#postcards from the edge

[anticmiscellaney]

My piece for Postcards From The Edge 2024 exhibition and art auction put on by Visual Aids to raise money for AIDs causes. Inkwash on 4x6 paper. I can share this now because it's been sold.

It was very cool going to the exhibition opening last night and seeing all the different work up there on the wall, postcards by all kinds of artists from all over the world. You should send something in for 2025, I'd love to see your work there too.

#not fanart #newoldrare #postcards from the edge

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE by Carrie Fisher.

Continuing my "help I need something Funny and Reasonably Short" kick with a book by Space Mom that's been languishing on my shelf for [INCRIMINATING TIME PERIOD: REDACTED]. Since I, too, feel very close to sending postcards from the edge right now, this one seemed appropriate.

#books #books of 2024 #carrie fisher #postcards from the edge #book photography #my photography #forreal i know she's hilarious #i don't know why i haven't read this yet #the pages had not yellowed when i first bought it #they're starting to yellow now #(i know part of that is cheap paper but come on. it' hasn't been THAT long has it???) #anyway it's not my usual genre but i'll make an exception for Carrie Fisher XD #seriously i feel so close to losing my entire mind right now #i need the stars to align for me in the housing market this spring/summer or ELSE

[vintagecelebrityslides]

Anthony Perkins - "Postcards from the Edge" Premier, Century City Plaza Cinemas, LA, 10 September 1990

Photographer: Scott Downie

#Anthony Perkins #Postcards from the Edge #Postcards from the Edge Premier #Scott Downie #1990 Slide

[tunasaladonwhite]

#postcards from the edge #meryl streep #oliver platt #dennis quaid #mike nichols

[cantsayidont]

Haterating and hollerating through the '90s:

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE (1990): Carrie Fisher scripted this witty adaptation of her novel about coked-up, pill-popping actress Suzanne Yale (Meryl Streep), who overdoses in the bed of a strange man (Dennis Quaid), ends up in rehab, and learns that the only way the production insurance company will let her keep working is if she stays with her mother, an aging singer-actress-diva (Shirley MacLaine) whose love for her daughter is equaled only by her tireless determination to upstage her. (No, it's not autobiographical at all, why do you ask?) Fisher's deftly paced, funny script weaves in various serious mother-daughter moments without ever becoming mawkish, and offers a fabulous part for MacLaine, who has a ball poking fun at herself as well as Debbie Reynolds, Fisher's real-life mother and the obvious basis for the film's lightly fictionalized "Doris Mann." Curiously, the weakest link is Streep, who never quite sheds her customary air of prim affectation and always seems ill at ease with Fisher's layers of self-deprecating, sarcastic humor. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Apparently not, although I had questions about Suzanne's rehab friend Aretha (Robin Barlett). VERDICT: MacLaine's finest hour, but Streep's primness keeps it "good" rather than "great."

TERESA'S TATTOO (1993): Painfully unfunny crime comedy, directed by Melissa Etheridge's then-GF Julie Cypher and costarring Cypher's ex, Lou Diamond Phillips, along with an array of incongruously high-profile actors like Joe Pantoliano, Tippi Hedren, Mare Winningham, Diedrich Bader, k.d. lang (!), Sean Astin, Emilio Estevez, and Kiefer Sutherland, most in bit parts (some of them unbilled). The headache-inducing plot concerns a couple of brain-dead thugs whose elaborate hostage scheme hits a snag when their hostage (Adrienne Shelly) accidentally dies. Their solution is to kidnap lookalike Teresa (also Adrienne Shelly), a brainy Ph.D. candidate, and disguise her to look like the dead girl — including giving her a matching tattoo on her chest — in the hopes that the dead girl's idiot brother (C. Thomas Howell) won't notice the switch until it's too late. This truly bad grade-Z effort, barely released theatrically, feels like either a vanity project or a practical joke that got out of hand, and is interesting mostly as a curiosity for Melissa Etheridge fans: The soundtrack is M.E.-heavy, and Etheridge herself has a brief nonspeaking role. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Technically? (Etheridge has no lines and lang plays a Jesus freak.) VERDICT: May erode your affection for M.E.

