Word: opalized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...course, life is never quite that simple and Dottie Ingels, played by Julie Kavner, experiences all the pitfalls of show business cum motherhood. First, her dream of stardom--which is shared by her two daughters, Erica and Opal--seems to bear little relation to reality...
While Dottie hits the comedy club circuit in Manhattan, Erica and Opal predictably struggle to adjust to their new surroundings. As Dottie enjoys her new life, the girls revel in their mother's success on stage and at the same time feel awed and threatened by her accomplishments...
...field as Dottie Ingels (Julie Kavner) does in This Is My Life. Dottie, God help her, decides that a polka-dot wardrobe will be her trademark. She blithely uses material in her act from the life she shares with her daughters, teenage Erica (Samantha Mathis) and 10-year-old Opal (Gaby Hoffmann). And, not least of her sins, she falls in love with her agent, Arnold Moss (Dan Aykroyd), who nervously chews Kleenex. Gross...
...confident movie -- Nora Ephron's first as a director -- is that it never turns into a single act. Even the minor characters are sharply written. Dottie's kids are fully her equals in its structure, always giving as good as they get. Erica's the silent, watchful one. Little Opal's the pert mistress of the wise-child zinger. In fact, the film's two best passages belong to them. When Erica takes as her first lover the squarest boy in school (that'll show Mom), their struggle with the logistics of lovemaking is a fresh, sweetly hilarious exploration...
...example, in "I Do Not Take Messages from Dead People," the sullen vice president is described as having "the gravitational density of an imploding star." The same story also presents the reader with a memorable image from Guyana at dusk: "a host of bats sewed up the great opal and silver clouds with their flitting, looping trajectories...