Tuesday, April 21, 2009

How could I forget this one?

One of the first shows I watched when we acquired Satellite television was the documentary, Grey Gardens. I was strangely fascinated by it and probably watched it more times than I should have. It probably has to do with my fascination of all things old money new york ... Vanderbilts, Astors. The documentary was incredible and let Big Edie and Little Edie just be themselves. No commentary, just the Beale women being themselves, which by themselves, I mean ... eccentric. Big Edie was Jackie Kennedy Onassis's aunt ... Edie's maiden name is Bouvier. Little Edie was Jackie's cousin. The Beale's lived in NYC and then moved to the Hamptons and Big Edie had no interest whatsoever in living in the city anymore at that point. Little Edie wanted to stay in the city, but they had a strange co-dependent relationship which resulted in the 2 Beale women living together at Grey Gardens (the Hamptons home). Little Edie never married, she lived with her mother and they ran out of money and the house became completely dilapidated and overrun by critters. The county health department came in and condemned the place and Jackie came to their rescue and took over supporting them and fixing up the house. Still .. they lived in squalor. Big Edie was accustomed to having a staff take care of the house ... in any event ...

HBO took the documentary 1 step further and made a movie about it and it was amazing. Drew Barrymore ... DREW BARRYMORE ... in the role of her life, played little Edie. She was simply amazing. You could tell that she really studied for this role. She didn't speak out of the side of her mouth, her diction was almost perfect and she LOOKED like Edie, it was scary. Just give her the emmy now ... it's over. Jessica Lange, who I continue to be amazed that she got her start playing in the horrible version of King Kong from the 70's ... talk about having a tremendous rebound. She was equally amazing as big Edie. Jeanne Tripplehorn, who I haven't seen forever, played Jackie O .. ok, just give 3 emmys to them all.

It's playing all this month on HBO. It's definitely worth checking out, whether you've seen the Grey Gardens documentary or not. You'll feel like you have.

1 comment:

Pink Evita said...

Wasn't Grey Gardens amazing? What a sad story though, I kept wondering where were the sons when the woman were living in squalor in the later years? And, why weren't they getting treatment for some obvious mental instabilities? I saw it a few days ago and I keep thinking about it. Drew Barrymore is so great.

Ok, the fabric? Haven't touched it yet. As it turns out I ended up with 4 shows in three weeks and I'm sort of pulling my hair out since I left a lot of good bags at the 4th street gallery in Covington. Gah, what was I thinking I would take to the shows coming up.

Ok, hmmm...great galleries in Columbus? Might need to road trip down there this summer? I could bring the kids and visit with your crew. Big fun.