Your life is written on your face

October 8, 2017 2:11 AM

Frances McDormand’s Difficult Women (NYT Magazine).
posted by sapagan (19 comments total)

Love her work. Never read an interview before. Now I understand why I love her work.

Thanks, sapagan.
posted by flabdablet at 3:46 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

I love her. Her and Judy Davis, my favourites.
posted by h00py at 4:14 AM on October 8, 2017

One of my favorites!
posted by reekbeek12 at 4:23 AM on October 8, 2017

That is a truly magnificent profile. I work with actors all the time, some (locally) famous, some not, and it's such a thing for them to be always 'on'. They guard their public personae so carefully, particularly if they regularly do film and tv work, and to read an in-depth piece that actually gets to uncover some of the real, thoughtful, profoundly clever woman behind so many difficult and intensely crafted performances that seem like the real Frances McDormand but aren't really... it's just genuinely fascinating and inspiring to read.

A+, Best of the Web, thanks sapagan!
posted by prismatic7 at 4:42 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

This is a glimpse into a life lived well. I would like to be like Frances McDormand, not in terms of her acting, because I have no interest in acting myself, but in terms of her confidence and her productivity and her uncompromising sense of what really matters.
posted by orange swan at 5:52 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

I am very much looking forward to "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." I think she is going to be fantastic (again).

I think I would watch her watching paint dry.
posted by kaymac at 7:24 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

You know what isn't really captured in this profile -- how funny she is. Yes, she's fierce, yes, she's no-nonsense, but she's also really funny, quick-witted and playful. When she was in the SF area doing Macbeth with that guy from Game of Thrones, the two of them were interviewed by (more like, participated in a conversation with) Tony Taccone of Berkeley Rep. And it was fucking delightful. She and that guy from Game of Thrones were clearly fond of each other and had spent enough time together that their playful patter just rolled along.

I think maybe her lightheartedness doesn't come across well in written interviews because much of it isn't what she says, but how she says it. Tone of voice, inflection, body language.

I've seen her onstage twice, in Shaker Spirituals and as Lady Macbeth, and she has a great ability to tamp down her charisma so that you can see ither people on stage with her. Not everyone with her force of personality can do that.

My personal favorite of her work is Olive Kittredge. It takes a real actor to humanize that harsh woman without watering down her harshness.
posted by janey47 at 8:14 AM on October 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

In reply to the lake picture, I sent her the poet Mary Ruefle’s essay “Pause.”

"Pause."
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:15 AM on October 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

What an interesting woman! Never mind the actress—the woman is purely wonderful. Thanks for posting this.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:38 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I hadn't heard of "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." but it sounds like it could be great. Reminds me of a lot of book discussion on twitter about how few older women characters are out there, let alone angry rage-fueled women.

Have loved McDormand in everything I've seen her in, Olive Kitteridge was magnificent.
posted by Fence at 9:46 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Whoa, I went looking for the audio of the conversation I mention above, and found the video YAY Enjoy
posted by janey47 at 10:12 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" recently won the People's Choice Award at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, one of 250+ feature-length entries.

The movie's RogerEbert.com review states, "...the film belongs to McDormand, who can do more with a withering glare than most actresses can do with a monologue. She is simply stunning when it comes to internal language, so often revealing the pain underneath the rage. Her Mildred takes no prisoners, but also feels like someone literally torn apart inside by grief. McDormand can destroy a monologue, too—a scene with a priest offering counsel is an all-timer, earning applause at my screening—but she’s even more impressive in the minor beats. It’s the curl of a lip to fight back tears or the downward glance to stop herself from punching someone. This character is so completely, fully realized in ways that other actresses couldn’t have come anywhere close to capturing. It’s stunning to watch... Very few recent movies have made me laugh and cry in equal measure as much as this one. Very few films recently are this good."

I can't wait to see her in it.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 12:06 PM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Alan Fraker, An Unnamed Town in the Berkshires, October 4, 2017, writes:

Our son was married in Frances' McDormand's "Unnamed Town in the Pacific Northwest" in August 2017. We rented a large home for our family several blocks from downtown. One morning, while wrestling with the bungee cords on our massive trash cans, a car slid to a stop on the dirt road behind me. Out jumped Frances who, in less than a minute, re-did the cords and showed me how to raccoon-proof them. More or less speechless, I watched in awe (and unstated recognition) as she outdid most Eagle Scouts at knotting up the containers. I thanked her for her help, she climbed back into the car with her husband, and off they went down the hill. An anonymous good citizen had done a good deed for a stranger in her nameless town, just the way she wanted it.

posted by standardasparagus at 1:10 PM on October 8, 2017 [7 favorites]

Frances McDormand is a goddamn national treasure.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:42 PM on October 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Fence, I'm looking forward to Three Billboards simply because of the excellence of McDonagh's first feature, In Bruges, one of my favorite films of the century thus far. That he's chosen to basically write a movie around McDormand is a real vote of confidence in each others' creative ability. The red-band trailer from the spring certainly shows off her tour-de-force performance.
posted by dhartung at 11:30 PM on October 8, 2017

I love this and I love Frances, but I'm feeling a bit cringy at the title of the piece. "Difficult Women". I'm sure it is supposed to be referencing Roxane Gay's Difficult Women, but it feels a bit icky to take a Black woman's title and apply it to a white woman.
posted by jillithd at 6:59 AM on October 9, 2017

Roxane Gay didn't invent the term, nor did the term originate in black culture. The term "difficult women" was actually coined during the witch-hunts in Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century and was used to identify women targeted to be burned at the stake and whose property would be confiscated by the church. David Plante wrote a memoir entitled Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three in 1983. There's an Australian literary-folk music cabaret group named Difficult Women that was created in 1992. Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote a book called Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women in 1998. I could name a number of other titles as well, and even point you to a 2013 New Yorker article on the women of Sex and the City which used it as a title. It's a common, even hackneyed term that's been subverted from its original misogynist use to become feminist. So I can't say I have any qualms about this writer using it at all, unless it's to say she should have come up with something a little less shopworn.
posted by orange swan at 7:17 AM on October 9, 2017 [4 favorites]

OK, but Gay's book was just published this year, so I do feel there is a reference there, which I know is a common thing to do to tie an interview to a current pop-culture phrase. However, neither of us know for sure the origins of the title in this specific case, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
posted by jillithd at 7:21 AM on October 9, 2017

Sure, it's entirely possible and even probable that this title was tied to a current and much discusses book. But again, it's a common feminist term, and while cultural appropriation/exploitation of other cultures and political initiatives by white mainstream culture is a real and serious issue (i.e., the way "taking a knee" has been diluted into a symbol unity/resistance against Trump rather than a protest of police brutality against members of the black community), this isn't a case of cultural appropriation/exploitation. To say this magazine shouldn't have used a centuries-old term in reference to a white woman because a black writer recently used it as a title for her book of short stories, that Roxane Gay effectively now owns the phrase, is absurd.
posted by orange swan at 7:54 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]