Here’s the piece I wrote when Duvall died last year: The “pink stuff” of Shelley Duvall.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Photo by Carl Van Vechten
Margaret Walker was born in 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents were interesting accomplished people, and her childhood was filled with literature and music. Her father gave her a love of heavy-hitters like Schopenhauer, classic English literature, all poetry, and her mother steeped her in music, ragtime, and read poetry outloud, from early African-American writers like Paul Dunbar (my post about him here) to Shakespeare. Walker’s great-grandmother was a slave in Georgia, and she heard stories about this from her grandmother. The diversity of all of these influences poured into Margaret Walker’s own work. She was a kid when the Harlem Renaissance started, and she read them all. She started writing poetry and submitting it for publication.
Her first collection, For My People won the Yale Younger Poets prize (she was the first Black woman to win the prize.)
The title poem is perhaps one of her most famous (it’s printed below). It’s an anthem. The collection is filled with memorable character sketches, a portrait of a whole diverse community of people. “People” has its regular meaning, and then it has its higher meaning, as an identity marker – A people, MY people. She writes about legendary African-American figures, like John Henry and Stagger Lee.
What Walker considered her life’s work, and she worked on it for thirty years, was the historical novel Jubilee, published in 1966. Jubilee was about a slave family, based on the stories her grandmother used to tell her. Walker also did extensive research into the period. The novel spans many years, from the antebellum era, through the Civil War, through the chaos of Reconstruction. I have not read Jubilee, although I remember it being on the little display on the table in the main room of the library where I worked after school in high school. It has a very memorable cover. So this is an oversight on my part. I’ve read her poetry (I have For My People), but not Jubilee. It was an important book (recently released in a 50th anniversary edition), and a commercial success, important because it was black history written by a black person, not through the eyes of a white writer. Black experience is centralized. Of course, though, when the book came out many white critics compared it to Gone With the Wind, as in “It’s the OTHER side of Gone With the Wind!” OR, even worse, criticizing her for upholding some myth of Southern antebellum life, in the same way Gone With the Wind did. The NERVE. Margaret Walker was so annoyed by this she wrote a couple of pieces combatting the comparison.
Margaret Walker was a professor of literature for almost the entirety of her life. A major figure in 20th century African-American literature.
Here are a couple of her poems. And I promise I will read Jubilee.
For My People
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;
For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
dragging along never gaining never reaping never
knowing and never understanding;
For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
and playhouse and concert and store and hair and
Miss Choomby and company;
For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
people who and the places where and the days when, in
memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
were black and poor and small and different and nobody
cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;
For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
marry their playmates and bear children and then die
of consumption and anemia and lynching;
For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and something—something all our own;
For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;
For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
the dark of churches and schools and clubs
and societies, associations and councils and committees and
conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
false prophet and holy believer;
For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
rise and take control.
“Sit-Ins”
Greensboro, North Carolina, in the Spring of 1960
You were the first brave ones to defy their dissonance of hate
With your silence
With your willingness to suffer
Without violence
Those first bright young to fling your names across pages
Of new southern history
With courage and faith, convictions, and intelligence
The first to blaze a flaming path for justice
And awaken consciences
Of these stony ones.
Come, Lord Jesus, Bold Young Galilean
Sit Beside this Counter, Lord, with Me!
“Writers should not write exclusively for black or white audiences, but most inclusively. After all, it is the business of all writers to write about the human condition, and all humanity must be involved in both the writing and in the reading.” — Margaret Walker
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Old-timers here will remember the Rocky phase that took over for a while. Of course the movies weren’t new to me. As a matter of fact, I know the first movie by heart, practically shot for shot, and there was an infamous day when my friend Betsy and I had a sudden BURNING desire to see Rocky IV, because we fucking loved it, but it had already passed out of most theatres, but we were DETERMINED, so we looked it up (in the newspapers remember) and found it was playing in a theatre somewhere out in the middle of Connecticut so we – spur of the moment – raced to her car and set out for the adventure. So. My relationship with his movies go way back. Once I started blogging though, and writing about movies, it was fun to actually try to put into words the things I felt about him (particularly about Rocky, but there’s been more.) I have a lot of admiration for Sylvester Stallone – as an actor, yes, but REALLY as a writer – and stick up for him if I feel he is being under-valued or dismissed. The original screenplay for Rocky – not the shooting script, but the original script written by Stallone, before anyone else saw it – is a masterpiece of its kind. It’s taught in screenplay classes. It is the gold standard of How to Do It. What is fascinating about it is that it was written in such a short period – when Stallone was at his lowest point. He wrote it in his tiny apartment – he described that if he reached his arms out, he could touch both walls. He wrote it on legal pads. It took about 4 days. It is online in PDF form but I haven’t been able to locate it this morning. The shooting script, once John Avildsen came on board, didn’t change much – Avildsen said it was one of the most perfect screenplays he ever read. He read it and could SEE the movie. Stallone had done all the work. But it’s that original, written when Stallone was desperate, that is the one to seek out. His stage descriptions and character descriptions … his inclusion of subtext in stage directions – to let you know WHY a character does what he/she does … there’s a rough kind of street poetry in all of it. It reminded me of Clifford Odets’ scripts, and Stallone clocks him as an influence. You can feel it.
It’s typical in cinephile circles when Stallone comes up – to hear someone say “I really love Copland.” Yeah. Okay. Me too. But … it just seems like falling back on Copland, a “serious” movie, with “serious” actors in it, is a way to avoid the real source of Stallone’s massive popularity. Or, it makes you feel better about liking Stallone if you say “Copland”. Sorry. I know it’s rude to assign motives like that. I try not to do it. But it’s enough of a pattern – me bringing up Stallone, and some film nerd immediately mentioning Copland – that I feel on solid ground pointing it out. Yes. He’s great in Copland. But he’s EPIC in Rocky. My favorite Stallone movie, outside of Rocky, is Demolition Man.
He’s hilarious in it. And if you’ve seen him in interviews – relaxed interviews, anyway – then you know he’s very funny. Demolition Man is great because it puts him – with all his power and alpha-male leading-actor chops – into the submissive position of being an outsider and a newcomer, baffled by everything he sees. And he and Sandra Bullock are great together.
So. Without further ado: a little library of links to things I’ve written about him:
I included his wonderful mirror scene in Rocky in my piece for Oscilloscope Laboratories about scenes in movies where men look at themselves in the mirror.
Related: This is one of my favorite things I’ve written about him (if I do say so myself). During the height of the Rocky phase here, when I watched all the movies, and wrote about them, I wrote a piece about how Rocky Balboa practices telling a joke to Adrian. It took me a second to figure it out, to put it together. This is not just about his acting. It’s really about Stallone’s screenplay and how good it is. Plus a bit of character analysis. Rocky Balboa Tells a Joke.
Related again: Just some jotted-off observations during a Rocky watch.
Related again: on Rocky Balboa’s silhouette.
In looking for other things I’ve written about Stallone, I came across this piece – written when Creed came out – which reiterates a lot of the things I said above, only I go into it with a little bit more depth.
From Creed:
That iconic instantly-recognizable silhouette again!
I wrote quite a bit about Creed for Ebert:
— In the Ten Best Films of 2015, I wrote about Creed.
— In the yearly “If We Picked the Winners” series, I picked Sylvester Stallone in Creed as Best Supporting Actor. You’ll notice that I open with my irritation in re: the “He was really good in Copland” thing. It really is a tic. I’m not complaining for no reason. Was very happy to pay tribute to his acting, which – in the right circumstances – is overwhelming and powerful. Nothing against Mark Rylance, but I’m still irritated Stallone didn’t win, although I don’t believe anyone can “win” that particular contest. But in that case, I had feelings about it mainly because I think Stallone is consistently under-valued and counted-out in terms of his acting, and it’s such bullshit.
He’ll always be a champion to me.
When he smiled, sadness and grief billowed off of him almost visibly. The smile came either out of his pain – whatever that pain was – or was a defense against the pain. Either way, the pain was always there. Either way, I am hard pressed to think of an actor who makes me want to cry when he smiles.
Who replaced him? Who could play those roles now? It’s a moot question because Warren-Oates-roles aren’t written anymore. We have lost a lot in our understanding of human nature with the vanishing of Warren Oates from the screen, because he revealed things about humanity – about men, in particular – that The Powers That Be have a vested interest in suppressing. I don’t mean to sound paranoid. But seriously: perhaps only in the 70s was the burden of masculinity – the burdens of manhood – the LONELINESS of manhood – seriously and deeply explored. This was Warren Oates territory.
That smile. That smile trying to seem jolly and jocular and confident but … you could feel the anguish wafting out of him, beyond his control.
Kim Morgan is the Poet Laureate of Warren Oates. Her essay on Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is essential reading: there’s been a lot of ink spilled on that film, but Kim’s is the one to read. She wrote and narrated a video-essay on Oates for Criterion’s release of The Shooting/Ride in the Whirlwind. Oates was Monte Hellman’s muse.
Along those lines, I touched on Oates a little bit in my tribute for Monte Hellman in Film Comment.
The last couple of months – really since the beginning of the year – I’ve only had room in my head for re-watches of stuff I already know. It was crunch time for the Frankenstein book. Plus politics and pretty heavy family obligations. There are only so many hours in the day.
The X-Files rewatch.
This has been ongoing. I’m in Season 7 now.
Prime Minister (2025; d. Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe)
A documentary about the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. I reviewed.
Pride & Prejudice (2005; d. Joe Wright)
Drove to an arthouse theatre with my sister-in-law and niece to see this classic. My niece had never seen it. We had a blast.
Lilo & Stitch (2025; d. Dean Fleischer Camp)
Another movie outing with another of my nieces. An aunt-niece afternoon date. We had so much fun!
