BEFORE: I sort of hit a dead-end with "Coal Miner's Daughter" - I mean, I could continue with the musician theme, but I'm saving those films for when I get back from San Diego. So I'll keep the biopic theme going, and I'll backtrack to Ed Harris, who was in "Sweet Dreams". Linking from "Coal Miner's Daughter", Tommy Lee Jones was also in "Space Cowboys" with Marcia Gay Harden. I've got another space-related linking thing going on, but I'll pose it as a question instead - what film (which I watched back in 2010) featured at least one actor from this film, and the four previous films in my chain? Answer will appear tomorrow.
AFTER: Thankfully this will be the last biopic I'm watching for a while, as they've all developed a form of sameness to them - it's been a week full of alcoholism, arguments, domestic violence, and rampant affairs. Look, I don't know if famous people have more affairs than regular people, or if the ones that they do have are just more prominent. It's like asking why so many music stars have died in plane crashes - which probably has a lot to do with the fact that they travel so much when they're on tour. That's just probability.
Anyway, tonight it's the complicated relationship between Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Krasner put her art career more or less on hold to be Pollock's lover, publicist, wife and all-around caretaker. And this did pay off when his art became a thing - but eventually he started drinking again, and sleeping around again, and then came the jealousy, the yelling, and the separation. Are all artists this moody, or just the successful ones? Can a marriage survive one person being famous and successful, or does that automatically tip the balance somehow?
For that matter, do the highs of success automatically bring on the lows of depression? Should artists be allowed to self-medicate if they feel that helps them to be creative? Who are we to judge another person's creative process, if it results in a piece of art or a film that others deem noteworthy or successful? Is there a point where someone becomes famous enough that the rules no longer apply to them, and if so, should others intervene to change them, or just get out of the way?
Some good questions tonight, but not a whole lot of answers.
I suppose it comes as no surprise that Pollock's famous "splatter" technique came about by accident - he'd put his canvases on the floor to access them better, so at some point spilling paint on them was more or less inevitable. That's OK, most of the greatest innovations of the modern age came to be after accidents, from the telephone right on down to the breakfast taco.
Also starring Jennifer Connelly (last seen in "The Rocketeer"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Mr. Popper's Penguins"), Amy Madigan, John Heard (last seen in "Snake Eyes"), Bud Cort, Tom Bower, Sada Thompson, Robert Knott, with cameos from Val Kilmer (last seen in "Tombstone"), Stephanie Seymour, John Rothman, Annabelle Gurwitch.
RATING: 5 out of 10 bottles of Schlitz
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