a division of the Chersonian Institute

Category: Film (Page 7 of 16)

Cher Photographed in Spring

Cher1Lip-lickin' delight! Cher has been out and about in New York City. Lots of lovely pics as a result.

Boss ‘O Tweets

And although Cher was all over the red carpet this week and on TV doing whatnot, the most exciting coverage to happen recently, in my humble opinion, was a review of Cher’s tweets by The Guardian. The Guardian writing about Cher tweet! Maybe it’s the Cher nerd in me but…

Long story short, Sonny was once the only butt of Cher’s wisecracks. Now the world gets to enjoy them.

There was also a recent story about Cher's Baltimore tweets.

In Music

Some exciting music news regarding Cher's song “Believe.” It gets a well-rated review in the cover by rapper MNEK and I agree it’s nifty!

Ben E. King passed away. This is a good time to revisit Sonny & Cher’s version of “Stand By Me.” I’ve always thought this version was very creative and outside-the-box.

MsI just saw the Muscle Shoals documentary last week. Cher has a few photos in the movie, outtakes of the headband shots also seen in the Rhino collectors CD of her 1969 album Jackson Highway. Nothing particularly noteworthy about her in the movie except for the fact that they say she was the first customer at the Jackson Highway studio in 1969 after the four "Swampers" decided to leave the FAME Studios to create their own rival studio.

Cher Appearances

So there was this big New York Met Gala this week. And EVERYONE was there. Remember how Cher showed up at the 1975 Met Gala (40 years ago beotches!) with Bob Mackie in that wow-ser dress? So does everyone else remember that, including Kim Kardashian and the press.

Harper's Bazaar story about the designer Cher went with this year. (Marc Jacobs)

Vogue coverage of the dress.

New York Times coverage of the dress.

Cher World Coverage.

Kim Kardashian said her dress was tribute to Cher’s 1975 dress (Daily Mail). 

The Independent.

Express.

Oh, but Kim’s been tributin’ Cher for a long, long time! See the photo breakdown (Daily Mail). Didn’t you always figure Kim, being another Armenian and all, has always been a big Cher fan?

Also ran: Kanye West was at the gala with Kim and he spoke to Cher (allegers) thanking her for popularizing autotune. Is that for reals?

Gala pics (click to enlarge):

Cher5 Designer  Cherkim 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Cherny2After the gala, Cher went strolling around in NYC (Cher World).

Check out those shoes and those bell bottoms!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Television

While Cher was in New York, she took time to say goodbye to the funny asshole on Late Night with David Letterman (Cher World). More coverage in Entertainment Weekly and News Day. And also on some site called Classic Hits.

Pics (click to enlarge):

Letterman Chernewyork Chertweetletterman 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Recognize that jacket from the 1980s when Cher was living in NYC?

PoliticsPeripherals

Cher also did a publicity photo shoot with Heidi Shink and Chaz (Cher World).

Last week I was searching for something about Cher long ago in Bust or Bitch Magazine and I found this, a review of good and the bad in the book Becoming Chaz: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/bibliobitch-transition-by-chaz-bono.

Movies

MaskA blogger writes about what the movie Mask means to her all these 20 years later (Huffington Post).

 

 

Movie Alert, Toto Bro RIP, Cherity and Cher Impersonators

MikePorcaroToto

Another Toto member and Porcaro brother has died. Toto's bassist, Mike Porcaro, died last week at age 59. David Hungate was their original bassist. Mike's brother, drummer Jeff Porcaro, died in 1992 at the age 39. David and Jeff were members of Sonny & Cher's band during the early 1970s, later becoming founding members of Toto with David Paich (also of Sonny & Cher's band and of "David's Song") and Steve Lukather. Many Toto members have worked with Cher over the years as studio musicians and as inspiration. Read Mike's New York Times obit or more about the history of Toto.

The Wrecking Crew Movie

The-Wrecking-Crew-posterGreat news! The Wrecking Crew documentary is coming to an art house near you! I saw an LA screening of this movie back in 2008 and did an expensive blog post about it. Cher in not only interviewed but you learn a lot more about the musicians Sonny & Cher were working with in the 1960s. There is some good old S&C footage here and as the press for the movie states, these musicians were “the unsung heroes of the West Coast Sound."

