Word: hollywood
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hope, however, is not lost. In true Hollywood fashion, the heroine enters to save the day. Michelle Pfeiffer stumbles in, three hours late, with broken shoes and a mouthful of chewing gum. She is Suzie Diamond, an entrancing former employee of the Triple A Escort Service. Tired of being the glittering wrist ornament of shoe vendors and lug-wrench magnates, Suzie hopes a nightclub microphone can lead her to a better life...
...real and only-looks-like-real are mixed with abandon, a viewer can get disoriented. Newscasters like Connie Chung and Mary Alice Williams introduce Hollywood-style mini-dramas one day, news stories from Warsaw and Capitol Hill the next. Real-life victims of brutal crimes return to the scene to act them out for the TV cameras. At least one actor from America's Most Wanted was turned in to authorities by a concerned viewer -- who mistook him for the fugitive he played in a re-enactment...
Which is just the problem. The scenes with James Earl Jones were not just of motion-picture quality; they were virtually indistinguishable from a motion picture. TV news producers may well be capable of making docudramas as good as or better than Hollywood's; the question is whether they should. Journalists are in the business of conveying reality; re-enactments convert reality into something else -- something neater, more palatable, more conventionally "dramatic." Mental institutions are filled with raving loonies; murderers move in grainy, horrific slow motion; civil rights leaders look like James Earl Jones. There was no better drama...
...accommodate -- often passed her by for the sake of convenience. "It's not surprising that she's perceived by most Jewish people as anti-Jewish," says her ex-husband, director Tony Richardson. "She has created this image for herself, which makes her almost uncastable in a leading role in Hollywood. She's totally unrealistic in her attitude: when she says 'Zionism,' she thinks she isn't talking about Jews. But there isn't a single bit of anti-Semitic blood in Vanessa." Embittered, Redgrave nowadays declines to cooperate on articles -- including this one -- unless the publication pledges in writing...
Although she makes films elsewhere, Hollywood has not cast Redgrave since Yanks in 1979. She has secured only sporadic U.S. TV work. Other actors report that merely suggesting her for a role is enough to damage their own careers. The protest peaked in 1982, when the woman whom Redgrave was playing called for her to be ousted from the Emmy-winning lead in Arthur Miller's CBS-TV drama Playing for Time. Politics also excluded her from being cast in the Broadway drama Plenty. That same year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, allegedly fearful of disruptions and of losing donor support...