A Gift From Me To You

Forewarned is forearmed! I was so thrilled to be gifting you with my memories, past and present, I forgot to look at the time. This is the longest Blah, Blah Blog I’ve ever written. So be prepared for food and bathroom breaks.

My suggestion is to read a little, return to the living, read a little more, return to the living, repeating these steps until you have finished. An ingenious way to spend the holidays with you.
Right??? Of course, right!!!

It’s that time of year when, on and off the Internet, The Best of 2024 is being announced. It’s ok to award a prize to the best pickle, but I feel differently when it comes to prizes for artists who work in films and television. I don’t believe they should compete with each other. Award shows and prizes are all about making money. Some of that money trickles down to the artist, but most of it is for the producers, the agents, the publishers, and, of course, the humongous production teams needed to advertise and produce award shows et al.. I don’t remember the last time I watched the Academy Awards. Oops! Yes, I do. I saw a replay of the slap Will Smith gave Chris Rock on a news channel. What can I tell you? At times, we actors have a hard time separating reality from fantasy. “Did I just do something from a scene in my last movie?”

I went to the Tony Awards in 1976 only because the show I was in was nominated… not me… fellow actors, etc., and I felt like a traitor to my beliefs.
Art is subjective.
What pleases, excites, and challenges me will not necessarily do the same for someone else.

Sooooo? Here’s my holiday gift proposal. Loosely, very loosely, I want to connect the dots from what I have seen today (2024) in the movies and on television with what I have seen or read over the last 9 decades. I know. I know. One of us might not be here by the time I’ve completed my analysis. C’est la vie!

Disclaimer, Disclosure, and to be perfectly truthful:
Not Yet! My recently published memoir which you can purchase by clicking right here, will not be considered due to the conflict of interest of its author. Sometimes I frighten myself, I am so honest.

Furthermore:
I try not to expose myself to the public at large or at small. Occasionally, I will make an exception, but for the most part, today, I am homeschooled. While watching a movie or television show at home, bathroom or food breaks are verboten. I make exceptions when a show is over two hours. But it’s tricky when to take a break. There is nothing worse for the emotional continuity of a good film or television show than pausing amidst character and plot development.
Hey! It’s my television set, my rules.

Alright, already!

Best Movies

Emilia Perez (2024, Netflix)
Karla Sofia Gascon plays Emilia. Hopefully, one day, she will not have to have the words transgender actor after her name because the world will simply accept that she, he, they, or them is the best artist in a film. Supporting honors go to Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez. The film is a unique drama with musical interludes that make it difficult to classify. It’s not a musical, and yet the songs and the choreography are seamlessly integrated, giving the characters and plot soul and dimension. What shouldn’t have worked works brilliantly. I find most films are predictable. Not so with Emilia. This movie kept surprising me, and I was riveted by these surprises. I allowed myself to be transported by the collaborative genius of the artists.

Of course, I am not going to give away the plot. I want you to be surprised, too. Over the weeks since I saw it, Emilia Perez’s story is still roaming around inside my headball. The unexpected twist of Emilia being both the protagonist and the villain of the film is the conundrum. A character with this duality is rare and a puzzlement. I’d love to know what you think.

Frankenstein, a movie from my past, also has a villain as the protagonist. It was made in 1931. I was born in 1933. From ages 5 or 6, going to the movies was a way of life for me. For sure, any movie was better than the family I was living with. There were at least four movie houses within walking distance of my house. As the 7th of 8 children, my mother was not averse to taking a well-needed break by sending me and my older brother, by two years, to the movies. With 25 cents and a shared Hostess Twinkie, we made our way into the darkened theatre to be scared out of our wits by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s (the author) and James Whalen’s (the director) Frankenstein. When the monster came alive, I screamed and hid my face in my brother’s sleeve. I was sure to keep one eye on the screen so I could periodically release my brother’s paralyzed arm and take a breath until the monster’s next dastardly deed. I had to have been confused by the scene where he sweetly played the daisy flower game “he loves me, he loves me not” with the little girl.

So, who is the real villain of the piece… Victor Frankenstein or the monster he created? I’d like to think that Boris Karloff’s nuanced portrayal of the monster added a touch of grey to my black-and-white life, which, over the years, offered a more compassionate perspective so that when I watch movies like Emilia Perez, I try to leave my judgemental genes at the door.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024, HBO)
Self explanatory, but I think a more potent story now than in 1995 when Reeve had his accident. This movie needs to be seen so we can restore these words to our vocabulary: compassion, goodwill, forgiveness. Did I hear you say there are no role models, no heroes anymore?
Don’t just stand there. See the movie.

What follows is a random selection of films from every decade in my life in no special order, but like fine wine, they aged well.

