Jessica Lange: From Kong to Blue Sky | 1995

the Academy faces watershed decisions this year notably on the question of whether the film industry is in a forward-looking frame of mind the Best Actress category is especially telling in that regard plug from its context to this quote from the New York Times looks like it could describe any number of years at the Academy Awards it refers specifically to 1995 a year in which a woman who already had a Best Supporting Actress Oscar won an extremely predictable race in a somewhat weak field that included a beloved portrayal of Joe March never heard of it the general outline may sound may be familiar but the story of Jessica Lange's second Oscar win has its twists and turns she never expected to win for blue sky and at one point the film seemed dead and buried destined to remain a victim of its studio's financial troubles its eventual resurrection meant resurrection for lange to revitalizing a career that some critics assumed had stalled for good in this video we'll follow her journey and take a look at what struck voters critics and audiences as an underwhelming year for women in film what happened and why does it all sound so familiar [Applause] you could say at the beginning of Jessica Lange's career was big recruited through her modeling agency Jessica Lange made her screen debut in the 1976 remake of King Kong now there are plenty of things to say about this movie its portrayal of the natives on Skull Island the now obviously horrible decision to make Kong climb the Twin Towers the fact that Kong just kind of walks around like a regular human guy I mean where is the character work Andy Serkis would never but critics and audiences had much more to say about Jessica's character Duan than they did about any of that the New York Times described Wan as a pseudo Marilyn Monroe character who seems less dizzy than certifiably daft aggressively unpleasant and out of place may hate to say it but this isn't exactly wrong the script doesn't do her any favors and puts her body on display in gratuitous ways that range from absurd to inexplicable as the LA Times put it to say that this Phila fied film got Lang's career off to a shaky start would be an understatement she was immediately categorized as dumb but pretty and the general consensus became her career died before it even began so shaking the reputation as the girl for whom Kong went ape became her first hurdle to overcome and it wouldn't be easy even in 2020 it was my mom's first thought Ling said nothing much was offered to me after Kong I began to get very anxious I was afraid I would never work again years of stagnation followed that movie still under contract to Kong's producer Dino De Laurentiis she wasn't exactly free to seek opportunities but finally and thankfully she broke the pact by accepting director Bob fauci's offer to star in his next film [Music] perhaps the opposite to King Kong in terms of critical acclaim all that jazz provided some much-needed prestige to combat the dumb but pretty stereotyped as Angelique she was subtle and refined and mysterious and did it well enough to give critics a reason to reconsider her abilities and casting agents a reason to give her a second chance she followed up all that jazz with a few bigger roles including the lead in an aptly described steamy remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice the film's director Bob Rafelson said he castling because he saw something behind the beauty that suggested black deaths he basically had a sense like Fosse did that Lange was actually capable of dramatic excellence she just needed to find the right role to show that skill off she got to 1982 and 83 were blockbuster years for Jessica Lange first came Francis a biopic about the actress Frances farmer who was controversially institutionalized to undergo mental-health treatment see Karina Longworth dissection on you must remember this for more on her then came Tootsie a comedy in which Lange Clay's an actress Hooper friends a man who is disguised as a woman in order to get good TV roles because as we all know it is much easier for women to get good roles Tootsie and Francis landed in theaters just a few weeks apart causing a complete transformation of Jessica Lange star persona into a skilled performer distinguished in both tragedy and light comedy Vincent Canby wrote in his review of Francis after fooling around and things like King Kong how to beat the high cost of living and even the pretentious The Postman Always Rings Twice this stunningly beautiful woman emerges as a major film actress the excitement of watching her in Francis goes a long way toward transforming the film which is a colossal downer into an experience that is if not exactly a fling genuinely memorable Lange herself noted that year with Francis and Tootsie I'm popular now and I wouldn't trade it for anything but I can't take any of it very seriously there was a period not too long ago when no one would talk to me with rave reviews came Oscar buzz and before long she became the first actress since 1942 to be nominated a for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year though Francis was perhaps the more stereotypical oscar-winning role there was tiny obstacle in the Best Actress category okay a major obstacle in Sophie's Choice Meryl Streep delivered a performance that is widely considered not only one of her personal best but also one of cinema's best if the film industry had suspected they might have a genius on their hands when she won her first Oscar for Kramer vs Kramer then Sophie's Choice confirmed it so the Best Actress went for Lange wasn't in the stars but that wasn't a reason to lose hope one critic summed it up since everybody seems to think Meryl Streep is an absolute shoo-in for Best Actress and Sophie's Choice this leads me to believe Jessica will take home her award for Best Supporting not only for the reality of her acting in Tootsie but also as a stop for having to out vote her in Francis and that's basically what happened Meryl took home Best Actress for Sophie's Choice while Jessica Lange took home Best Supporting Actress for Tootsie she and Meryl became the foremost actresses working at the time and we're sort of simultaneously paired and posed against each other by the press I think there's at least one significant way to contrast the two and to help understand where their careers diverge in my Meryl Streep video I talked about how Meryl Streep's defining characteristic as an actress and the key to her longevity is that she doesn't have a defining characteristic she's ostensibly the chameleon who disappears into her character work and though beautiful she's never been seen as a