Profiles in Greatness: Suzanne Stone

SUZANNE STONE

in

TO DIE FOR (1995)

 

"It's nice to live in a country where life, liberty... 

and all the rest of it, still stand for something." 

Name:   Suzanne Stone (aka. Suzanne Maretto)
Occupation:    On-Air Correspondent of the WWEN Weather Center in Little Hope, NY
Nickname:   Gangbusters

 On using her "Professional Name"...

"It's not like I have negative feelings about the name Maretto. Maretto was the name after all of my husband who I loved very, very much. It's also the name of his parents, Joe and Angela Maretto, and his lovely and talented sister Janice Maretto, who have been like a second family to me, and who I regard as I do my own family. Particularly since my recent tragedy... And who, just through knowing and being related to them, have given me what I think is a very precious and valuable insight into the different kind of ethnic relationships that are a part of the very things that I've been trying to explore as a member of the professional media."

On branding...

"The point is that, for instance, Connie Chung -- who is married I believe to Maury Povich, the well-known interviewer -- doesn't say, "Hello, this is Connie Povich with the news," now does she? And I don't think she would be embarrassed by it or anything like that because she's already pretty ethnic when you think about it... Or, to take another example, someone who doesn't appear to have an ethnic bone in their body... there's Jane Pauley. Who I strongly relate to because, you know, when you have... similar physical traits. Although I think we don't have to struggle with the weight problem like she does...  And she also, to the best of my knowledge, has never identified herself audience-wise as Jane Trudeau, even though her husband, Mr. Trudeau, is a prominent cartoonist of some kind, and not as so many people believe, the ex-president of Canada. So what I'm saying is this... There are some people who never know who they are or who they want to be, until it's too late. And that is a real tragedy in my book. Because I always knew who I was and who I wanted to be. Always."  

On being in the public eye...

"Of course if you're actively seeking a career in the professional ice skating field -- in the spotlight, so to speak -- I think you have to maximize your positive features. So what I'm saying is, a qualified plastic surgeon could snip away those little... beauty spots, or facial blemishes - whatever you want to call 'em - and you'd see how much better you feel about yourself! I believe that Mr. Gorbachev -- y'know, the man who ran Russia for so long?  I believe that he would still be in power today if he'd done what so many people suggested and had that big purple thing taken off his forehead. I firmly believe that. Someday I hope to interview him and we would discuss that along with more pertinent, international things."

On balancing career and family...

"I love kids! I absolutely love them! But a woman in my field with a baby has two strikes against her. Say I'm in New York, right? And I'm called to go on some foreign assignment -- like a royal wedding or... a revolution in South America! You can't run from place to place with your crew following you and conduct SERIOUS interviews with a big fat stomach! Or say you've already had the baby and you've got this blubber, these boobs out to here... It's just so gross."

On media influence...

"You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching? And if people are watching? It makes you a better person."

"I believe that in our fast moving computer age it is the medium of television that joins together the global community. And it is the television journalist who serves as messenger. Bringing the world into our homes and our homes into the world. It has always been my dream to become such a messenger. I look to you gentlemen now to make that dream a reality."

On her personal influences...

"Barbara (Walters) does have many admirable qualities. Wide range of knowledge of current events, and a deep sympathy for people's inner feelings -- which is a trait so many people have of the Jewish persuasion."

"Everyone has to start somewhere! Do you know where Edward R. Murrow started? ... No. Well... Neither do I offhand. But I don't think it was at the top, do you?"

In the words of her friends and colleagues...

"Suzanne Maretto was a beautiful human being with real dreams and aspirations."

"She's like one of those porcelain dolls that mom collects. She is so pure and delicate and innocent, you just have to look at her and you want to take care of her for the rest of your life."

 "I never really gave a rat's ass about the weather until I got to know Ms. Moretto. Now I take it very seriously. If it rains, or there's lightning or thunder, or if it snows... I have to jack off."

"Four letters. Begins with C... "

"Cold. C-O-L-D. Cold. "

Obscure Beauty: Birth (2004)

"You certainly had me fooled. I thought you were my dead husband...

But you're just a little boy in my bathtub. "

Mass for Cinephile Shut-Ins: Part Four

Let us commune over all this vague pre-publicity so as to garner faith and hope for a bright cinematic future. And let us also pass invalid judgment.

This is Part Four.

Human scientific experiments at their most prim and proper.

