79 Ways To Celebrate The Life of Elizabeth Taylor

In lieu of a traditional obituary, and because I'm still working on two other Taylor posts that were started before this sad news, I thought a major revision of a two year-old birthday post was in order. If you're in need of comfort today, wrap yourself up in this legend's grandiosity on this disheartening day. Take Taylor's life as inspiration. Survive Everything... but for death, of course, which will come for us all. But leave a legacy behind you and you've got that beat, too.

79 Ways to Celebrate Liz Taylor's Legacy in 2011
How many can you do this year?

1. Be great.
2. Be beautiful.
3. Be ambitious. Quoth Liz "It's not the having, it's the getting."
4. Be a legend in your own mind, and in others.
5. Get married. Or divorced. Or remarried. Or all three. Or several times.
6. Let your passions rule you.
7. Act like a diva. (But back it up with substance... nobody likes a vacuous primadonna.)
8. Wear something spectacularly sexy, preferrably white.
9. Make people want more.
10. Forge unbreakable friendships.
11. Stick with those people through tragedies, scandals, and anything else that besets them.
12. Watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
    
    
    
13. Invite people over for copious drinking party.
14. Play "get the guests" or "hump the hostess", your choice.
15. (If you don't have a child, invent one.)
16. Watch National Velvet. 
17. Go horseback riding.
18. Watch A Place in the Sun.
19. "Tell mama everything"
20. Fall in love with Montgomery Clift in glorious black and white (any of his movies will do).
    
    
21. Ask your best friend to refer to you as "Bessie Mae" for the rest of the year.
22. Demand a Taylor retrospective at your local arthouse cinema. Suggest that they donate a portion of the proceeds to Liz's charity.
23. Be highly quotable.
24. Flaunt every piece of jewelry you own. (Maybe wear them all at once?)
25. Donate to an AIDS charity. Per Liz's request in lieu of flowers.
26. Nurse a sick friend or loved one.
27. Enjoy your own wicked sense of humor. Laugh loudly at good jokes.
28. Scream "I was the slut of all time!" with style and at the top of your lungs. Shamelessness suits you.
29. Watch Butterfield 8.
30. Fight for that performance's reputation (It's better than Oscar mythology claims. But more on that in April for the 50th anniversary of her win.)
31. Write something pity or bitchy on a mirror in lipstick. "NO SALE"
32. Survive the loss of someone you loved no matter how hard that is to do. If you're still grieving find a way to make that sadness productive.
33. Pretend you've won an Oscar.
    
    
    
    
34. And another. (Or work at actually deserving one if you're in showbiz). Better yet...
35. ...deserve the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
36. Drink people under the table.
37. Polish La Liz's star at 6336 Hollywood Blvd.
38. Watch Cleopatra...(okay, half of it. It's so long!).
39. Make memorable entrances (if you're rolled in a carpet, have a safe word handy.)
40. Read "Elizabeth".
41. Watch the original Father of the Bride.
42. Buy a pair of violet contact lenses or just play up your natural eye color's beauty.
43. Paint a beauty mark on your right upper jaw.
44. Don't take yourself too seriously.
45. Role play "Liz and Dickie" with your boyfriend / girlfriend. H-O-T.
46. Name perfumes after your favorite things.
47. Monetize your favorite things.
48. Love dogs (and other animals).
    
    
49. Be a "Functioning Voluptuary"... enjoy the finer things in life.
50. Gain lots of weight or lose some -- it doesn't matter; you're still fabulous.
51. Stop worrying about getting older (Liz didn't); you're still fabulous.
52. Watch Giant.
53. Watch Suddenly Last Summer.
54. Speak the truth with a ferocity of spirit. Even if it makes uptight people want to cut your brain up to stop your "hatchet tongue"
55. Get familiar with the entire Tennesse Williams oeuvre. It suits the remarkable dramatic women (and sure suited La Liz who went there four times).
56. Watch Boom.
57. Watch Reflections in a Golden Eye.
58. Steal something from someone who reminds you of Debbie Reynolds.
    
    
    
    
59. But bury the hatchet with your enemies.
60. Give them something to talk about when you leave the room.
61. Photoshop yourself onto the cover of 14 People magazines.
62. Watch The Flintstones.
63. Watch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
64. Make sure you're enticing in your underwear.
65. Descend into "erotic vagrancy"!
    
    
    
66. Watch The Taming of the Shrew.
67. Imagine how Sherilyn Fenn might play you in a TV movie.
68. Study Kabbalah.
69. Excite the tabloids.
70. Inspire other artists.
    
    
    
    
71. Add a "Dame" before your name on Facebook.
72. Make your speaking voice so memorable that The Simpsons want you.
73. Work towards making lots of "all time greatest" lists in whatever it is that you do and actually deserve the honor.
74. Make the world a better place.
75. Survive whatever illnesses beset you (tracheotomy, pneumonia, cancer, hip replacements, you name it.)
76. Next time you throw your back out, spend that time catching up on old movie classics.
77. Call yourself "Mother Courage" and mean it.
78. Survive everything...
79. Even death; leave great work behind you and live on.

Elizabeth Taylor, "Functioning Voluptuary" (RIP)

A very sad morning it is. I am loathe to report that Elizabeth Taylor, has passed away at the age of 79. While I gather my thoughts -- I am genuinely upset at the moment, Liz having been one of my favorite people in the universe my whole life -- please enjoy this beautiful tribute from Paul Newman, another lost great, to one of the most important stars of all time.

or check out the gallery section to enjoy her beauty.

Tennessee 100: "Suddenly Last Summer"

Robert A. here (of Distant Relatives). When Nathaniel asked us to pick a Tennessee Williams based film and write about it, my first instinct was the pick something I’d seen again and again and thus could write with authority. Unfortunately all of those films were quickly scooped up and I thought, why not take the opportunity to explore one I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to. Why did I want to see Suddenly, Last Summer?