vampy sex symbol but rather as elegant and refined Lange on the other hand began her career as an object of sexual attraction her roles post King Kong obviously were more nuanced than duan but many of them postman Francis even blue sky require Lange's beauty to build the character her willingness to foreground her character's sexuality gives Lange a more edgy glamour than Streep she's often more volatile and by nature of being more alluring she's often more dangerous Lange recently told an interview magazine that she likes playing characters who are out there on the edge where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice that description works just as well for American Horror Story as it does for Francis as it does for blue sky as a newly minted Academy award-winner Lang continued to earn critical success with films like crimes of the heart and sweet dreams while taking a brief swerve into sensitive or oral tales inspired by her romance with Sam Shepard but as the decade continued things started to slow down and to be fair a part of this is because she never loved the culture of Hollywood or show business as kind of an artsy semi recluse she's frequently chosen to take time off or reject projects or return to the stage as she did in nineteen ninety two's a streetcar named desire and as far back as 1983 she was talking about retiring but part of it was also that the roles were drying up she took supporting roles in films like Cape Fear and though clearly anointed one of the industry's most accomplished leading ladies did not maintain the same clout as she had in the early 80s then came Blue Sky kind of in blue sky Jessica Lange plays the wife of an army officer her husband tasked with conducting nuclear tests begins to see flaws in the military's plans while she conflicts with the conservative culture of the base as her mental illness worsens now blue sky actually completed filming in the summer of 1990 it was director Tony Richardson's last film before tragically passing from AIDS however its studio orion toppled into bankruptcy shortly thereafter for all the money in the world we wouldn't have gotten blue sky released while we were in bankruptcy said Orion's vice-president for a publicity Gale block while you're in bankruptcy everything is frozen so Orion had no choice but to put blue sky on the Shelf until they emerge from bankruptcy in 1992 typically delayed releases from studios with serious financial difficulties do not produce confidence within the film industry so the question became how do you treat blue sky how do you get the most out of something old that everybody probably assumes is bad according to the studio senior vice president for marketing they decided not to treat this film as an old film but rather to release it during award season in the hopes of prompting some Oscar buzz for Lange as they had done for Michelle Pfeiffer in 1992 s Love Field just after they had emerged from bankruptcy hopefully her powerhouse performance would lead the way to prestige and give the film of financial boost at the box office thankfully critics were receptive to her performance Peter Raynor of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the real heroism in blue sky is the way Jessica Lange doesn't hold anything back she has so much to give it's a fierce display Todd McCarthy agreed that Lange had the showi role with almost unlimited opportunities to emot-- and strut her stuff which she did magnificently and with total abandon total abandon is a good way to put it watching this movie now you definitely see many of the elements that have made her performances in American Horror Story so successful it's sometimes dark wild touching and often camp to the point that it's almost indistinguishable from American Horror Story regardless and despite earning pennies at the box office her performance generated the Oscar buzz Orion had hoped for soon began the tedious exercise that is Oscar season Vogue magazine declared Winona Ryder Hollywood's Princess films like Heather's beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands firmly established her stardom making her sort of an anti eight girl it girl perpetually cool in her leather jacket and Tom Waits shirt in 1994 she used her star power to help greenlight an adaptation of one of her favorite novels because I guess I just can't escape this topic despite positive reviews Little Women faced a somewhat familiar uphill battle during award season one candid publicity executive claimed the film appealed to the wrong sex the Academy is still very male I doubt if most of them will even look at the cassette they'll give it to their granddaughters another Hollywood executive categorized the critical response to Little Women as a pat on the head and said male critics were embarrassed to put it on their 10 best lists cool yeah that's awesome cool the film went home empty-handed on Oscar night but that didn't bother voters so much about Winona in 1994 there was no reason to believe she wouldn't have her moment eventually I think we're not a writer my twin she's very skillful actress and everybody likes her and she's now shown that she's versatile she can do period stuff she can do contemporary stuff it's 20 more years to live that's 20 more years to win she was considered the future of Hollywood and she damn well should have been critics appeared to dismiss Miranda Richardson's nomination for Tom and viv almost immediately truly it was difficult to find many resources discussing her at all the film of Miramax film about the troubled relationship of poet TS Eliot and his wife Vivian barely made any money and seemed to rely on Richardson's reputation for performances in The Crying Game damage and more Jodie Foster's first effort as a producer resulted in Nell the story of a woman who grows up isolated in the woods and must learned to communicate with the local authorities and community that threatens to upend her way of life it is generous to call Jodie Foster the lead in now of course that doesn't necessarily mean anything at the Oscars but more so than many other miscategorized performances you really feel it in this film critics appreciated her visceral commitment to the character but wish that her perspective had not been so secondary to Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson's still Jodie Foster was at the height of her popularity and had recently won two Best Actress Academy Awards in the span of three years so while it was unlikely that the Academy would continue such a streak it would have been easy to consider her prominent enough to merit a nomination the client was considered a pretty good perfectly average commercial thriller which is not precisely