The Materialists (2025; d. Celine Song)
Allison and I went to go see this on a steamy hot day in New York. I loved Celine Song’s Past Lives, and this was really interesting. The “discourse” around it has been pretty annoying and just shows how unaccustomed we are now to watching romantic dramas for adults. Celine Song is romantic. You can tell. This is out of style. I was surprisingly moved by the ending – and the scene that unfolds as the final credits roll. I won’t say what it is, because it’s a spoiler. Chris Evans … I know so many people like that character. I’ve dated that character. A guy like that – super good-looking but maybe a little lost – and spinning his wheels because it “didn’t happen” for him – and still doing plays below Houston Street after 15 years in New York – and etc. – it is a real type of person. Perhaps it won’t be in the future since New York has become so uninviting for artists and anyone who’s not a billionaire or a Saudi prince. I liked the financial aspect of the story – it’s right there in the title – but I have to say … my experience with dating was never like this. It still isn’t. I am not strategic. Money doesn’t come into it, although I certainly don’t want a free-loader. But I’m not positioning myself for a certain demographic. I’ve had jobs since I was 13 years old. I’ve never not had a job. So I just don’t look at it in terms of “I need to be taken care of” the way you see in the film. I am not saying my way is the right way. Obviously things did not work out for me. I know my own worth but in THAT market – the one in the movie – I have NO worth. So fuck that market. This kind of thing is dating for rich people, which is part of the tension of the film, since she – the matchmaker – is NOT rich. And I have to say: Zoe Winters is in about three scenes and it’s an Oscar worthy performance. She won’t win or even be nominated but it’s the kind of acting I love most. When she cries, it comes from her GUTS. Incredible performance.
Better Sister (2025; d. Craig Gillespie, Leslie Hope, Azazel Jacobs, Dawn Wilkinson, Stephanie Laing)
Allison and I binged this one. It was so hot out and we stayed inside with the AC and watched this twisted semi-trashy but pretty interesting family thriller, starring Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks, both of whom are excellent.
Ponyboi (2025; d. Esteban Arango)
I reviewed for Ebert.
My Mom Jayne (2025; d. Mariska Hargitay)
Mariska Hargitay’s documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot. I reviewed.
Countdown (2025; created and written by Derek Haas)
Only four episodes are out. They’re releasing one episode a week through the summer. I’m so happy to have something to look forward to. I’ve said this before: streaming platforms dumping new series all at once turns a work of art into “content”. The older way is better, and better for the platforms financially: give people the impetus to come back. Keep them waiting. If what you put out is GOOD, they will look forward to the next episode. Idiots ruining the industry. I’m enjoying this very much.
The Bear, Season 4
Speaking of dumping everything at once … So I binged it and now it’s over. Now I wait for season 5. You can tell that season 3 and season 4 were filmed together, and then pried apart into two seasons. Season 3 was maybe 60% B-roll? I really liked season 3 though and I’m not saying that just to be a contrarian. I thought it was bold and I like bold, even if the boldness is not always successful. Like having the entire first episode unfold with almost no dialogue, an entire episode made up of a montage. A tone-poem. A mood piece. Now you have to be INTO the mood, so I get it if you aren’t into this mood. It’s certainly not for everyone and they REALLY pushed it. Also the two main characters were spinning their wheels: Sid not signing the partnership agreement. Carmy not apologizing to Claire. Richie and Carmy in a fight the whole season. Carmy being an asshole. It was endless. (I did read someone say – maybe on Blue Sky – that the entirety of The Bear is a metaphor for being a beleaguered showrunner. I think that’s pretty funny, and also probably accurate.) And here we are in season 4, and Sid is still not signing the agreement and Carmy is still STUCK and Richie is backsliding and etc. There are a couple of moments veering into schtick. The same thing happened with season 3 of Ted Lasso. You have to be very careful when something becomes popular, especially in a culture where the whole goal is to become “meme-worthy”. RESIST. Like, Chester the roommate. Is he supposed to be in love with Marcus? He’s such a side character and it’s so late in the game it feels random and imposed. Not that Marcus isn’t crush-able. I’ve seen a lot of chatter about Claire – like “why is she here?” to the point where it almost sounds like “ew, girls” or “why does there have to be kissing in this story?” I disagreed with the critique in season 2 and I disagree with it now. People who want the entire show to be about the working of the restaurant are clearly rejecting ALL of the scenes showing us these people’s LIVES, outside the restaurant: parents and children and backstories – and, my God, yes, romantic relationships. I disagree that Claire was shoe-horned in. I disagree with the critique that she’s “manic pixie” ish. Or stupid critiques like “If she’s a doctor, why does she have so much free time?” She doesn’t have “so much free time”. Every time they show her on the phone with Carmy, she’s in scrubs, she’s at work. She has just one afternoon free, so they have a “date” involving taking a drive to a storage unit. That’s her only time that week. People were just irritated that she was “taking him away” from the restaurant. I think they did a good job establishing the backstory that she and Carmy knew each other since they were kids, she’s good friends with the Faks, and therefore the Berzattos. She’s in their circle. If they made her just some dreamy girl who came into the Beef one day and flirted up Carmy, it would have felt way more forced than she’s a blast from the past and everyone knows her. People were pissed Carmy was distracted in season 2. But … he’s never had a girlfriend. How ELSE is he going to be? And then came the breakup and