Me and My Shadows

Believe it or not, Rita used to wonder what was the big deal about…Judy Garland. Can you imagine?
With only a childish perspective from multiple viewings of The Wizard of Oz, “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and perhaps, “Zing! Went the Strings of my Heart” were the only songs I had any passing familiarity (and like Louis B. Mayer in the movie review that follows, I was not so impressed).

By chance, I happen to catch the made-for-tv bio pic, Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001) based on daughter Lorna Luft’s biography of her legendary show-biz mama. The very great Judy Davis (an Australian actress known for a few Woody Allen pics from the 90s) channels the haunted chantreuse quite unlike any living actor I have seen so far. Tammy Blanchett also does an admirable job portraying young Frances Gumm (Judy’s birth name before MGM changed it) auditioning for the imperious movie mogul, Louis B. Mayer. Judy becomes a big star but she pays a high price for her fame, a lifetime addiction to amphetamines that the studio prescribes to her to keep her weight down and her perky energy up. When she collapses on the set because of the bullying of her director, she’s only given 3 weeks to recover even though the doctor insists she needs 6. Her mother (Marsha Mason as the quintessential stage mother) and the studio push and push poor Judy until she is just a bundle of nerves but that voice…that voices flattens all in its path.

My favorite part is when Judy Davis as Judy is seen backstage revving herself up for her famous Concert at Carnegie Hall which is considered to be a once in a lifetime, star performance. A very famous critic is said to have wept openly at Judy’s performance. Picture perfect, the issue of that concert has never gone out of print. If one listens to that CD and sees the actual concert footage from Judy Garland: The Concert Years there is no doubt, you too shall also be converted to a die-hard Judy fan. Not just for gay men anymore (or Rufus Wainwright who had the audacity to try and recreate her concert.) Judy Garland was performer who gave of and above her humanity and she had the voice to do so. The documentary contains clips from the variety show she hosted on CBS during the 60s. Among the highlights on DVD are her duets with Barbara Streisand, her daughter Liza Minnelli, Lena Horne and Tony Bennett. Lorna Luft hosts the documentary and covers a happier time in the singer’s life, when she returned to her career as a singer and stopped doing movies, with the notable exception of her one-woman tour de force in A Star is Born. These are all must-see rentals.

Rita recommends…Infamous

Infamous(2006) Directed by Douglas McGrath. Starring Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver.
The other Truman Capote movie, Infamous, follows the Oscar winning Capote almost a year later. Rita was advised to see Infamous to compare it with Capote and some had hinted they liked Infamous better. Well, I have to say I was a little disappointed with Infamous. The actor, Toby Jones, does seem to be Truman Capote’s doppleganger and the actor has Capote’s mannerisms down pat. That said, I did find the acting a bit stilted with almost all of the players except for Sandra Bullock. She lends a quiet melodiousness to the character of Harper Lee. The rest of the actors looked like they were “acting” which was disappointing. I wasn’t crazy about the talking heads interviews—from Capote’s editor at the New Yorker (Peter Bogadonavitch) to his high society ladies. (Hope Davis & Sigourney Weaver) The interviews broke up the action to fill in background information but it wasn’t dramatically believable.

One of the main difference between the two film is, whereas Capote hinted at a romance between one of the killers, Perry Smith, and Capote, Infamous all but lifts the veil between the two.

Because I already reviewed Capoteearlier in this blog, I only will cover the plot superficially: in 1959, Truman Capote reads about a grisly murder of a Kansas family in The NY Times. This story grabs himself so much so that he pitches to the New Yorker the idea of covering how the murders affect the townspeople. He takes his childhood friend, Harper Lee, with him. The process of writing and researching his literary sensation, In Cold Blood is what the movie explores in detail.

Both movies travail basically the same time period, although in very different ways. Even though I personally preferredCapote as a film, I think both are worthy of consideration in dramatizing a very fascinating, real-life writer and eccentric.

Capote

Capote (2005), aka the writer, Truman Capote, covers a very short time in the writer’s life, a span of six years, when he decides to do research into the 1959 murders of the Cultler family. He reads about the brutal murders in the
New York Times and is hooked. He calls his editor at The New Yorker and informs him of his decision to write a feature on this gruesome story. He brings his good friend, Nelle Harper Lee (Author of “Kill a Mockingbird”) as his assistant and emissary to try to connect with the local people of Holcomb, Kansas (pop. 308). Capote’s feature article on how the murders affect the small town turns into a six-year odyssey that would mark the pinnacle of his writing career and his ultimate undoing.

Capote does not hide his effeminate manners and as such, no one in the town wants to talk to him. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays him so artfully and captures Capote’s complexity; it is riveting performance. He has Capote’s mannerisms down cold but instead of playing him as caricature, (which would have been easy for an actor of lessor ability to do) he expertly captures Capote’s absolute steadfastness and total immersion in his subjects. Regardless of how much disdain is reflected in the face of the chief of police and his underlings, one marvels at how Capote gets access to his subjects, namely, one of the accused killers, Perry Smith. It is a testament to his writer’s tenacity; he is absolutely wedded to his obsession. He seems to become enamored with Smith (Clifton Collins Jr. ) and the interviews between them in the jail cell are a bizarre dance of the erotic and exploitation.