Never Let Me Go

directed by: Mark Romanek

written by: Alex Garland, Kazuo Ishiguro (novel)

starring: Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling

Basically: Friends reunite to unravel a shared dark past at their private boarding school.

And We Should Care Because: The summary suggests English period drama of an ordinary kind, when the plot is actually steeped in scholarly sci-fi. Based on a novel by The Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro, threads of the story involve tea, scones, cloning and dystopias. Wisely the school seems to have cloned a choice British cast in the likes of Knightley, Hawkins, Rampling, and fresh-faced breakthrough Carey Mulligan. Director Mark Romanek's career consists largely of music videos, outside of his 2002 freak show set during Robin Williams dark period. Not the scarring era of Patch Adams, RV, License to Wed and Old Dogs, but the characteristically dark period that included Death to Smoochy, Insomnia, and Romanek's own One Hour Photo. The meld of an ace female cast, sinister schoolgirl undercurrents, and a notable visual stylist, could make for a posh, pleasant surprise.

Status: Curious

Walking and Talking,

and waiting for old people to die off.

Please Give

directed and written by: Nicole Holofcener

starring: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Kevin Corrigan

Basically: A couple stirs confrontation as they eye the antiques of an elderly woman in their New York apartment building.

And We Should Care Because: Nicole Holofcener's films are so adept at delving into specific characteristic quirks, without those detrimental indie quirks. Lovely & Amazing is perhaps her most acclaimed title, and an apt description of Holofcener's charming, but still scathing, works. Alongside longtime muse and perfect sardonic vessel, Catherine Keener, Holofcener will once again seek to dissect human flaws, flawlessly. Advanced word from Sundance has given fans reason to demand, "Please, Give," with critics citing the writer/director's consistent talent for making small moments ring of immensely poignant truths.

Status: Can't Miss

The Origin of Grief-Stricken Love

Rabbit Hole

directed by: John Cameron Mitchell

written by: David Lindsay-Abaire

starring: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest

Basically: A couple unravels upon the death of their four-year-old son.

And We Should Care Because: John Cameron Mitchell is a reputable auteur after two dynamic and distinctive works: the trans rock spectacular Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and the neurotic sex spectacular Shortbus. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning stage play by David Lindsay-Abaire, the tonal shift seems inevitably darker than Cameron Mitchell's past works, but he has already shown himself to be gifted at balancing even his bawdiest moments with some touching backstory. For what reads like a conventional drama, the cast and crew promises anything but. Nicole Kidman graciously ties herself to another edgy indie director - the type of career choice that consistently gives her the best material. And we know by now that a grieving Kidman is a great Kidman. Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest lend their own spark to what easily sounds like one of the highlight dramas of the year. I'm so ready to love taking the plunge down this rabbit hole of despair.

Status: Can't Miss

Being a celebrity is about sex, drugs,

and paying child support.

Somewhere

directed and written by: Sofia Coppola

starring: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Chris Pontius

Basically: Troubled actor Johnny Marco receives a wake up call from his 11-year-old daughter while holed up at LA's infamous Chateau Marmont.

And We Should Care Because: One of the most fascinating directors working today - female or otherwise - Sofia Coppola finds such startling grace in her relaxed, atmospheric tone poems on film. Her last, the unjustly ignored and utterly sublime Marie Antoinette, had Coppola taking on a project of historically grand scale with a personal, ethereal touch. Somewhere reads like it could very well find itself in a similarly detached headspace as the many lethargic and longing characters Coppola has confronted throughout her career. She's keeping it interesting with oft-ignored actor Stephen Dorff playing bad-boy Johnny Marco, and a compellingly cast Chris Pontius of MTV's Jackass as one of Johnny's pals. Stellar French band Phoenix (the lead of whom is married to Coppola) is also lending their talents to the soundtrack.

Status: Can't Miss

Bite your tongue.
Then bite mine.

The Talking Cure

directed by: David Cronenberg

written by: Christopher Hampton (play)

starring: Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley

Basically: Carl Jung finds therapeutic and romantic success while using Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" approach on a disturbed female patient. Freud names Jung his successor only to find discord and a division of thought.

And We Should Care Because: All that male goodness under the guidance of mastermind David Cronenberg? My mind is officially blown Scanners-style. The collaborations between Mortensen and Cronenberg have already yielded two jaw dropping performances in two knockout films. The inclusion of Club Silencio favorite, the equally jaw dropping Michael Fassbender, could only be topped if Cronenberg were to make a sequel to the bathhouse scene in Eastern Promises. What can I say, I'm Rabid with a case of sexually parasitic Shivers. The mental minefield premise seems right up Cronenberg's alley. He's never one to disappoint when it comes the psychological, sexual, and everything dark and delicious in the Interzone.

