Catherine O’Hara
After Hours
Penelope
Greetings my good-natured readers, and Happy Spring. This is in fact my least favorite season, as my severe allergies and aversion to fluctuating weather somewhat prevents me from stopping to smell the freshly-bloomed flowers, so I’m relieved that movie-watching season is a year-round occurrence. It’s hard to pinpoint when, exactly, my love for the movies began, but I know I can credit a certain crop of comedies for shaping my sense of humor—I’m of course talking about the legendary works of Christopher Guest. All of his films are masterpieces, but I grew up watching and loving Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. These films had a dry, deadpan delivery of humor, presented in a mockumentary format that—shocker—somewhat confused my adolescent mind upon first watch. But one person was guaranteed to hold my attention and make me laugh, without fail, every single time, and that was the star of all of these films and many more: Catherine O’Hara. Though it sounds insanely para-social, it’s hard for me to even approach a discussion about Catherine O’Hara, because I have loved her my whole life and I still struggle to accept that she’s gone. I can so clearly remember doing impressions of her characters on the playground in elementary school (particularly of Cookie Fleck’s wobbly ankle)—which not everyone understood, but I didn’t even care. She could be very broad and physical and over-the-top in her humor, loudly blurting out the last thing you would expect to be said, or she was grounded, quiet, casually hilarious for anyone who picked up on her micro-choices. There is no true hierarchy of comedy, because this is a subjective thing, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t appreciate how fucking funny Catherine O’Hara was. She existed on another level of hilarity, one that seemed effortless and genuinely empathetic to the fictional cause(s) she represented in every role. I have plenty of comedy idols, but I can’t even put Catherine O’Hara in the same camp, because—once again, para-socially speaking—she just felt like another mom. She felt like everyone’s mom, someone who contained a thrilling edge and a palpable sense of compassion all at once. She was born March 4, 1954, in Toronto, Canada (the sixth of seven children) and her comedy career began in 1974 when she joined the cast of the Toronto branch of The Second City, originally as an understudy for Gilda Radner. When SCTV kicked off, O’Hara was a naturally-gifted leader and sketch writer, constantly dreaming up and starring in the most iconic and hilarious skits that SNL wished they could pull off, which eventually even earned her an Emmy. She would pop in and out of several other TV shows throughout the 80s and 90s, with memorable cameos in Tales from the Crypt, Oh Baby, Morton & Hayes, The Larry Sanders Show, and The Outer Limits, where she even directed an episode. TV was perhaps a more reliable gig for someone as intimidatingly-versatile as O’Hara, but when she found her place in film, she shined there as well. She was, rather legendarily, Kate McCallister in Home Alone, Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice, and Sally in Nightmare Before Christmas—all of these roles inspiring sequels and reboots and merch to forever cement her status as an icon. But she was also in Heartburn, Wyatt Earp, Rock & Rule, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Chicken Little, Over the Hedge, Monster House, Frankenweenie, and a lesser known comedy that I adore called Orange County. And that’s to say nothing of her famous turn in more recent TV like Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Schitt’s Creek, The Last of Us, and The Studio. I thought I knew all of the multitudes that Catherine O’Hara contained, but then COVID hit, my family dove deep into Schitt’s Creek, and I fell in love with yet another brilliant character of hers. She met her husband, production designer Bo Welch, on the set of Beetlejuice, but she is perhaps best remembered for her 40-year “acquaintanceship” with fellow hilarious Canadian Eugene Levy, whom she starred alongside in too many projects to name. She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and an honorary Mayor of Brentwood, Los Angeles, and will be remembered for too many funny moments to list, including those which make up the best parts of tonight’s two films. Both of tonight’s films—while somewhat iconic in their own right(s)—are mere blips in Catherine O’Hara’s long and illustrious and diverse career, but they were made all the better by her divine presence.
