Forgiving Shelly Winters

I watched way, way too much TV when I was growing up. And one of the shows I watched way too much of was Donahue. Why a pre-teen girl would watch Donahue, who knows… his shows weren’t salacious like day-time talk shows today – even Oprah at times went down the ratings-sweeps road that Donahue avoided (I’m still mad about your amplification of the anti-vaccine movement, Oprah…). I just thought the topics were always interesting.

I remember one Donahue episode in particular: his guest was Shelly Winters. Shelly Winters has put in some incredible film performances I admire hugely: in A Place in the Sun, Executive Suite, The Night of the Hunter, The Diary of Anne Frank, Alfie, Lolita, Harper and, of course, The Poseidon Adventure. She generates sympathy for characters that, in real life, annoy me. She forces you to see the humanity and pathos behind people you might dismiss as whiney and socially-awkward and completely not self-aware in the real world.

So there I am, 12 or so, watching Shelly, and she’s holding court – truly, she’s the Queen and the audience are her subjects. And she’s doing what older actors and directors do: complain about movies today. She’s ranting on and on and she finishes one of her long-winded complaints with, “What people want is Shakespeare and instead, they get Star Wars.” And when she said Star Wars, she flicked her hand dismissively.

I. Was. Pissed. That was it for Shelly Winters. If one of her movies came on, I turned it off. If she came on Johnny Carson, I walked out of the room. How DARE she dismiss a film that had taken all that I loved from Greek and Roman and Arthurian mythology and PUT IT IN SPACE?!? How DARE she dismiss a movie that had Princess Leia, a strong, sassy, smart character that was the LEADER of all the men in the movie? How DARE she dismiss a movie that had been my refuge from a dysfunctional family and a neighborhood full of bullies?

Spoiler alert: I ended up forgiving Shelly Winters.

First of all, it’s not like all of Shelly’s movies are high art – she was in a freakin’ Chuck Norris movie, among others… I’m sure she conveniently forgot that, as most ar-teeeests do, during her rants against movies “today.” And secondly, she’s like so many people around me right now, running down what’s popular in movies or in music while romanticizing movies and music from their day as somehow all SO much better and glorious – a mythology they have created about movies and music when they were younger that I find incredibly amusing.

Now, Martin Scorsese, he of the I’m-going-to-make-yet-ANOTHER-violent-movie-with-Al-Pacino-and/or-Robert De Niro, and Francis Ford Coppola, he of haven’t-had-an-acclaimed-film-in-25-years fame, have said they don’t like the Marvel movies.

So… I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of either of them, not as much as most other movie lovers. I find the hyper Western toxic masculinity of their movies – and their fans – terribly disturbing at times. And I think some of their films have NOT held up well over time and look really dated and unimaginative and utterly ego-driven now. Still, yes, they have been brilliant filmmakers and have fostered a lot of talent.

Their comments immediately reminded me of Shelly Winters way back when. Part of me wants to dismiss them, even get mad at them: how pathetic to see artists well past their prime lash out at what’s popular now. Next up: Get off my lawn! I love the Marvel movies, I love how the filmmakers have brought out both the epic and the vulnerable and the short-comings in supposed “superheroes”  and how they have both paid tribute to the original comic book stories and legends while also making movies that offer some startling parallels to our world right now. I love how complex the stories are and how online debates break out about the moral choices the characters make.

But, honestly, mostly I’m just going to roll my eyes, stay off their lawn, and keep loving what I love. If you don’t get it, that’s fine – your loss. I think Dirty Dancing is one of the dumbest fucking movies ever made, but if it floats your boat, you just keep right on watchin’ every time it’s shown on TV… over and over and over…