Go see this movie!

Cher Offers to Help 96-Year Old Edith Harrison

In other big news this week, Cher offered to help 96-year old Edith Harrison return home in Virginia.

ChercoupleCher offered to help pay for needed upgrades to Hill's family home in Alexandria and some medical expensive because Cher was inspired by the love story between Edith and her husband Eddie Harrison who died after they were forcibly separated in December. The story was picked up in at least 145 outlets as of last week.

Cher Impersonators

Stef and Johnny, Peter and Lily, and Sonny and Cher

There are a plethora of Cher impersonators. In my humble opinion, (thffffffft), the best ones don't try to sing. Maybe they can perfect the Cher twang or vibrator or her smokey contralto, but they just can't get the deadpan, cool distance of her persona, which is why our most famous Cher impersonator doesn't sing.

It's rare to find some Sonny & Cher impersonators (even harder to pull off), but there's a new Scottish pair doing a tribute play called "And the Beat Goes On." The Sonny might just be on to something with his stern Sonny stare. But the clothes need a little workup and what's with the teddy bear?

Kathy Griffin Opens Up About Her 'Fashion Police' Exit

Griffin does a very funny Cher impersonation in her act and her friend Cher expressed support last week when Griffin quit Fashion Police…and I do, too. I love how Griffin and Kelly Osbourne have stood up to bullying, especially calling it out among the LA fashionauts.

 

Cher Homes, Calendars, Tour Stuff , Screen Sirens, Oscar Winning Chart Toppers

CalHappy New Year! I started my new job this week at Central New Mexico Community College. So far so good. Everyone is smart, interesting and involved in cool extra-curricular projects.

Over my two week break between jobs I started to go through my back log of emails. I found plenty of Cher links to keep us busy until Cher is back to selling us stuff.

It's the new year and you may be in need of some fan-made Cher Calendars. Here are some places to get some:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cher-DESKTOP-CALENDAR-2015-NEW-Dressed-to-Kill-D2K-Tour-Closer-to-the-Truth-/261688900218?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3ceddfba7a

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cher-CALENDAR-2015-NEW-Dressed-to-Kill-D2K-Tour-Closer-to-the-Truth-Magazine-/251663378456?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a984e6818

Links

My friend Julie sent me this link, a vacation rental in Palm Springs billing itself as Sonny & Cher's love nest. Does anyone recognize this house? 

Lovenest2 Lovenest  

 

 

 

  

 

The Cher Look Book – a 101 picture slide show of Cher in New York Magazine.

A short little interview in the Times Union.

Cher doesn't just like running with a younger crowd — she likes outrunning them: a long interview in The Wisconsin Gazette

Video

Cher's Caesar's Palace monologue.

Factoids

DrewcherCher scholar Jefrey noted that in the March 23rd 2012 issue of Entertainment Weekly, (I know! I can't believe that was sitting in my email still), Drew Barrymore co-hosted Turner Classic Movies with Robert Osborne for a special called "The Essentials." They played classics movies like Gilda and Diabolique. Barrymore was asked who her favorite screen sirens of all time were.

She chose Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Annette Bening and Cher. Wow. Awesome company there. Barrymore said about Cher, "She's strong and comedic and
incredibly brave, but shows vulnerability. I think she's the epitome of rock & roll." (Can Barrymore talk some sense into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?) She cited Silkwood, Moonstruck, Mask, and The JloWitches of Eastwick as some of her favorite Cher performances.

My friend Christopher also notified me that in December of last year Jennifer Lawrence became the highest-charting Oscar-winning actress on the Hot 100 since Cher took "Believe" to #1 in 1999. Lawrence hit at #12 with a song from the latest Hunger Games movie, "The Hanging Tree."

  

Mike Nichols, Dead at 83

ChernicholsCher with Mike Nichols at his AFI Life Achievement tribute in 2010.

Mike Nichols died suddently of cardiac arrest in Manhattan on November 19 at the age of 83. The Dec 5, 2014 issue of Entertainment Weekly memorialized him with a short essay and a list of his essential films, which included Silkwood, released in 1983. 

