How 'real' is it?????
Is it 100% real or most of it fictionilized?
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MovieChat Forums > The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) Discussion > How 'real' is it?????
It's an extremely shallow portrayal. The film makers seemed interested only in recreating the photo shoots.
Her early years are barely touched on. We learn almost nothing about her post modeling life.
Big events in her life (possible childhood sexual abuse, an abusive first husband, a sexual assault) are brought up, or barely hinted at, and then brushed aside, with no indication of what kind of impact said events had on Bettie's life.
Looking at www.bettiepage.com, and reading the bio there, it seems they left out all the good stuff. Bettie's parents divorced? Not in the film they didn't. Bettie's mother had to support the family herself, and put Bettie and her sisters into an orphanage when Bettie was ten? Not in the film. After leaving her husband, and before settling in New York, Bettie did a bunch of traveling? Not in the film - she's just a simple, unworldly southern girl, who thinks she's just dressing up in costumes for nice men who like strange pictures....
Then again, who know how accurate the site is (though it is the site IMDB lists as the "official site" on Bettie's page - but none of this stuff is in her IMDB bio/trivia).
IMDB does list this quote though: About her mother's younger lover when he made a move on her: "My mother nearly murdered me over that, then made me live with my father. So I couldn't review my exam notes, which were at home. Because of that I got beat out of graduating valedictorian by a quarter of a grade point and lost my dream of getting a scholarship to attend Vanderbilt University. It was the worst disappointment of my life." (LA Times 3-11-06)
So it would seem her parents did divorce. The thing about losing valedictorian was in the film, only it's because she cut one class to go to a rehersal for a play, and ended up with and A- because of it - enough to lose to someone else.
“I always tell the truth…even when I lie” - Scarface
I get the impression that the whole project got run through a post-modern feminist-lesbian ideological filter. Guinevere Turner, the co-writer and frequent writing partner of the co-writer and director, Mary Harron, is an "out" lesbian and I'd guess Mary is, too, based on her IMDB bio and quotes.
My guess is that they found it almost impossible to tell her story without compromising whatever sociopolitical perspective they hold, and the best they could do was a naive girl with a positive body image who doesn't have relationships with men.
I'd like to give Mary the benefit of the doubt since she's directed several TV episodes of shows I have a lot of respect for (Oz and Homicide). I suppose its possible that Bettie herself withheld or was inconsistent about details of her life to an extent that they weren't actually able to tell the story accurately.
The more I think about this, the more sense it makes that Bettie simply won't or can't tell a coherent story about her modeling career or personal life -- multiple divorces, a born-again Christian conversion, not to mention her actual nude modeling may have her unwilling to actually report realistically what happened.
Read the books:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/102-4438377-7987345?url=search-ali as%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bettie+page&x=0&y=0
You can't expect a bio-pic to be an in-depth examination of someone's life. Harron's film is meant to be as much about us as it is Bettie. Watch it from that perspective and you'll enjoy it more. Then read the books if you want to know more.
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You can't expect a bio-pic to be an in-depth examination of someone's life.
Given that she made sexually provocative films and photos, I don't think whether she was sexually assaulted by her father, raped as a young woman or what her relationships were like with men qualify as trivia exempt from examination.
They are in fact defining moments of truth.
Can't say I disagree with what you have to say. In terms of a full biography, such "defining moments of truth" are, indeed, not exempt from examination, which is why I recommend reading the books to those people interested in learning more about Bettie's life. In terms of a bio-pic, though, it all depends on the perspective of the filmmaker and what it is they want to say. As it stands, Harron touched on the incest and the rape; that she glossed over or ignored Bettie's relationships with men was her choice as a director. I would argue that Harron's intent was to illuminate American sexual mores of the time (and ours) through the lens of Bettie's modeling life rather than to present us with an in-depth examination of Bettie's psycho-sexual history. That was her choice. We may or may not, as audience, agree with that choice, and regard the film accordingly, but there you have it. The choice was hers to make as the filmmaker.
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That was her choice. We may or may not, as audience, agree with that choice, and regard the film accordingly, but there you have it. The choice was hers to make as the filmmaker.
I'd have to disagree; calling it a "choice" lets her off the hook for questionable direction and screenplay choices. The only way choice works is if you believe she made the wrong choices.
