I\u2019ve never seen a promising young actress have a quicker rise and fall than Anne Heche did in the late \u201890s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the span of three years, the Daytime Emmy-winning, ex-soap star went from indie darling (doing odd-ass movies like Donald Cammell\u2019s lurid Wild Side<\/em>) to scene-stealing supporting actress (she played Johnny Depp\u2019s ferocious wife in the mob drama Donnie Brasco<\/em>) to above-title star (she locked lips with Harrison Ford in the adventurous rom-com Six Days Seven Nights<\/em>). But, by the time the 21st century rolled around, she was out of the picture. Her brief but very public relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, who had a controversial coming-out herself, led to her getting shunned by the major studios<\/a>. And, then, there was that incident where she was found by cops in an ecstasy-fueled daze<\/a> after their breakup. She spent her later years mostly doing primetime TV, including a stint on Dancing with the Stars<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During what I like to call her indie year, she did an adorable turn in Walking and Talking<\/em>, the debut 1996 movie from filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money, Enough Said<\/em>). She and Catherine Keener star as New Yorkers\/lifelong best friends Laura and Amelia. Laura is a therapist who recently became engaged to her boyfriend Frank (Todd Field). This causes some tension between her and Amelia, a single gal who can\u2019t seem to get her ish together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keener has the meatier role, playing Amelia as a hopelessly awkward flake with a cancer-ridden cat and a taste for semi-creepy dudes. (Liev Schreiber plays her porn-addicted ex, while Kevin Corrigan is a horror-obsessed, video-store clerk she ghosts when he finds out she and Laura call him \u201cthe ugly guy\u201d) But Heche has her own moments of neurotic behavior. Laura starts down a subtle spiral of self-sabotage after she accepts her beau\u2019s proposal, nagging him about getting a mole on his chest checked and even hanging out with a waiter\/actor (Randall Batinkoff) she regularly flirts with. But she also makes Laura an appealing significant other, engaging in such intimate activities with her man as holding his penis when he urinates. (I\u2019m quite certain there were men who saw this and wished it was their junk she was holding.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n While Walking<\/em> is a quick and tidy look at messy, sympathetic young adults in the Big Apple, when I saw Walking<\/em> in the summer of \u201896, I gotta admit I was turned off by how, you know, white<\/em> it is. You have to remember this film came out during a time when stories about single, pale-faced, usually snarky twentysomethings, living and loving and all that bullshit, were all the rage in pop culture. While Friends<\/em> and its ripoffs were all over the small screen, we also had movies like Reality Bites<\/em>, Bodies, Rest and Motion<\/em>, Sleep with Me, <\/em>etc. (At that time, I found that any movie starring Eric Stoltz was gonna be white and neurotic as hell.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n While Walking<\/em> does exhibit the same overwhelming whiteness of those aforementioned films, it\u2019s more \u2013 shall we say \u2013 feminine because a woman is behind the camera. As she would do throughout most of her film career, Holofcener crafted a story about female friendship \u2013 and solidarity. It\u2019s basically about how Keener and Heche\u2019s characters try to continue having a bond, even when they\u2019re living their own separate lives. And unlike her male counterparts, Holofcener shows off a hearty sense of self-awareness. She knows damn well she\u2019s making a film that might turn guys off. This is exhibited in the movie\u2019s most oft-quoted scene, where Amelia, Laura and Frank are driving to the country home of Amelia\u2019s parents, where Laura and Frank will hold the wedding. After listening to Joan Osborne non-stop on the radio, Frank has had enough. \u201cDo we really have to listen to this \u2018vagina music\u2019 all the way there?\u201d he asks. Amelia and Laura simultaneously reply, \u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, let\u2019s talk about how Harvey Weinstein fucked over this movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Holofcener herself revealed in a 2011 IndieWire<\/em> piece<\/a>, while Walking and Talking <\/em>was bought by Miramax after a positive Sundance premiere, the studio released it around the same time as another female-centric movie of theirs: Douglas McGrath\u2019s crowd-pleasing adaptation of Jane Austen\u2019s Emma<\/em>, starring Miramax muse Gwyneth Paltrow. Even though Walking<\/em> was getting good reviews, Harvey and them decided that they could only throw their marketing and publicity support behind one<\/em> art-house movie geared for women that summer. \u201cWe didn\u2019t even have a premiere or a party,\u201d Holofcener wrote. \u201dI was invited to the Emma<\/em> premiere. I think that was my consolation prize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, this $1 million-budgeted movie only made $1.6 million at the box office, another title that had to fend for itself once Miramax threw it out into the wild. Nevertheless, there are people, like Slate<\/em>\u2019s Dana Stevens, who feel it laid down the groundwork for the more successful, comic tales of girl BFFs (Bridesmaids, Girls, Broad City<\/em>) that would come years later. \u201cIndeed,\u201d Stevens wrote in 2016<\/a>, \u201cwomen telling stories about other women walking and talking\u2014and flirting, and fucking, and fighting\u2014now live at the forefront of comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most everyone involved in Walking<\/em> went on to bigger and better things: Holofcener and Keener made more movies together, Field directed the Oscar-nominated In the Bedroom<\/em> for Miramax in 2001, Schreiber became Ray Donovan, even bit players Allison Janney (as Amelia\u2019s neighbor) and Vincent Pastore (as Laura\u2019s devil-seeing patient) went on to memorable TV work. But Heche was the first one to break out and have a short-but-memorable rise to the top. Now that she\u2019s no longer with us, hopefully more people will go back to her early work and discover what made people find her so \u2013 if I may use a Holofcener movie title \u2013 lovely and amazing. Walking and Talking is <\/em>currently streaming on Hoopla<\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s also <\/em>available to rent or buy<\/em><\/a>. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/walking2-1024x576.jpg\")
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