he can’t recover and/or apologize. Well, yeah. He’s never loved anyone before. He’s not GOOD at ANYthing besides cooking. The whole POINT is to add stress to him, outside stress, to throw him off his game. That’s good story-telling. We already saw him struggle to get the restaurant into shape in season 1. If we had seen him keep doing that in season 2, it would have been repetitive. My point is, the Claire thing continues in season 4, and I’m happy about it. People who say stuff like “God, is Carmy STILL obsessing about this?” or “Jesus, this is a bit MUCH for only dating for a couple months” … I mean, I’m glad these people are so mentally well-balanced. I have been UNDONE by a romantic relationship that barely had a chance to establish itself. If you were reading me in 2009 then you watched it happen on my site like a horrible slo-mo car accident. I have been undone by this kind of thing multiple times. << That one was really bad, but it did push me to start this here blog. I wrote a script called July and Half of August and the title refers to the length of the relationship which completely unraveled two people, who never quite got their bearings afterwards. So I totally get it and I never “get over” anything. Good for you critics for being so well-adjusted! Also good for you for being able to resist love because of your responsibilities to your job. Wow! You’re awesome! But the stuff of DRAMA is not made up of well-adjusted people who make sane responsible choices. Most of us are all fucked up and if we DON’T have relationships all the time, then even a CRUSH can derail our whole life. I’m into the exploration of this in the Carmy-Claire thing. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about some fancy-schmancy restaurant I personally couldn’t afford to patronize. The Beef is more my speed. Final thoughts: I am deeply in love with Chuckie. He’s so my type it’s almost like he was created in a lab just for me. Not to sound creepy. More Chuckie in every episode. That is my wish.
For Audra McDonald’s birthday
My good friend Ted and I were once talking about Audra McDonald and her performance of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in the live televised version of The Sound of Music, and what a powerhouse it was. You can see Carrie Underwood, receiving the power of McDonald at close range, and you can see Underwood almost shattered by what was going on, what was coming at her. It’s hard to look at anyone other than Audra, but I was deeply touched by Underwood. She is barely holding on. Even with McDonald’s performance, it is Underwood’s reaction – as a fellow performer – which is the true tribute. Unfortunately, I can’t find the live version on Youtube, so McDonald performing it at the Kennedy Center will have to do. I honestly thought I never needed to hear that song ever again. Or, hell, even once. I’m not a fan. But McDonald revitalizes it singlehandedly.
Audra McDonald’s voice is one of the great instruments of our time.
But we must not forget her acting and how her acting elevates her voice into a truly transcendent space, similar to what Judy Garland could do, what all the great singers can do. In that regard: I want to talk about McDonald’s live performance of “Maybe This Time.” I consider it to be a high watermark of live performance.
Sometimes it’s helpful to compare/contrast, although some seem to dislike it, assuming you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Believe me. I am not. Kristen Chenoweth has a phenomenal instrument, and she also can act. However: when Chenoweth sang “Maybe This Time” on Glee, she – in my opinion – dodged the entire point of the song. It’s a deep song: you MUST deal with the lyrics, you must FEEL those lyrics, otherwise … who cares.
I really dislike her version of it because she does not want to deal with the emotions of the song. In my opinion, she can’t relate to the self-loathing (“Everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me”). Chenoweth is invested in herself as a “winner.” Which, of course, is great, good for her. But as an actor you can’t care about that if the moment calls for something else. “Maybe This Time” is brutal, and trying to weasel out of the song’s implications is a fake. “Maybe This Time” is not a song of plucky triumph, but that’s the way Chenoweth plays it, down to the last show-off note. Natasha Richardson didn’t have a phenomenal voice, but her performance of the song when I saw her on Broadway, was so painful it was a harrowing experience sitting through it. I’m not exaggerating: I could barely stand to be sitting there watching. I wrote about it here, when Richardson died. Liza Minnelli’s version was different from all of these (I go into the differences in the Natasha Richardson piece). Minnelli played as hard as she could Sally’s delusional state, her self-willed belief in her own amazing-ness, and it’s insanely disturbing and thrilling. The song can take different interpretations, but you can’t DODGE anything while singing it: you have to FACE it.
Back to McDonald: watch the clip above. She FACES it.
Watch how she lets the song build, and not just the song itself, but the song’s story, and the emotions the song unleashes. The song is working ON her. As the song climbs the scales, she is not in the driver’s seat, the song pulls her up and up and up. (And of course, it’s not that simple: she IS in the driver’s seat. This is her brilliance as an actress and a performer. She is controlled enough with her instrument that she can craft it, and she does it in a way where it doesn’t look crafted at all.) The song seems to be taking her where IT needs to go. McDonald does not compromise the voice, ever: it’s clear as a bell, every note perfectly placed, no strain, no sloppiness. She is in exquisite control of her voice. Her voice is how she gets her feelings out. So often with great instruments, the feelings and/or the sense of the lyrics ARE compromised in order to get the sound out. We see this time and time again, we see this on American Idol, where the kids somehow think that SMILING while singing “Stormy Weather” is in any way a valid choice. There is such a thing as a wrong choice. It doesn’t matter if you have amazing pipes if you don’t understand THE JOB.
