Cher

Silkwood

Moonstruck

Greetings, g*psies, tramps, and thieves, and welcome to the wild, wild, west that is Gemini season. Summer is creeping its way in and I can feel my desire to retreat indoors growing rapidly, so while we’re inside, let’s watch some movies, shall we? This past Monday, May 20th, was the 78th birthday of the icon of all icons, the most Taurus-Gemini cusp person, culture-appropriator and appreciator, mogul, milf, and muse, oft-impersonated but rarely appearing in-person, Cher, and I thought it was about time to pay my respects to this titan of the music and film industry. Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in 1946 to John Sarkisian—a truck driver who wouldn’t stay in Cher’s life long—and Georgia Holt—an actress and country singer. Georgia (born Jean Crouch) moved around her whole life (having allegedly attended seventeen high schools) and Cher suffered that same fate, as Georgia remarried and divorced and moved around numerous times before Cher dropped out of school and moved to Los Angeles with a friend at age 16. Cher had developed an unusually low singing voice for a young girl, that combined with her darker hair and features apparently made her stand out amongst her peers—garnering her attention for good and bad reasons. Once in LA, Cher was unstoppable in her pursuit of a career in showbiz. She took a job as singer Sonny Bono’s housekeeper in 1962, where he introduced her to producer Phil Spector. Spector used Cher as a background singer on several popular songs including The Ronette’s “Be My Baby” and The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, all while becoming very close with and falling in love with Sonny Bono. The two had an unofficial marriage ceremony on October 27th, 1964, and Sonny encouraged Cher to become a singer. Due to her intense stage fright, however, Cher requested that Sonny sing with her, and the two became a singing duo known as “Caesar and Cleo” for some reason. They produced loads of songs together, some popular, some severely unpopular, and in 1965 the pair began rightfully going by “Sonny and Cher”. Cher quickly became a fashion icon of the mod era, with her striking looks and distinct style of singing, she went on to find fame with (and without) Sonny Bono. The couple got officially married and gave birth to their child, Chaz Bono, in 1969. Sonny and Cher did have a successful television show for many years, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, but this was after two failed filmmaking attempts: Good Times, a musical comedy directed by William Friedkin (of all people), and Chastity, where Cher plays the titular character who is in search of the meaning of life, neither of which succeeded commercially or critically. Obviously, Cher is best known for her impressive, multi-era-spanning music career, where she succeeded much more without the help of Sonny Bono. Cher has lived so many lives and has worn so many hats, she has had just as many flop eras as she has had comebacks, and just as many fascinating trysts and marriages as her mother, that I could go on and on about. But tonight let’s focus on Cher’s curious and ever-evolving film career, where some of this legend’s most memorable stamps upon pop culture took place. In the late seventies and early eighties, Cher was on another comeback tour, selling out shows internationally, but feeling unsatisfied inside. She’d always wanted to pursue acting, but at this point, hardly anyone took her seriously as a recording artist, let alone an actress, and she only had her previous cheesy film failures to go off of. But in 1982, Cher decided to take acting seriously, and landed herself a role in a stage production of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, and she later reprised this role in the Robert Altman film adaptation. Director Mike Nichols saw Cher in the onstage production and cast her in tonight’s first film from 1983, Silkwood. Audiences were apparently shocked to see Cher’s name in the opening credits of this serious film, reportedly laughing when her name appeared, but this role earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar Nomination. Amid Cher’s birth month and the ongoing labor crisis across this country, Silkwood felt like a very appropriate watch, despite Cher only starring in a supporting role. Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen adapted Silkwood’s script from the book Who Killed Karen Silkwood? by Howard Kohn, which details the story of the nuclear plant whistleblower and labor union activist Karen Silkwood. This film was in development for nearly nine years, initially with Jane Fonda set to play Karen Silkwood, but eventually the role was given to Meryl Streep. We meet Streep’s Silkwood on her normal morning carpool commute to work at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site near Crescent, Oklahoma, where she and her two roommates, her boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and her lesbian friend Dolly Pelliker (Cher) work. The trio goes through meticulous and perhaps gratuitous security checkpoints as they walk into the fortress of a plant, all stationed in different departments. Karen makes MOX fuel rods for nuclear reactors, dealing with the threat of exposure to radiation every single day—though she is only somewhat aware of how dangerous this is. All of her coworkers, Karen included, are just kind, simple country folk, who clearly are kept mostly in the dark about the work they’re doing. They’re all over-scheduled, overwrought, and Karen struggles to find someone to cover her shift so she can go