Play It As It Lays

Back in my college days I remember buying musician Matthew Sweet's classic rock album, "Girlfriend". Who graces this rock testament of unrequited love and heartbreak? Actress Tuesday Weld, wrapped in a fur jacket, beautifully shot at a California canyon location. I had never heard of her, although i was quite enamored of her beauty. Then, a month later I saw Weld in action in the film, "Looking for Mr.Goodbar". She played Diane Keaton's train wreck sister. She was incredible. A month ago, I saw Tuesday Weld in another incredible performance. The movie is called, "Play it as it Lays".

The opening sequence is stunning. Weld circles the outside garden of a mental institution, thinking of how she got there in the first place. No music, no histrionics, no special effects. Just the image of this beautiful, surprisingly small woman contemplating her life. Images of Maria, Weld's character, driving down a California freeway, shooting a gun at various street signs in an act of defiance. It is clear that Maria is no ordinary Beach Boy image of the Califronia Girl. Maria is very much her own person. A rebel. An angry young woman. It is not only an image of a woman losing her grip but one of a woman claiming her right for independence and for some kind of freedom. Clearly, this part was made for Tuesday Weld. The actress that playwright/actor Sam Sheperd called, "The Female Brando".

Weld is not the only great talent in this film. Director Frank Perry challenges the viewer with a film that provides no easy answers. Perry shows Los Angeles for what it can really be at times. Dense, loud, claustriphobic. Showing the smog and cloudiness that sometimes covers the sunny atmosphere and that often overcomes the land itself. Many critics panned the film for its quick cutting and fast paced direction, but this is important theme to the movie itself. It clearly shows what Maria is seeing of LA and how her life jumps from one incident to another. It shows Maria on her journey, even though it has no clear beginning or end. It is one drama quickly jumping to the other. Perry does this beautifully and with a clear intention for the story.

Maria is a person who is trying to question why things are so wrong with her life and the way she lives it. The other characters, during the film, at times mock Maria's quest for self investigation, for even thinking that she will find and understand her journey for truth. Perry is trying to show the importance of a person going on a journey for self discovery. He tries to show how the people surrounding us sometimes judge in order to justify their own empty lives. Maria may survive this journey, but there may be a price to pay.

Weld gives a performance of such depth, subtlety and nuance it is impossible to stop watching. I keep remembering Weld lying in bed as she discusses her pregnancy with her husband,and the possibility of an abortion. Weld doesn't cry, yell, she doesn't move at all, as she lies there almost perfectly still. But i remember the sadness on her face as she desperately tries to find reason, some kind of solution to the problem. As her husband beats her down emotionally, threatening her almost that he will take her daughter from her, we see how she is left heartbroken at her failed attempt at a resoulution. The vision of Weld, lying in bed, being so helpless but TRYING to resolve the situation is beautiful but ultimately very sad.

Simply put, Tuesday Weld's performance is a stunner. It never stops from film's beginning to end. Perry films her as a modern day female James Dean. Her blonde hair whipping in the air, as she speeds through LA on her defiant journey. Once again, comparisons of Dean and Brando abound. One scene has her pulling out a loaded gun, shooting at empty cans on her husband's film set. It is an image of freedom and of rage that is exciting to watch.

I know that the Sundance Channel has showed the movie a few times. This is no excuse that the movie is not on DVD yet. Well, after all, the movie was never released on VHS. It is definitely worthy of a Criterion Collection edition. It would be wonderful to get a behind the scenes look at the film, which is wishful thinking. And i think it would be incredible to get an interview with Tuesday Weld, although she doesn't strike me as someone to talk about her past on film. There are countless websites about the film, all over the internet. Most of these posing the same question as to why the movie is not available on DVD. These people are quite frustrated, as am i, that such an important film is not given its due. Perhaps after, what, thirty years, it is still hard to take for some viewers.

So, this leads me back to where i began, i suppose. Maybe seeing her on album covers, right? I don't want anyone to underestimate this incredible actress. It is clear that she has been an influence on many actresses, from Jessica Lange to Winona Ryder. Her acting brings a uniqueness to the craft, much in the way Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway did in the early 70s. It is clear that Tuesday Weld rightfully deserves the same recognition as these actresses did in their day. We need the DVD release of Play it as it Lays and other Tuesday Weld films, so that she does receive this recognition. Others may not remember, but i for one, will never forget her.