Entertainment Weekly's commentary on the movie:

“Astoundingly lived-in performances from Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher anchor Nichols’ drama about blue-collar workers in an Oklahoma nuclear-parts factory.”

People often comment on the difference between Cher and Madonna in film. I believe it is just this "lived-in" quality (not affected, not actor-ly) that many critics find so appealing about her performances.

Watch Cher's tribute to Mike Nichols. where she calls him Dad and talks about how he deserves the credit for her Oscar nomination (for her performance as Dolly Pelliker) and how she always called him whenever she was in a bind.

     

Concert Cher News

SlashCher News has been tracking the release of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Good news: the Blue-ray is available for pre-order.

The second leg of Cher shows were to start on September, 11 but Cher has had to push back 10 dates pushing this legs shows into December.

Slash reported to The Huffington Post about attending a Cher concert and needing to go outside to smoke eventually gave him pneumonia. So he quit smoking.

Cher is also being sued by her former choreographer Kevin Wilson. Read stories on:

The last link is the testimony of Jamal Story, one of Cher's dancers. He was the dancer featured in last week's story in Fortune Magazine: "How to Survive on the Road with Cher. He makes great reference to the chaos in the Ferguson suburb of St. Louis (my hometown).He says:

I am disheartened to know that racism is part of the charge leveled in a lawsuit at my boss…But even if there is some shred of merit here, the lack of consideration for the three brown band members (of which there are only seven) still in Cher's camp befuddles me.

In fact, one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had dealing with the color quota represented on stage happened on Cher’s stage in Vegas years ago. A brunette out for her wedding was replaced by the cousin of another black dancer on the gig. Adding two of the plaintiffs (who were also there) brought the count of bona fide chocolate up to four, and then there were the two of us too light to figure in. Among the other six dancers were a Latino and a Tongan, both with enough pigment to type them out of a Mayflower Voyage film. We didn’t know whether to take a picture (because who would believe it) or accuse our boss of Blaxploitation. Because of course there were also the two black backup singers, the keyboardist and the drummer…

This doesn’t happen with a racist performer.                                                                             

In fact, since my first gig with Cher twelve years ago, I have missed only 2 of her 568 full stage shows. Never in any of them have I experienced any form of racial or sexist prejudice.

It’s not her style.  I was there every time she strutted around stage in a Native American feathered headdress singing about her Cherokee heritage.  Early in a career older than all of her dancers, she was notorious for entering the back door of venues and restaurants that would not allow her colored staff through their front. She argued with her fans via Twitter that the Tea Party supports racist policies.  She funds the Peace Village School in Kenya for black orphans.  Chand

You know, there was a budget for my hair. When I ran out of Mixed Chicks conditioner on the road,  or couldn’t find a barber for a manicured fro, Cher reimbursed receipts for cornrows. It did not bother her any when I walked on stage wearing them, black pants and a white tank—a look that might have gotten me shot by police in Ferguson—to stand in her spotlight and present her a stool.  This is the conversation we should be having instead, how my "Burlesque" costume with this hairstyle is life-threatening around those who would see a dangerous, uber-sexualized Negro thug.

During a delay in the tech rehearsal for the number “Dressed to Kill,” she sat waiting on the chandelier and smiled at me.

“I’m getting a weave,” I told her.

“Really??!!” she said, ecstatic.

     

Retro Stuff

Music

I recently when on a hunt for Cher mashups. Of course, all the new ones I found were using "Believe" (This is getting old.)

 Beyonce sing’s "Bang Bang" in her HBO trailer with Jay Z.

Video

Cher in a Tea with Mussolini-era interview

Cher and other 80s-celebrities singing "What a Wonderful World." This is from a star-studded special called "An Evening with Friends of the Environment. A Meryl Streep website has a great overview of who participated.

InterviweMagazines

Cher scholar Dishy sent me this link to that awesome interview with Cher in the early 80s with Any Warhol in Interview Magazine: http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/new-again-cher. I had this cover framed an on my wall for many years.

Movies

Cher scholar Robrt Pela sent me some very kewl news about the movie Chastity. A friend of his was an extra in the brothel scene. His friend said that Cher was pregnant and cranky during filming, "and when he accidentally stepped on her foot, she was not nice about it. Sonny took him aside to talk to him about not stepping on Cher."