1940’s: Betty Grable, Alice Faye, Judy Garland, et al movie musicals. No matter which star actually sang and danced in those films, in my headball it was me who sang and danced those routines, and I was fabulous.

1944: Arsenic and Old Lace… stands the test of time.
1966: A Man For All Seasons (distantly related to the current replaying of Wolf Hall on PBS)
2007: The Golden Door In the early 20th century, immigrants dream of a land of milk and honey, as they travel packed like sardines in steerage across the stormy ocean, arriving at Ellis Island, being forced to endure entry tests created for the dumb and dumber without benefit of language. An interesting headball contemplation:

In 1885, Donald Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, at age 16, emigrated from Kallstadt, Palatinate (Kingdom of Bavaria), anglicizing his name to Frederick to become a U.S. citizen. His grandfather, for goodness sake. Not even his great-grandfather but his father’s father. l am having the best time creating a conversation between Trump and his heavily accented grandfather.

Friedrich: Gotten himmel! Vy, do I have to leave? I just got here.

Trump: Grandpop, have I ever lied to you? We’re working on getting you birthright citizenship. I promise.

Here is a special subsection of my recommended movies for when you’re feeling blue during the next four years.

Marx Brothers Duck Soup; A Night At The Opera
Preston Sturges movies, especially The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Great McGinty…Waiting For Huffman
Bowfinger
Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, The Producers, To Be or Not To Be as well as Ernest Lubitsch’s original 1942 version of the same story with Jack Benny and Carol Lombard. Utterly priceless.

Ishtar… if you’re laughing at me because I selected one of the biggest flops of 1987… let me warn you… he who laughs first doesn’t get the last laugh. If you don’t have a few big belly laughs during the course of this movie… check your pulse.

I don’t know how Elaine May knew what was happening in the Middle East as early as the middle 80s, but the movie foretells the real political situations right down to the Caliph of Ishtar, who might as well be Hussein, Kohemeni, MBS, or any of their brethren… she must have had insider information from the CIA, MI6, et al. It stars Dustin Hoffman as the wild and sexy Hawk and Warren Beatty as the awkward doofus; they play songwriters (some of the best/worst lyrics you have ever heard written by May, Henry, Hoffman, and Beatty) as they sing and play in a cafe in Ishtar. They were going to perform in Honduras, but the death squads took over the hotel. Miss it at your peril.

Honorable mention goes to Criterion, a streaming channel that carries some of the best modern and vintage films from everywhere in the world.
It’s a gold mine.

Best Television

Just For Us with Alex Edelman (2024, HBO)
Hands down. I’m taking the lazy way out, and if you click here, you can read what I said about him from my Blog titled I Don’t Have Time For This when I first saw his HBO Special. What a guy. And here’s a howdy-do… this past summer, he came to the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts to try out a new show. Immediately, I ran to offer him my body, and whatever else he might be interested in. He paced all over the stage like the caged animal that he is and once again lit up the foils and folly of the human condition in an ever more brilliant yet utterly outrageous diatribe on us human animals. His is an all-inclusive rant about how he thinks we think we are getting away with whatever we are not getting away with.

Martha Stewart (2024, Netflix)
Not a lot to be said about this “tell all,” which really doesn’t… but do any of them??? I am still shaking my head, wondering why she went to jail. In the financial debacle of 2008, only one person went to jail… and only because they needed to have at least someone go to jail before people got suspicious and began looking at the CEOs along with every other person of every major Bank and Wall Street business. Martha is just a poor little rich girl who fell in love with her abusive father and abused everyone in her life because her father taught her well. She didn’t commit any crime. If someone says it’s because she lied, then I and everyone I know and love needs to go to jail right now… do not pass GO; do not collect your $200. What a joke… but on who???

The Greatest Night of Pop (2024, Netflix)
In 1985, music’s biggest stars gathered to record We Are The World. In this 2024 remembrance, the team goes behind the scenes of the event to see how all the artists came together to make history.

A testament to Harry Belafonte, who had the idea, Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, who wrote the song, and Quincy Jones, who created the arrangements and unbelievably was able to get everyone to park their ego outside the door long enough to create a masterpiece in one night after the American Music Awards. For that moment of joy and hope you need now, this minute, immediately… yesterday.

Bully, Coward, Victim, The Story of Roy Cohn (2020, HBO)
A historic document of Trump’s role model and best friend until he wasn’t. Cohn is Machievelli. Trump is his court jester/acolyte. A brilliant depiction of the rise and fall of Cohn’s empire with a stunning video of a young Trump at a Ronald Reagan banquet asking, on camera, for all to see and hear if the President will please appoint his sister, Mary Trump, to the Federal Judiciary. Which the President does; pass the baloney.

