Grey Gardens

Ahhh, HBO did a good job! Have you seen it?

Particularly good was Drew Barrymore as Little Edie, she nailed the performance.

I saw the original documentary. The eccentricities of these two women was, frankly, disturbing to watch. It did help that HBO gave us some background. The story is no less disturbing this time around, but they did a good job of weaving flashback scenes in to the "documentary" scenes. Building on, but never overshadowing the work done by the Maysles. I will watch it again, I'm sure.... and again I'll be rooting for Little Edie to pull herself up, slap her mother in the face, and make it to that damn audition for Max Gordon. It bothers me so that Little Edie never had the inner strength to stand up to her mother - and that her mother never loved her enough to let her go. Big Edie only ever really cared about what Big Edie wanted.

Here are are a couple of pictures to show you how well the makeup is done:

(screen capture from original 1975 film. found at THIS SITE)

(Photo by HBO)

It's an odd subject matter, the fall of this prominent NY society family. I wonder why watching the very wealthy fall from grace is interesting (fascinating, even) because they have so much farther to fall?