NicknolteBut that's not the bombshell news. Nick Nolte is also in the scene when the boys arrive at the cathouse. Nick Notle is the first to enter the scene. Watch the clip at timestamp 5:07.

Robrt informed me that Nick Nolte was involved in Phoenix theater back in the late 1960s, appearing in local plays.

As I was looking for pictures of the brothel scene online (didn't find any), I did find this description of the movie from a site called Cult Oddities: "The film rests squarely on Cher's shoulders, though she got a major boost from Sonny's dialogue, which was littered with unusual thoughts and pithy one-liners." 

 

Cher Bric-a-Brac: Carly Simon, Britney’s Bad Show, Moms in the Movies

BioOver the summer I read the Carly Simon biography that came out a few years ago, written by Stephen Davis who was famous for writing Hammer of the Gods in the 1980s about Led Zepplin.

Considering the couple Carly Simon and James Taylor and their love-song decade, the sad pining and avoidance the book describes between Carly Simon and James Taylor makes the story of Sonny & Cher seem quite functional in retrospect.

True, Carly Simon seems a tad bonkers with her long list of of lifetime neurosis and insecurities but Taylor comes over like a self-concerned, (albeit depressed), ass in his own right. As a result, this is one of those biographies I wish I had never read. I came out of it thinking much less of both of them and somewhat better about the acknowledged dysfunctions of Sonny & Cher who, although they had their bouts of not speaking to each other and trash-talking, never devolved into the kind of pathetic heartache and shunning Carly and James still seem to be indulging in. Sonny & Cher could have dissolved into much more extended legal battles that they did, similar to what professional partners Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton went through, or the old-age bickering and breakup of Captain and Tennille. Sonny & Cher did seem melodramatically dysfunctional back in the mid-1970s, but doesn't time always do a number on the smug?

HotcakesThere was, however, some Cherness in this book. Carly Simon was pregnant she made Hotcakes album (see cover) and I've always liked it. There's "Mockingbird" and "Forever My Love," (I really love this song, but  Sonny & Cher never went that far), and the Simon-classic "Haven’t Got Time" for the Pain." Her album label Elektra had just merged with David Geffen’s Asylum label:

“Hotcakes quickly sold nine hundred thousand copies, but it was hard to get attention amid all the hoopla for Carly’s label mates. David Geffen had assured Carly that she was going to have a solo release and it would be promoted individually, but it didn’t happen. (Geffen said later that he’d been distracted in this period by his torrid romance with Cher.)"

Darn that Cher!

TorchThe book also gives us a great definition of the torch song tradition, an explanation that sheds some light as to why Cher's fans love her torch songs so much:

"Torch songs were an enduring artistic legacy of the Roaring Twenties. 'Carrying a torch' for a lost lover was a “modernist” female thing, a romantic agony personified by singers such as Libby Holman (1904-1971) who famously married the heir to a Carolina tobacco fortune and then accidentally shot him to death as he was trying to break into his own house when he’d been locked out. Torch songs were retro-noir, semidesperate expressions of female disappointment and lust.”

The book also reminds us that Norman Seeff, who took the amazing shots of Cher for I'd Rather Believe in You, also took the amazing shots of Simon for her Playing Possum album.

Pp1 Pp2 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In detailing the production of her My Romance album:“Carly…gave the tapes to the legendary Marty Paich, who wrote the orchestrations.”

I did not know he was legendary.

The book also defined Film Noir as characterized by suspense leading to violence, shadowy, tense, forboding, populated by jaded femme fatales. Cher's dalliance with the ideas and characterizations of film noir happened mostly in skits from her television shows, consistently playing femme fetales who persevered which, I think, contributed in large part to her icon image today.

Like Cher, Carly Simon was also rejected from residence in Manhattan's Dakota building.

The book did peak my interest in Carly's early work with her sister, Lucy in The Simon Sisters back in the 1960s. Daughters of one of the co-founders of the corporate publishing house Simon & Schuester, these were privileged kids. And it shows. Their folk music is pleasant but lacks the street-saviness of their compadres.