visit her children who live with her common law ex-husband. In the smoky break room at the Kerr-McGee plant, you can see how well-liked Karen is, but when she is made aware of the mistreatment of her coworkers, and the abuse of power by her superiors to cut corners and save money, Karen joins the union and starts to make enemies. Barely involved with the union and at this point only slightly suspicious of her bosses, Karen is blamed for a contamination in her sector, where she witnesses an older female coworker get scrubbed to the point of bleeding in order to clean off the external radiation. This is only one example of how nightmarish working at this kind of plant is, and as Karen becomes more aware of the corruption happening at the expense of herself and her friends, she is desperate to do something about it. Meanwhile, her hot boyfriend Kurt Russell plays a banjo with a confederate flag hanging over his bed, and Dolly becomes involved with a beautician who works on dead bodies at a funeral home who says “I can always tell when I’m working on someone who worked for Kerr-McGee, they all looked like they died, before they died.” Meryl’s anxiety and concern only grows, and the cigarette she smokes seemingly never leaves her hand, just as Kurt Russell’s character never wears a shirt. Karen’s work with the local union takes her to the national union reps in Washington, D.C., where she spills all sorts of piping hot plutonium tea to the leader, detailing examples of falsified safety reports and cancers contracted by her fellow plant employees and their families, slowly but surely building a strong case against Kerr-McGee. But just as Karen keeps her eyes on her shady superiors, they watch her like hawks—observing and scrutinizing everything she does while at work in the plant. The target on Karen’s back only keeps growing as she becomes more of a hero in her union, and her hot boyfriend Kurt Russell is increasingly concerned for her, telling her that she doesn’t owe anyone anything. But Karen cares about her coworkers’ safety, even as they turn their backs on her for fear of losing their jobs, and as the dangers grow, Karen doesn’t back down. I obviously knew this film was headed in a bummer direction, but I was filled with anxiety more than I was filled with sadness. The second Karen becomes aware of just how dangerous her job is and sprouts a strong moral compass, she becomes doomed, for everyone talks and watches and does what they need to do to survive in this small, industry-owned Oklahoma town. No one knows the exact details of how Karen Silkwood came to perish, and Silkwood does a gut-wrenchingly good job of keeping this story accurately frustrating. Given her real-life status as an activist, I can understand why Jane Fonda was originally cast as Karen Silkwood, but Meryl gave such a delicate but strong performance here, feeling like a true accidental-martyr, that the result is one of the most quietly powerful films I’ve ever seen. Cher was equally convincing as Dolly Pelliker, a well-meaning but messy friend and ally that Karen desperately needed at this moment in time. The leading trio of this movie all had excellent, friendly chemistry together, I actually bought the idea that these three very famous people were living in a ramshackle old house in Oklahoma. [Meryl and Cher made for believable friends, which is why it’s all the more apalling that Cher plays Meryl’s mother in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!, but I already talked shit about that sequel last week.] One of the final shots of Silkwood is of Cher’s character Dolly shedding a single tear, silently confirming the fact that her friend died a brutal and wrongful death at the hands of the people whom she was trying to expose. Karen Silkwood’s story is, unfortunately, not the only one of its kind, as countless whistleblowers throughout time have been covertly killed and silenced by the industries they sought to expose. Silkwood is an incredibly heavy film not just because of its tragic and infuriating subject matter, but because the cast is easy to love and root for, which makes it all the more painful when the bad guys win. Mike Nichols said he cast Cher in Silkwood because she “possessed the necessary vitality, humor, and surprising depth” required for this role, and the same could be said for her part in tonight’s next film. Throughout the 80s, Cher’s film career steadily grew, and in 1987 Cher starred in three major films: Suspect, The Witches of Eastwick, and tonight’s next film, Moonstruck. Written by John Patrick Shanley and directed by Norman Jewison, Moonstruck follows Cher as a tough, brassy, Italian-American bookeeper named Loretta who, at the age of 37, is a widow. Living with her father Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia), her mother Rose (Olympia Dukakis), and her paternal grandfather and his handful of dogs, and working everyday Loretta keeps busy, but she is clearly a bit lonely. That’s why Loretta hardly hesitates when her half-assed older boyfriend Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aielo) proposes to her before he goes to visit his dying mother in Sicily. Johnny has to rush off to Italy to see his mother before she dies, but Loretta pleads with Johnny that they have at least a semi-normal wedding, since her last wedding took place quickly in city hall—which Loretta attributes to the bad luck in that marriage, including the fate her late husband suffered when he was struck by a bus. At the airport, Johnny promises to give Loretta the marriage she wants in one month’s time, his only request is