Up first is a chaotic classic that has gained a larger cult following in recent years, as many auteurs try (and fail) to emulate its intoxicating brand of cinematic anxiety, this is Martin Scorsese’s 1985 film After Hours. Written by Joseph Minion as an assignment for his film class at Columbia, After Hours is part of a subgenre called “yuppie nightmare cycle” that was quite popular at the time, which could best be described as a combination of screwball comedies and film noir. After Hours follows a mild-mannered and well-dressed word processor named Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) on one of the wildest and most unfortunate nights of his life. We meet him at his boring, menial job, where the constant hum of typing reaches a deafening pitch. That night, finally free from his humdrum day job, Paul is at a diner, causally reading Tropic of Cancer, when a pretty, unnamed girl (Rosanna Arquette) begins quoting the book to him. Next thing Paul knows, she’s sitting at his table, telling him about her friend, Kiki, the sculptress who makes and sells plaster-of-Paris paperweights of bagels and cream cheese. Then she gives Paul her number. It is a bizarre meet-cute, but it is cute, nonetheless, and when Paul gets home, he decides to give this mystery girl a call. We learn her name is Marcy, she just got in a fight with another friend of hers, and she asks Paul to come over. It’s 11:30 PM and Paul should be in bed, and yet he takes a taxi to Soho to see her, losing his $20 cab fare out the window as the driver swerves recklessly. Out of breath but happy to be alive, Paul knocks on Marcy’s door, but it’s Kiki (Linda Fiorentino) who opens it, immediately enlisting Paul’s help with her messy papier-mâché project. Kiki also a requests a massage from Paul, who obliges as he tells a traumatic story from his childhood, which puts Kiki to sleep. Finally, Marcy shows up, somewhat bewildered that Paul actually made the trek to come see her, and only somewhat concerned by the fact that her friend is now passed out and topless next to this smiling stranger on the couch. After taking a quick shower, Marcy shares a traumatic memory of her own, and suggests that the two go get coffee somewhere. “Is anywhere still open?” Paul asks, and Marcy responds, “Of course, it’s not even 2AM yet!” Marcy yo-yos between happy and sad, content and distressed, and Paul is enraptured by the words coming out of her mouth, though he feels increasingly like a captive audience. When they meander back to her apartment, she tells another traumatic story told in a funny, folksy way, and as soon as he is alone, Paul makes his escape. Only, the cabs and the subway have increased their fares, and Paul doesn’t have enough money to go home. What follows is an escalation of the madness that Paul has already endured this evening, full of frustrations and misunderstandings and leather daddies and weird artists and more beautiful but quirky women who throw themselves at him. One of these women is Catherine O’Hara, in a smaller but utterly unforgettable role. As he explains to her character, “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through tonight.” And she retorts, earnestly, “Oh yeah I would: I work at an ice cream place.” As one thing leads to another and she leads an angry mob against Paul, O’Hara’s character quickly became my favorite of the random women whom our protagonist encounters that night. The film also stars Teri Garr, Verna Bloom, John Heard, Dick Miller, Will Patton, and Cheech and Chong, and while they were all wonderful, I think Griffin Dunne should’ve been nominated for some award for his sweaty, desperate, paint-covered performance here. Intentionally frenetic and overwrought with problems, Scorsese made this film after his passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ, was abandoned by Paramount Pictures, and his most recent film, The King of Comedy, had not performed well at the box office. So if you watch After Hours with this in mind, it makes all the senseless strife thrown at the main character make way more sense. I really enjoyed After Hours, and I’ll be honest, it’s partly because it wasn’t nearly as stressful as I thought it’d be. Don’t get me wrong, cutie Griffin Dunne does go through hell throughout the film, but I found it all to be way more entertaining and manageable than most anxious cinema I’ve seen. Idk, maybe I’m the crazy one, but I think any of the Ben Stiller comedies of the early 2000s were way cringier and more stressful than After Hours.
