Mamie Gummer – Bitch Flicks

Meryl Streep Has a Blast in ‘Ricki and the Flash’ and You Will Too

Meryl Streep is having the time of her life in ‘Ricki and the Flash’ — playing rock star, acting alongside her daughter Mamie Gummer, macking on Rick Springfield, and wearing leather pants. Her joy is infectious, and lends an overall lighthearted tone to what could be a very sad movie about estranged families.

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

Meryl Streep is having the time of her life in Ricki and the Flash — playing rock star, acting alongside her daughter Mamie Gummer, macking on Rick Springfield, and wearing leather pants. Her joy is infectious, and lends an overall lighthearted tone to what could be a very sad movie about estranged families.

Streep plays Ricki Randazzo, formerly known as Linda Brummer back in her square suburban mother days. She left her marriage and her three children to escape intractable dissatisfaction; basically, imagine if Streep’s character in Kramer vs. Kramer went on to become frontwoman for a dive bar’s house band.

Ricki’s life is far from perfect: she struggles to get by with her cashier job at a Whole Foods stand-in, she won’t commit to her boyfriend/lead guitarist Greg, but she doesn’t seem to regret her life or her choices.

Then: a phone call. Her daughter Julie’s husband has abruptly left for her for another woman. She’s falling apart and “needs her mother,” a role Ricki hasn’t played in decades.

Mamie Gummer is fantastic in her role as Julie. She genuinely portrays the devastating depression of grief while milking plenty of humor from her character having absolutely zero fucks left to give. Streep and her daughter perfectly utilize their natural chemistry as Julie’s inability to play at normalcy jibes with Ricki’s counterculture vibe, both sticking out awkwardly behind the Brummer’s white picket fence.

There’s a fantastically tense dinner where Ricki’s also reunited with her sons Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate), who are revealed by Julie to be respectively engaged and gay, though they haven’t felt moved to tell their biological mother either of those things. As strained as Julie and Ricki’s relationship is, there’s a wider chasm between Ricki and her sons.

Even though Ricki does bond with Julie and with her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline), Diablo Cody’s smart script avoids excessive sentimentality; it is clear that Ricki can never make up for lost time, and that her children will always have a family she’s not entirely a part of, including their seemingly perfect stepmother Maureen (Audra McDonald). Maureen is stunningly polite and kind when she basically kicks Ricki out of her house, and subsequently reaches out to Ricki with an invite to Josh’s wedding. I really liked seeing these two women not hate each other despite their obvious conflict, and Audra McDonald is really good in her few scenes.

At the big wedding in the end, everyone gets along despite some awkward moments, and when Ricki and the Flash crash the wedding stage (sorry, other band!) they get all the uptight rich people in their boogie shoes. (The third act felt a bit like a condensed version of director Jonathan Demme’s previous wedding movie, Rachel Getting Married.) We know it can’t really be happily ever after for this family, but there is hope for much-less-unhappily ever after.

A significant portion of the film’s run time is Ricki’s band rocking out, so if that’s not your jam, you might get bored (my husband sure did). But director Jonathan Demme has made some incredible concert movies (Stop Making Sense and Neil Young: Heart of Gold), and he puts those talents to use here. And giving the band significant screen time allows us to see the joy in Ricki’s life, so she’s not just some pathetic deadbeat mother who ruined her life. And also lets us see Meryl Streep sing “Bad Romance,” which is worth the price of admission.

Ricki and the Flash is not a movie of great consequence, but it is nearly perfect for what it is. Unless you’re a weirdo like my husband who hates rock ‘n’ roll, you should see it.

Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who was born in the same hospital as Meryl Streep.

‘The Lifeguard’: A Female Anti-Hero on the Cusp of 30

The Lifeguard movie poster.

Written by Leigh Kolb

There’s something about 30.

When I turned 30 last summer, a switch went off inside of me–I was restless, searching and stuck deep in nostalgic thoughts, wanting to be 19 again. I was ruminating about this with my husband and he interjected, “I have indigestion.” I stared at him, and reminded him that I was having an existential crisis. “Hey, you’re dealing with 30,” he said. “I’m dealing with 31.”

I know that my experience is not special or unusual (another 30 realization–my life is really fucking normal, even though I’ve always thought otherwise), and a plethora of films support that theory. The latest film in the catalog of this kind of life crisis (oh, I guess it has a ridiculous name–the “thrisis”) is The Lifeguard, which was written and directed by Liz W. Garcia.

