Here's a little something for the feminist and movie buff:
Documentary is on actresses and aging
Debra Winger's big-screen exit spurs filmmaker
By Edward Guthman
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Debra Winger was one of Hollywood's top stars in the early 1980s, but she figured out pretty quickly that something was wrong in a business that sets impossible standards of youth and beauty.
During the making of "An Officer and a Gentleman," producer Don Simpson knocked on her door and handed her a manila envelope. Inside was a diuretic pill. "We watched the dailies," Simpson said in a low, I'm-doing-you-a-favor voice. "You look a little bloated."
It was that kind of humiliation that eventually drove the gifted actress out of the business. Unlike the rest of her peers - who still fight for parts, go for Botox injections and struggle not to look their age - Winger just walked away at 39.
Her departure, so rare among actresses, inspired a new documentary about female survival in the movie industry. Directed by actress Rosanna Arquette, "Searching for Debra Winger" is a fascinating look at aging and adjustment in a high-stress, youth-worshiping profession.
Arquette interviews 36 well-known actresses, some in groups and some individually, and elicits a frankness and intimacy that she couldn't if she weren't a fellow warrior. Many seem thrilled to have a forum to express their frustration with the movie business; Jane Fonda, who retired 12 years ago, is especially moving.
"The reality is that most people look like me," says Whoopi Goldberg, 47, of Hollywood's youth-and-beauty fixation. "(Hollywood) is a different world. All these women cut their bodies up, cut their faces up. They're sort of reproducing like an amoeba."
With few roles written for mature women, especially in studio features, are actresses feeling pressure to retain their youth at any cost?
Research would seem to bear that out. According to Martha Lauzen, a communications professor at San Diego State University and author of "The Celluloid Ceiling Study," more than half the men in movies are older than 35, while only 8 percent of the women fall in the same category.
Lauzen also found that in 250 films released in 2001, only 25 percent of the characters were women. Directors and writers scored even worse that year: Six percent of the top films were directed by women; 10 percent were written by women.
The Screen Actors Guild came up with different numbers that same year, claiming that women received 38 percent of all movie roles. Either way, it's a dispiriting statistic given that women make up 50.9 percent of the U.S. populace.
Dazzling exceptions exist on the big screen; they always will.
Last year, at 53, Meryl Streep had two of her best roles ever, in "The Hours" and "Adaptation." Frances McDormand, 45, is sexy, funny and strong in "Laurel Canyon." Julianne Moore, 42, is in her prime, and Jessica Lange, 54, Susan Sarandon, 56, and Goldie Hawn, 57, are still very much in the game.
Whether those women can win roles into their 60s and 70s, as men often do, remains to be seen. "There's more dignity in aging in France and England and Europe," says Tracey Ullman, 43, in "Searching for Debra Winger." "You see many more women having better careers in their 50s and 60s. Here it's Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Sean Connery. Name three women of that age that are still working."
Part of the problem, says Samantha Mathis, 33, is "the 'Revenge of the Nerds' syndrome. All these guys that couldn't get a date in high school. They're smart, but they have no social skills, and suddenly they're running the studios."
They're the ones who decide what preteen and teen-age boys - the No. 1 perceived moviegoing demographic - want to see. Because teenage boys seem to like toilet humor and car chases, aging women are more often going to cable TV and theater to find work.
When an actress goes in for a reading, says "E.R." star Julianna Margulies, 37, she's rated not only on her looks, but also on how much the men in the room would like to have sex with her.
It sounds horrifying, but when Margulies says this in the film, at a luncheon with Mathis, Daryl Hannah, Melanie Griffith, Patricia Arquette and Kelly Lynch, each of the actresses nods in grim assent. They've all been there.
In the film, Winger, a naturally beautiful 46, says it took her five years to drop her career, "to believe that I wasn't addicted, that my life would (still) be good.
"I guess I've turned the word 'passion' into whatever it is that melts your heart, that keeps you soft and open. That's what you should be following. And show business just made me rough and hard." |