McDonald’s voice is so flexible and free, with such a breath-driven mix of head voice and chest voice, it can do anything go anywhere, and in the case of “Maybe This Time” the voice is such that it can TAKE the emotions exploding out of her by the end.
But watch her face during the performance of “Maybe This Time”. Watch what’s going on with her, through the whole thing but particularly as she approaches the end end, from minute 2:47 on.
The voice is in control, the feelings are not.
At the 2025 Tony Awards, she performed “Rose’s Turn”. If you were clicked into the theatre community, you followed along with the responses, which were instantaneous. People were blown away, people were critical. People raved, people recoiled. It was one of those moments (and, to be honest, we don’t get many of them any more when so much of entertainment is designed to generate NO strong responses at all, because God forbid we risk offending someone). “Rose’s Turn” is the “To be or not to be” of American musical theatre. It is the soliloquy to end all soliloquies and it can make or break a performer. Nothing will reveal shallowness or phoniness or even trying too hard like “Rose’s Turn”. There is a standard as well: it’s so well-known there are assumptions of what it is, and how it should be done. And so any deviation, an actor who makes another type of choice, can face rejection. Audiences: “no no no I remember it was done THIS way and how dare you make another choice?”
I remember Natasha Richardson playing Sally Bowles on Broadway, a production I saw, and her “take” was so different from Liza Minnelli’s that it did take a second to adjust. To be that bold in interpretation is not for the faint-hearted. You must have the goods and you must have the philosophy behind it: you have to really know what the fuck you are doing and why, in other words. Richardson knew what she was doing. I wrote about that groundbreaking performance when she died.
What happened with that performance was almost unthinkable: I didn’t think once of Liza Minnelli. “Maybe This Time” (speaking of which) completely changed when Richardson sang it. I heard it another way.
The song is the song. The soliloquy is the soliloquy. It’s a TEXT. That’s all. Words on a page.
It takes an actor to bring it to life. And, despite definitive performances, there is no one way to do it.
Audra McDonald’s interpretation of “Rose’s Turn” was unlike any other performance of it I’ve seen and it did the unthinkable (again): it made me hear the song a new way. It almost baffled me, and I did almost reject it – not because it wasn’t good, but because I literally couldn’t TAKE IN what she was doing and where she was going emotionally. She didn’t obliterate other versions but … well, she almost did. She found new depths in the song. She came at it with a different philosophy and backstory. To the naysayers: she is allowed to do that.
And maybe, just maybe, Audra McDonald’s stunning groundbreaking career has earned her the right for you to maybe think, just maybe, she knows best? i.e. She knows what the fuck she is doing and why. And maybe GO WITH IT as opposed to REJECT it because it is NEW. There’s a conservative strain in audiences, particularly those who know their history. This is why radically new interpretations of Shakespeare sometimes meet resistance.
Anyway. I have never seen a performance like this in my life. I still can’t even believe what I am seeing.
Powerful waves pour through Audra McDonald. There is no sea wall to break those waves. There is no barrier. These powerful waves would overwhelm other people, frighten them. When feelings are as huge as a 90-foot wave, many others – including actors – balk. It’s not that they WON’T “go there”, it’s that they CAN’T. This stuff is not for the weak. You must be able to FACE the wave and let it hit. What I’m seeing here with her “Rose’s Turn” is a woman being hit by a 90-foot wave, and singing THROUGH the hugeness of it, the chaos of it. She’s barely holding on. (I felt this in Natasha Richardson’s Sally Bowles too. She was barely holding on.)
Are you tough enough to face what McDonald faces here? Can you accept that maybe, just maybe, she knows what she is doing, and why? And she has courage enough to do it.
I took a right-hand turn and found myself driving in the Pride parade in the small beach town next to mine. I was on my way somewhere else but could not escape so I just went with it, waving and beeping, like I was supposed to be there. Happy Pride. You’re not going anywhere and the clock cannot be turned back. I stand with you always. I accidentally drive in the Pride parade and I will be late to where I am going but I feel privileged to be there among you.
Wonderful afternoon with my sister-in-law Melody and my niece Lucy. We drove to Providence to the Avon theatre, in operation since 1938, for a showing of Pride and Prejudice (the 2005 version). Lucy had never seen it. She hadn’t been to the Avon either. The Avon was where we would go, in high school and college, to see independent films, foreign films, classic films. We’d drive up to see a Hitchcock. We’d drive up to see a little French movie. The Avon is essential in such a small state with only a few arthouse theatres. Also it’s this old art deco building. Lucy was so into it. The movie was overwhelming and it was fun to hear Lucy’s bursts of laughter next to me, at the ridiculous Mr. Collins, or how unbelievably rude Mr. Darcy is, or the hilarity of the silly Bennett sisters. We walked across Thayer Street afterwards and had some Chinese food, talking about the movie, and about other things, technology and A.I. We have to do more outings like this. We all deserve it.
