Crass, crude, foul-mouthed comedies have been all the rage at the movies for some time now, with the trendiest comedians from any given year dropping F-bombs, and spouting off rapid-fire fraternity jokes in their (almost always nudity-obsessed) star vehicles. Wet Hot American Summer and The State co-creator Michael Showalter‘s latest offering, Hello, My Name Is Doris, is the perfect antidote to the unending strain of Apatow offshoots: It balances classy, screwball comedy, bone-deep drama, and old-fashioned romance with the finesse of an Olympic gymnast. For once, it’s a rom-com with aims of enchanting and disarming us rather than grossing us out of our minds.
The film’s greatest boon is its star, Sally Field, an actor of age who puts on a performance so range-y, powerful and tender that it all but wipes today’s young, sparkling starlets from memory. She plays Doris, a sixtysomething recluse who’s lived in her mother’s cluttered house in Staten Island her whole life. Doris falls into lonely despair when her mother passes away but thankfully has her job as a paper pusher to keep her busy during the day. She’s the only person over 40 at her company though her role as office outcast could be more attributed to her cat-lady eccentricities (cat-eye glasses, headscarves, wooly knits and all).
Hope of getting Doris unstuck from her rut arrives in the form of her company’s new art director, a strapping, decades-younger Los Angeles transplant amusingly named John Fremont (New Girl‘s Max Greenfield). On several occasions, we get lost with Doris in fantasy as she daydreams about John confessing his love for her in front of their colleagues and hooking up with him in the breakroom. Field is ungodly adorable as she fumbles and fawns, and Greenfield does a good job of keeping us in suspense as to whether or not Doris has got a shot at John’s heart.
With encouragement from her best (only) friend, Roz (Tyne Daly)—who takes her to a life-altering lecture by motivational speaker Willy Williams (Peter Gallagher)—Doris decides it’s time to make a change and begins fashioning herself to John’s interests (facilitated by Roz’s granddaughter, who schools her on the art of Facebook stalking), making a concerted, somewhat creepy effort to cougar her way into John’s arms. Suddenly, she’s clumsily throwing around millennial slang, rocking neon yellow outfits and going to indie electro-pop shows headlined by John’s favorite band, Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters (where the two “coincidentally” bump into each other).
Just as a tight friendship starts to form between them and the thought of romance doesn’t seem so inconceivable, John meets another woman, bringing Doris’ dreams crashing down. In a drunken fit of desperation, she sabotages John’s new relationship (via a lovelorn timeline post from her fake Facebook account), a plan that naturally backfires and leads to even more heartbreak. Showalter and co-writer Laura Terruso—who directed the short the movie is based on as a student of Showalter’s at New York University—hit every romantic, comedic, and dramatic beat so well that the movie transcends genre. This makes for such an enjoyable experience because, instead of trying to predict where the story’s going, we’re allowed to let go of preconception and go wherever the emotions may take us. Every laugh, every heartbreak, every moment feels sincere, not hokey or contrived. Nothing’s cheap; everything’s earned. The movie’s liberating in that way.
Field is so talented it’s scary. It should go without saying—she’s a two-time Oscar winner, after all—but the sad reality is that female actors over 50 are typically relegated to secondary, tertiary, often motherly roles. Her career, tragically, supports that narrative. But that’s why Hello, My Name Is Doris is such a gift; in all her glory, we get to see Field showcase her unparalleled mastery of physical comedy (watching Doris quiver and drool as John pumps up her deflated gym-ball office chair is insanely funny) as well as her earth-shattering dramatic chops. In the movie’s most powerful, unsettling scene, Doris hops up onto her couch, screaming at her brother (Stephen Root) to leave her house as she tearfully refuses to clear out the piles of old magazines and expired food her mother left behind. It’s scenes like this that reveal the psychological complexity bubbling beneath Doris’ cartoonish exterior. Such a wonderfully weird, layered character is only safe in the hands of an actor of Field’s caliber.
]]>It’s been some time since Michael Showalter‘s Hello, My Name Is Doris premiered at SXSW 2015, where the film’s seasoned star, Sally Field, made waves with an outstanding performance as the titular, socially invisible cat-lady, who we follow as she lusts after her significantly younger co-worker (Max Greenfield). As would be expected considering Showalter’s resume (he co-wrote the great Wet Hot American Summer), the film is exceptionally funny; watching awkward Doris stalk her prey is adorable and awkward and hilarious. But what’s special about the movie is that Field not only makes us laugh, but finds incredible depth in a role that, ostensibly, is a walking cliché. One of the sad realities of the movie business is that actors of age as gifted and experienced as Field are rarely afforded meaty starring roles. But, thanks to Showalter, we’ve got this terrific little film that showcases Field and her talent full-force.
