Pforever

Curio: Michelle Pfeiffer in Vogue, 1991

Alexa here. Nathaniel's post on stars posing as other stars brought to mind a spread in Vogue that seared my brain when I was a teenager, so much so that I tore it out and saved it.  After a bit of digging in our basement, I found it: a now-famous set of photos of Michelle Pfeiffer by Herb Ritts.  This shoot has her posing as six different characters, which she chose herself. "I had lists and lists compiled, and I did a lot of reading, and it all kind of boiled down to these characters," she said in the accompanying interview.

as Louise Brooks as Lulu

as Laurence from Noël Coward's Private Lives

Another series I remember were the portraits Kevyn Aucoin shot for his books Making Faces and Face Forward (see here for Calista Flockhart as Audrey, Gwyneth as James Dean). I'm no pop culture historian, but I would think that Cindy Sherman's film stills from the 70s and 80s had a heavy influence on this trend well into the 90s and beyond.  But none of these spreads thrilled me as much as these of Michelle. I can only imagine how much fun they were to shoot.

See more of Michelle's characters after the jump, including Maggie the Cat!

Click to read more ...

A "Cool Rider" Never Forgets

Don't know if you Pfans out there caught PopWrap's interview with Maxwell Caulfield of Grease 2 fame. He's doing Cactus Flower on stage now (yep the property that won Goldie Hawn that early Oscar -- though I personally didn't realize that Adam Sandler's Just Go With It was a reworking???) so he's making the press rounds. He's still an extremely handsome bloke at 51. I've noticed him billed on a couple of stage things here in New York over the years but haven't managed to catch him doing his thing.

PopWrap asks him about Grease 2 (1982) of course and I love his humble appreciative response despite the film career never really working out.

PW: Do you remember it fondly? 
Maxwell: I haven’t hit enough home runs in the film world to say, “oh yea, ‘Grease 2,’ isn’t that a cute movie?” For me, it is a very major part of my filmography. I still have my great friends from the experience and when it pops up on TV, I stick with it – it brings back so many happy memories.

PW: It was filmed almost 30 years ago and some actors can't remember projects they made 3 years ago -- do you recall shooting it? 
Maxwell: Oh yes! You’re never going to forget a liplock with Michelle Pfeiffer! [laughs] I remember being in the bowling alley and the school. I have very distinct memories from making that movie ... But I do look at it and think, “damn, why didn’t they give me a second picture?” [laughs]  But them is the breaks.

He's never forgotten his liplock with Michelle Pfeiffer? Well neither have we.

Yum!

"New Year's Eve" Throws Pfeiffer in the Trash

The headline may be provocative but it's unfortunately (and literally) true. To my great distress veteran director Garry Marshall has decided to throw Michelle Pfeiffer in the garbage in a scene from the all star "comedy" New Year's Eve (2011). Here she is filming in NYC.

Sigh.

Honestly Mr. Marshall, this just seems like asking for trouble. If you make jokes involving movie stars and garbage, aren't you daring the reviews to write themselves? It's not like the star-studded lead-in Valentine's Day (2010) was a critical darling!

And if you're going to cast Michelle Pfeiffer why do you want her drabbed down? I hate it when they make her mousy. She looks better than this just walking around with her husband without a team of makeup artists handy. Mousy Michelle is not what audiences come to see. There better be a makeover moment later in the film.

New Year's Eve, which like its predecessors charts the intertwining lives of several couples and singles throughout a holiday, has a couple dozen stars in it including other big names like Hilary Swank, Julie Andrews, Halle Berry, Sarah Jessica Parker,  some TV biggies (Sofia Vergara, Lea Michele) and many more but apparently La Pfeiff is paired with a bike riding Zac Efron somehow (mother/son? fateful strangers?)

I can't decide whether I should be happy to see her onscreen again on December 9th or dread the very likely probability that she is adding another terrible movie to her weirdly haphazard filmography.

On that note the actress herself has generously demonstrated this How I Feel / How I Wish I Felt conundrum for me.

When thinking about this movie, which look best describes your mood: left or right?

"Baby there's no other superstar you know that I'll be... ♫ "

Michelle Pfeiffer sightings are so rare these days that I have to share them every time (the last big day out was the White House Correspondents dinner in May of last year). Here she is at the Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden yesterday. (I'm guessing she was on her way out because she's totally smiling and Gaga concerts are fun.) Which means she was right here in NYC last night. Wheeee.

They filmed that particular concert for HBO. She and David E Kelley were taking their kids Claudia Rose and John Henry who are now 17 and 16 respectively. This is all an effort to make me feel old since I still remember the first photo I ever saw of Claudia Rose, her daughter, (who turns 18 very shortly), which happens to be my favorite paparazzi photo of Michelle  since she looked ridiculously happy. I'm sure she didn't like the intrusion of the cameras though since Pfeiffer is not a Fame Monster. She once told Rolling Stone.

I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.

What does Pfeiffer make of Lady Gaga and her ilk, the celebrities who LIVE for their own celebrity? Different times. Different breeds of stars. When Lady Gaga was born (1986), Michelle was probably filming The Witches of Eastwick! Bye Jack. Now Gaga is the horned one.

What do you suppose La Pfeiff's favorite Gaga song is?