice it to say it IS going to cost YOU – a lot – and it may not be measurable by mere currency.
It certainly seems like US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, has the right to retire from the bench anytime he wants. Yet when I read this week that he was not so subtly reassured of his legacy beforehand by the White House, and that his eldest son worked for years with Trump on real estate deals at Deutsche Bank, the institution that loaned Trump a BILLION dollars, I couldn’t help but cynically and rhetorically ask the justice, and myself, – what price?
Me… all week
Of course I will never know if a price was exacted or if this justice – the Republican who was actually the swing vote in making gay marriage the law of the land – was swayed by any of it, or by them.
So it’s instead easier for me to stew over the millions of Americans (Note: And perhaps a handful of Russian bots) who voted for and still support a president who consistently calls the press the enemy of the American people or very bad people on the very day that five journalists were gunned down in their Maryland newsroom by a crazed shooter with a vendetta against their paper. Did Trump’s words contribute to egging the guy on in that particular moment? Again, we’ll never know. But for any of his supporters who still get joy from and continue to revel in how he’s characterized one of the foundations of our democracy – the free press – again I ask – what price?
And then – well, there are the immigrant kids in those cages. Mostly brown. Many fleeing violence in their home country – the way my grandparents and friends’ relatives did when they escaped the Nazis and came here in the 1930s and early forties. Or the way my internist’s family did when he was smuggled out of war torn southeast Asia in the 1970s. Or how my dental hygienist managed it when her family ran for their lives from Iran in the 1980s.
Today in America
None of them were forcibly separated from their parents by the US government when they arrived at our borders seeking asylum (Note: The latter a legal right of ANYONE arriving at our shores. Asylum, that is).
notes from a chair 