Does anyone else have trouble with expressions like “turkey time” and “gobble, gobble” because of Gigli? In that 2003 mega-flop, Jennifer Lopez plays a lesbian who uses turkey terminology before engaging in sexual congress (of a decidedly non-lesbian variety) with Ben Affleck. Class action lawsuits never surfaced, but some viewers were left with lingering cases of GTSD—Gigli-traumatic stress disorder.
Writer-director Martin Brest’s career was a casualty of the film’s disastrous performance, but Lopez and Affleck retained theirs, if not their high-profile romance, which fizzled shortly thereafter. Last year, the two rekindled their relationship. And while I’m generally a sucker for a good reunion, I’ll admit to harboring fears about whether they nostalgically recreate that Gigli scene on this most beloved of secular holidays, seeing as their pants are probably already unbuckled after dinner.
With that, and with lasting gratitude for a sexual history (thus far) unblemished by poultry references, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope there’s an abundance of wonderful things in your lives for which you’re grateful.
Mary Tyler Moore spanks Jonathon Brandmeier in Thanksgiving Day.
Readers, I’m going to ask you to sit down before we continue any discussion of Thanksgiving Day (1990), because I’m about to say something that might upset anyone with lingering nightmares about Just Between Friends (1986). It’s as difficult to break this news as it is to receive it: Mary Tyler Moore wears a pink spandex leotard in this one, too. Not only that, we’re subjected to lingering shots of her scantily-clad tap dancing skills in lieu of excessive aerobics instruction. Scream and cry and hug Judd Hirsch about it, and then we’ll move on.
Even without those godforsaken leotards, you have to approach Thanksgiving Day with realistic expectations. NBC billed it as “the most unusual holiday movie ever” for a reason—it’s a big ol’ frozen turkey. Performed in the screwball style of Rue McClanahan’s Children of the Bride (1990), but without its pathos or crooked charm, we are left with little more than Moore’s exhibitionism and repeated gags about serving roast beef on Thanksgiving. Oh, and there’s a lesbian. Except, American television being what it was in the early ’90s, Moore’s daughter isn’t really a lesbian. She ends up with… Sonny Bono.
Janet McTeer in Daphne: “That’s what I get for not reading the script.”
Five years ago this Thanksgiving my life changed forever, but it would be months before I knew it. As I slept that night, a stranger who couldn’t sleep – a stranger then living hundreds of miles away – found herself watching the BBC Two production of Daphne and regarding the screen with increasing disbelief at its epic crumminess.
By the end, having watched a sullen and snappish Daphne du Maurier (lifelessly rendered by Geraldine Somerville) sulk and throw tantrums for 90 minutes because Ellen Doubleday (played by Elizabeth McGovern in the same pinched, pale style she now brings to her role as Cora on Downton Abbey), the publisher’s wife and heterosexual object of her desire, couldn’t magically turn gay for her – this while alternately rejecting Janet McTeer’s Gertrude Lawrence and having strangely unsexy extramarital rendezvous with her – the insomniac was borderline enraged.
Turning to Google, she looked for reassurance that she wasn’t alone in the opinion that Daphne was, for want of a more polite term, unmitigated crap. That’s when she found the review I’d posted months earlier. And then, with a click of the mouse, the insomniac and I were introduced, more or less by search engine algorithm. Had she conducted the same search a week earlier or later, had the tides of the Internet shifted, she might have been treated to different results. Sometimes in the present day, when I say or do something idiotic (an event that reliably happens in hourly intervals), she must turn toward the heavens and mournfully cry, “Why didn’t I use Yahoo?!” But Google brought us together that night, though it would be a while still before we met.
Boredom compelled the insomniac to read more of my posts (as boredom had once compelled me to write them), but I remained unaware of her existence until some months later, when she sent the tiniest of e-mails to congratulate me on a minor achievement. I responded with similar (and uncharacteristic) brevity. We did not know each others’ names then or really anything about each other. Our exchanges were short and impersonal. For weeks I was uncertain even of her gender and privately entertained the notion – it was possible, I knew, based on the demographics of my readership – that she was a drag queen.
So naturally it follows that we’d end up together within months (it turns out she wasn’t a drag queen), and that today we will celebrate our fifth Thanksgiving as a couple. We have marked the occasion in all of our previous Novembers together by watching Daphne on Thanksgiving, after spending the day before Thanksgiving groaning at the thought of having to watch Daphne. When I mentioned last week that it was almost Daphne time, the insomniac groaned, “Already?!”, much as she glares at me throughout the year when I sing “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” while preparing dinner or deliberately provoke her with cheerful references to “queer anti-climaxes” and “the most extraordinary thrill.”
Today would mark, for this poor woman who has been burdened enough by choosing me for her partner, the sixth year in a row of watching Daphne. To give her something to be thankful for this year, besides our health and our love and the life we’ve built together, I am officially releasing her from the bondage of Daphne. We don’t have to watch a “keen archer” stomp around the moors tonight, indignant that a straight lady won’t put out for her. We don’t have to listen to any of that business about being “a boy of eighteen” when one is actually a middle-aged woman. Instead we can watch whatever she wants, if she wants to watch anything at all. I do hope, though, that it isn’t Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. One viewing of that was enough.
For no reason whatsoever, Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters dancing in The Jerk.
Neither did an evil fetus, if you thought that was a possibility. I’ve just been busy lately, as everyone is this time of year, and unfortunately (or perhaps very fortunately, depending on how you look at it) it has kept me from posting all manner of nonsense here.
You can imagine the mental anguish this caused when, the week before last, I read that Miranda Richardson — who still hasn’t called me, I’m sad to report — apparently expressed her desire to play a Calamity Jane type role in a Western-themed hypothetical fifth season of Blackadder. (If you guessed my response was going to involve some kind of speculation that Richardson might have sung “Secret Love” to an audience of pillows in her bedroom once or twice during her formative years, you know me all too well.)
Or the way my fingers have itched to write, enthusiastically and at great length, horrible things about Mike Huckabee every time he opens his yap about “the gays” and violence and our terrible oppression of Christians and whatnot. (If you guessed my response was going to involve some kind of link to this photo of his family, you — well, you know the rest.) It has been exasperating to me that I haven’t had time for any of that.
Hopefully I’ll be back to making all of you roll your eyes and murmur, “Christ, what an idiot,” within the next few days. Until then, I leave you with one of the greatest clips in the history of movies. Nary a week goes by that I don’t find the opportunity to work “Is this the Cocksucker residence?” or “Listen to your filthy mouth, you fucking whore!” into a conversation. Preferably with my grandma.
The title of this post is, of course, a quote from Hamlet. I think the whole thing goes:
Parades or killer fetuses, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The murderous unborn in films produced by Roger Corman,
Or to watch a giant inflatable Snoopy take over the streets of New York
Both are almost equally pointless, and will make you want to die, to sleep.
william crankspeare
(That last part might be off by a few words. It’s been a while since I last read Hamlet.)
Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the United States, and it’s a day that’s always been “meh” for me, perhaps because I don’t like turkey or football — or maybe because I don’t need to be reminded to be thankful for all the good things in my life.
For me, Thanksgiving means there are marathons of horrible shows on cable all day and there’s no mail service. Is that really worth celebrating? Then there’s the family togetherness concept, which always sounds so warm and fuzzy in theory and ends up being more like a bad Fassbinder film in practice, but without the very things that make bad Fassbinder films bearable: English subtitles and sodomy. (Oh, and without the Hanna Schygulla. Can’t forget the Hanna Schygulla.)