BLUE JUICE (1995): Tiresome comedy-drama about an aging surfer (a terribly miscast, painfully uncomfortable-looking Sean Pertwee) who's still determined to continue living like a 20-year-old surf bum with his obnoxious mates, even though his back is giving out and he's perilously close to driving away his girlfriend (a disconcertingly hot 25-year-old Catherine Zeta Jones), who is keen for him to finally cut the shit. Meanwhile, the scummiest of his mates (Ewan McGregor) doses their pal Terry (Peter Gunn) and gets him to chase after an actress from his childhood favorite TV show (Jenny Agutter) in hopes of dissuading from marrying his actual girlfriend (Michelle Chadwick), and their mate Josh (Steven Mackintosh), a successful techno producer, flirts with an attractive DJ (Colette Brown) who's actually furious at him for building a vapid techno hit around a sample of her soul singer dad's biggest hit. The latter storyline probably had the most potential (although a weird scene where Josh is castigated by a group of outraged soul fans seems like a lesser TWILIGHT ZONE plot), but none of the script's various threads ever amounts to much. CONTAINS LESBIANS? It doesn't even pass the Bechdel test. VERDICT: If you happen upon it, you may be tempted just for Zeta Jones (and/or Brown), but the rest wears out its welcome with alacrity.

HIGHER LEARNING (1995): Potent story of simmering racial tensions on the campus of a university that definitely isn't USC (writer-director John Singleton's alma mater, and where most of the film was obviously shot), let down by incredibly heavy-handed execution. (The film's final shot is of the word "UNLEARN" superimposed over a giant American flag!) A capable cast (including Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Michael Rapaport, Jennifer Connelly, Ice Cube, Tyra Banks, Cole Hauser, Laurence Fishburne, and Regina King) tries to maintain a sense of emotional reality through Singleton's frequent excursions into overpowering melodrama, but there are so many competing plot threads that few characters have any depth; curiously, the script's most complex characterization is in the scenes between budding white supremacist Remy (Rapaport) and Aryan Brotherhood organizer Scott (Hauser). Singleton made this film when he was 25, and there's no shame in its sense of breathless ambition (even if it inevitably bites off more than it can chew), but the overwrought stridency undercuts its intended impact. For a more effective treatment of similar themes in roughly the same period, try Gilbert Hernandez's graphic novel X, originally serialized in LOVE & ROCKETS #31–39 and first collected in 1993. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Jennifer Connelly gives Kristy Swanson a bisexual awakening. VERDICT: The '90s through a bullhorn.

CRASH (1996): Divisive David Cronenberg adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel, about a movie producer called James Ballard (James Spader) and his desperately horny wife (Deborah Kara Unger), drawn into a loose-knit group of car-crash fetishists organized around a man called Vaughan (Elias Koteas at his creepiest), who stages recreations of famous celebrity crashes like the 1955 accident that killed James Dean. Despite some pretentious dialogue about "the reshaping of the human body by modern technology," the controlling idea might be better summarized as "anything can be a paraphilia if you get weird enough about it." Part of what offends people about the film is that Cronenberg deliberately treats the entire story with the same frosty clinical detachment, rendering the "normal" sex scenes just as remote and perverse as the characters' fixation on the grisly aftermath of car wrecks; the point is that there is no line, just different facets of the same erotic longing, which each of the (admittedly unsympathetic) principal characters embodies in different ways. Spader, Kara Unger, and Koteas are very good, as is Holly Hunter, in perhaps the bravest role of her career, but Rosanna Arquette is underutilized. A worthwhile companion piece would be Steven Soderbergh's 1989 SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE, also with Spader, which is much more highly regarded (though almost as contrived and scarcely less perverse), perhaps because it seeks to titillate where Cronenberg does not. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Briefly. (See previous note in re: underutilization of Rosanna Arquette.) VERDICT: Icy but interesting.

#movies #hateration holleration #postcards from the edge #carrie fisher #meryl streep #shirley maclaine #debbie reynolds #teresa's tattoo #julie cypher #melissa etheridge #adrienne shelly #kd lang #blue juice #sean pertwee #catherine zeta jones #ewan mcgregor #crash 1996 #david cronenberg #j.g. ballard #james spader #deborah kara unger #crash #holly hunter #sex lies and videotape #john singleton #higher learning #higher learning 1995 #omar epps

[o-avosetta]

The thing about having it all is, it should include having the ability to have it all. Maybe there are some people who know how to have it all. They're probably off in a group somewhere, laughing at those of us who have it all but don't know how to.

... it's like I've got a visa for happiness but for sadness I've got a lifetime pass.

— Carrie Fisher, Postcards From the Edge

#carrie fisher #postcards from the edge #books

[fayegonnaslay]

Happy 90th Birthday Shirley MacLaine!

"Shirley MacLean Beaty" was born on this day, April 24th, in 1934 in Richmond Virginia.

#living legend #botd #shirley maclaine #warren beatty #terms of endearment #the apartment #postcards from the edge #sweet charity #the turning point #steel magnolias #taurus #happy birthday #movie stars

[buckhead1111]

buckhead1111

#buckhead1111 #artists on tumblr #postcards from the edge

[denimbex1986]

'As a boy, Andrew Scott had a lisp. "I was sent to speech and drama classes, so I had to do 'He sells seashells on the seashore" endlessly, trying to get rid of the lisp," recalls the Dublin-born actor. "Then in the drama section, you had to get up and do improvisations and all that kind of stuff, and something just happened to me. I was very shy, but when I got up to do those things, I felt, I don't know, emancipated."