Leigh London (Kristen Bell) is an Associated Press reporter in New York City, and she’s having an affair with her betrothed boss. She covers a story on a tiger that was kept captive in a city apartment and died–and something clicked. She clearly sees herself as this tiger, locked up and trapped, and needs to get out.

She heads back to her hometown in Connecticut to stay with her parents. “I need some time out of my life,” she explains. Leigh–who was always a high-achiever (she was valedictorian)–decides to work as a lifeguard for the summer, just like she did when she was a teenager.

I normally don’t like to bring myself into film reviews, but there are some things you need to know. I was a mild high-achiever in high school and felt unfulfilled with my first jobs out of college, which were in journalism. I was a lifeguard in high school and college. In my scriptwriting course in graduate school, I pitched my final full-length semi-autobiographical screenplay as “like Garden State, but with a female protagonist” (“not enough action,” grumbled my professor). See above, in re: “thrisis.”

My name is Leigh.

I felt like there was a lot riding on this film for me.

Overall, The Lifeguard didn’t disappoint. Well, it didn’t disappoint me. It’s been getting largely unfavorable reviews, most of which echo the idea that this story has been overdone. But most stories have been overdone, and with a plot like this, there’s good reason–this moment in life is full of crises and tensions and people can relate to it.

“I’m the fucking lifeguard, motherfuckers.”

While there are a few minor questionable plot points and it sometimes feels like a first feature independent film (which it is), I was struck by the realistic portrayal of a life hanging in the balance between adulthood and the ache for youth.

Even the moments that felt unbelievable or clunky–well, that’s part of it. That’s part of trying to figure things out.

The filmography and soundtrack were lovely, and the actors were excellent. Leigh’s best friends–Todd (Martin Starr) and Mel (Mamie Gummer)–have lives that appear to be put together, but aren’t really. Todd is coming to terms with his sexuality, and Mel is a vice principal at their alma mater and she and her husband are trying to get pregnant, unsuccessfully. Each character is dealing with a unique but totally normal crisis.

Leigh is self-destructive throughout her journey to herself, and her friends come along for the ride. They smoke cigarettes and pot, buy beer for minors, and at one point, Leigh almost fails to see a struggling child in the pool because she’s stuck in a fantasy. Here’s the female anti-hero that we are always looking for (perhaps that’s why the mostly male reviewers were put off?).

The most destructive decision Leigh makes, though, is engaging in a sexual relationship with a teenager. In attempting to reclaim her youth, she also attempts to revise her virginal teenage experience. While on paper this seems like a dealbreaker, Garcia’s writing and direction made it–dare I say–work? The scenes are uncomfortable and incredibly sexy. They feel different than normal sex scenes, largely because of the focus on Leigh’s satisfaction.

We know it’s wrong. We know it’s destructive. But we are along for the ride, just like Leigh.

Leigh attempts to guide Jason (David Lambert) into better life choices. Their relationship is disturbing, sexy, destructive and strangely realistic.

It’s hard not to draw a parallel between The Lifeguard and The To Do List (The Lifeguard is like its much darker older sister). For the Type-A protagonists, their roles at a swimming pool allow them to be in control yet vulnerable and unclothed. The setting is important, because as female lifeguards, they experience power and vulnerability all at once. The position and pool are also seasonal and fleeting–just like youth. There’s something temporary about being a lifeguard. Leigh is trying to use that position, seeping with nostalgia, to gain something permanent.

In The To Do List, Brandy says, “Teenagers don’t have regrets–that’s for your 30s.” Leigh is trying desperately to hold on before her 30s hit.

Night-swimming in the pool–Leigh is caught between rules and control and wildness.

The Lifeguard delivers a female anti-hero and realistic struggles that women of a certain age face. The film doesn’t, as some reviewers suggest, sink. It goes into the deep end, treads water and gets out of the pool–just like most of us do.

The Lifeguard is available on iTunes and Video on Demand; on August 30, it will play in select theaters.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Women Doctors: Professionally Competent, Messy Personal Lives

Mindy Kaling as Dr. Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project

Originally published at The Funny Feminist.

You know what I’d like to see more of on television? Stories about women who are successful in their professional lives, but whose personal lives are a complete mess. I especially want to see more of these stories about female doctors.

Take Emily Owens, M.D., for example. Starring Mamie Gummer, Emily Owens, M.D. tells the story of a medical intern who discovers that life in a hospital is just like high school. In the first episode, she confesses to her old high school crush that she likes him only to be shot down, and realizes that her high school nemesis is interested in her high school crush, but she also diagnoses a condition and performs a life-saving procedure during her first day on the job.