I met up for drinks with my first boyfriend, Antonio. We haven’t seen each other in years. Not since our mutual friend Brett died in 2011. I wondered if it would be awkward. He and I went through a lot together and much of it was really bleak and it ended with us living in our van for months, which I’ve written about before. I’ve joked that I had no business going off the grid when I should have been in a psych ward. None of which was his fault – at least not the mental illness part – and it was a million years ago. We met up at a seafood place – kind of legendary, at least in my neck of the woods. I’ve been going to this place since I was a kid. I’m sure he and I had dates there. It was a beautiful afternoon and actually kind of empty, maybe because it was a Friday. I don’t know. We sat up on the deck at first, with a view of the ocean, had drinks, food, and then we moved downstairs to the little patio out back. He brought a little bag filled with all the letters I wrote him – by hand !! – and cards we gave each other, as well as photos. Stuff I not only haven’t seen since we broke up but have no memory of doing any of the things portrayed in the photos, I have no memory of making all these little cartoons depicting our relationship, I have no memory of being so “lovey dovey”. It was shocking. We put each other through hell back then. It’s not like memory has blurred it out or like it didn’t happen. It’s just that we’re so far on the other side of it we can look back on it together and go, “…. what the fuck.” We were together for hours. There were times when we were WEEPING with laughter. It was rejuvenating. And surreal. The vibe was so positive we talked about the most harrowing shit with honesty and openness, we both were like “we should have broken up three months into the thing” – not because we didn’t love each other but because we were meant to be friends, not boyfriend-girlfriend. It was all okay to talk about. Here’s an exchange about, well, me losing my virginity to this man:
He: It wasn’t a bad experience for you, right?
Me: (sipping on my Bloody Mary) It could have been worse.
He practically did a spit take and then we howled. Unheard of even ten years ago. Look at us! Looking at photos of myself back then. Age 20, 21. Having no idea what was in store for me. Or him. Thank God I didn’t know.
Spent the weekend at my sisters. It’s been too long. When I lived in the New York area, I was there all the time, coming up a couple times a week to get my niece to the busstop, to babysit, to fill in if they needed it. I’ve missed that personal one-on-one time. I still see them all the time but usually in a group setting, where my niece and nephew race off to be with their cousins. So I took my niece to the movies. We saw Lilo and Stitch and fully enjoyed our time together. We talked about everything going on in her life. I loved it. Then we came home and watched Dance Moms, which she loves, and I couldn’t help myself, I kept giving her short lectures: “So you know this isn’t a good way to treat each other” “This is fun and all but I hope you know so much of it is fake.” She was very patient. “I know, She She.” Then the next morning I got to go see my nephew play baseball. My sister is one of the coaches. These little boys were so adorable in their uniforms. I love the whole ritual of it. Then I drove down to the city for Bloomsday.
The good thing about my life is I can work from anywhere. I was in New York for a lot of this month and went to this little cafe in Greenwich Village one morning, and signed on for work. It’s this cute coffee place where you also buy plants. There’s a little glassed-in area in the back filled with flowers. You drink your iced coffee surrounded by flowers and greenery. It was a rainy day and, I don’t know, it was ideal.
How is it possible he’s only been with me since November? LOOK at him. He is always near me and always in some variation of this pose. Except for when he’s racing around my apartment like a Tasmanian devil. He’s so dear.
Speaking of Frankie: I had someone take care of him while I was away, of course. I got pictures sent to me of him rubbing up against things, rolling around, playing with toys. So he adjusted to me not being there. But he went a little crazy at one point, and attacked the lower shelves of my bookcases, creating total chaos. I came home to a lot of books lying on the floor. Frankie! You went nuts! I had to laugh though because I walked in the door and this was the first book I saw, lying at my feet.
Reading
Judge on Trial, by Ivan Klíma (read this decades ago so it’s a re-read)
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (a couple a day)
Essays in Criticism, by Matthew Arnold
It’s her birthday today.
In The Heiress, Olivia de Havilland gave one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. Her final moment, ascending the stairs, as the grifter Montgomery Clift bangs on the door screaming her name, is one of the greatest final shots in cinema. The Heiress is that rare thing, a perfect movie. It’s really a quartet – played by de Havilland, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins and Montgomery Clift – an interwoven portrayal of a sick family system, undone by the outsider. Catherine is a victim not just of a controlling father, a manipulative fantasist aunt who encourages the delusions and ignores the threat, and the user who “courts” her and betrays her … but of her society. She is a victim of the world into which she was born. This was, of course, Henry James’ point, and Washington Square, the novel on which The Heiress is based, is slim (compared to his other works) – with every word an indictment. For me, it is a criticism of patriarchy, a word now so over-used as to become almost meaningless. Catherine lives in a world where a certain class of woman has only one option: get married. If you don’t get married, you will be at the mercy of your family, you depend on them for food/shelter. You can’t do anything else. In this world, love doesn’t come into the picture. “Class” is important here. Poor people were trapped in many ways, but they weren’t trapped by these byzantine social rules dominating private life.
