It's hard to imagine fuller lives than those of Elaine Stritch and the late Gore Vidal, the subjects of two sensationally entertaining documentaries at the Tribeca Film Festival. Each seems to have crossed paths and/or formed friendships with some of the most legendary names of the 20th century, and each is a legend in their own right in their respective fields.
A photo of Elaine Stritch should accompany the word "irrepressible" in the dictionary; "cantankerous" and "resilient" might also apply. Director Chiemi Karasawa's Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me is an extremely intimate, warts-and-all look at the 88-year-old Broadway veteran, whose credits range from Noel Coward's Sail Away and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Stephen Sondheim's Company and playing Alec Baldwin's mother on "30 Rock." From the moment she appears onscreen, limberly walking the streets of Manhattan in a fur coat over her trademark tights, you realize this is one quick-witted New York character. (When a fan tells her, "You've still got it," she responds in mock indignation, "Still?") She doesn't suffer fools gladly and has a healthy skepticism of the constant ego-massaging of show biz: "Everybody's lovin' everybody else just too much, for my money."
Karasawa's cameras follow Stritch at home in her suite at the Carlyle Hotel and rehearsing an all-Sondheim show for the Cafe Carlyle, on the set of "30 Rock," and sorting through old photos to be displayed in a rehearsal room named in her honor at the Stella Adler Studio. Though she remains remarkably energetic, she is also at times quite frail, due to her longtime battle with Type 1 diabetes. (An alcoholic, she was sober for 24 years but now allows herself one drink a day.) In one remarkably unfiltered sequence, her terror is palpable when she suffers an attack of hypoglycemia. Stritch's health issues, which can affect her memory, are at constant war with her determination to soldier on as a performer. "It's hard enough to remember Sondheim's lines when you don't have diabetes," she laments. (I, for one, will never forget the added element of suspense when I saw Stritch struggle with her big number in the 2010 Broadway revival of A Little Night Music.) Throughout, Stritch is supported in more ways than one by her patient and devoted music director Rob Bowman, truly a candidate for sainthood.
In Stritch's younger days, John F. Kennedy tried to seduce her, but she held her ground as a proper Catholic girl. A surprising contemporary friend is James Gandolfini, who is convinced that if they'd both met at 35, they would have had "a torrid love affair that ended very badly." Her appeal endures to this day, as Stritch disarms the audience at New York's Town Hall in 2011 with her expertly timed rendition of "I Feel Pretty."
Throughout the doc, Stritch illustrates the famous line she quotes from Bette Davis: "Old age ain't for sissies." The veteran star prefers the phrase "growing older" to "growing old." After all, we're all on this journey together and "Why not enjoy it?"
Look up "gadfly" in the dictionary, and there should be a cross-reference to Gore Vidal. The prolific novelist, playwright, essayist, raconteur, TV celebrity and sometime political candidate is the lively subject of Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, which director Nicholas Wrathall filmed over the course of seven years. The film offers a wealth of both new and archival interviews with the outspoken, unapologetically left-wing social observer, whose bon mots here include "Every time a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies" and "Never offend an enemy in a small way."
The doc covers the early influence of Vidal's blind grandfather, an Oklahoma senator; his acclaimed literary debut at the age of 21 and the subsequent backlash to his second novel The City and The Pillar with its then-graphic depiction of gay sex; his TV and film writing career; his novels ranging from acclaimed historical works to the outrageous Myra Breckinridge; and his TV sparring matches with conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr. and a pugnacious Norman Mailer.
Vidal's acid wit aims at U.S. imperialism, economic inequality, the emergence of an American police state, and the corruption of our political system, and even targets a sacred cow like John F. Kennedy ("one of the most disastrous presidents... I learned never again to be taken in by anyone's charisma"). Wrathall even filmed Vidal watching Barack Obama's 2008 victory speech and smirking at his high-flying rhetoric.
You'll never find the word "modest" associated with Vidal; in a post-film Q&A, Wrathall (a friend of Vidal's nephew, the film director Burr Steers) said it wasn't difficult to secure the author's cooperation: "He loved being on camera." But, asked about his legacy, Vidal stubbornly insists, "I couldn't care less." Whatever his wishes, The United States of Amnesia is sure to burnish and grow that legacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment