A few weeks ago… or maybe it was months (gosh, summer, you
sure do fly by)… I watched My Week with Marilyn. I liked it well enough to troll through
youtube for clips of Kenneth Branagh interviews… which led me to watching
Laurence Olivier interviews… and some place in there, interviews with Vivien
Leigh. I started reading Olivier’s autobiography
over fifteen years ago. I didn’t finish it
because I thought he was a pompous jackass who gave himself credit for Leigh’s
successes. But it was one of the first
times I started to comprehend the story of the tragic British actress.
Hers is not a happy biography – if you buy into that sort of
thing, part of the curse of all that had to do with Gone with the Wind. I watched those interviews and put it in the
back of my mind to revisit those biographies when I had more time. This weekend I had a few stolen hours -well, hours when I was less interested in
learning bits of dialogue in a Mississippi accent and sought to find any other
mental distraction. So, I picked up the book I am reading to inspire my own
writing. There is a scene in Tigers in Red Weather when Vivien Leigh is mentioned.
Indeed in reference to Gone with the Wind when, according to a bit of conversation in
that novel, Vivien Leigh went crazy. You
can see it in her eyes. I don’t
know. Can you?
I thought about that.
I thought about that because of those youtube interviews. Because I have a scene in my novel that
references Gone with the Wind and reveals the Mommy Dearest crazy of one of my
main characters. It’s not a pleasant
scene… but I love it. Because I love
Helen’s crazy. It’s, got to admit, fun to
write.
I’m not trying to make light of crazy here. I know mental illness – or even just the
struggle of the common person to cope with life’s difficulty is no laughing
matter. And yet I find myself actually
contemplating that as a writer and as an actress. When is the portrayal of crazy
laughable? When is it honest and a
compelling part of the story? And how does
the fact these characters are women determine that place on the spectrum?
I have been thinking a lot about this on my commute, as I try to repeat those Mississippi lines of a hysterical breakdown into
memory. I stumble through that part of
my role… because I don’t like hysterical crazy.
Not that I didn’t have my moments as a child and teenager. Maybe I’m bored with it because I know it’s
all noise and little substance. It’s not
as powerful… or mysterious as a look in the eye. I don’t want to write Helen that way. She has her intense moments, but no throwing
of furniture and pulling out her hair.
Or crying.
I remember another interview with a famous British actress
from about 15 years ago. Helena Bonham
Carter was discussing her role as Ophelia.
She said something I have heard in various interpretations over the
years. That crazy should be portrayed
like drunkenness. The drunk never wants
to show off his intoxication. He will do
everything to prove he isn’t drunk… and in the slip up, that is where it is
obvious. I hate seeing over the top
drunk on the stage. It is seldom funny
and so taxing on my attention span. The
funny is the tiny little reveal, even if it ends up being a huge pratfall.
Likewise, I have no interest in Ophelia if she is a cry
baby. The more she shrieks, the less I
will rate that interpretation of my favorite play. Her madness should have as much a question as
Hamlet’s. Wailing and screaming are dead
giveaways.
So I don’t know. I
know I’m not playing Helen on the stage in this play. Her path to breakdown has a vague parallel to
Babe, but not really. They are
two separate animals of creativity. Two
different interpretations of crazy. But…
I don’t know… I find it more fascinating when I’m asking myself, did those
green eyes look a little bit mad? At the
very least, I find the character who noticed them much more compelling… and
very likely going to distract me again from reviewing lines tonight.
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