that she call his estranged brother for him and invite him to the wedding. Johnny and his brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage), as we come to find out, had a falling out when Johnny distracted Ronny and caused him to slice off half of his hand in a bread slicer at the bakery where he works. Loretta learns this—and the fact that her fiancé’s brother is super hot (despite his wooden hand)—when she is unable to keep Ronny on the phone and tracks him down herself at his place of work. Ronny is a deadly combo of broody and goofy, a big softie who is so rough around the edges and tortured by his own streak of bad luck that he labors to find joy in much of anything. In a big, dramatic display at the bakery, Ronny says he will not be attending this wedding, and requests that one of his coworkers bring him the “big knife” so he can cut his throat. This kind of over-the-top absurdity would typically be off-putting to this down-to-earth critic, but the sincere delivery from Nic Cage and the hilarity of the lines he delivered won me over pretty instantly. Loretta convinces Ronny to calm down and just have a conversation with her, which evolves from commiserating over their respective bad luck, to eating steak, to fighting, to drinking whiskey in the daytime, to them passionately kissing—which causes Loretta to go “wait a minute, wait a minute!” before kissing him some more. One thing leads to another, and the surly but sensitive Ronny makes love to Loretta and falls in love with her, making her slap him twice and say the iconic line, “Snap out of it!” Loretta is distraught by this whirlwind love affair, now telling Ronny that he definitely cannot come to the wedding, and that they’ll have to take this to their graves. Ronny, lovestruck and desperate for any crumb of affection Loretta will give him, begs her to just go to the opera with him, then he’ll leave her alone, to which she agrees. Loretta gets a makeover where she gets her gray hairs removed and some of her unibrow plucked, and she transforms into the most glamorous version of Cher there may have ever been. Ronny’s two greatest loves are the opera and Loretta, and to have them both together fills him with such happiness that when Loretta removes her coat to reveal her dazzling new dress, all Ronny can say is, “thank you.” It is one of the more understated moments of romance in this incredibly romantic movie, and it stood out, even amongst the heart-shatteringly sexy and passionate lines Nic Cage delivers to Cher, like, “Everything seems like nothing to me now that I want you in my bed. I don’t care if I go to hell. We are here to ruin ourselves, and break our hearts, and fall in love with the wrong people, and die. Now I want you to come upstairs and get in my bed.” I mean how could you not fall in love with a young Nicolas Cage, especially when he says shit like that??? As if my double Nic Cage feature didn’t make me fall in love with this man enough, Moonstruck was the final nail in the coffin of my desire for this beady-eyed, breathy-voiced, himbo extraordinaire. This film has had a lot of hype surrounding it, certainly back then, when it was nominated for and won several Oscars—earning Cher her Oscar—but even now. This always seemed somewhat random on the outside looking in, for what did this random NYC rom com starring two nepo babies really have to offer this critic, who has seen every single good and bad rom com? But between my appreciation for Cher, my infatuation with both Nicolas Cage and the moon (which is a character, itself here), Moonstruck really didn’t have to work too hard to win me over. The script was clever, funny, but not trying to be anything special, which is why I think it ended up being kinda special. It felt like My Big Fat Greek Wedding in its inclusion of light family drama alongside its main romantic plot, and gave each character an interesting and funny perspective. Cher is perhaps her most beautiful in Moonstruck, and her performance was dynamic and charming. Her and Nic Cage had wonderfully weird chemistry, as two hardened New Yorkers who can’t catch a break but desperately want human connection. And the big, bright, beautiful moon that seemed to hang perpetually full in the background of this entire movie was just a gorgeous and appropriately mystical addition for tonight’s subject to star with. Everything just kind of sparkled in a unique but hum drum way, from the gorgeous apartments and settings, to the delectable-looking food (no one told me that Moonstruck is such a food film!) to its lovely cast. Cher has been many things, she’s been quoted and misquoted for decades by Ru Paul, she’s starred in complex movies like Silkwood and in shockingly stupid movies like Stuck on You, oh so randomly. But through it all, through her many changing aesthetics and love interests and career pursuits, she has remained, eternally, passionately herself, which I really admire. No matter how many times Cher reinvents herself, she is still thoroughly iconic and funny and delightfully-offbeat. You may not like every Cher song, or every Cher movie, but I dare you to name another singer-turned-actress and forever diva who is still relevant and can be quoted with a simple, “Oh!” and you know who it is. If I could turn back time, I, too would fall for a young Nicolas Cage, but since I can’t, I’ll just need to watch Moonstruck several more times, and Silkwood, beautiful as it is, never again. Thank you for letting me share my thoughts about Cher this week, dear readers, and whether or not you believe in life after love, I hope you’ll join me again next week!