Hardly anxious, but with a bit more cringe involved was tonight’s next film, a movie I probably should’ve seen as a child instead of as an adult: Martin Palansky’s 2006 film Penelope. I’ll try my best to keep this one as short and sweet as possible, though this kinda short and kinda sweet movie is oddly convoluted in its approach to storytelling, and goes in directions I truly would’ve never predicted. Penelope opens on “once upon a time”, as all good fairytales do, and shares the story of the Wilhern family—a prestigious lineage of blue bloods who befell one of the silliest curses I’ve ever heard of. You see, many many years ago, Ralph Wilhern fell in love with and knocked up a servant woman named Clara, but was forbidden to be with her. Pregnant and alone, Clara killed herself, and understandably distraught, Clara’s mother (who happens to be the town witch) inflicted a curse upon this family: that their first born daughter will have the face of a pig and experience the rejection her daughter had. The next five generations of Wilhern brides lived in terror of giving birth to a daughter, but thankfully, they all had sons. That is, until Frank and Jessica Wilhern (Richard E. Grant and Catherine O’Hara) finally had a daughter: a beautiful, healthy, but pig-nosed daughter named Penelope. If you thought it got less strange from here, you’d be dead wrong, because as our protagonist and narrator Penelope (Christina Ricci) explains, the next couple decades of her life were spent locked away in her family’s sprawling estate, a poor little rich girl with a pig nose, never exposed to the outside world out of fear of reporters and paparazzi and angry mobs who would misunderstand her. Still, her mother Jessica works hard to mold Penelope into an ideal bride aside from her face—causing Penelope to be fluent in French, adept at piano, and well-versed several avenues of literature and other academic topics. When she turned 18, Jessica hired a matchmaker for the rich and famous, and together they began gathering up all of the best blue-blooded bachelors that they could find—as it was suggested that Penelope’s curse could only be broken by one of her “own kind.” Seven years and several scarred, confused suitors later, Penelope tires of this exhausting practice, wherein she sits behind one-sided glass, and each eligible bachelor makes the same, boring small talk until she reveals her face and they inevitably run away screaming. But everything changes when she meets a disgraced, down-on-his-luck rich kid named Max Campion (James McAvoy, in the most scene kid hair and atrociously milady fedora + scarf combo I have ever seen), who isn’t afraid of the way Penelope looks, but he may be harboring a few secrets of his own. I could tell you more plot details about this film, but that wouldn’t make it make any more sense, and I feel this is just one of those movies you kinda have to see to believe. It is all at once sweet and cynical, grounded in reality and decently fantastical, and so so so 2006 that it was charming for that reason, alone. I was confused by the vague, nondescript setting, which seemed British, and starred British people, but they all mostly did American accents, but the random cameos in this movie really made my head spin. Peter Dinklage, Simon Woods, Ronni Anconca, Michael Feast, and Burn Gorman all star in this film, but imagine my surprise, when Reese Witherspoon, Nick Frost, and Russell Brand (sorry for the jump scare) all showed up! It really seemed to be a who’s who of who was on set that day, with Reese Witherspoon feeling particularly random, though she was a producer. Christina Ricci was reliably charming, Richard E. Grant was at his sweetest, James McAvoy still looked cute despite his abysmal wardrobe, and only Catherine O’Hara could play such a kooky, controlling, and at-times bitchy mother and still make us root for her. I’m not sure if the message of this film is “be yourself” or “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, because it was actually, pretty refreshingly, realistic about the way women’s appearances are judged in society. And while it may seem diminutive or rude to say, if the message of Penelope is “be ugly, who cares, you’ll find your people anyway”, that’s still oddly powerful and sweet, to this critic. This is the kind of whimsical, silly-for-the-sake-of-girlish-silliness movie that would never be made today, because it doesn’t belong to any existing IP and it does not concern itself with universally-marketable aesthetics. For these reasons, I especially loved Penelope, and I’d probably love it even more if I’d seen it when it first came out. Still, this sweet, strange fable is worth a watch if you haven’t already seen it, for Catherine O’Hara’s hilariously-disturbed performance alone—and the same could absolutely be said for After Hours. Catherine O’Hara always knew how to find the funny, regardless of the setting, tone, or character she inhabited. She’s one of the few performers who I can say never fully disappeared into a role, and mean it as a compliment. I wouldn’t have wanted her to lose herself too much in any part, because then I would just miss her, as I really do right now. Cheers to Catherine O’Hara: a comedic genius, an acting genius, a genius genius. Losing her is an insurmountable tragedy, but I suppose all I can do is look for guidance from her spectacular Moira Rose, who once said,
“It is all but impossible to explain why things happen the way they do. Our lives are like little bébé crows, carried upon a curious wind. And all we can wish, for our families, for those we love, is that that wind will eventually places us on solid ground.”
Ttyl ❤️
