Gay Best Friend: Hedy & Graham in "Single White Female" (1992)

a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope   

You wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out? It’s kinda long, but it’s full of suspense.Gay Best Friends aren’t often paired with gay panic. Especially in movies made more than 10 years ago, we either were taught to laugh at queer characters, cry for them or fear them. Single White Female asked us to do two of the three. The 1992 thriller didn’t just settle for giving our jilted protagonist, Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda), a supportive gay best friend (Graham, played by Peter Friedman). They also paired her with a roommate nursing a lesbian crush on Allie and refining her murderous skills (Hedra Carlson, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Broad doesn’t begin to describe the movie. While it swings for the fences with its queer characterizations, a large degree of camp shines through. This makes for a pleasurable “turn-your-brain-off” wild thrill ride...

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Showbiz History: Adele drops, Bridget retires, Natalie drowns

6 random things that happened on this day, November 29th, in showbiz history

1898 C.S. Lewis born in Belfast, Ireland. His Narnia books would be adapted for screens both large and small and he even got his own biopic of sorts in Shadowlands (1993) starring Sir Anthony Hopkins. I always believeed that Hopkins would have been Oscar nominated for this if it hadn't arrived the same year as Remains of the Day (since you can't be nominated twice in any one acting category in the samee year). On an unrelated note: my personal favourite C.S. Lewis work is "The Screwtape Letters" but "Chronicles of Narnia" gets all of the attention.)

The Nuremberg trials, movie star deaths, and one vanishing act by marriage after the jump... 

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Lunchtime Poll: What would you do with a $2 Million Tip?

by Nathaniel R

On this day 25 years ago It Could Happen to You was released, a romantic comedy in which a cop (Nicolas Cage) wins the lottery and shares half his fortune with a waitress (Bridget Fonda) who he was unable to tip. The original and far superior title was Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip. That year in its rejected honor, my friends and I would jokingly refer to movies by a single sentence plot rather than titles... Streep Goes White Water Rafting, Vampire Brad Feels Guilt, This Bus Is a Bomb! etc -- shut up, it was funny at the time.

In its honor today, what would you do with a $2 million dollar windfall? The catch is that you have to spend half of it on the movies. Would you invest in films, be a patron for an auteur, gift it to a struggling actor, or other? (After the jump, an Oscar-adjacent list for fun)

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Beauty vs Beast: Crazy Comes Classified

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" for your consideration -- Jennifer Jason Leigh will be celebrating her 54th birthday this upcoming Friday February 5th, after finally earning a long overdue Oscar nomination this year with her joyously profane work as "Daisy Dahmer-goo" (sorry I can only type it like Kurt Russell says it) in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

But Daisy's hardly my favorite villainous turn from the actress - she's always been willing to tap into the crazy, and that was a willingness that reaped righteously trashy rewards with 1992's psycho-roomate-thriller Single White Female, one of my favorites from the "psycho [fill in the blank] genre" that dominated in the early 90s. And meeting her all the way was a terrifically sweet and dazed Bridget Fonda (good god I miss Bridget Fonda), slinking around foolishly in that silver coat that haunts my dreams.

PREVIOUSLY Last week's actressy showdown didn't incolve Steven Weber getting a high heel to the forehead (much to Clouds of Sils Maria's detriment, obviously) but it did involve an incredibly close race from start to finish, and just ekeing it out in the end was (drumroll please) Kristen Stewart, with literally half of a percentage point lead over The Binoche! Talk about a photo finish. Said AndPeggy:

"This result is just testament to how great these two actresses are together. Their interplay and chemistry is what makes the film so memorable."

Bridget Fonda At 50

JA from MNPP here to wish Bridget Fonda a tremendously happy 50th birthday today.

Indeed I hope that hitting 50 is such a momentously joyous experience for her that it stirs a renewed something-or-other inside her belly and reignites Ye Olde Acting Bug, because I don't know about you all but I really miss this lady.

It's been a full twelve years since she last acted - twelve years! Can you believe that? She side-stepped all of her 40s in the public eye - her last acting role was as the Snow Queen in the 2002 tele-movie of that name, about that same Hans Christian Anderson tale that inspired this year's hit Frozen. Maybe Bridget took her son to see Frozen and was all "Hey, I remember what it was like shooting icicles from my fingertips, that was fun! Acting ho!" If Frozen reinvigorates Bridget Fonda's acting career it'll be the greatest thing to come from that movie - yes, even better than "Let It Go." 

Anyway to celebrate just a smidge of the twenty or so years of her career that we do have, for now, I figured I'd single out a few of my favorite scenes from her movies. The ones that come right to mind when I think of her....

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