Craig D. Lindsey
Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. With the recent passing of the late, great screen actress Gena Rowlands, let’s go back to the time when she was a regular presence in Miramax films.
If you were a working actress in the ‘90s, you had to deal with Harvey Weinstein at some point – even Gena Rowlands.
The veteran actress was working quite steadily during the Clinton era. You could see her in a TV movie one day and a studio picture as the mom of the movie-star lead (Hope Floats, Something to Talk About) the next. She also popped up in indie flicks (Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, Terence Davies’s The Neon Bible) directed by maverick auteurs not unlike her late husband/filmmaker John Cassavetes, who regularly made Rowlands the star of his films.
But Rowlands also starred in movies for Weinstein during his Miramax rule. It all started in 1996 with Unhook the Stars, a movie that was co-written and directed by her son, Nick Cassavetes.
Rowlands is Mildred “Millie” Hawks, a widow who finds herself dealing with some messed-up, younger women in her life. She has a wayward daughter (Moira Kelly) who pops in and out, constantly yelling at Millie when she’s not looking for money or a place to stay. And right across the street is Monica (Marisa Tomei), a foul-mouthed chain smoker with an abusive husband (David Thornton, husband of Cyndi Lauper, who sings the titular theme song) and a son (a pre-Phantom Menace Jake Lloyd) Millie begins to take care of when Monica is out working.
Briefly released in November 1996 for awards consideration before getting a pitiful Valentine’s Day rollout, Stars is middlebrow, melodramatic Oscar bait (Weinstein’s favorite kind of bait!) that tries to throw in the same human messiness that Cassavetes’s old man used to inject in his films. Weinstein was most likely aiming for an Academy Awards nod for Best Actress for Rowlands. But the Best Actress race was insane that year; Madonna, Courtney Love and Debbie Reynolds were all hoping to get some Oscar love and weren’t even nominated. Rowlands and Tomei only received Screen Actors Guild Award nominations (for Best Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively) for their performances.
While the reviews were mixed, Rowlands usually received high praise. Although she had a rep for playing women who were often on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Rowlands is at her most subdued in Stars. She plays Millie as a doting, conservative matriarch, quietly being there for a young boy while his mom figures out her issues. (Tomei, rocking dirty-blonde hair, often acts like she’s doing an impression of Rowlands in her prime.) When the mom decides to be more attentive to the kid, as she and her husband reconcile and attempt to make a happy home, Millie starts wondering if she should stop doing for others and start doing for herself. She even hangs out with one of Monica’s drinking buddies, a French-Canadian truck driver (Gerard Depardieu, also an uncredited producer) who’s obviously sweet on her.
Rowlands and her son collaborated again the following year on She’s So Lovely, from an unproduced script by none other than John Cassavetes. This wackadoo romantic dramedy has Sean Penn and his then-wife Robin Wright Penn, clearly getting their Cassavetes and Rowlands on, as dysfunctional lovebirds Eddie and Maureen. This low-rent couple can’t seem to stay away from each other, especially after Eddie gets released from a psychiatric hospital after a ten-year stint and comes looking for Maureen, who now has three kids and a successful, even-more-hotheaded husband (John Travolta). Rowlands has a brief cameo as the caseworker who meets with Eddie before he’s released.
Rowlands did a couple more maternal turns in a pair of Miramax films from 1998. In The Mighty, British director Peter Chelsom’s adaptation of Rodman Philbrick’s young adult novel Freak the Mighty, she’s a grandmother whose teenage, developmentally challenged grandson (Elden Henson) befriends an intelligent but disabled 12-year-old (Kieran Culkin). Sharon Stone, who would star in a remake of the John Cassavetes film Gloria (where Rowlands assumed the title role) a few months later, plays the boy’s mother. BTW, if you think this is the tearjerker about a kid who has a young dwarf for a best friend, that’s Simon Birch, which came out the month before.
Later that year, Rowlands was part of writer-director Willard Carroll’s all-star ensemble Playing by Heart. This collection of seemingly unconnected stories about LA couples (think Short Cuts, but with serious yuppie energy) has a fully stocked cast: Gillian Anderson, Madeleine Stowe, Angelina Jolie, Dennis Quaid, Ryan Phillippe, a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart. Rowlands and Sean Connery are the oldest of the couples, struggling with some very personal stuff before they renew their wedding vows.
In typical, Miramax-era fashion, these hella flawed films were ultimately tossed in multiplexes by Harvey and them, receiving marketing and publicity that were either misconceived or nonexistent and barely making any money because of it. (Hell, Stars only grossed a paltry $272,542.) But they do deserve a mention for giving one of the great movie actresses some screen time to show that, even in her middle-aged years, she could still bring it.
“Unhook the Stars“, “She’s So Lovely,” “The Mighty” and “Playing by Heart” are all streaming for free on Hoopla Digital.
