Best Actress 2013: Shirley MacLaine, Elsa & Fred

(from top left clockwise) Shirley MacLaine poses with a come
hither look directed at Christopher Plummer; she cuddles
with a kitten MacLaine will later lock in a bedroom with
another cat and force into losing her feline virginity;
MacLaine tries to carry on a conversation with one of her
former lives, which has been reincarnated as an orange

Shirley MacLaine has been nominated six times for an Academy Award (five for lead Actress and one for writing, directing and producing a documentary about China), all in the course of a time period that is now smaller than the amount of years which have passed since she won her long overdue Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment almost 30 years ago.  She flirted with the possibility of another nomination shortly thereafter with Madame Sousatzka, Steel Magnolias, and Postcards from the Edge.  MacLaine kept working consistently on the silver screen as well as TV, even having a career spike in the mid-2000s, taking on younger female costars like Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Cameron Diaz.  When none of those films hit big, her career quieted down slightly until last year's Bernie came rolling along.  Since then, she has appeared on popular series Downton Abbey and has a slew of films in preproduction.  She has wrapped a role in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, as well as Elsa & Fred in December.  Michael Radford (Il Postino) directed and cowrote the latter screenplay with Anna Pavignano, adapted from a 2005 Argentinian film about two people, played by MacLaine and recent Oscar winner Christopher Plummer, who fall in love in their twilight years.  On the crew is cinematographer Michael McDonough (Winter's Bone, Albert Nobbs), editor Peter Boyle (The Hours),  and costume designer Gary Jones (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient).  Filmed on a $10M budget in New Orleans and Rome, the movie will release sometime this year.  MacLaine has been in the news lately thanks to her daughter, who has just come out with a less than flattering book depicting her relationship with the batty transcendentalist mother.

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She's Still Here!

I recently saw the LA production of Follies with a friend and reminisced about Postcards from the Edge.  I shared the scene with him of Shirley MacLaine singing "I'm Still Here," but I felt badly afterwards, as I think he went temporarily blind.  I keep forgetting that he had a much more cultured upbringing than myself--raised on a steady diet of TV and Hollywood movies.  (He recovered his sight and is completely coherent now.)  Anyhow, in the scene, MacLaine's character grabs the spotlight during a party she threw for her recovering addict daughter (played by Meryl Streep), because it can't always not be about her.  The movie was based on the novel, written by Carrie Fisher, which was a thinly veiled biographical account of her relationship with mother Debbie Reynolds.

While they had their problems, deep down they loved each other and have been very close for many years.  I guess I respond so much to the film (which shows all the dramatic ugliness, as it's a movie) because the underlining chemistry between Streep and MacLaine is electric, all there, and reminds me of my relationship with my mother.  Mother/gay son, as I'm sure mother/daughter relationships (I imagine Fisher considers herself to be part gay man) can be very complicated and come in all shapes and sizes, but they are often spirited and full of love. You could tell Streep and MacLaine really enjoyed working with each other (or they're just damn good actors), as much as Fisher and Reynolds love each other.  In the attached scene, MacLaine doesn't only show off her performance chops while conveying the desperation she feels for a woman passed her prime, she even steps slightly out of character and throws out a reference making fun of herself.  "I'm feeling transcendental" was a line she tossed in making fun of her Hinduistic take on the afterlife she became known for from her work as an author.

Forget how competitive 1990 was, the AMPAS were clearly not of their right collective mind when they handed out the five nominations and passed MacLaine over for Mary McDonnell in Dances With Wolves.  Sorry, President Roslin, you were the weakest link.  Goodbye.  Anyway, I never thought I'd be able to use the clip.  Lo and behold: Deadline just announced that Streep will present MacLaine with the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award this June.  Yay for the both of them.  Look out for a great speech or two, per usual.

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