So Catherine is a victim. She is a capable woman, but she has been kept in a state of suspended childhood, almost a forced naivete. She has no other option. Her naivete is not charming or adorable. It is grotesque (and infuriating: there is a social critique in James’ portrayal). Her naivete leaves her open to predation. When a predator appears, in the glamorous form of the pretty-talking fortune hunter Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), Catherine is completely unprotected. Patriarchy not only couldn’t save/protect her – as it promised to do – it offered her up into danger. Catherine is foolish in many ways, but her foolishness is imposed from the outside. The world is to blame. What other options did she have? She couldn’t get an education, beyond what was deemed appropriate for young ladies of a certain class. She couldn’t circulate on her own as a single lady, and get some experience which would have helped her clock Morris instantly as a Bad Dude Up to No Good. She couldn’t travel on her own. Or … she COULD. But she would have had to be brave enough, smart enough, resourceful enough, to reject her entire upbringing, to face scandal and shunning … and not too many people can do that. We are social animals. We need our community.
Catherine could have been a happy person in any other era. She could have gone the Now Voyager route, and find her place in a more bohemian world (the films have much in common). She could have made her own money. She could have been a librarian or a secretary or … really, anything. But in her time, in her place, she had to stay at home and play by the rules. These rules destroyed her.
The revelation of de Havilland’s performance is profound. (And don’t even get me started on Ralph Richardson. He totally understood what was being critiqued and set about – meticulously and perfectly – to embody Patriarchy with a capital P, in all its cruelty, condescension and control.) But there’s more complexity to be added. Catherine’s father is right to be concerned. He clocks Morris instantly. He knows his daughter is being used. He tries to save her. Unfortunately, and tragically, this comes out as “why would this glamorous young man be interested in YOU?”
The real revelation for Catherine is the contempt in which her father holds her. She has been living in a state of illusion. She has bought her society’s lie, about her place in it, about her value and worth. When she finally perceives how her father really sees her, nothing will ever be the same again.
De Havilland portrays this in chilling totality: her voice, her manner, her gestures – that needlepoint moment – her very soul has been altered. The scales have been ripped from her eyes. She now sees her world for what it is. She sees the lie.
While this truth is terrible, one wouldn’t wish for Catherine to stay in the place where her illusions are intact. Those illusions are built on sand. They cannot hold. They are phony. They are designed to keep her down, to keep her pliable and passive. And so when her life is destroyed by Morris’ betrayal, and when she sees how her father looks at her, her old self dies and a new one emerges, a stronger harder person. But free.
It is a towering performance. It is an example of what great acting can convey. It is not about “self”, it is not even about giving a great acting performance. It is attached to the larger world and its fictions, the lies it tells itself: de Havilland exposes the lie. She lives the consequences of the lie dying. She walks up the stairs, ignoring her lover’s anguished cries, her heart is hardened to him, she is turned to stone. Nothing could make her turn around and go open the door. She would rather die.
Her hardness is a tragedy. What would it have been like if the world had actually protected her, had nurtured her naive openness, and allowed her to blossom on her own terms? Wouldn’t it have been nice if the patriarchy had held up its end of the bargain?
Well, sure. But it’s all a lie.
At least Catherine knows it’s a lie now. The truth has set her free. Freedom can be a terrible thing, but the alternative is worse.
Blues-harmonica legend James Cotton was born on this day in 1935 on a cotton plantation. He was a working musician by the time he was 10 years old. He toured with Howlin’ Wolf. Eventually he hooked up with Muddy Waters and toured with him for years, his harmonica solos an integral part of the songs. Later on, he formed his own band, and toured as a solo act for 60-plus years. He played with everyone.
In the early 1950s, he – like so many others – gravitated to Memphis, to Sun Records specifically, the space Sam Phillips had created to record blues and gospel music. Cotton’s Sun tracks are incredible, with that unmistakeable Sun sound, a sound you would recognize in a blind sample. There’s a raw-ness to the Sun stuff, because even though you had to pay to record there, it wasn’t really a commercial enterprise. At least not at the start. (One arm of the business was the money-making arm, which paid the bills, Phillips recording weddings and stuff like that.) Phillips was on a mission. He wanted these musicians and this music to be heard.
Of all of James Cotton’s Sun stuff, I love “Cotton Crop Blues” the best, a 1954 recording at Sun Records, with a grinding slightly distorted and totally modern-sounding electric guitar solo by Pat Hare.
Here’s a live clip from a Muddy Waters show from 1966. A performance of “Got My Mojo Workin’,” James Cotton harmonica solo.
And here, James Cotton, alone, slows it all way, way, WAY down. Center stage. His harmonica was as eloquent as human speech. Maybe more eloquent. Because I’ve listened to a lot of people talk, and they never sound like THIS.
He died in 2017. Here’s a full obituary, with more information.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
It’s her birthday today.