For instance, they made a French version of "Blowin in the Wind," called "Encoute Dans le Vent" and it is actually a good version but you know they didn't learn French on the street. Their big hit was "Winkin Blinkin and Nod."

My friend Christopher sent me the LA Times review of the Britney Spears  "Piece of Me" show in Las Vegas:

“Whatever the scale of the number, the singer’s presence felt so diminished, her dancing a tentative shadow of what it used to be, her vocals apparently lip-synched for the majority of the show – as if to make the production’s title seem a taunt…[The show] neither revisits her old mode effectively nor presents a compelling new approach…Instead of looking forward, Spears (and her handlers) are playing a dangerously cynical short game, exploiting the interest her name still inspires without regard for how the act’s shoddiness may limit her options. Spear’s turn at the table needn’t be over, yet she’s cashing in all her chips.”

Contrast this to the reviews of Cher’s shows (From her Heart of Stone reinvention to the current show), how important a "compelling new approach" seems to be and how eternally authentic and human she seems to come across. She stands out even among young pop divas, maybe because even her foibles seem more authentic than theirs, less like publicity stunts or their staid and overly-produced attempts at life as performance art.

In doing research for my novel about New Mexico, I've been reading many New Mexico art books and art magazines. Santa Fe has a family of Sarkisian artists.

IncarnationIn a magazine, I also found a very funny pop surrealism spoof of Lady Gaga's meat dress done by artist Mark Ryden (see right).

Turner Classic Movies was also promoting a new book called Mom in the Movies, I don't know if any of Cher's moms are in there but Cher has played a special kind of flawed mom in two of her movies. In Mask she's a good mom but on drugs. In Mermaids she's quirky and self-involved, with a subtext of unavailability. She's mostly played single characters in Chastity, 5 & Dime (couldn't have kids), Silkwood, Suspect (works too hard), Moonstruck (probably over the hill), Tea with Mussolini, Stuck on You (we only see her at work), Burlesque (we only see her at work). Maybe we could say she was mom to the little dog Scoongie in Good Times.

Also of note, my boss at ICANN sent me this clip over the summer: a man doing 29 celebity imprssions in 1 song, including Cher.

 

Cher in New TCM Documentary

Oscars80sCher scholar Dishy notified me a few weeks ago that Turner Classic Movies was airing a documentary called And the Oscar Goes To in which Cher is interviewed and occasionally appears.

There are brief clips of her talking about her Academy Award night experiences. They show clips of Sonny & Cher arriving at the 1974 Oscars and Cher's presenting of Best Original Dramatic Score where she fumbles over Marvin Hamlisch's name. Cher was wearing the floral dress below when she presented with Henry Mancini (watch her present).

To left is her appearance there when she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Silkwood.

 

FlowrdressThe documentary is more about this history of the academy awards show itself and of the academy's politics and it was interesting and straight-forward, but one thing was missing: I didn't see that famous David Niven and the streaker clip. That seems to me a major Oscar's moment and spoke to something going on at the time culturally. That clip also occurred the same year Cher gave to Marvin Hamlisch.

Watch a video of the moment and why it was important. If I'm not mistaken, as David Niven delivers his ad lib you can hear Cher's crane laugh in the background.

  

Review of Pret-a-Porter

PapSo a few weeks ago I broke down and bought the two Robert Altman movies with Cher cameos and did a positive review of The Player.

In comparison to that movie, Pret-a-Porter (or Ready to Wear) has a much more European cast and vibe, complete with 1960s-inspried opening credits. The film didn’t work as well as The Player did in the re-watch however, even after years of my watching Project Runway and Ru Paul shows.

The movie seems to be trying to showcase the cut-throat excitement of the fashion world’s “behind the scenes” and the shallowness of its players. The so-muchness of every performance and scene began to take on a one-note quality that became numbingly boring after a while. The reviews on the DVD claimed the film was “exuberant” but it read instead to me as manic. Mr. Cher Scholar watched most of the movie with me and I ended up receiving a very long and informative lecture in the middle of it on improv and the movie's issues (outlined below). Mr. Cher Scholar was formerly a Chicago improv director. I didn’t even realize before his schooling that the movie was improved!