Scott made his film debut at age 18 in the Irish drama, Korea. He broke through in the BBC series Sherlock, winning a BAFTA Television Award for his performance as the criminal mastermind Moriarty, and then as the "Hot Priest" on season two of Fleabag. On the big screen, he has had memorable turns in Pride (2014), 1917 (2019), and Catherine Called Birdy (2022).

No matter the role, Scott finds himself returning to his schoolboy days. "I have a strong sense of playfulness, and it's something I go back to daily," he reflects. "Playfulness is something that we're encouraged to do as children, but not so much as we grow into adulthood. You need to keep it playful even when you're doing serious scenes, because you don't know how the day's going to go. Something could happen any second that could completely change our emotional landscape. That's the thing you have to keep alive."

Now, he takes the lead in All of Us Strangers, director Andrew Haigh's haunting love story about a lonely writer, Adam (Scott), who develops an intense bond with a handsome stranger, Harry (Paul Mescal). At the same time, Adam travels back to his childhood home, where he has the chance to reconnect with his long-dead parents (played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell). It might sound complicated, but for Scott, the "simplicity of the ideas at the center" of the film are what attracted him to the project.

"When I was a kid, I remember I just parked myself in front of the TV and I used to watch those big MGM musicals. I used to be obsessed with those Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers kind of films," says the actor. "In All of Us Strangers, it's all about bringing your parents back, which is quite a theatrical idea, like in those MGM movies, so you don't need to do any CGI to tell the audience that they're ghosts or whatever they might be. You just play it, and the audience loves that. We like a little bit of surrealism. You want the filmmaker to use their imagination."

Below, Scott shares with A.frame five of the films that have had the biggest impact on him throughout his life, including the Meryl Streep starrer that made him finally commit to becoming an actor.

1. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982

Directed by: Steven Spielberg | Written by: Melissa Mathison

E.T. was the first film I ever saw in the cinema. I was probably about 6 or 7, and I begged my parents to take me to see it. It was the first time I was ever in a movie theater, and I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it was happening to me. I still think E.T. is so completely wonderful. In a way, Spielberg is able to access something that I don't think a lot of people are able to do, which is the feeling of being a child. His sense of wonder is so extraordinary.

It's a really audacious idea, and people love an audacious idea. We talk about realism and you're like, 'Oh my God, as if that would ever happen.' The movies is our chance to go, 'Well no, that would never happen, but we have a chance to do something that tells us who we are except in a completely different way.'

2. The Poseidon Adventure 1972

Directed by: Ronald Neame | Written by: Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes

I watched The Poseidon Adventure when I was a kid, and I was absolutely beside myself. It's a disaster movie, which I find stressful as an adult, but it's definitely one that I remember. I think some films in your life are just really potent, aren't they? And they just stay with you. As a kid, I was completely transfixed by the storytelling of that. Like, when Shelley Winters swam to save everybody. I haven't watched it as an adult, but I remember being so invested in the story. Maybe I shouldn't have watched it when I did, because it's pretty serious stuff. But that is definitely one that has stuck with me.

3. Postcards from the Edge 1990

Directed by: Mike Nichols | Written by: Carrie Fisher

I remember it really clearly. It was a very strange thing that happened before my Junior Cert, which is a tedious exam that you have to take in Ireland when you're about 15. My mother said, 'Do you want to go and see a film the night before the exam?' because maybe I'd been working hard, which seems unlikely. We went to see that, and because I had to do this exam the next day, I remember I was like, 'I don't care about this exam. I want to be an actor so much.'

The acting in Postcards from the Edge is so sensational. Meryl Streep is a hero to me because of her extraordinary sense of humor. Obviously, she's incredibly affecting, but all great actors have to have a sense of the absurd. Olivia Colman is another person who has got an extraordinary sense of humor. Judi Dench, Ben Whishaw, Claire Foy. The two things I think you should have as an actor are an imagination and a sense of humor.

With Postcards from the Edge, I love that kind of human story that's told with such flair. I think it is Carrie Fisher's screenplay. They know they're having great fun and it's about show business. It's a film that gives me great, great pleasure, and if ever it's on, I would always watch the whole thing.

4. Punch-Drunk Love 2002

Written and Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson

I love all of his films. I think that beside his extraordinary ability as a storyteller, it's the element of surprise. I love to be surprised. It's a romantic comedy, and I love romantic comedies — I'll watch really any romantic comedy, actually — but that is such a sophisticated romantic comedy. The chemistry between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson is so completely wonderful.

