![]() She helped raise my daughter and she’s wonderful. Someone has lived with us for years and I insisted on her going home to be with her family, but she wants to be with us. She’s gone to hang out with her friends, I think. I have my husband, and my daughter was here. Bill Gates was talking about a pandemic that would kill millions in 2019. We’re all counting on the internet as this crazy thing is happening, which, along with the election, makes one a little suspicious. Well, I’m glad you’re starting to feel better. But I think I’m okay because I don’t have the cough anymore it’s just a flu. I had a flu and a really bad cough last week and a fever, which has subsided. When we hopped on the phone, we had a long-ranging conversation about the film, but also about what it feels like to know Weinstein is behind bars, and how she’s handling our shared new normal. Just before Arquette and I were scheduled to speak about Desperately Seeking Susan, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison - and WHO declared a global pandemic (after this interview was conducted, we learned of the tragic death of Mark Blum, who plays Arquette’s husband in the film, from coronavirus). Arquette’s nervous innocence plays perfectly off of then-burgeoning Madonna’s aforementioned trampy indolence in the very few moments they’re together on screen, it’s like somebody got drunk on Champagne and remade Persona.Īrquette has been in the news for another reason lately: She accused Harvey Weinstein of assaulting her in Ronan Farrow’s October New Yorker article, and said she believed Weinstein ultimately blacklisted her for resisting. Arquette, who plays said housewife, Roberta, carries the whole thing, all sweet melancholy and Lucille Ball pathos, just as believable running from the mafia while holding a gigantic birdcage as she is swanning sadly around her devastatingly ugly suburban McMansion. Thirty-five years later, Desperately Seeking Susan holds up as a bizarre paean to a downtown New York that no longer exists, one where a depressed New Jersey housewife can ditch her prim wardrobe and jacuzzi-salesman husband to spy on a romance she’s sussed out in the city’s personal pages, get bonked on the head, forget her entire life, incidentally impersonate Madonna, get arrested for prostitution in a tutu, and fall in love all in a manner of days. Arquette eventually won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress for her role. And it worked: The New York Times named Desperately Seeking Susan one of the ten best films of 1985, praising leads Rosanna Arquette and Madonna (called an “indolent, trampy goddess” by Pauline Kael) for their kooky but grounded performances. Leora Barish’s script had been lingering in development hell for years, with studios passing on it because, as producer Sarah Pillsbury put it in 2015, “When we circulated the script, only women and gay men liked it.” Fortunately, Orion Pictures producer Barbara Boyle was one of those women she picked up the film and hired Seidelman based on the singular, punk-rock style of her debut film, Smithereens. ![]() ![]() In 1985, Susan Seidelman blessed the planet with Desperately Seeking Susan, a screwball East Village fantasia about amnesia, Egyptian artifacts, mob killings, mistaken identities, jacuzzi sales, magic acts, suburban ennui, Nefertiti’s earrings, and an extremely rad jacket. One of Seidelman’s hidden messages seems to be that love is a powerful currency, and that following where your heart leads is a kind of destiny.The actress talks falling in love with Madonna, where that jacket is now, and what it feels like to know Harvey Weinstein is behind bars. Metallic jacquard with skinny animal-print lapels, its decorated back borrowed motifs and language from the United States dollar bill: Novus ordo seclorum, “The new order is dispatched.” Susan might be broke, but she has agency, which Roberta, despite her means, does not. Sold in 2016 for $87,500, the jacket is a borrowed from the boys cropped tuxedo with a rockabilly air. Her transformation starts when she puts on Susan’s jacket, which is even more central to the movie than the stolen Egyptian earrings around which the Pink Panther-esque plot revolves. Later she’s shown in a Vaquera-like choir-boy collared blouse. When we first meet Roberta, she’s playing the role of a dutiful Fort Lee housewife, wearing a mumsy Dynasty-esque silk dress. Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) Photo: ©Orion Pictures Corp / Courtesy Everett Collection
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |