Bette Midler
Page 29
She then gets a look at the kind of boys Jenny is hanging out with. A pre-stardom Ben Stiller appears here as a punkish older boy—Jim—that Jenny brings home to meet her mother. Stella sees up close how Jenny’s fate will be as bad as hers, if she doesn’t do something to help.
Desperate for money, Stella hits the streets, selling Nancy Lee cosmetics. One of her more amusing sequences is during this door-to-door saleswoman phase in Stella’s forlorn life.
However, Jenny’s life is tempered by the kind of existence she experiences while visiting her father in New York City. Stephen Dallas is a successful doctor, and his girlfriend, Janis (Marsha Mason), is a successful editor. When Jenny visits them, she is exposed to a completely different life and a new class of suitors. It becomes an emotional tug-of-war on Christmas Eve for Jenny to have to choose between a night at Mom’s slum-like apartment or Dad’s truly dazzling party.
One of the most memorable sequences occurs after a credit card shows up in the mail. Stella takes Jenny on a trip to Florida to surprise the aristocratic boy Jenny is in love with. The love affair is undone after Stella makes a fool of herself at a beachside bar, dressed like a crazed floozy. A suddenly blonde Stella proceeds to cause a wild scene, lubricated by waaaaaay too many cocktails. In this crazy scene, Stella is dressed in a blue ruffled nightmare of a dress that not even Vicki Eydie would be caught dead wearing.
Later, relaxing by the ocean, Stella overhears two girls laughing to themselves, “You know that ‘thing’ we saw in the bar this morning? You know who that is? That’s Jenny Claire’s mother! Can you believe that? I thought it must have been Pee Wee Herman’s wife or something!” The scene is largely played off Bette’s sinking face.
The World Trade Center is seen in an “establishment” shot, when Jenny goes to New York City to stay with her dad.
Realizing that Jenny would be better off living with her father, Stella launches a plan for the ultimate self-sacrifice. Unexpectedly, she shows up in New York City at Janice’s office, and in a woman-to-woman conversation, she plots Jenny’s future. One of Bette’s best dramatic scenes is with Marsha Mason, where she plans to have Jenny go and live with her father. It is sharp, touching, and emotion-filled.
Naturally, Jenny refuses to consider leaving her mother. So, Stella sets up a scenario to discourage Jenny from staying with her, by embarrassing her and hurting her feelings. By claiming that she is in love with her drunken slob of a boyfriend, Ed, Stella drives Jenny away.
The film ends with a truly tear-jerking scene of Stella watching Jenny’s wedding, while standing in the pouring rain outside Tavern on the Green. It is a weepy, melodramatic story of maternal sacrifice. The wedding scene does, however, walk a fine line between being touchingly sentimental and completely sappy. Through it all, Stella is a great ensemble film, a well-paced drama, and Bette really did throw herself into becoming the character.
As the credits roll, Bette sings her only song in the film, “One More Cheer.” It was produced by Arif Mardin and written by Jay Gurska and Paul Gordon. There was no soundtrack album released.
Bette admitted that she did have her misgivings about doing Stella to begin with. However, it was a great deal for her. According to her, “They told me to do it. Jeffrey [Katzenberg] had it in his mind to do it for a long time: he always loved it. He got a wonderful script, and Sam Goldwyn had the rights to it because it was his father’s picture. Jeffrey paid buckets for it, so I read it, and it’s a good script. I don’t exactly do what they tell me without putting up a fight, but I couldn’t say ‘no’ to this because he paid so much money for it” (131).
When it was released in 1990, the critics either loved it or hated it. Mainly, they hated it. Roger Ebert, in the Chicago Sun Times, was one of the few reviewers who really liked it, giving it three and a half stars (out of four). According to his review, “Every charge you can make against this movie is probably true—it’s cornball, manipulative, unlikely, sentimental and shameless. But once the lights go down and the performances begin, none of those things really matter, because this Stella has a quality that many more sophisticated films lack: It makes us really care about its characters. . . . There are scenes here of great difficulty, which Midler plays wonderfully; the scene, for example, where she goes to Marsha Mason’s office to ask if Jenny can come to live with Mason and Collins. . . . Stella is the kind of movie that works you over and leaves you feeling good, unless you absolutely steel yourself against it. Go to sneer. Stay to weep” (132).
His long-time sparring partner, Gene Siskell, in the Chicago Tribune, had the opposite opinion when he wrote, “Bette Midler stars in a laughably bad remake of Stella Dallas, the story of a working-class mother who sacrificed her own future for that of her daughter. Stephen Collins is wildly miscast as the man who loves Midler, and Trini Alvarado is too contemporary for the dated character of the daughter. Nothing—absolutely nothing—works here in this shoddy soap opera” (133).
Stanley Kauffman, in the New Republic, really ripped into Bette by stating, “Come back, Bette Midler. She is a true original. Why does she spend her time copying others? Especially since she’s not doing it very well. She made her reputation, outside singing, as a rude, anticonventional comedienne. But her last film, Beaches, and her latest, Stella, are mainline tearjerkers. . . . In fact, she once announced plans for a film on the life of Lotte Lenya. Where is it? Where is anything other than her two latest films? They’re not only dreadful in themselves, they debase her talent” (134).
Stella was something of a disappointment at the box office. However, Bette didn’t take a lot of time to dwell on its outcome. She was busy with several other projects.
While the film was still in theaters across America, on February 21 the song “Wind beneath My Wings” won the Song of the Year at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards. The award went to the writers of the song, Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar. Bette herself won the Grammy Award for the Record of the Year, marking the fourth time she had one of the trophies. Furthermore, Bette’s performance of her winning song was used to close the show that night.
On April 22, 1990, Bette was one of the stars on the ABC-TV broadcast of its Earth Day Special. Other stars who appeared on the telecast included Robin Williams, Barbra Streisand, and Quincy Jones.
It had been seven years since Bette Midler had released an album of music that wasn’t tied to a movie soundtrack. When it came time for Bette to go into the recording studio to record her twelfth album, Some People’s Lives, she did so with longtime producer Arif Mardin at the helm.
With regard to her ability to choose the right songs to record, Midler claimed at the time, “I know right away if it moves me, it’ll move the public. That has always been my criterion. I have been pressured at points by my label to record this or record that, and I’ve had terrible, terrible flops . . . so I stopped doing it for the most part. . . . I think that’s bullshit” (40).
According to Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records, Midler often derails herself. “She was her own worst enemy when it came to recording, because she had so many doubts about everything,” he explained. “The reason for some of her albums not doing well was that there was no real marriage between her and her producers. I think finally we found Arif Mardin, who is the right person to bring out of her what’s in her. She’s very, very anxious to do her best, and nothing sounds like her best to her, so it has been a very tough procedure” (40).
Some People’s Lives is an excellent Bette Midler album. Though it tends to center itself on pop ballads, the diva sounds great, and she can be heard stretching herself into a couple of jazz standards. While the song “Miss Otis Regrets” is presented here as a game bit of fun, there aren’t any real Divine Miss M excursions into the outrageous found on this album. Instead, she reaches for touching love songs. Two of the best performances on this album are the ballad “The Girl Is On to You” and the medley of Rogers & Hart’s “He Was Too Good to Me” with the contemporary “Since You Stayed Here.”
However, the album’s real masterpiece is Bette’s recording of the Julie Gold composition “From a Distance.” The song is an emotional epic, which finds Miss M backed up vocally by former Harlette Charlotte Crossley, Cissy Houston of the Sweet Inspirations, and the Radio Choir of New Hope Baptist Church of Newark, New Jersey. “From a Distance” is a song of pacifism; it was unforeseeable that America would get into a Middle Eastern military conflict at the same time that the single version of this song was released.
