Erin Watches Movies

In March, I read The Big Short, and over the past weekend, I finally watched the movie version on Netflix. 

It’s a very good film. Although it's no secret I’m a big Christian Bale fan, and I really enjoyed his performance as Dr. Michael Burry, I thought Steve Carell’s performance was the best. (I did appreciate how Bale was framed so that the left side of his face was de-emphasized to help create the illusion that he had a glass eye, like the real Michael Burry. Good cinnamon tography.)

I didn’t realize it while I was watching it, but later when Tit Elingtin watched the movie at my suggestion, I noticed Tracy Letts in the cast list. As you may recall, I heard his name in “HardcoverBound 2,” first thought he was a female and probably quite feminist playwright, and then thought to associate him with the films Bug and August: Osage County. 

Tracy Letts has a small role in The Big Short. It makes sense. He’s a theatre kid, writing plays and acting in movies. Also, his mother was the writer Billie Letts, who wrote Where the Heart Is. It was turned into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd. (I saw it in the movie theater with my friend Jamie in 2000.) Judd, who was in Bug, has thus appeared in films by two different Lettses. 

I didn't read this.

But I digress. In trying to find out a little more about Letts’ acting career, I found upon a photo of Letts with Rebecca Hall and Michael C. Hall (no relation to one another). The Halls and Letts are involved in a film called Christine, scheduled to be released in October (next month).

I recently saw Michael C. Hall in Kill Your Darlings, the drama in which Daniel Radcliffe played Allen Ginsberg. I loved that movie. David Cross was adorable as Ginsberg’s poet father, Dane DeHaan* is dreamy even though Lucien Carr was a shit boyfriend to Allen (repressed much?), and Radcliffe is now my second-favorite movie Ginsberg after James Franco. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the Norman Reedus/Keifer Sutherland/Courtney Love film Beat, with my sweet sweet baby Kyle Secor as David Kammerer, Carr’s creepy stalker. The Kammerer character in KYD is much better written and sympathetic, and Hall does an excellent job playing him.

Rebecca Hall, of course, played the long-suffering wife of Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) in The Prestige. It’s one of my favorite movies, and I’m not the only fan. The Simpsons had its season premiere this past weekend. Mr. Burns re-instated a vaudeville-like stage show like he remembered from his childhood, including a magic act performed by twins Sherri and Terri that referenced The Prestige.

I DID read Christopher Priest's novel - after I saw the movie

I’ve also been watching Rebecca Hall as Edwardian narcissist Sylvia Tietjens, opposite Benedict Cumberbatch, in Parade’s End. She will play the title character in Christine.

Christine is Christine Chubbuck, a real person whom I read about in He Who Shall Remain Shameless. 

Sylvia Tietjens isn’t a very sympathetic character. One tends to feel more sympathy for husband Christopher, who is desperately in love with spunky suffragist Ms. Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens, a young Australian who played Myrtle Wilson’s sister in The Great Gatsby), but too old-fashioned to divorce Sylvia. I'm on episode 2 of the 4-part miniseries, and so far the most scandalous thing Christopher and Valentine have done is get lost in the fog and stay out together all night…sitting next to each other. Just sitting, physical contact at an absolute minimum. It’s like the opposite of Jane Eyre. Where Edward Fairfax Rochester was not concerned enough about pursuing the woman he loved while in a bad marriage, Christopher Tietjens was probably too concerned. Lots of unresolved longing and surreptitious eye contact ensue.

Christine Chubbuck, conversely, is a very sympathetic character. Life dealt her a hand so much worse than she deserved. Her severe depression cost her her life. Live on television. We can't see the actual footage, thank Something, but we will see a dramatized version. 

*I saw him in the trailer for Tulip Fever while waiting for Love and Friendship (a Jane Austen adaptation) to start in the movie theater. I want to see that. Christine might be too sad, even though I'm sure Rebecca Hall's acting will be great. Let's see Tulip Fever instead. As of this writing, its release is planned for February 2017. 

No, I did not read this book.