Status: Can't Miss

Part Five soon.

Defensive Cinema #3: Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Defensive Cinema is a series devoted to films seemingly dismissed by the greater population. And me getting all defensive like and telling you why my opinions hold more water than yours.

"Margot tried to murder me when we were girls. She put me on a baking sheet, sprinkled me with paprika and put me in the oven."

-Pauline

Margot at the Wedding is a film about what it means to be a family. That includes selling them out for your novel, contemplating their abandonment on a bus, and trying to sabotage their happiest day.

Noah Baumbach's sour little saga is the antithesis of what we usually consider a "family film." Unlike Dan in Real Life, another 2007 film about ties that bind, Margot (Nicole Kidman) and her bloodline don't engage in talent shows and morale-boosting morning workouts. The sisters in Margot at the Wedding get their heartiest laughs from a relative's rape by a horse trainer. It's one of the film's meager moments of warmth and it's cold as ice. But there's more truth, humor and psychological horror in these fractured bonds than anything inside that formulaic fluff labeled "Real Life." Margot's ties may be toxic but their roots are grounded in reality. Sometimes family is there to pick you up, and sometimes they're there to really put you down.

Truthfully Margot's greatest talent, outside of being a "fiction" writer, is the art of the insult: seldom-subtle attempts to bring about her own misery and shortcomings in everyone around her. If only they gave the Booker Prize for that...

Margot on a good day:

"If you keep telling him he's like everyone else he's going to wonder why he isn't."

"He's not ugly, he's just completely unattractive."

Bitterness nibbles away and consumes Margot's daily life, and by effect, those of her loved ones - in particular her confused and attached son, Claude (Zane Pais), and free-spirited but floundering sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). When she hears of Pauline's impending vows to Malcolm (Jack Black), an unemployed oaf she's known but a year, Margot's abhorrent agenda is set in motion. Her plan to attend her sister's wedding becomes a cover for her to promote her latest book, start up anew with an old flame, and attempt to detach from her son. All that and she doesn't even bring a gift...

"We're supporting her."

This is a character piece first and foremost - a bruising, scathing, warts and all look at people you'd rather not be related to in real (too real) life. Writer/director Noah Baumbach has pulled prickly truths out of family dysfunction in the past with his heralded The Squid and the Whale, but Margot's story has its own brand of caustic wit. Like Squid it's funny while it scalds. But Margot is a more daring venture for Baumbach because it hardly feigns an interest in audience sympathy, and its muted visuals, while appropriate, are hardly a feast for the eyes. The script is wonderfully woven out of minor moments and somehow it still manages to cut away all the excess; plenty of nuance but it always goes unpronounced. You'd almost have to see the film twice to fully appreciate Baumbach's inventive and organic approach - the way scenes end abruptly, beginnings and endings blur, and those minuscule tidbits carry the bulk of dramatic and comic weight.

Beyond that it's a stage for really superb actors to dig into some fascinating, flawed characters. Jennifer Jason Leigh is such an underused actress, and it could be due to being so close to her husband's script during its development that she gives this part its refreshingly lived-in quality. It's natural and effortless, and one of Leigh's best performances in years.

Of course the highlight, not surprisingly, is Nicole Kidman. It's a showcase of her ability to fully commit to a part - even if her character needs to be committed. Every beat of judgment and venom is masterfully undercut with an unknowing frailty. Likewise, Kidman's "showcase" scene is a subtle knockout. A humdrum Q&A session at her reading turns into her brutal public shaming when she's confronted by the assertion that her treacherous lead character is merely Margot in disguise. She becomes embarrassed, exposed, and then ducks for cover. As delivered by Kidman it's simultaneously funny, odd and wincingly painful; basically Margot at the Wedding in a monologue.

"Why do you assume that -- I mean we all take from life... I had to have our refrigerator repaired the other day, at our apartment in Manhattan, and uhh... I was alone with this guy - I think he was Puerto Rican. He was, um, sent over by Whirlpool, who I think it is makes our fridge... Umm... Although he did say he worked for an independent organization that Whirlpool subcontracts... I think he was retarded. There was an anger in him, and uh... suddenly... suddenly I became afraid for my life. I called, um... Jim, at NYU, and I asked him to come home -- I think it was Frigidaire that made our fridge... I'm going to need to take a moment here."