We sat down with Showalter and Field in a roundtable interview to talk about the film, which hits theaters today!
I love Doris as a character. Sally, what was your immediate reaction to her?
Sally: When I read the screenplay, I loved it. I said to my agents, “I want to do this.” They said, “You should meet Michael. What if you don’t like him?” We met, and immediately he said…
Michael: It was about the comedy.
Sally: We were addressing how you can blend both of those arenas.
Michael: The big question for her was, how are you going to do all this slapstick, screwball comedy stuff—the ball pumping scene, the dancing—with this really intense, sad stuff? I don’t want to water either one down to make it a fine line. I want the comedy to go all the way. We want to play every level as loud or as soft as we want. She did ultimately map out a way. She’s crying her eyes out in the scene where she gets drunk, but it’s this sort of dramatic, feeling sorry for herself kind of crying. In the scene where the brother-in-law comes to the house, that’s a different kind of crying. That’s all the way deep down in her. It was about figuring out all these different shades of this character and how to piece it all together so we weren’t repeating ourselves.
The film feels like a perfect antidote to the kind of issue that was addressed in the Inside Amy Schumer sketch that gave that shout-out to you and your career arc. I was wondering if that was a part of the appeal of this character. Here’s a character who’s not defined as a wife, as a mother. She’s discovering her vitality, really.
Sally: The appeal of the screenplay and the character wasn’t in that it’s a “not.” It was such a unique person. A three-dimensional character that really talked about how there are all these stages in life. People always think, “Well, there’s the childhood stage—we know what kind of development goes on there. You don’t know where to put your feet down because you’re a child. Then, there’s adolescence…everyone knows what a tough stage that is. Then, there’s young adulthood—you’ve got relationships and children and a career.” The thing is, those stages go on into your 30s, your 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s. Every one of them is this new place that you arrive. When you’re older, society doesn’t let you feel, “I don’t know what I’m doing! I don’t know where to put my feet! I’m brand new and I’m too old to be this new!” That is, in a lot of ways, what this film is.
That is, in a lot of ways, what this film is. She has arrested development, yes. And she’s in her sixties, having a kind of adolescence, a birth of her own voice, her own vision of who she is, what she wants. It has to do with her mother passing away, so her life is just changing whether she wants it to or not. That is something that I really responded to, as well as the fact that age is such a weird thing. Inside, whether you’re 20, 30, 40, 50, 60…you’re still who you are. Who you are is lodged there. Human beings need to make contact with other human beings, so sometimes they don’t match, chronologically. If [Doris had] been the man and he’d been female…
Michael: It’d be Bad Grandpa.
Sally: [laughs] It’d be an Audrey Hepburn movie.
Michael: There’s a line from the movie Grey Gardens where the mother is in bed and Edie’s doing something and the mother says something to the effect of, “I lived my life.” The implication was, I may be crazy and living alone in this crazy house with a million cats, but she’s even worse because I actually had a life! I didn’t start living this way until I got way older. But Edie never even had a life! I did stuff, so I have an excuse to be this way. It’s so sad for Edie. It’s such a dig at her. That line resonated for me, and a lot of that is in this story. What Doris sacrificed for her mother was her whole life! It wasn’t just that—I think you learn in the brother scene that there were gender politics, but these were not areas the movie was going to delve into. But it was very real.
Sally: I always thought Doris was predisposed to be a hider anyway. I always saw her mother as being a big personality who took all the air out of a room. So Doris got smaller and smaller. Her mother was much more of a hoarder, so she’d bring home this stuff to please her mother. There was an injured part of Doris that preferred to hide. I recognized that, and sometimes it takes change to force you out of your own comfort zone. I don’t think she’s, like, a victim within it because I think in a lot of ways she was predisposed to be this way, and they were her choices. She could have walked away. She could have said, “You know what, Mom? Let’s see if I can earn enough money and get someone to look in on you. I’ve got some dating to do.” But she chose not to for a reason. Part of her couldn’t heal.
I think, right now, mean-spirited comedies are sort of fashionable. The humor in your movie is more classic, screwball stuff. We laugh at Doris, but it’s out of recognition. Like, when she’s daydreaming about her crush, we laugh because we’ve all been there. We’ve all liked someone like that. It’s good-natured.
Michael: The comedies I loved were not mean-spirited. I grew up on the comedies of the 70s and early 80s, which were silly—Steve Martin movies, Python, Woody Allen, Airplane! My comedic sensibility is really just silly and light and broad. Physical comedy. I love slipping on a banana peel and stuff like that. That’s always been my sensibility. I just really like silliness. It’s just my own aesthetic.