  • The problems of improvisation:  Manic-ness is a common symptom of novice improv, according to Mr. Cher Scholar. When stressed, actors tend to play to that stress. It comes off very un-natural. Another issue with untrained improv actors is their declaring who their character is (again, out of nervousness). This was occurring throughout the movie (ex: . Stephen Rae declaring, “I’m just a simple Irish Country boy”). All telling versus showing. This was compounded by the problem of too many characters who didn’t have enough screen time to really develop a characters, to even attempt a “show.” And improv takes time. Scenes with larger casts already cause more nervousness due to the amped-up energy at play. The scenes that did seem to work were much more quiet and simplified. Mr. Cher Scholar also said it's harder to reveal much about your character when you’re doing scenes depicting only business relationships. What information of depth can occur in a short business conversation? And unfortunately, the majority of this movie was about business relationships and business conversations. The Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins scenes were absolutely painful to watch. According to Mr. Cher Scholar, Roberts sounded like she was reiterating the stage notes she had received. Their lines definitely seemed flat and their performances were both manic.
  • The problem of the Altman style of ambient noise:  Mr. Cher Scholar also went into detail about his understanding of Robert Altman’s signature style of having an ambient soundtrack. Apparently Altman likes to shoot scenes in the midst of ambient sound, catching character’s lines in-between sometimes louder noises, characters talking over each other. He said this style demands that you really pay attention or you’ll miss important dialogue. He said McCabe and Mrs. Miller was impossible to watch because, try as you might, you couldn’t hear what any of the main characters were saying and so were lost in most of the movie. Sometimes it works, he said, but in this case this kind of realist soundtrack style, when you add on improvisation, was just a confusing mess.
  • The reporter motif with Kim Basinger as southern-accented reporter Kitty Potter sifting through interviews with “super novas and super nobodies:” Basinger's part played more like a cliché than a satire. Instead of a dumb, ambitious and giggling American” it would have been more interesting if they had let her play smart. But I guess that was Lili Taylor’s role as the slovenly reporter from the New York Times. Mr. Cher Scholar also remarked that the reporter device is really hard to play (by design, the character gets no depth) and serves as mostly a functional, exposition devise (telling us who everyone is because the cast is too big for slower reveals). He was amazed at how bad Kim B’s southern accent was considering she is from Georgia.
  • What exactly is the story anyway? Linda Hunt, Tracy Ullman and Sally Kellerman play editors of prominent fashion magazines who they spend the movie trying to hire an arrogant trend-setting photographer played by Stephen Rae who claims he came to fame “taking advantage of other people’s insecurities” (which could stand as the major message of the movie). The head of the fashion council is supposedly murdered and these are the major threads of the movie, although they can’t seem to hold it together. Forty minutes in and we still had no idea what the major story was. It never felt like the movie was moving forward. Mr. Cher Scholar used Spinal Tap as a comparison. Fran Dresher’s scene with the band, for example, had a simpler focus, was allowed time to develop, and served to comment on the larger story, the demise of a heavy metal band. Christopher Guest’s improv movies seem to have stronger points to hit in each scene and it all works to push toward the spine story forward. Altman didn’t check in often enough with the spine story and a lot of his scenes seemed superfluous.
  • Mr. Cher Scholar was impressed by all the coordination the movie must have demanded with all the scene setups and all the extras in each scene, the sheer cost of the filming on locations. But at the end, he determined the movie was just a mass of entrances where no possible character development could occur, the same scene over and over again for 133 minutes, characters coming in but never going anywhere.
  • Many of the small stories were left unresolved. For example, did the three editors come to successful “negotiations” with Milo? We don’t fully know. At the end of the movie, he’s doing a shoot with babies. That seemed inconclusive. 
  • Fashion already satirizes itself. How can you top it? Altman didn’t reveal anything new, nothing beyond what you’d expect from these characters. The movie deals with the unsavory alliances and the money issues at fashion houses, the last fashion show is entirely of naked girls as a kind of rebel statement. Kitty Potter tries to make meaning out of this and gives up in frustration. You feel like giving up as well. The movie comes up with only “almost satires.”
  • The film deals with many sexualities but is devoid of any sexiness. In fact, it seemed the film was trying for a sexy Pink Panther feel. This failed because the cast was too big and the bad improv work poured cold water on all the potential sexiness.
  • The shows within the show didn’t seem exactly Ready to Wear collections but more like haute couture shows.