August: Osage County (Not Spoiler-Free)

Remember “Hardcover Bound 2,” the clever literary parody of a Kanye West song with a memorable music video? It contains the lines:

“They ask me what’s next on my reading list-

Ever start a book that you can’t finish?!

Caryl Churchill and Tracy Letts, I

Think I’ll make time for Samuel Beckett

Books can help you overcome lotsa things

You know, I know,

Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

I was vaguely aware of Samuel Beckett as the author of Waiting for Godot, some kind of experimental play in which the two on-stage characters are waiting for an off-stage character who never shows up. As far as I could remember, I hadn’t heard of Caryl Churchill or Tracy Letts. To me, that sounded like the names of two lady playwrights.

It turned out I had actually heard of Tracy Letts, though. (And that he is a boy.) Several years ago, my dad told me and my husband we should watch a movie called Bug, which he said was one of the weirdest things he’d ever seen. So we watched the film, in which Ashley Judd played the main character.

The movie was made in 2006. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was based on a Tracy Letts play. Letts had another play made into a movie in 2014, and Meryl Streep won an Oscar for playing Letts’ main character Violet Weston in August: Osage County. I watched the film version on Saturday, June 11, on Netflix.

August: Osage County is set on Kansas. I’ve never been to Osage County, but it’s the county directly south of the one in which the city of Lawrence sits. I passed through Lawrence on my way to Manhattan for my nephew’s 2012 wedding.

The rural county is the home of poet and playwright Beverly Weston and his wife, Violet, who are both white. Violet has mouth cancer and a strong dependency on pain pills. The pills amplify her tendency to say whatever’s on her mind, no matter how blunt, thoughtless, rude, or obscene it happens to be. Bev hires a Native American woman named Johnna to help him take care of Violet, since Violet’s care is seriously cutting into Bev’s drinking time.

When Bev disappears, Violet’s family converges on the house: daughters Barbara, Ivy, and Karen (only middle daughter Ivy still lives in Kansas), sister Mattie Fay, brother-in-law Charles (played by Chris Cooper, who previously played a Kansan in Capote), nephew Little Charles, granddaughter Jean, Barbara’s estranged husband Bill, and Karen’s fiancé Steve.

Mattie Fay is very harsh and mean to her son, Little Charles, played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch. I have only recently warmed to his charms. At first I was like, “Ha ha – Benadryl Cookingpot.” That he played the creep in Atonement did not help his case. (Atonement makes a good case for falling in love with James McAvoy or Keira Knightley.) Tumblr wore me down until one day I said, “BBC Sherlock Holmes – actually kind of good-looking. And he does do that sexy impression of Alan Rickman…” (See The Simpsons.)

Let that be a lesson to ya, kids – stay away from Tumblr and British television. They’ll rot your brain.

Little Charles is the family disappointment, and the one thing that makes him happy is his cousin Ivy. They are having an affair that the rest of the family doesn’t know about. In one scene, Ivy goes to kiss Charles but he stops her, reminding her they have a deal not to be affectionate around the family. Then he stares at her in a very dreamy and romantic way, finally saying, “I adore you.” In another scene, they sit at the piano and he sings her a song he’s written for her.

It soon comes out, though, that Bev and Mattie Fay had an affair years ago. Ivy and Little Charles are possibly – probably – half-siblings. Little Charles doesn’t find out, but Ivy does. This does not change Ivy’s plans to run away with him to New York. She reasons that since she’s had a hysterectomy and can’t have any biological children, they aren’t hurting anyone. And it’s hard to argue with her logic. I mean, they were both fine with the fact that their mothers are sisters. They know they’re at least first cousins. It’s not too big a leap.

It’s a pretty grim, gloomy movie overall. If I were a theater major in college, I would compare and contrast Tracy Letts’ bitter matriarch Violet Weston with Tennessee Williams’ overly entangled, bitter matriarch Violet Venable in Suddenly Last Summer.

I don't know if I liked August: Osage County, but it was certainly interesting.