Swept up into the whole Desert Storm 1990–1991 conflict, Bette’s recording of “From a Distance” captured the hearts and minds of radio programmers and record buyers alike. Within weeks, Bette had the second-hottest single recording of her entire career. Between November 1990 and January 1991, the song was in the American Top 10, peaking at Number 2 the week of December 15. The single alone sold over a million copies and was certified Platinum in America. In the United Kingdom it peaked at Number 6.
The album ultimately sold two million copies in America alone. Hot on the heels of what she had done with the Beaches soundtrack and “The Wind beneath My Wings” the year before, Bette Midler again had an incredibly hot hit single and a multi-Platinum album. In America, Some People’s Lives reached Number 6 in America and Number 5 in the U.K.
In February of 1991, Midler was back in movie theaters. Her next screen role was in Paul Mazursky’s lunatic comedy Scenes from a Mall. The film found her cast as a Beverly Hills relationship counselor, encountering some problems in her own marriage. Starring opposite her was one of her favorite leading men, Woody Allen. According to her, “It was the most fun I ever had in my life. During filming, I’d get up every day and say, ‘I’m going to see Woody,’ and I’d jump into makeup and run out there and wait to hear what he was going to say next. He was really magical to work with” (27).
She also confessed, “I hadn’t had a crush like that since I married my husband. . . . I love to scream and laugh, and that’s why I fell so in love with Woody. I would laugh and laugh. I would pee! I would have to go and change my diaper. I swear to God!” (40)
Scenes from a Mall is a very quirky, but highly amusing film, produced and directed by Paul Mazursky of Down and Out in Beverly Hills fame. Bette loved working with Mazursky—who also makes a cameo appearance—and she had high hopes for the project. This film again mocks the shallow culture of Los Angeles; this time it’s a married couple at each other’s throats at a shopping mall.
The action takes place at the Beverly Center, a shopping mall in the Beverly Hills area, which—in reality—is an odd conglomeration of stores. The regular department stores—Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s—share mall space with high-end jewelry stores, sushi bars, and designer boutiques. (Scenes from a Mall was filmed at Stamford Town Center in Stamford, Connecticut, as well as at the Beverly Center.)
Bette plays psychologist Debra Feingold-Fifer. She and her husband, Nick Fifer (Woody Allen), are about to celebrate their sixteenth wedding anniversary that evening. They drive to the mall to purchase clothes, food, and gifts for the anniversary party. However, as they find themselves trapped at the shopping mall, one comic series of mishaps after another transpires. In addition, a white-faced mime (Bill Irwin) seems to follow them wherever they go, mocking their misadventures. The obnoxious mime is played by Bill Irwin, whom Midler had presented on her Mondo Beyondo TV special in 1988. He was later to find fame in the 2000 hit film The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, as Cindy Lou Who’s father.
At the mall, after a sushi lunch, Nick admits to his wife that he has been having affair. It is the Christmas season, and Debra is actively promoting her new book about marriage, I Do! I Do! I Do! In fact, at the mall’s Waldenbooks store, a promotional clip about her book plays over and over again. True to her marriage therapist stature, at first she instinctively attempts to digest the news of her husband’s infidelity intellectually.
However, when this revelation finally sinks in, Debra knees Nick in the groin, starts screaming, and throws a very large and expensive box of sushi at the mime. She manages to make it back to the car, where she breaks down crying. However, the traffic is so thick that she finds herself stuck in the car, unable to escape the snarl of traffic in the parking lot.
Nick finds her in the car, and together they park and return to the mall to discuss this dilemma further. They then argue about which divorce lawyer they should use. He insists that she use him as her divorce lawyer, so they can save the legal fees. Next they start verbally dividing up their community property, over lunch at a Mexican restaurant and several margaritas. Debra manages to get loaded and weepy as the margarita glasses pile up.
Then their argument continues in the mall movie theater—Nick lugging the lime-green surfboard Debra has bought him as an anniversary present, into the theater. The theater scene is hysterical. They begin arguing in whispering tones during an Indian film up on the screen. As he starts experiencing chest pains and has trouble breathing, they somehow rekindle their devotion for one another and then start having sex in the movie theater. Outlandishly, Nick goes down on Debra right there in her seat, and she has a loud orgasm while people on the screen are running down the streets of India. The scene is inspired insanity, to say the least.
