THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH

아름다운 배우

영화 boys on the side 남자들은 길을 비켜 를 보면 왜 그런지 알 수 있다.

미드 weed 를 봐도 그렇고. 

Mary-Louise Parker Shows a Sweet Side
People: Actress Found HBO Role a Welcome Change of Pace
by Frazier Moore, The Orange County Register, November 24, 1995

(Many Thanks to Ashley from USA!)



Mary-Louise Parker got into microwaving Moon Pies in a big way during the "Sugartime" shoot.

"Delicious," she says.

So is her portrayal of Phyllis McGuire, a legendary show-biz confection _ and tough cookie, too, as we learn in "Sugartime," an HBO original film debuting Saturday.

Phyllis, of course, was one of the McGuire Sisters, three saccharine chanteuses as brazenly wholesome as the era that launched them.

To everyone's delight, they imbued their glittery gowns and painted faces with 1950s-vintage virtue. They were Daddy's little girls as bottle blondes, singing in three-part harmony "We got the whole wide world in our hands," "You do something to me" and their signature hit, "Be my little sugar and love me all the time."

The rub: In 1960, Phyllis was swept off her feet by mobster Sam Giancana (played by John Turturro). And vice versa: Giancana, a fearsomely powerful Mafia boss, was likewise smitten by "the one in the middle" when he saw her onstage.

No wonder. Unlike the rest of the world, Phyllis gave Sam what-for whenever he pushed her too far. She was as uncompromising as she was kittenish. He loved it. Loved her. To his downfall. That's the bittersweet story "Sugartime" tells.

Mary-Louise Parker, who has played more than her share of the ailing and woebegone in films such as "Boys on the Side," "The Client," "Fried Green Tomatoes" and TV's "A Place for Annie," says she loved stepping into Phyllis McGuire's high heels.

"She was so positive in a lot of ways, and I've played a lot of people who've died or had a very tragic side to them," says Parker, adding, "It's fun to wear all those pretty dresses and look like a Barbie doll."

At this moment, Parker looks very unlike a Barbie doll, unless it's maybe Greenwich Village Barbie. A devout Manhattanite ("I think by now I've lived on every block"), she is smartly uniformed in black leggings, boots and jacket. A lock of her brown hair keeps flopping in the eyes so accomplished at conveying angst and pain. She seems unconcerned.

"It was a totally different time," says Parker, casting back to the McGuire Sisters' heyday, which was, come to think of it, before she was born. "That ingenuousness and naivete and sweetness, it does not exist now. Today there's some kind of jaded, world-weary thing. You'd just be laughed at today if you got up onstage and did what the McGuire Sisters did.

"There was something so pure about them," Parker says almost wistfully, "and when you have struggled like they had to to reach success, and then you're able to give people something really nice . . . well, why NOT smile, showing two rows of teeth? Damn right!"

At that, she grins the big grin she put to such good use playing Phyllis.

"I have a place in myself that is very available to that kind of thing," she says "that thinks, I can go there."

But Parker went there without the help of the woman she portrays. The real Phyllis McGuire, now 64 and a Las Vegas socialite, was uninvolved with "Sugartime" and reportedly pretty sour on the project.

Therefore, Parker studied recordings, filmed performances and newsreels to prepare for the role.

"I had to find what the McGuire Sisters evoked when they were performing," Parker says. "They were so engaging and fun and clean and sweet, which I found exhilarating. And I loved doing the numbers. Sublime! The girls who played my sisters and I were in heaven."

But wearing crinoline and singing those squeaky-clean songs wasn't why Parker signed on for the project. She says she did it mostly to work with John Turturro.

Having built a career on playing fascinating geeks in films such as "Barton Fink," "Quiz Show" and again in "Sugartime," "Turturro is the best actor I've ever worked with," Parker says. Thus does he eclipse in her esteem the likes of Alec Baldwin, Eric Stoltz and even former beau Timothy Hutton. "John is the best ... the BEST!"

She had never met him before production on "Sugartime" began, "but right away we understood each other. We didn't have to translate things or explain things. He worked tirelessly. And he was so funny and so sweet."

How he felt about those Moon Pies doesn't come up.