Movie meme, 5

My first contribution to this meme was almost ten years ago. My last contribution (till today) was almost five. Since that time my posting has gotten a lot sparser and more erratic. But also, the cast of characters has changed. I no longer spend time with Wife, so her parade of boyfriends and (perhaps) girlfriends no longer interests me. My focus is more on my own relationships -- Debbie, for a while, and then Marie -- and on members of my family. And it hasn't always been easy for me to decide whom to cast in those roles. But I've been mulling it for a while, and I think I can make some headway.

The last four contributions were here, here, here, and here. And the next batch of additions follows below.

Debbie: Saoirse Ronan

Partly the similarity is physical: Debbie looks something like Saoirse Ronan. Partly it is related to a sense I get from the characters she has played in, for example, "Brooklyn" and "Lady Bird", exhibiting a kind of simplicity and directness that isn't the least bit aggressive or abrasive, but that is self-possessed enough to say, "This is where I stand, this is where I am; let's start from here." Debbie is older than Ronan -- as of today she is in her early sixties. But a good actress can play any age.

Marie: Elizabeth Moss

Here too the similarity is physical, though I never noticed it before watching "The Seagull" a couple weeks ago. But there it is: somehow the broad face, the sharp chin, and the dark hair come together just right. Again, she'd have to play older than she is now, but that's all.












Father: Peter Sellers, playing Ricky Gervais

This one is trickier, because my father spent his entire life playing a role. The role changed from time to time: for a while he was a liberal college professor; then he became a conservative business owner; then after that he was an out-of-work actor who listened to Rush Limbaugh. But the longer I think about it, the more convinced I become that none of them was really him. They were all simply roles.

So casting him is more complex than it is for some of the others. Certainly one of the people he pretended to be looked a lot like the public persona of Ricky Gervais. There's even a physical similarity to my father as a very young man. But it's the personality that I think of first: the loud, outgoing, self-centered and socially clueless personality that entertained people endlessly at parties and offended them when they tried to engage seriously, the bon-vivant cheerfulness that was always ready to pour you a drink and that made women feel creepy when he got too close. It's a complex, subtle combination, but I think Ricky Gervais captures it.

Except of course that it wasn't real -- like all of the other personalities he tried on for size, it was a mask. A mask concealing what? Sometimes I think even he never knew. It's true that he could slide into and out of any role almost effortlessly. But it's not clear to me that he ever gave a lot of still, quiet thought to what lay behind all those masks. So that's why I think the best way to portray him is not with Ricky Gervais himself, but with somebody else playing Ricky Gervais. And who better than the man who could play anybody, the best artist ever at disappearing into a role.

Once when Peter Sellers was a guest on "The Muppet Show" Kermit the Frog encouraged him to relax and "be yourself." Sellers replied, "I can't do that. There is no me, I do not exist. There used to be a me... but I had it surgically removed."

Yup. That's my dad.






Mother: Myrna Loy

 

In some ways it is easier to pick actors to play high-profile individuals. See the very first one of these posts, where I pegged Bette Davis to play Wife. My mother is quieter than that. When my parents would go to a party, people always called my father "charming" and my mother "serene". There was always a bit of a risk that she would disappear against the wallpaper -- especially in comparison to my father's boisterousness. She always seemed like "the normal one" of the family.

But she's whip-smart: in her intellect (Ph.D. in mathematics), in her wit (she's the one who taught me to pun), and in practical life (she kept the family business afloat for years despite my father's fecklessness and ruinous business sense). And beautiful: when I was twenty and she was in her forties the two of us went out to dinner one evening, and the waitress took her for my girlfriend. Until the day she decided to cut her hair short and wear granny glasses, she was seemingly ageless.

I debated a long time what actress could fill this bill. She couldn't be too flamboyant or exotic; but neither could she be drab or dull. At the same time she should be quintessentially American, summoning up images of domestic normality, and yet she had to be smarter and more beautiful than any of that. It's a difficult combination to achieve, but I think Myrna Loy pegged it perfectly. If you haven't seen her in anything, stop reading this blog immediately and go binge on every movie she ever made with William Powell.

Brother: Frank Zappa

I've often said Brother is the rock musician in the family. So the actor to portray him should be a rock musician -- one who is unafraid to do his own thing, regardless how outré it might appear. Brother has never had children, but I wouldn't put it past him to name one of them Moon-Unit ... except that name has already been taken now. Something else, then.






SIL: Audrey Hepburn

Part of me wonders if Audrey Hepburn might not be too extreme a choice for SIL, Brother's wife (and formerly twenty-years-girlfriend). Is she the most striking beauty in a century? Well, ... she's certainly pretty but it would be hard to call anyone the most striking beauty in a century. But then I started to think about other things. Hepburn was noted for her sense of fashion; SIL makes her living doing fashion design for commercials and other photographic shoots. Hepburn was noted for her ease in international settings; SIL routinely travels for her work, and has spent months in Spain or Berlin on one job or another. Hepburn described herself as shy; SIL is quiet where Brother is loud, and is adept at avoiding confrontations ... but you can sense an unswerving determination underneath it all. So yes, let's go with Audrey Hepburn. I compromised by picking a photo that shows her closer to SIL's real age, I think, rather than one of the ultra-glamorous shots of her youth. But I think it works.

I hope this helps bring the dramatis personae up to date for you.