The Sheila Variations

And the reason I read the blogs I do - including yours and Michele's - are BECAUSE of the stuff you write about and the way you write. If I didn't like it, there are about ten million other blogs out there I could read.

I mean, I love the fact that Michele took time out of all the horror about Paul Johnson's beheading to discuss cartoon characters. And I love the obsessions you get onto. If life were nothing but news and the horrors that people commit on each other - well, I'd have killed myself a long time ago. It's the fact that people have other stuff going on in their lives that they write about that delights me and keeps me returning to the blogs.

When I subscribe to a newspaper or magazine and pay for it, that's when I have the right to complain about content. And even then, I often don't, not to the writers or editors at least. (My rather expensive local paper is often eight pages long and three of those are local high school sports, like I care.)

You just keep writing about the stuff that interests you. It's what makes you so very readable: say, for instance, your reaction to AFI's tribute to Meryl Streep on television last night.

Sadness. I don't have a TV.

I love Meryl Streep. She came and did a seminar at my school ... maybe I can talk about that. She was unbelievable - and completely not what I expected.

What was the tribute like?

Absolutely the. Best. Tribute. Show. In the world. Ever. First she came out with a camera and took pictures of her friends in the audience. Then she was just so effusive about her joy at being feted. The term Drama Queen escaped my lips more than once. But in a good way. She sat with her family and every time a presenter got up she held out her arms and hands, stuck out her chin and looked like she just wanted to Eat. Them. Up. And Jim Carrey (sp?) was just over the top hilarious. If it's on again I'll tape it and get it to you. You must have a friend with a VCR.

Michael: I actually do have a television and a VCR (hence: the Bogart film festivals) - just no hook-up or cable or anything. On a clear night, I can get CBS, but that's about it.

I'd love to see it!

I saw her do The Seagull in Central Park - with Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Natalie Portman - and she was beyond great. She's better on stage than on screen, actually - she's so HUGE.

I had this fantasy last night of a screenplay that would have her, Helen Hunt and Lelee Sobieski as sisters.

By "huge" I mean that she can have the teeniest emotional response to something - and it will read in the back row.

This is such a rare gift - and as more and more actors don't do stage EVER (except when they become famous and then can "afford to") - it is becoming a lost gift.

Meryl Streep started out as a stage actress - and when she was 22 years old captured the lead in Joe Papp's Taming of the Shrew - done in Central Park. She played Kate - and Raul freakin' Julia played Petruchio. It was a coup. She beat out veteran actresses - she was completely unknown.

It made her a star in New York. I've seen a video of it - I mean, Raul Julia is BEYOND fantastic, and she is a worthy foe. There are moments where the camera is close-up on her face - it is during a live performance - and it doesn't have any of that actress-y feel. It looks like a closeup in a FILM, as opposed to a close-up of an actress during a play.

Gives me chills.

Love Lee lee sobieski. I loved her as the geeky girl in Never Been Kissed. She was adorable.

Never saw that picture. (I love the word picture for movie) It's just that the three actresses just look like sisters, to my eye. The director of the AFI show last night must have had the same notion, as he kept showing brief glimpses of LS in the audience.

Sheila

Don't worry.....I've got The Streep on tape. Your sad cable-less life makes me positively weep at night.

And I'm not kidding you.

I practically forgot Leelee Sobieski: she was like, everywhere for about five minutes, and then seems to have vanished. If you haven't seen it, Sheila, see her as this depressed self-mutilating Goth girl opposite Albert Brooks's starchy clothing-storem manager in "My First Mister." The ending is trite and awful, but their two performances are just wonderful (at least I thought so).

She was superb as well as Joan of Arc in a TV miniseries maybe four or five years ago.

And Raul Julia...my god, what a loss. So many things I could think of, and yet for some reason what immeditaely comes to my mind is his brilliant rapport with Richard Dreyfuss in Moon Over Parador, which maybe you as an actress could appreciate even more than me.

"Alfonse just isn't working for me any more, you know? He's become what we call a result-oriented performance."

"Play the part, or I'll kill you."

I remember a very funny moment in some interview with Sobieski - it was a print interview - can't remember where I read it.

At the time, she was .. 16 or something like that. Reporters tend to forget the AGE of some of these actresses, because they are so beautiful - and people project onto them maturity - when really they're just teenagers.

Anyway - the interviewer said to her, "So ... as a teenager ... what is it like to grow up in a time when there's always been AIDS? Are you concerned about it?"

And she said, "Well, I haven't had sex yet. So, no, I'm not worried about it yet."

I loved the bluntness of that! Straight on target.

Ha!! Yes, Dave - I love him in that!!

I also liked him in The Morning After - with Jeff Bridges and Jane Fonda. He played the famous hairdresser ex-husband to Jane Fonda - one of those hairdresser to the stars types. He was so excellent. Any part he played it was like you couldn't imagine another actor in the role.

I saw him on Broadway when I was a teenager in "Nine". Way too young to appreciate it, though. All I remember is that there was nudity in it, and I was shocked. :)

Saw him on stage as Don Quixote in the revival of "Man of La Mancha," opposite (of all people) Sheena Easton as Aldonza/Dulcinea. I've discovered since that that version of the show's been panned, but it seemed great to me at the time (I think I was in high school).

Raul Julia was the best Gomez Addams EVER.

No question, Emily: John Astin was good, too, but Raul Julia was simply untouchable in that role, and the chemistry between him and Anjelica Huston as Morticia...hilarious, touching and smolderingly hot all at the same time.

Totally!!

Funny factoid:

Anjelica Huston based her entire characterization of Morticia on her very good friend Jerry Hall. (Wife of Mick Jagger for a while.)

Anjelica said, "Any time I call up Jerry and say How's it going, how are you? I always hear: Great! Just WONDERFUL! Mick is great, my life is great, I absolutely love every second of my life."

I always thought that was so FUNNY. Anjelica said she felt that Morticia lived in a constant state of "self-satisfaction" - and so did Jerry Hall. Not in a bad way - just in a self-satisfied and content way.

Sheila - you'll love this -- I always thought of Morticia and Gomez in those two movies as the gothic Bogie and Bacall.

I loved the way Julia always had this knack for being subtle. One of my favorite moments in movie history is from Addams Family Values when the kids come back from camp -- "you sent us to camp. They made us sing." The look on his face was classic - all at once he was frightened, ashamed, mortified. That, along with his "dark recesses of the human soul" speech at the police station to Nathan Lane ("who are you?!?! Who moved the rock?!?!?") and the "please, take me! Take me!" scene when Pubert goes peachy under a bad spell...okay, so I've probably watched that movie too many times.

Emily - I can so see his face in that moment you describe. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

"They made us sing"

Another movie I need to see again!!

Oh, and DaveJ;

Ghostbusters arrived! I watched it the other night. So many memories came back!!

"Okay ... so she's a dog."

"she sleeps four feet above her covers..."

And then - God, so funny: when they blast the Marshmallow Man and his face changes from the happy goofy Stay Puft face into a rageful angry face ... I was HOWLING. The Marshmallow Man actually having emotions

So ridiculous. So funny

And the moment where they drop the kids at camp -- "the great outdoors, fresh air, the scent of pine", followed by the look of utter disgust and revulsion.

Then he hands Pugsley a cigar.

Sorry. I'll stop now. Maybe I'll do a Gomez Addams post at my place tonight.

HAHAHA

It's so gleefully subversive and dark. I love it.

Not to comment on the original post, but I think this emerging trend of criticizing the editorial content of blogs is evidence that the blog-o-sphere is starting to threaten mainstream journalism.