RSS SPIRIT

Future Best Actress





I was watching UHF the other night, caught a good Partridge Family episode. In it there was a special guest star - an 11 year old (or so) Jodie Foster. When watching Jodie as a girl one immediately realizes, all that is wonderful and terrifying about her was openly on display even as a young woman. She was pretty, but there was something exhausted about her demeanour. She was bright and intelligent, but almost unnaturally so. She was a great actress even back then, yet we are fascinated with the gangly girl behind the actress.

In this episode, Danny Partridge falls madly in love with her. She breaks his heart, but nicely, informs him that she "is just not ready for all that." Guess who plays her dad who has a thing for a Danny's mother? That's right, Bill Bixby.

I mention this by way of thinking about America's best actress. To wonder at the wonder she inspires and perhaps guess at a strategy for her future success.

Because yes we all saw Flight Plan and Panic Room. Not great movies. But one could argue that Ms. Foster gave great performances. I think Jodie is such a freak of nature that in order for her to get into a role, she requires nothing less than playing it German Expressionist style. And yes, she would have been an incredible actor in silent German movies of the 1920's.

She is right now in a movie that got released in March (we all know what that means) and she was also in the French movie The Longest Engagement. She has a supporting role here but is great. She also has a great love scene that should silence all the haters who diss her kissing scenes.

But here is what Jodie Foster teaches us. Great leading ladies need great scripts. Laugh if you want, but Contact was a great script. It had everything a leading lady needs: love, betrayal, obsession, despair and tortured redemption. People will be watching Contact a 100 years from now.

So what does a script require before it is worthy of Jodie Foster? First there better be glamorous locations. I mean we have had enough of Jodie locked in a room or in a plane. She is a beauty, only the perfect light of Southern California is suitable for her.

Second, let us get rid of all this scientist/engineer nonsense. Yes I know she wants to be encouraging to girls, but this is a movie, Jodie, not an educational film strip. She should play a smart character of course, but softer, say an English Professor at USC. So she can show off the freakishly smart while having some emotional strength too.

Essentially, as a proper leading lady, she should be put in situations where life and death hang on her decisions; in situations where she is madly loves, intensely loves and knows heartbreak; in situations where she will conjure awe in her face during a third act confronation on the Santa Monica pier.

To paraphrase a better writer: I come not to bury Jodie, I come to praise her. For she is one of those rare born hopeful monsters who, if she can mate with the right script, can transport millions to wonder in a movie worthy of a DVD collector's edition.

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