SallyField Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Oh, what might have been! Alison Lohman gives a terrific performance as the cursed loan officer Christine Brown in Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, which opens tomorrow. If not for the vagaries of scheduling, though, Ellen Page would have played the lead role. Would Page have been any better? We'll never know, but she joins a long list that inspires thoughts of 'What if ...?'

Once upon a time, we might have seen Leslie Howard as the titular Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi as The Monster. Instead, Colin Clive played the good doctor, Boris Karloff got a jump-start on life, and the rest is horror history. Here are seven more recent examples of actors and actresses who were considered for key roles in great horror films ... and the ones who replaced them, listed in chronological order. [Disclaimer: Based on information provided on IMDb's "trivia" pages, so no guarantees on accuracy.] Better? Worse? You decide.

1. Melanie Griffith / Sissy Spacek (Carrie)

Even though she was in her mid-20s, Spacek looks so young and fragile as Carrie that it's difficult to imagine anyone else in the role. Griffith was 18 or 19 and already had made an impression in Night Moves, The Drowning Pool, and Smile when she auditioned to play the telekinetic high schooler. Conveying Carrie's complexities might have been beyond her still-developing skills at that point. The pic above, left, is from Joyride, released the following year.

Why do so many women get stuck playing characters older than they are? While watching Duplicity, for example, I was thinking, "Wow, Julia Roberts really looks her age." (She's 41.) I don't mean that in a negative way -- she's still a fine-looking woman -- but it's rare to see an actress in her 40s or 50s playing a character who's in her 40s or 50s.

More often than that, we see younger women playing older characters, as Hadley Freeman points out in The Guardian: "It is all too easy for a female actor to find herself cast as the mother of someone who once played her boyfriend as soon as she blows out the candles on her 35th birthday cake." She cites various examples:

• Sally Field as Tom Hanks' mother in Forrest Gump. Age difference: ten years.
• Glenn Close as Mel Gibson's mother in Hamlet. Age difference: nine years.
• Anne Bancroft as Dustin Hoffman's matronly seductress in The Graduate. Age difference: five years.
• Elizabeth Taylor as Dennis Hopper's mother in Giant. Age difference: four years.
• Angelina Jolie as Colin Farrell's mother in Alexander. Age difference: one year.
• Lea Thompson as Michael J. Fox's mother in Back to the Future. Age difference: none.

Freeman concludes: "Quite why film directors are so averse to having middle-aged roles played by middle-aged women comes down to male insecurity and misogyny ... The sense of disgust of older women is so deeply entrenched in Hollywood that even when the role is specifically for an older woman, no one wants to see an actual older woman on screen." All of the directors of the films cited above are men.

Do you want to see more "actual older women" on screen? Or would you prefer that older female characters be played by younger actresses?

*A guest review today, from Nick Schager, of Slant Magazine

Four grown-up siblings reunite to take care of their ovarian cancer-stricken mother during her dying days in Two Weeks, a melodrama that, while partially based on the life of writer/director Steve Stockman, nonetheless frequently exhibits a startling ignorance about normative human behavior. Making his feature directorial debut, Stockman approaches his downbeat material with equal measures of somberness and levity, the latter supposedly aimed at replicating the way in which people use wisecracks and sarcasm as a defense mechanism – an emotional barricade – against wellsprings of pain and misery. It's a reasonable aim, yet one that requires a lighter touch than the first-time filmmaker possesses, the result being an awkward hybrid of earnest weepiness and bouncy lightheartedness that's further undermined by numerous scenes that come across as divorced from any sense of recognizable reality.

Wasting away in the North Carolina home she shares with second husband Jim (James Murtaugh), Anita (Sally Field) gets to share her final two weeks with her quartet of kids, a motley bunch of "types" who each boast one distinctive trait. Keith (Ben Chaplin) is a Hollywood filmmaker whose life is guided by a "one day at a time" Zen philosophy, and who has never cried in front of his wife; Barry (Thomas Cavanagh) is a businessman who thinks cleaning up after mom – who does a lot of puking into a bedpan – is icky; Matthew (Glenn Howerton) is the youngest child, and thus feels bossed around and disrespected; and Emily (Julianne Nicholson) is the devoted daughter whose method of dealing with her mother's impending demise is to read every one of her local library's self-help books.

This is Part Two of a two-part interview with screenwriter Stewart Stern, who wrote the screenplays for Rebel Without a Cause, Sybil, and many other films. Part One of the interview covered Stern's career.

CINEMATICAL: Stewart, let's start by talking about your childhood, which profoundly impacted your writing. You and your mother never had a good relationship.

STERN: She did her best - she and my father never intended to have a baby so soon. They went on their honeymoon - boom! - she was pregnant; they never even had a chance to know each other, really, before they became parents. My mother was creative, she wanted to be an actress. She didn't really want to have a baby then. Her own mother, my Grandma Kaufman, was 47 when my mother was born; she had already used up most of her affection on the nine children she had before my mother. So my mother never learned how to be...how to be that way.

But when I made clay figures, my mother would run them off to a ceramic studio and get them glazed and fired. (Stern goes to his desk and pulls a small, green clay figure out of a drawer) This is an alligator I made as a kid...just a little clay figure, and look - she had it glazed and fired. (He hands me the figure to examine)

CINEMATICAL: It says on the bottom you were nine years old. This is remarkably well done for a nine-year-old.

STERN: I was always artistic. Marjorie (his younger sister) wasn't. She wanted to be, she tried so hard, but she just wasn't.

Stewart Stern had a enviable career in Hollywood for over a quarter century. He was the nephew of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, and spent much of his childhood at Zukor's Mountain View Farm near Nyack, NY, where he played with his cousin, Arthur Loew Jr, who would later help Stern start his career in Hollywood. But Stern's childhood was far from idyllic; he had a difficult relationship with his emotionally distant parents, which would later shape much of his writing.

Stern wrote the screenplays for Rebel Without a Cause, Sybil, The Ugly American, and Rachel, Rachel, among others. He had unprecedented access as a screenwriter to the sets of his films, and counted some of Hollywood's biggest names - Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Natalie Wood, James Dean - among his friends.

While I think most people think of drama when they think of Sally Field, I always thought that she could of done some really great comedies. I just don't think she ever managed to choose the right ones. It might not have been a perfect movie, but she was absolutely hilarious in Soapdish as a highly-strung soap star. Sure, I liked Norma Rae, but most of Fields' "heavy" roles always grated on my nerves just a little -- a good example would be her work on ER, it's just too much crying, too much yelling, just too much of everything. It looks like I will have to wait for that great Sally Field comedy project, because her next film sounds pretty light on the laughs.

Variety reported that MGM purchased the international rights to the film Two Weeks starring Field, Ben Chaplin (The Thin Red Line), and Tom Cavanagh (Scrubs). Rounding out the rest of the cast is Julianne Nicholson, Glenn Howerton, and Clea DuVall. The film follows four siblings who rush home to see their terminally ill mother for the last time, but end up having to wait around for the inevitable for the next two weeks. Steve Stockman who is at the helm as a first time director also wrote the script. Two Weeks is set for release this December.