Things I liked:

  • The fact that there was a dog in the dog show named “Ladd.”
  • The huge cell phones were very funny. 
  • Richard E. Grant.
  • Some of the fashions were funny: the two candles on the head, the siren light hat.
  • Teri Garr made me laugh when she got in a cab and said “Tout les bags!”
  •  Sophia Loren talks about doing aerobics. Remember aerobics! How old-fashioned.
  • I liked the variety of fashion shows: the street collection (in an abandoned subway, no less), the over-the-top gay collection, the mature European woman collection.
  • I loved the song playing during the naked show, “Pretty” by The Cranberries (“You’re so pretty the way you are”). I also liked the closing Grace Jones version of “La Vie en Rose.”

CherreadyThere was a shorter, mostly European, list of “As Themselves” cast members of which Cher and Harry Belafonte were the two I recognized.

Cher’s is seen in two scenes, one arriving to a show (as seen on a TV) and the other being interviewed by Kitty Potter (Basinger). You get a good view of her old necklace arm tattoo. She wears a busty white t-shirt top with a leather-like quilted bustier and pants. She talks about how we can never look like Naomi Campbell or Christy Turlington and how these shows are about “women trying to be beautiful,” calling herself a “victim as much as a perpetrator” when Kitty Potter says, with admiration, "Well, we can’t all look like you either." Cher says it’s not about the clothes on your body but what’s inside that counts.”

ReadytowearThis reminded me of when Kitty Potter introduces the photographer Milo and says that for a decade he has “controlled how women think they have to look.”

Cast members who connect to Cher: Linda Hunt won the Best Supporting Oscar we were hoping Cher would win for Silkwood. Teri Garr (of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour) has a very funny part as the co-hort of Danny Aiello who played Johnnie Camereri  in Moonstruck. Sally Kellerman was in the movie Foxes where Cher had a song on the soundtrack, "Bad Love."

Oddly, none of the clothes or hairstyles portrayed on the DVD cover to the right appeared in the movie. And who is that blonde woman?

  

Review of The Player

CherplayerIn 1992 Cher did a cameo for the Robert Altman film The Player. I have always hesitated to buy or review this movie because a) should cameos be included in a star's filmography? Really? and b) I was only 22 when this movie came out and had never lived in Los Angeles so all the cynical references were lost on me.

But since The Player and Altman's other cameo-ridden movie, Ready to Wear, always end up in Cher filmographies and since I'm older and LA-savy now and since the new Cher biography mentioned the trivia that Ret Turner was supposedly Cher's date to the movie, I finally purchased my (used) copies of these two "Cher films."

I'm actually glad I did. I'm better at reading these films now. Did I ever tell you how I became Cher Scholar? After creating the spoof fansite Cher Scholar, a site meant to be a critique of online Cher shrines, I was working at a job in LA and didn't have anything to do for a few weeks. So I started writing off-the-cuff reviews of all of Cher's albums in order to keep away the crushing boredom of the work day. This begot the Cher zines and essays and eventually this blog. Last week in a poetry essay I read a description of a Bob Dylan scholar as a "Dylanologist." In mocking celebrity scholarship, I accidentally became a real one. Anyway, it all led me to nerdy essays and pop culture analysis that ties back into the explicating I used to do in college for literature papers. This is why this post is so nerdy.

I don't know if you have to live in Los Angeles and hear awful Swimming With Sharks stories about Hollywood movie-making from your friends to get the inside digs the fill up The Player, but the movie starts right away with secretary abuse, ("I want him back here before he arrives!"). There are plenty of dysfunctional throwaways in the movie: posers who don't really watch movies, endless ridiculous movie pitches (Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate), sad digs at writers (the writer desperately stalking/pitching producers in the opening shot turns out to be a famous writer), the fast-paced frenzy of the power players in meetings juxtaposed with the frenzy of the police station (every bit as heated and crass, with Whoppi Goldberg twirling a tampon throughout the scene), disparaging TV stars versus "real" stars, characters who have their most personal conversation in script-eze and who make pissy requests at restaurants. It's humorous to see the world of curly-paper faxes, pre-Windows computers and pre-cell-phones. The movie also questions not only Hollywood posers but outsiders like the love-interest who is a painter and who claims to be above the world of movies: "Life's too short for movies." Turns out even she's not who she purports to be with her existential commentary on art and life, but possibly just a fake like everyone else.