Or let’s look at Mindy Kaling’s new sitcom. The Mindy Project, recently picked up for a full season, tells the story of Mindy Lahiri, a gynecologist whose dating life is a mess. In the first episode of the show, she rudely interrupts an ex-boyfriend’s wedding and drives a bicycle into a pool, but by the end of the pilot, she’s heroically delivering a baby to a patient who doesn’t have health insurance – even interrupting a date to do it.

Or let’s go back in time a few years to a show called Grey’s Anatomy, the drama that won’t die (even when most of its characters do). Ellen Pompeo plays Meredith Grey, an intern who accidentally sleeps with her boss the night before her first day. (By “accidentally sleep with,” I mean that the sex was intentional, but she did not know the man was her boss.) She struggles with a patient, but gets a sexy love interest and a guy crushing on her forlornly from the minute he meets her. She’s also the intern who makes the miraculous discovery of what’s wrong with her patient, and figures out how to help a fellow intern’s patient.

Am I mess or a rock star intern? I can’t remember! | Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) in Grey’s Anatomy

Now, pretend you’ve been living under a pop culture rock for the last few years and know nothing about these three shows or the actresses who play these characters. Based just on the descriptions, would you be able to tell which program was the satire/comedy and which two programs took the “professionally skilled, personal mess” trope seriously?

…Okay, so maybe the bicycle in the pool was the giveaway. Fair enough. The point remains that television continues to have a problem with professional women. Showrunners don’t seem to know how to write professional women characters without turning them into neurotic messes who can control nothing about their personal lives, and lately, female doctors are getting the brunt of that particular cliche.

I like comparing these female doctor characters to a character like House on House, M.D. or Dr. Perry Cox on Scrubs (who has been compared to House by other characters on Scrubs, amusingly enough). These men are professional geniuses whose personal lives are also fraught with drama, but we’d never call them neurotic. They’re curmudgeonly assholes who bark perfectly crafted sarcasm at their professional inferiors, colleagues, and bosses. Their personal lives are messes because they’re misanthropic, or because they’re masking years of built-up pain. Women doctors have messy personal lives because they overanalyze and are neurotic and always pick the wrong men.

I don’t know if showrunners write women doctors this way because they lack imagination, or because they’ve internalized sexist stereotypes, or because they don’t know how else to make a professionally competent women sympathetic to an audience. “We’ve got a woman doctor here, because women can be doctors now, but women who are TOO put-together will be a turnoff, so we’ll make her a mess outside of work! INSTANT EMPATHY!”

Fortunately, Mindy Kaling is aware of this cliche, and the episodes of The Mindy Project following the pilot have veered away from “professionally competent, personally messy” plots.Show-Mindy is often portrayed as less neurotic and more of a jerk, and Kaling is more interested in making the character funny than making her likable. Show-Mindy is several steps in the right direction, and I hope we start seeing more characters like her, soon.

But not too soon, because I want there to still be a market for my own pilot about a professionally competent, neurotic female doctor. Doctor Love tells the story of Hilarie Love, a young physician who can’t seem to get her personal life together. In the pilot episode, Hilarie goes on her first date since high school, where her prom date stood her up to go have sex with the cheerleader. Unfortunately, she winds up wearing an outfit where none of the clothes match, and gets so nervous that she throws up on her date in the middle of a restaurant, and almost accidentally kills him when she stands up and knocks the table on him. Then she gets called into work, and performs a miraculous, life-saving surgery (even though she’s not a surgeon) on a young blind boy who’s been shot, removing the bullet with her bare hands and donating her own blood to rejuvenate the child. This catches the attention of a handsome attending physician who finds her competent and pretty, and is still intrigued by Hilarie even after she throws up on him, too.

What do you think? Do we have a hit?


Oh, I get it. It’s butterflies in the…er, ribcage. \| Mamie Gummer in Emily Owens, M.D.

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

Women Doctors: Professionally Competent, Messy Personal Lives

Mindy Kaling as Dr. Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project

Originally published at The Funny Feminist.

Am I mess or a rock star intern? I can’t remember! | Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) in Grey’s Anatomy

What do you think? Do we have a hit?


Oh, I get it. It’s butterflies in the…er, ribcage. \| Mamie Gummer in Emily Owens, M.D.

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.