a genre the Academy typically likes it followed a series of performances that signaled a shift in susan sarandon career away from the sexually charged characters like in bill Durham and Atlantic City two dedicated mothers on a mission like in Lorenzo's oil and Little Women by 1995 season Sarandon was considered a major star and her loss here her fourth would undoubtedly contribute to her win the following year for dead man walking frankly the Best Actress race was not very suspenseful critics predicted Lange would win early on not because they felt she indisputably knocked it out of the park but because there were noticeably few quote-unquote oscar-worthy female performances to choose from the frustration among female critics was palpable here's Janet Maslin of the New York Times absolutely exhausted on Charlie Rose Best Actress this way around this is this is just sad because each of these people these are all very good actresses and each one of them is on this list for other things that she has done for what her career stands for not for the work in this particular pan because there are very weak films this is the roles for women this year but nobody here is nominated for a great performance given this and who do you think will win I don't even so spread out if you don't they're tired and it makes sense because this problem is not exclusive to 1995 the LA Times taking a broader view diagnosed the category as perennial e week while critic Bernard Weintraub observed that embarassingly the Academy had trouble for decades scraping together enough actresses to even fill the category what's striking to me reading this commentary in 2020 is how interchangeable these articles are with things I read just weeks ago quote strong candidates in the Best Actress category are elusive to put it mildly while prize where the male actors are hard to miss 1995 or 2020 quote I'm curious whether the Academy is just going to affirm yet again that as far as industry is concerned big men always Trump little women 1995 or 2020 these quotes point to a larger and persistent representation problem very few female lead films are being made just 33% of on screen speaking roles belong to women in 2018 and the ones that are made compete for recognition from a largely homogeneous group just 32% of Academy voters were women last year the Washington Post revealed that only 12% of Best Picture winners have a female lead in other words the numbers bear out this feeling that there just aren't very many performances to choose from and more concerning for the actresses themselves they have a much smaller window to get the few roles that are available Sarandon and Lange are interesting to pair here both had earned multiple nominations one in back-to-back years and perhaps most importantly are almost the same age and that maybe seems kind of odd to bring up but although they were both only in their 40s the press made it sound like they each had one foot in the grave the SF Chronicle bluntly called Lange's age an actress's terror and acknowledged that it was clearly a handicap the New York Times Gus sarandon age and oddly explicit terms too as she glides gracefully towards 50 Sarandon will have to find a way to make menopausal sexuality glamorous enough to be acceptable to audiences um yikes contrast this with the rhetoric surrounding Paul Newman who was also nominated in 1995 one article read Paul Newman no longer wants to be seen as a sex symbol all in all he's a star who can have legions of women humming the country song the older the violin the sweeter the music at 69 years old which by the way is one year younger than Jessica Lange's current age Paul Newman apparently has to shoe women away he's allowed the agency he chooses how his sexuality should be perceived and of course there are numbers to confirm this narrative here - best actress has on average the youngest winners of any acting category just 36 years old there's reason for hope on this front 1995 may have been very similar to 2020 at the Oscars but Renee Zellweger just won Best Actress at age 50 - and at least no one dared or even thought to write about her menopausal sexuality at least half the Internet is either thirsting over Kaitlyn chatter JLo who are both inexplicably 50 and more opportunities are popping up every day on television lang and Sarandon for example recently co-starred in feud as Joan Crawford and Betty Davis respectively Joan and Betty were about 10 years younger at the time depicted in the show than Jessica and Susan were when they played them and yet Joan and Betty's careers were considered over according to Sarandon that's growth when I started it was over by 40 so definitely the line has been pushed still laying qualified the statement I don't think it's changed very much to tell you the truth it's not a question of age or looks if the powers that be aren't interested in the story of women of a certain age then older women won't be cast in those stories and I think that's the most important part this is about employment ensuring that actresses have access to great roles and a similar longevity to actors seems like a pretty straightforward plea for equality but part of this is also about how we see women what does it say about us that we think the most interesting part of a life tends to be in her 30s that she only used to speak 33% of the time what stories are we missing how can broadening the scope of aged representation change how we view and talk about women watch Grace and Franky on Netflix Jessica Lange told The Washington Post after her 1995 win for blue sky there was a period of time I was so worried about being taken seriously then I was taken seriously and I worried I would lose my looks herstory gives us a glimpse at the difficult and often contradictory messages a woman must consider to succeed in Hollywood you need to be pretty but not the kind of pretty that makes you look dumb and of course you'll only be considered that pretty for a shorter period of time than your male counterparts during which you'll need to glam down to be taken seriously 15 years later not much has changed one thing for sure has not changed and that's that Jessica Lange can still deliver edgy performances with total abandon she still finds and excels in characters teetering on the precipice and if that isn't the case to find more vehicles for actresses like her I don't know what is [Music]

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Views: 140,342

Rating: 4.9488201 out of 5

Keywords: Jessica Lange, Best Actress Oscar

Id: pyprnJ8WCtA

Length: 19min 57sec (1197 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 17 2020

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