Ironically, it's only the writers who pay to go see the movies here, who still love movies, and who still innocently consider movies to be an art form versus a cut-throat business that it really is.

Even Altman's film-making is meta-commentary on the movie business, his initial tracking shot that happens while the head of security (Fred Ward) drones on about long tracking shots. He keeps foreshadowing doom for the murderous producer/protagonist Griffin Mill. The movie marquee lights go dark when Mill walks under them; we see closeups of ominous horror movie posters, of dead fish, a picture of Alfred Hitchcock with his eyes closed. These turn out to be frustrating and empty foreshadowing.

Altman also subverts the idea of the happy ending as a critique of the happy ending. He hands us a happy ending but he gives it to the bad guy. Our hero is a thief and will he pay for his crime? No he will not, and here we have the movie's sublime irony. When earlier a writer pleads for his movie to be made lacking the typical Hollywood happy ending because that's not reality, Atlman's provides a happy ending for his protagonist/villain that is a "happy ending" but one that sadly still reflecting the harsh reality. Altman is, in effect, saying Hollywood producers get a away with murder. The happy ending is for their point of view, which makes for the realistic sad ending for everyone else.

This would be a distasteful message to hear from practically any other director other than Robert Altman, someone whom many consider an outsider auteur. You can believe he would have had to endure some of the near-murderous aggravations the movie describes.

Because the characters talk in script-eze and because some stars play stars in the movie and some stars play characters, Altman also subverts the idea that you can ever reconcile the fake with the real when dealing in Hollywood "players" since the fictions bleed into their real lives. And any story is always threatened with becoming overwhelmed by the personality attached to it. 

Speaking of which, Cher is in three shots of the film. She appears at the LACMA party wearing a fire-engine red dress (when the invitations specifically call for black and white attire). This is supposed to be seen as typical Cher-style rebelliousness. She shows off her two 1990s-era shoulder tattoos and arrives with the nemesis of Griffin Mill, (played by Tim Robbins), Larry Levy, played by Peter Gallagher. Altman gives Cher the prime spot of sitting next to Griffin Mill in the movie and her only understandable line in the movie is "Well, are we having fun yet?"

Ret-peter Ret-turner  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is the shot of Cher appearing with her date in the film, Peter Gallagher. Next to that is a picture of Ret Turner with Cher in the same dress. This would indicate Cher arrived at the production with Ret Turner.

It's significant that Altman gives Cher such a prominent position in this scene. And that she wears red. Not only is the color shocking for the LACMA party, but it's a shot of color in an otherwise colorless and drab movie, the flat look familiar to many of the movies of the early 1990s. Remember how colorful Scorsese's The End of Innocence seemed to be in 1993?

There is a dullness in all the scenes, sets and characters. This flat lack of color seems very intentional. Even the painter seems drab (seeming and looking) in the story. It's as if Altman is saying Cher is the most colorful thing in Hollywood. And colorful in every sense you can think of: colorful in what she wears and says, colorful as in her attributes as a woman of color and ethnicity, and colorful as in just being an interesting person, as in being not at all dull.

So far from being simply a cameo, Altman's idea of Cher as a Hollywood personality becomes symbolic in the film's critique of Hollywood itself. And in an Altman-approved positive way. Cool beans.

As I was watching the movie, I played the game of "Catching People in the Movie Cher Has Worked With in the Past" (that I know of):

  1. Fred Ward (Morgan in Silkwood)
  2. Lily Tomlin (Cher show and Georgie Rockwell in Tea with Mussolini)
  3. Peter Gallagher ("Vince" Scali in Burlesque)
  4. Teri Garr (Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and Cher show)
  5. Karen Black (Joanne in Come Back to the Five and Dime)
  6. Martin Mull (Cher show) – I missed this cameo but he was in the credits

   

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