I always think when you're playing tragedy, you should look for the light, and when you're playing comedy, you should look for the soul. I remember when we were doing Hamlet, realizing that it was so funny, even though it's obviously the most famous tragedy in the world. But I think that's the way human beings are, and you always want to have a little bit of both. Punch-Drunk Love has that in spades.

5. Call Me by Your Name 2017

Directed by: Luca Guadagnino | Written by: James Ivory

Call Me By Your Name is such a beautiful love story. It's so atmospheric and it's surprising, that film. At the beginning, I was like, 'What is the dynamic between these two people?' I love the fact that love manifests itself in so many extraordinary ways. It's not just two people who look exactly the same as each other and are exactly the same age. Sometimes in talking about love stories, we don't look at the really surprising love stories, where people just meet each other and connect. They're not always straight people between the ages of 27 and 32 and then they get married, you know what I mean?

Love is for everybody, and there's something about the rebelliousness of that film that's so beautiful. It made me nostalgic for something that I never really had, and it satiated something in me. I just thought it was so beautifully acted and beautifully directed. It was a special one that I remember going to as a full-grown adult.'

#Andrew Scott #Call Me By Your Name #Meryl Streep #Punch Drunk Love #Adam Sandler #Emily Watson #Postcards from The Edge #Carrie Fisher #Mike Nichols #Judi Dench #Claire Foy #Olivia Colman #Ben Whishaw #Shelley Winters #The Poseidon Adventure #E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial #Steven Spielberg #Jamie Bell #Paul Mescal #All of Us Strangers #Korea #Sherlock #Hot Priest #Fleabag #Moriarty #Pride #1917 #Catherine Called Birdy

[nudeornaked]

#postcards from the edge #le petit tour #the fantastic idea of rolling off the hill had never seemed so safe (though still stupid in a way) or so loose #first mosquito in a week! #now that's an achievement!

[helena-bottom-farter]

#Barbie #vintage postcard #90s #vintage los angeles #90s los angeles #postcards from the edge #Hollywood

[whispersintheink]

6th September 2023

1st Book

I read the whole of “Postcards From The Edge” in one day. I enjoyed it so much I couldn’t put it down.

From the very first page, Fisher's writing captivates with its raw honesty and unflinching portrayal of Suzanne's struggles. As readers, we are immediately drawn into her world, feeling an overwhelming urge to shield her from the harsh realities of addiction and the relentless pressures of Hollywood.

Fisher's portrayal of Suzanne is both heartbreaking and inspiring. We witness her battle with addiction, her journey through rehab, and her attempts to rebuild her life. Through it all, Suzanne's resilience shines through, and we find ourselves rooting for her every step of the way. Fisher's ability to create such a complex and relatable character is a testament to her own experiences and her deep understanding of the human condition.

The novel's structure, presented as a series of postcards, adds a unique layer to the narrative. Each postcard offers a glimpse into Suzanne's life, allowing us to witness her triumphs and setbacks, her moments of despair and hope. It is through these intimate snapshots that we develop a profound connection with Suzanne, feeling a strong desire to protect her from the harsh realities she faces.

Fisher's writing style is a perfect blend of wit, humor, and vulnerability. She tackles difficult subjects with grace and sensitivity, infusing the story with moments of levity that provide much-needed relief from the weight of Suzanne's struggles. It is this delicate balance that makes "Postcards from the Edge" such a compelling and unforgettable read.

"Postcards from the Edge" is a testament to the indomitable human spirit. Through Suzanne's journey, we are reminded of the power of resilience, the importance of self-acceptance, and the healing that can come from embracing our vulnerabilities. Carrie Fisher's masterful storytelling and her unwavering commitment to portraying Suzanne's journey with authenticity make this book a must-read for anyone seeking a heartfelt and transformative literary experience.

I’m thinking of watching the film with Meryl Streep. But am unsure whether it will live up to the book. I adore Meryl Streep though.

#postcards from the edge #carrie fisher #reading #reading challenge

[vintagecelebrityslides]

Anthony Perkins; Osgood Perkins - "Postcards from the Edge" Premier, Century City Plaza Cinemas, LA, 10 September 1990

Photographer: Scott Downie

#Anthony Perkins #Postcards from the Edge #Postcards from the Edge Premier #Scott Downie #1990 Slide

[reggieburger]

#postcards from the edge #meryl streep #Youtube

[thegayfangrrl]

#doris mann #liz james #postcards from the edge #the parent trap #shirley maclaine #natasha richardson #milfmadnesspoll

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

#postcards from the edge #meryl streep #shirley maclaine #dennis quaid #mike nichols #1990