Eh? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I don't think her having choices to make as a filmmaker "lets her off the hook" at all. How can we say she doesn't have choices? As the director, it's her prerogative to make directorial choices, is it not? We may well question them, and qualify our opinion of the resultant film accordingly, but she still has those choices to make. That's her job as a director.
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It lets her off the hook because it assumed she made the "choice" to gloss over the child abuse, rape and quixotic relationships with men. For all we know she didn't make that choice, and actually "chose" to reveal those things in ways she felt meaningful but whose actual outcome ends up glossing over that stuff.
It seems to me that what you're really saying is that she didn't make the choices that you might have made if it were you who'd directed the movie.
I would argue that Harron "glossed over" these things because they were not germane to what she intended to say. I'm not saying, btw, that such things are not important to understanding the personal life of Bettie Page; they surely are. But they're not important in terms of what Mary Harron wanted to say about American sexual attitudes, both in Bettie's era as well as our own. In addition, perhaps this "glossing over" says as much Mary Harron's idealogy as it does anything else.
Food for thought, anyway. Thanks for a great discussion so far!
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What's underpinning the whole choice thesis is the assumption we actually know what choices she made. We don't, actually, unless you're referring to writings the directory and screenwriter have made about why they chose to gloss over major aspects of their subjects life.
All we have is the film in front of us and we *assume* she made some choices, when in fact she may have made the *opposite* choices and they were just very poorly executed.
Regardless, it was a weak movie even assuming she deliberately choice to obfuscate Bettie's psychology. Another commentary on the puritanical and often conflicted morality of American morality in any era, past or present, is entirely superfluous and I didn't find this one a terribly compelling commentary on that subject matter.
Add that in with the oblique revelations about her child abuse, rape, relationships with men, let alone the entirely missing subject of her own sexuality and you have a movie that was kind of fun to watch (hey, I'll look at Gretchen Mol naked) but in the final analysis was pretty shallow.
Well, given what I know about film-making (beyond my eternal confusion as to whether that's one word or requires the hyphen), I'm pretty sure that choices were made. It's certainly possibly that certain choices were made and then poorly executed, but given the professionalism of all involved, I'm pretty sure as well that re-takes were done until things were done the way Harron wanted them done.
At any rate, I tend to agree with you that the film was fun to watch and pretty shallow. I already knew most of the back story, so I didn't really care, and was content to drink in Mol's excellent performance, as well as her au natural beauty.
I certainly grant you your opinion on the superfluity of Harron's thematic intent, though I suspect that in both our cases she was preaching to the choir. I didn't find it overly compelling myself, but I was much more interested in seeing how well Mol brought Bettie to life, which I thought she did magnificently. Plus, those who might benefit from exposure to such themes probably won't see the film anyway.
Unless, of course, they're one of the self-righteous hypocrites that so many of them truly are.
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Forget all that crap, read the 1998 Playboy interview. Its still a shame that the person that makes the least amount of money on 'Bettie Page' these days is Bettie Page. As for her sexuality, she pretty much says that she had the least sex in her life during the period she was a pinup(hence no references to any extraordinarly sex life in the movie). Her actual sex life seems to be quite boring, apparently only being active when married. Is the movie REALLY that shallow? I don't think there was any need to elaborate on the 'bad', as that's all everyone who has tried to capitalize on her fame has already done to death, even when they just make up a lot of the stuff. She had disappeared completely from the public for decades when her resurgence in popularity in the 80's started up and everyone just started saying whatever they felt like saying to make a buck.
Millions and millions were made hand over fist and she had no idea she was even 'famous' again(while living either in institutions or on social security while the entire fashion industry was using her look as a theme)....Being that they brought her 'back' via revisiting only her image in the 50's, she to this day doesn't even want anyone to see her face in an interview. So sad, but she's still alive and kicking...
http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/bettiepage/interview/index.html
Guinevere Turner, the co-writer and frequent writing partner of the co-writer and director, Mary Harron, is an "out" lesbian and I'd guess Mary is, too, based on her IMDB bio and quotes.
Mary Harron - "She has been married to John Walsh since August 15, 1998. They have two children."
I can see nothing in her bio or her quotes that indicates she is a lesbian, out or otherwise. share