After sex, they leave the theater in love and lust. Finally, with the clarity of their sexual reconciliation, she admits that she, too, has been having an extramarital affair. That’s it, now he is suddenly all finished with her.
When he attempts to leave Debra stranded at the mall, he returns to the parking structure to find that the car has been towed, as it was erroneously parked in a “handicapped” slot. Next, they run into each other in the painkiller aisle of the mall drugstore. With post-painkiller clarity, they begin discussing their future aspirations for their life.
Then it’s off to the mall’s blue light-illuminated Maison du Caviar, for champagne and caviar. The opulent caviar makes them romantic again. However, their conversation turns into another argument, this time over which one of their mutual friends they would each like to sleep with.
Throughout the entire film, Debra uses the mall payphone, announcing that the party is “on,” “off,” “on,” “off,” and finally “on” again. Suddenly, she wants a new outfit for their anniversary party, which is now back on track. Then, he decides that he, too, wants a new outfit for the evening. As the film ends, they are back together—and still arguing.
This kooky film exploits an old movie theme—Scenes from a Marriage—and cleverly takes it shopping. In one scene, they get into the mall elevator and muscleman/romance novel coverboy Fabio is in it.
Although it was not a huge box-office hit, the film is quirky and totally entertaining. Bette’s compatriot-in-song Marc Shaiman handled the music for the film, and as the ending credits roll, she sings the standard “You Do Something to Me.”
While the reviews for Stella had been mixed, the reviews for Scenes from a Mall were awful. Roger Ebert, in the Chicago Sun-Times, called it “very bad indeed,” further dissecting it by stating, “the movie doesn’t work, except for a short time at the beginning. . . . Allen and Midler struggle heroically with their characters, but there is nothing in this story for us to believe” (135).
David Denby, in New York magazine, claimed, “Both Allen and Midler are required to play the scenes realistically, but as performers, they are inherently too stylized for such a trite, knowing, ‘psychological’ approach to marital weariness. . . . Scenes from a Mall is not a dud—there are a few jokes—but it left me with an almost mournful sense of disappointment” (136). And Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide wearily stated, “Fans of the stars should take a look, but this one ranks as a major
disappointment” (128).
Coming to her own defense about her latest two films, Bette explained at the time, “I was so slagged for Stella. I’m afraid to talk about it even to defend myself. Stella wasn’t so bad. I guess people just read such terrible reviews that they decided they didn’t want to spend their seven dollars. It wasn’t that bad. I always cry when I look at it. I believe nobody saw that picture. And the same thing is true for Scenes from a Mall. I loved it. I loved making it. I loved being involved with Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky, and I sat in that screening room and I loved it. I was so shocked that people didn’t go to see it. I was just dumbfounded. I said, ‘Well, you know, you just throw up your hands. What do they want?’ ” (131).
Regardless of what Scenes from a Mall was doing at the box office, Bette was big news in the recording business. On February 20, the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards opened with Midler singing her latest hit, “From a Distance,” on the telecast, live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Like “Wind beneath My Wings” a year before, the song won the Grammy for Song of the Year, with the trophy going to the song’s writer, Julie Gold.
In June of 1991 Bette was in England, where she appeared on the BBC1-TV show Wogan. The week of August 29 the Record Industry Association of America announced that the Beaches soundtrack had been certified Triple Platinum, making it her biggest-selling album yet.
Meanwhile, Bette’s children’s song “Blueberry Pie” was revived from the 1980s Sesame Street album and was included on the all-star compilation album For Our Children, and it reached Number 31 on the American album charts.
On the 15th of September, Bette Midler was honored by AIDS Project Los Angeles, for her charitable work, raising money for AIDS victims. The event, known as “Commitment for Life V,” was held at the Universal Amphitheatre.