We mentioned the Amy Schumer sketch earlier in which she used your career to comment on how a female actor of age’s value is unjustifiably tied to her age. Do you find that perception to be accurate?
Sally: Of course. I feel like that’s accurate in show business and accurate in most of society. In this country, ageism for women, not necessarily for men, is a deterrent. You’re talking about show business, but it’s hard for women in every arena. It’s not getting any better. If you add any other ingredient on top of being female, like being of color, and then you add age…The statistics on all of that, of those who participate and whether they be in front of the camera or behind the camera, are pretty horrifying. They do not reflect where we are in society. I think the world has something to work on when it comes to empowering and bringing women to the table. Unless we can do that, the whole world will not heal. We’re out of balance.
CJ and Bernard tackle the #OscarsSoWhite controversy on this week’s episode, delving into the complexities of the pre-awards show debacle and the larger social issue it stems from. To help balance out the heavy shit, we’ll check in on Darth Dissenter himself as he finally shares with us his thoughts on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Better late than never! Plus, Bernard fills us in on a mildly traumatic experience he had involving the legendary Sally Field. All that, plus our Indie Picks of the Week, on this episode of the Way Too Indiecast!
Ten years ago Hollywood graced the world with their Tobey Maguire led rendition of Spider-Man which helped pave the way for a generation of super hero movies to litter our summer line up. Then, Hollywood upped the ante and delivered upon us Spider-Man 2 which was met with critical and financial acclaim. With dollar signs in their eyes and arguably the best source material in the entire Spider-Man universe, Hollywood churned out Spider-Man 3, and came up about two feet short of home plate and was tagged out by a mob of pitchfork wielding critics and fans. Poor Hollywood retreated into its cave of remake henchmen and stewed upon the decision of what to do with the Spider-Man franchise. “We will remake it!” They cried as they threw stacks of $100 bills at each other. “Yes! And we won’t even bother with any of that Nolan-esque gritty reboot nonsense either!” And they made it so. With new directors, writers, and actors, Hollywood was ready to rock-and-roll with their shiny new Spider-Man vehicle in The Amazing Spider-Man!
And rock-and-roll they did not. I can’t imagine a more flat remake than this. It literally treads the same water as the original only more failingly. Andrew Garfield may make an arguably better Peter Parker/Spider-Man with his British-ness and super hair, but everyone forgets that in 2002, Tobey Maguire was being hailed as the true savior of all things spider related.
The Amazing Spider-Man sticks closer to the source material in that they invite Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy to the party and provides a more fleshed out and real super science corporation Oscorp versus the cartoonish one provided in 2002. But the film has the much of the same origin story as the ten year old Spider-Man.
Even if it isn’t exactly the same plot-wise as the original 2002 version, it feels the same. The film still has that sappy ham-fisted moment where everyone agrees to help Spider-Man at a moment of great need. I imagine if a Brooklynite man saw a teenager dressed in a spandex unitard shooting ropes out his wrists and limping around sixty stories overhead, they wouldn’t say, “My good gracious, that man needs our help! Quick! Frank! Help conjure the manpower needed to help this poor unitard wearing teenager in his swinging ways!”
The Amazing Spider-Man also falters with some of the action scenes as well. One particular scene that stands out as especially awkward is one where the villain, a scientist lizard-man, attacks the school Peter Parker attends in an attempt to destroy him quickly. During the whole fight, the musical score accompanying the fight is a wailing and triumphant orchestral movement that is a very strange juxtaposition of the fight scene in which Peter Parker is getting his spider face smashed into everything.
The biologist in me also cringed when the villain grabs a couple of unlabeled beakers of presumably colored water and mixes them together to form a perfectly sized explosion to knock Spider-Man out from his hiding spot. Hollywood still hasn’t grasped the concept that their audience can tell when their being spoon fed fake science. Although, I say this whilst viewing a Spider-Teenager fly around a city fighting crime. But my point is still valid!
Overall, The Amazing Spider-Man languishes in dull territory and left me wanting some grittier content over the already overcooked and cheesy Spider-Man story. It was steering towards campy but narrowly avoids it with some humor, well done special effects and close ups of Emma Stone. It simply lacks any heart. However, Hollywood knows a money maker when they see it and I’m sure there will probably be two more multimillion dollar installments of Spider-Man and we will have two more chances to see random New Yorkers delivering pancake flat lines like, “He needs our help!” Until then, I will be figuring out how to make wall demolishing explosives out of blue and green colored liquids in my nearest science classroom.
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