Seeing as Margot at the Wedding is a film about family, it's appropriate then that at the film's center is the family tree - which Margot attempts climbing and gets stuck, which has roots that are rotting the property, and which threatens to topple over during Pauline's special day. But I guess that's what you get when all your family has to sow are seeds of resentment.


You can watch this movie at iReel.com.

Late to the Party

This blog has become a cinematic graveyard of late. I've been all too focused on movies of the distant past. It's most noticeable in a time when everyone's discussing the cinematic year that's been. On the other hand, I probably can't be expected to make a sufficient Top Ten List until June of 2010, given the vast holes in my 2008 viewing.

In place of that, here are my brief thoughts on two of 2008's new releases, believe it or not. "New" is relative of course... They've been out for some time now. As always, remember to check out Club Silencio two months from now for all the latest in film.


Rachel Getting Married was a lot like attending a wedding actually. If it were a wedding of someone I didn't know and wasn't sure I cared to know. I wandered around, meeting the crowd and sharing a laugh here and there, followed by more than a few glances at the open bar. But just like a wedding, it sits better in my memory.

I can remember some of the touching human moments and the real purpose of it all -- which has a scope both small and emotionally grand. It's often sweet, occasionally cringe-inducing, and filled with equal parts misery and awe. I'll raise my glass to Anne Hathaway for once again making the most of minor moments, and to Jonathan Demme, whose invasive camerawork somehow manages to be a fly on the wall. They may have to send me to rehab after the ceremony, but I'm glad I RSVP'd.


As with the openings of Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet, I was baffled at Baz Luhrmann's flustering thrust into exaggerated screwball with the intro to Australia. It's like an editing slaughterhouse in here! I was ready to press fast forward, even though it felt like that's exactly what Baz was doing for me. Once it settles down there's still a bit of awkwardness -- namely in Nicole Kidman's comic-to-crushing turn as Mrs. Boss, Sarah Ashley -- but then it finds its epic beats and plays them fairly well.

That said, while admirably vast in scope, everything that occurs in this movie feels so often inauthentic. Every turn of the plot and directorial cue is calculated to fit into that epic mold of classical Hollywood, to the point of my numb disinterest. The enormity of it all is rare nowadays, but the story and sweep still feels too common -- like a "Paint by the Numbers," it's pretty but programmed. I was emotionally left in the dust like a piece of stray cattle, and I wished Baz had wondered off course a bit as well. The performances are solid, if unremarkable, and Kidman eventually falls into character once Baz reins in his mood swings. Admirably Hugh Jackman is exploited like a piece of meat, and for that we can thank Baz and fast forward directly to the beef.

Inside the Minds of Nicole Kidman

Over at The Film Experience I posted my latest "Signatures" installment on the screen-stealing majesty that is Nicole Kidman. I couldn't help but think of all the wonderful monologue moments Kidman's had throughout her career. Some of them are expressed through song, some through John Hurt, and some of the best are without any words at all. I'm referring to moments such as the devastating and beautiful symphony scene from Birth, the grim "light bulb" moment from To Die For, and the knowing looks in Eyes Wide Shut. Kidman has a way of revealing the true arc of her characters with stunning ease and remarkable precision.
We can never know exactly what thoughts ran through Kidman's head during those classic scenes, but they may have gone something like this...

Margot at the Wedding: "Do I write today, or just belittle someone? ...I wrote yesterday."

Eyes Wide Shut: "It's so easy to fuck with my husband... Imagine if I told him what really happens in my dreams! Or about all those affairs."

Birth: "Could my husband have been cosmically reborn into the body of a little boy? Would Miss Cleo lie?"

Dogville: "This one's for all the avid Hummel collectors!"

Moulin Rouge: "If I choose the Duke I get diamonds, but I get treated like a whore. If I choose Christian I get true love, but I have to read his manuscripts."

To Die For: "If my husband's dead I'm that much closer to hosting Dateline! I wonder if Diane Sawyer knows where to buy an unregistered handgun..."

The Hours: "Do I write today, or just contemplate death? ...I wrote yesterday."

Cinema for a Rainy Day

Over a warm and sad cup of coffee, enjoy this cinematic rainy day.

I love a rainy day. You head inside and ask Patrick Wilson if he wants a dry towel...

And he responds thusly.

"The Stare Down" with Nicole Kidman

Life Lessons: Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Claude: Did she poop in her pants?

Margot: It happens to everyone, not just babies. It'll happen to you too someday.