Jagged, pessimistic view of the denizens of Hollywood, circa 1972. Troubled movie actress, conflicted over her recent divorce from her director-husband, is finding herself slowly becoming alienated from her show business circle; unselfconscious--and still hopeful things will work themselves out--she's unable to reconnect the lost threads of her past, and begins feeling numb and catatonic. Joan Didion's novel, adapted by Didion with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, has been entrusted to director Frank Perry, and he digs right to the core of this material. It isn't just the bitchiness of the business that is wearing our heroine down, it's the blasé apathy with which the business is handled that strikes her both curious and sad. Tuesday Weld gives a deliberately low-key, thoughtful performance in the lead; her Maria Wyeth can be as tart in her repartee as her competitors (she's no shrinking violet), and yet the numbness she feels creeping in frightens her. Weld is reunited with her "Pretty Poison" co-star Anthony Perkins, excellent as a gay producer trapped in a business-marriage to a woman. The two share a quietly devastating scene in a motel room near the end that brings the narrative full circle while also showing the depth of feeling in the material (some may think the film superficial, but this is deceptive). The quicksilver editing may actually be too canny and clever, with many scenes seeming smug or half-finished (and usually ending on a rueful line or look). I think Perry means to shake the audience up with his herky-jerky structure, but perhaps the movie (with its feeling of an open wound) left too many viewers behind. A forgotten picture, it remains one of the most acidic portraits of lotus land ever captured on film. ***1/2 from ****

I was 18 when I saw Frank Perry's Play It As It Lays during its brief opening run. It affected me powerfully. Blew me out like very few films ever have, actually. Completely intoxicating. I stumbled out into the afternoon sunlight afterwards rapt and bewildered, stunned and delighted, thoroughly alive. But in the years since I've never once met a single person who's even seen it, and the whole experience has become dreamlike and lost, a memory I'm no longer sure of.

However I did pounce on Joan Didion's blistering short novel when I found it. What a fine book! No wonder the effect of the film was so profound, telling that cruel, utterly remorseless story. (And of course I fell in love, fanboy-style, with Tuesday Weld, or perhaps more truly with Maria Wyeth, the doomed and heart-breakingly aware character she inhabited.)

But rather than attempt to analyse a film that plunged me in way out of my depth when I saw it 34 years ago, I simply want to add my voice to those of earlier and more capable reviewers calling for its release on DVD. It's exactly the sort of madly brilliant one-off that cries out for Criterion treatment. Well, mutters grumpily for it anyway.

And I'd most certainly like to recommend that if you ever do get the chance to see it, make sure you do. It might have vanished, but it always was an exceptionally interesting film, one of the very great "small" ones. Perhaps the best film Robert Altman never made.

The movie Play It as It Lays is, admittedly, not everyone's cup of tea. Even the book--as much as I liked it--was a hard sell to friends and family; most, especially those living outside the Southern California forcefield, simply could not grasp the essential Los Angeles flavor of Didion's dry economical language. The language of the Industry is spot-on (for a change) as are the depictions of the unusual alliances and estrangements of the characters in the film. One person I know who hated the film complained that it was too "faggy" and not like the real Hollywood at all (this person lives in Tucson); the B.Z. and Maria relationship at the heart of this movie may seem bizarre and pointless to auslanders, but it certainly reminded me of real life in LA circa 1972. Also of note is Tammy Grimes' performance as B.Z.'s wife--she got so many of the good lines ("Oh God my face--I can really see a difference"; "in what?"; "skipping my Lazslo for one day.") This movie should be available in VHS/DVD; does anyone know why it's been ignored? I'd love to know.

Life in Hollwood in the early 1970s--an actress, any actress, rich and famous or not, is exemplified in existential angst in 'play it as it lays.' A compelling character study, Tuesday Weld plays Maria (pronounced Mar EYE'a) Wyeth, an actress much like herself. It is difficult to see where the actress and character begin and end, she is that good in this film. Maria drives her yellow Stingray from one Los Angeles freeway into another only to kill time because she can't kill herself.

Her film industry friends are LA's idle rich who have little else but money. Only a gay friend, played by Tony Perkins, truly cares about her. Maria searches relentlessly for meaning in a place that has none, although it resembles a utopia. The sun is always shining, everyone drives a German car and sips cocktails at their pool or Malibu beach home.

If Albert Camus, the French existentialist of the absurd, had lived in Hollywood, he would have written her story.