Well...

Of course, Tennessee Williams films are often saturated in dripping sexuality.

Cue the crotchety old man in me saying “In my day, when films couldn’t show two people hopping in the sack, they were sexier.”  But in the case of Williams, it’s true. Consider shirtless desperate Marlon Brando shouting out for his lover in Streetcar or Eli Wallach seducing Carrol Baker in Baby Doll. This wasn’t every day sexuality winkingly eluded to to get past the censors. This was dangerous stuff.

Which finally brings me to Suddenly, Last Summer which stars Montgomery Clift as a psychiatrist hired by Katharine Hepburn to analyze, diagnose (and lobotomize) Elizabeth Taylor who has been hopelessly manic since witnessing the sudden death of her cousin Sebastian (Hepburn’s loving son) "last summer".

death haunts those conversations about last summer.

Made just a year after Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had every suggestion of Brick’s homosexuality purged, and knowing writer Gore Vidal claimed the studios made him do much of the same I went in expecting no less. Perhaps the innocence of the 50’s was still in full swing but from Taylor’s blunt declaration that Sebastian used she and his mother as “decoys” to attract desperate men, to the production design which covered Sebastian’s study with pictures and sculptures of naked men, the “undertones” seemed more like overtones.

To be gay would be shocking enough for audiences in 1959. But Sebastian’s predatory nature and the details of his grizzly murder add up to a kind of vampire sexuality where characters are at the complete whims of their urges, easily seduced, uncontrollably impassioned, set in a world explicitly characterized as one where the chaos of nature has free reign and we’re all victims in the making waiting to be devoured. My introduction to Suddenly, Last Summer was also my initiation into the most shocking of Tennessee Williams.

not the kind of action Sebastian was looking for

Suddenly Last Summer is actually a one-act play and, as such was not a Broadway outing for Tennessee in it's original run, double billed with another one-act. The film version won 3 Oscar nominations (art direction and a double Best Actress for Taylor and Hepburn. They lost to Simone Signoret in Room at the Top) There are no other feature film versions though there was a televised BBC production in the 90s with Maggie Smith (Emmy nominated), Rob Lowe, Richard E Grant and Natasha Richardson. 

Post-Crawford, Post-Host, Post-Cotillard

Madame LeFigaro [in French] an article about how many French stars are showing up in English language movies, the Post-Cotillard wave (though this has been going on for decades).
NY Times no word on Mad Men Season 5 and why.
Shiantology Shia Labeouf on the set of John Hillcoat's depression era drama The Wettest Country. Lots of stars in this one actually but I guess they weren't on the call sheet this day?
Kenneth in the (212) Winslet, Wood, Winningham (and more) at the Mildred Pierce premiere.
<---Stirred Straight Up... has a collection of amusing, curious, vivid quotes about Joan Crawford from other actresses. (God, I should've thought to do some sort of Joan celebration before the revisioning of Mildred Pierce came out). This one from notsilent icon Louise Brooks is fascinating:

To me, Joan Crawford's screen portrayals are all one: a series of transparencies through which she projects her daydream –- herself –- a wonderful abused kid. On the screen, every ladylike effort is stretched by the memory of self-abasement; the salt of every tear is the salt of self-pity.

Geekiness
Retro Movie Review has a flash animated showdown about Ken Russell's The Devils. Although the wrong critic wins here because The Devils is brilliant.
My New Plaid Pants is hosting a very busy "Special People Day" TODAY in honor of Welcome to the Dollhouse's 15th anniversary.
Mister Hipp has a hilarious Admiral Ackbar illustration
The Playlist The low budget 1990 film version of Captain America is going to be available for mass consumption soon.

Versus
have you been reading about this online bitch-fight James Franco vs. Bruce Vilanch about the Oscar night performance failure? Vilanch bitches that Franco was not available until Thursday and wasn't committed enough and Franco basically implies that Vilanche's jokes aren't funny -- and even disses Bette Midler in the process (uncalled for. After this and his dissing of The Social Network I'm starting to lose faith that Mr. Franco knows what he's talking about.). Gold Derby weirdly sides with Franco stating that there's no reason he needed to be in town longer than he was  (!!! say what now? a live multi million dollar production and it's OK that he's not in town until three days prior?) but if you ask me everyone is at fault, Vilanch because the jokes aren't particularly strong but especially Franco since everyone and their Aunt Martha understands how difficult the Oscar hosting gig is. If you have 7,001 things going on maybe you shouldn't commit to doing a 7,002nd half assed and for a big stack of money? But maybe that's because I share this flaw (the overbooking not the big stacks of money). But when a huge one night a year historical event is counting on you and paying you, maybe it deserves your full attention? Just a thought. The Wrap says they've since made up.

Curio: Gus Van Sant, Painter

Alexa here. Lately James Franco has gotten a lot of press for his artistic aspirations, earning multiple degrees while he exhibits his artwork in Berlin, seemingly hosting the Oscars as an afterthought.  So also getting attention is "Unfinished", an exhibition of film and visual art by Franco and Gus Van Sant.  Most of the attention is focused on Franco, and what the show reveals about him. (For the exhibit he reedited footage from My Own Private Idaho, creating a 12-hour-long film titled My Own Private River.)  

But what I find interesting about the show, currently showing at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, is seeing what Gus Van Sant is like as a painter. He studied film and painting at RISD, and was there at the same time as David Byrne (apparently urging Byrne to keep singing).  These watercolor portraits of young men, shown alongside Franco's film, obviously recall Mike and Scott from My Own Private Idaho, and share the film's dreamlike, loose, almost gangly quality.

more paintings after the jump...

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