Mitchell and I – in yet another of our series of conversations – discuss Lena Horne. Weirdly, we had an enormous discussion about her one night when I was staying with him in Chicago. We watched endless clips of her singing and talked about her with enthusiasm and love. We woke up to the news she had died. Mitchell looked at me and said, “We didn’t even know it, but last night we gave her a sendoff.”
Part of this “series” was me asking Mitchell to describe whoever it was in “one word” as a launching point.
SOM: One word.
MF: Angry.
SOM: Talk about that.
MF: It’s almost like she was the Mike Tyson of singers. There was always this idea that she might bite. She bit her words, and she bit her phrasing.
I read that beautiful biography about her, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne
She was angry about a lot of things. She was angry about the fact that she was never really given a role at MGM. All of her roles were AS Lena Horne. Well, not all of them – there were two exceptions and they were primarily black movies. But most of her movies, she was basically Lena Horne singing a song, which they would then take out when the movie played in the South. She was the link between Ethel Waters and Hattie McDaniel and the next generation, with Diahann Carroll.
MF: And she was pissed about it. She didn’t want to be anyone’s link. She wanted to be a movie star, and she wanted to be a top-rated concert singer, and she got stuck in the middle. She was very angry politically, when she got older. Totally justified. She was labeled as a female Uncle Tom, in a way, because her career was based on a white world. Her credibility as a black woman, or a civil rights activist, was called into question and that made her mad.
MF: I think a lot of people get disappointed when they hear Lena Horne for the first time. They think she’s going to be a soul singer. And of course she had a soulful voice because she sang from the heart, but she was like Sinatra and Dean Martin and Judy Garland and Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney.
MF: Lena Horne sang standards. She sang on the jazz edge of standards, but really, she was more of a pop singer. Not a blues singer, not a soul singer, not an R&B singer. She was a black woman who sang the standards. She was famous for singing Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Harold Arlen. She was also stunningly beautiful. It was interesting because she married a white man, and then seemed to regret it. She regretted that she had done that because she felt like it took her credibility away. She seemed to die fairly bitter. If you want to get a real sense of her, watch her in Cabin in the Sky (1943).
MF: Then watch some of her TV appearances in the 60s. Watch her sing with Judy Garland on the Judy Garland Show. They do two duets. They do “Day In Day Out”, and then they sing each other’s songs, which is really brilliant.
MF: I think my favorite recording of hers, for some reason, is from her Broadway show The Lady and Her Music that she won a Tony for. She does “Surrey With the Fringe On Top”, and it’s kind of a throwaway but I think it’s genius. She starts it off by saying, “I’m gonna sing this one …….. cause I like it.” And then she sings “Surrey With the Fringe On Top”, and it’s so good and jazzy and informed and sexy. To me, that’s a real mark of her artistry, that she could take a lyric and make it very much about whatever her story is, and it didn’t have to do with the context, it had to do with whatever she was thinking about. That’s the mark of a great singer.
MF: I love Christina Aguilera, and I know it’s a different tradition of singing, but she’s so busy acting like she’s singing, which she doesn’t have to do because she is in fact singing better than 90% of the planet. But she’s always showing us that she’s singing, and it’s like “Why don’t you talk to us about the story that you’re telling, and we’ll understand that you’re singing”.
SOM: One last thing about Lena: Could you talk to me about her gestures?
MF: Her gestures really are so unique, so connected to whatever she’s going through, but also really out there. Her gestures are less striking to me, though, than her facial expressions. She would do this wide-mouth to get the sound out, and her weird vowels. Like she wouldn’t say “there”, she’d say “thay-ah”. So if you say that, you can feel your mouth open – and it’s this open-mouthed A, even though that’s not really the vowel sound of the actual word. Her gestures were a lot of clenched fists, but her face – she sort of made her eyes huge, and she would scrunch up her eyes and growl. In a weird way, she had a tightness to her gestures, whereas Judy’s gestures flowed out, or Ethel Merman‘s gestures flowed out. Lena Horne’s was more of a clenched-fist gesture. In comparison to Shirley Bassey, who has the other extreme: the weirdest gestures ever.
MF: I mean, really. And Bassey got validated for it pretty early in her career so they kept getting more outrageous. She stopped judging herself. She knew she would get great reviews if she did the wildest gestures that anyone had ever seen. I feel like Lena’s gestures were born out of anger. According to a lot of reports, Lena Horne could carry a tune but wasn’t necessarily considered a great singer at the beginning, and she developed her style while doing those club dates that she hated. A lot of her style, which became famous and sexy, was based on her fury.
The biography of her is really good, because it’s about her but it’s also about that time, and what a lot of performers of her time went through. She had a lot of support in Hollywood, except she felt very very lonely, because as much as they supported her they still didn’t have much to say to her. She wasn’t working with everybody like everybody else was. They supported her, they went to see her shows and concerts, but they weren’t on set together. That kind of camaraderie, she didn’t have it. There’s that famous black and white clip showing all the MGM stars having lunch. Watch it again and see that she’s not talking to anyone, and no one’s talking to her. She looks lonely, and beautiful, and stuck there around people she doesn’t know. That’s Lena Horne in Hollywood.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