For the senior in you, whatever your age:
If You're Not In The Obit, Eat Breakfast (2017, HBO)
A documentary hosted by Carl Reiner, who looks at the secret to living into your 90s and loving every minute.

Anytime you feel a sniffle of self-pity coming on or a sigh of discontent or an ache or gas or any disorder that disrupts… plug in the heating pad, get out the package of caramel popcorn you’ve been hiding from those who want to deprive you, and sit down and feel good about who and where you are and take the last laugh because my friends…
YOU ARE STILL HERE!
Right??? Of course, right!!!

Viet Nam (2017, PBS)
The 10-part, 18-hour documentary series from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick presents firsthand accounts of the VietNam War from all sides with digitized archival footage, photographs, historic television broadcasts, and home movies as he offers different perspectives on the conflict. Included is inside information about the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon. I was as ignorant of this war as I was about any political events. The most painful part of this admission is I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time. I was a married supermom, having difficulty breathing while raising three daughters and pursuing a full-time career in show business. That last sentence is the biggest oxymoron ever. Washington, D.C. is the center of all show business. Show and Tell followed by politicians giving you the business. It has ever been so. A few years ago, I sat myself down and went to school to study the Vietnam War. I love history. I believe Voltaire: History doesn’t repeat itself. People do.

It was amazing how, as I viewed the series, the resemblance between the cast of characters of the Vietnam War and past despots, dictators, and Presidents resembled one another… plenty of George III’s Napoleons, MacArthurs, Pol Pot's… oops, he actually was there. On that note, if you want to see the rot as it sets in, Ken Burns will show you to your seat. I wouldn’t miss it.

Best Series

When television came into most homes in the ‘50’s I wasn’t watching. I was too busy waiting for Cecil B. De Mille or his cousin or anyone to discover me.

Thank goodness for YouTube, which made it possible for me to see most everything I had missed. From Omnibus to Leonard Bernstein’s Concerts to Your Show of Shows, which included the comic geniuses of Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Nanette Fabray, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris.

Continuing on… to Mike Wallace, Ed Sullivan, Walter Cronkite, and Edward R. Murrow to the genius of Lucille Ball to all the Westerns, Gun Smoke et al., Detectives, Colombo et al., Mysteries, The Twilight Zone et al. to present-day laudables like HBO’s Julia series (not to be confused with the real Julia PBS series), to Netflix series One Day, Schitt’s Creek, and their partnerships with foreign production companies, especially the South Koreans’ series Crash Landing On You and Attorney Woo to Amazon’s BritBox extra (many of our most successful series originated in Great Britain). I find the quality of their mysteries, detectives, dramas, and comedy shows superior to many of ours. Like the song from a James Bond movie, Nobody Does it Better. I wonder if it might have something to do with the arts being nationally supported there as they are in most other countries except ours… so shameful to almost anything on PBS, to Apple TV’s Slow Horses and Ted Lasso, the series that for me best expresses positive possibilities in the human comedy. Jason Sedakeis actually said no and meant it. Who says what they mean anymore???

I have left the talk shows and late-night shows off the list. Those shows have no attraction to me. It’s not rocket science. Why would I knowingly watch a show where other people talked and I couldn’t interrupt to have the last word? And as far as late-night shows go, they are not good for my health anymore… way past my bedtime.

A last beg for a MUST SEE.
There are so many versions of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but in my book, the hands-down winner is the BBC dramatization of 1995 starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. I return once a year to the series. In 29 years, it has lost none of its sparkle, its sexual tension (I swoon every time Firth, as Mr. Darcy, rips off his outer garments, swims across the lake at his Pemberley estate into an accidental meeting with his heartbreaker Elizabeth Bennett. Be still my heart!) or the brilliance of Ms. Austen’s literary male/female and class challenges.

Since reading, for me, is akin to breathing, I wanted to write about my favorite books, but there is not enough time in the universe. So, I’m hollering, “Uncle.” However, if I could, I would send each and every one of you the following four small books to keep, as I do, close to my bed and my heart.

Small Things Like These and Foster by Claire Keegan
This is Happiness by Niall Williams
The All of It by Jeannette Haien

Every time you feel the slightest twinge of doubt or thought discomfort… choose any passage from any one of these books. The juice of hope and love will set you free, and whatever joy of the season you wish for will be yours. From my mouth to your ears…

Love, Sally-Jane

P.S.Happy Holidays!

P.P.S. I saved this spot for the song from the 1985 televising of We Are The World. It’s 2024, and this song resonates for everyone, everywhere, about everything for always. Right??? Of course, right!!!