10/15/00

Yes, it's me. It really is.

Anne's Journal of Minutiae

October, 2000

10/15/00

You have to have a quick eye -- and quick ears -- to watch a Robert Altman film. So many important and tiny elements are embedded into each scene like pixels on a Web page. I saw Dr. T and the Women yesterday - and there were indeed many quirky details to track.

The story centers around Dr. Sullivan ("Sully") Travis (Richard Gere), an uber-popular Dallas-based OB-GYN ("The lucky kind [of doctor]" a character remarks) -- surrounded by women: petulant fur-betrimmed, Manolo Blahnik-stamping, demanding patients; a pathetically loony wife; a recently divorced, champagne-drinking alcoholic sister-in-law (brilliantly drawn by Laura Dern) and two sexually-confused daughters.

Dallas is the perfect setting in which to exhibit the most extreme caricatures of girly-girlish femininity: the big hair, lavish jewelry, fur and more fur, elaborate use of cosmetics. The women (gals?) are a pouting, flouncing, frowning, cuckolding bunch. They seem so in need of male attention that they gladly ease their pedicured heels into mink-lined stirrups for pap smears. ("Dr. T will use the small speculum if you ask him - he's just soooo considerate," coos one simpering patient to another.) They are all so spoiled and so hateful and distrustful of their fellow double XXers -- an overly-powdered, feathered hat-wearing elderly woman trips emotionally-needy Dorothy (Janine Turner) with her cane at every turn. One patient insists on smoking during her examinations. Dr. T's staff, reassuringly normal (except for nurse Shelley Long, who's almost dementedly perky -- I loved it when she reminded Dr. T that the "fillies are gettin' restless out there," followed by a horsey snort). They seem just as appalled by the behavior of the patients as they suffer insults from the bratty scions.

Poor Dr. T -- he suffers shrill female cacophony every minute of his life, except in the company of his buddies for some skeet-shooting or duck hunting. But they're no comfort: they are just as pussy-whipped and hen-pecked as he is. Sully has a lot of love to give, but none of the women he offers adoration, love and support to return the favor in kind. When he admits to his buddies in the countryclub lockerroom that he "wouldn't have it any other way," you can see a trace of wistfulness in his eyes. Dr. T is even told by a psychologist (Lee Grant) that his wife Kate (a brief, touching performance by Farrah Fawcett) has regressed to a childlike state because Sully has simply "loved her too much."

And so with Kate institutionalized, Sully eventually meets a woman golf-pro/golf instructor named Brie (not like the cheese but short for Briede, as she points out) played with witty East-coast smarts by Helen Hunt. She's completely unlike all the other women in Dr. T's life, so he can't help but fall for her. In the midst of this epiphany, Dr. T must still sort through the ongoing female chaos that surrounds him: his troubled daughter Connie (Tara Reid) informs him, conspiratorially, that his soon-to-be-a-bride older daughter Dee-Dee (Kate Hudson) is really a lesbian and still in love with her newly-chosen Maid of Honor Marilyn (Liv Tyler), with whom Dee-Dee had had a supposedly short-lived college affair. His perpetually chirpy, devoted nurse (Shelley Long) even attempts an embarrassing all-or-nothing confession of love for him one night. (And really, would she have given Dr. T the genuine love he so very much needs? Not likely. She's simply far more needy than he is.)

Women, women, women -- surrounding and suffocating, demanding his attention before all others. Sully Travis has dutifully given them what they crave -- but no one's even recognizing the good doctor's own needs. After Dee-Dee's outdoor wedding is spoiled by unpredictable Texas weather and a jolting, champagne-spewing revelation, Dr. T heads for what he hopes is his emotional salvation: Brie the Golf Lady. Soaking wet from the rain and jubilant in his newly-realized clarity, he proposes that the two of them spend the rest of their lives together. Sully, in a joyous outpouring, tells her that she won't have to work or give another golf lesson ever again, that he'll take care of her… Unwittingly, he's fallen back into the old trap of Protector, Apologist and Supplicant. But Brie saves him -- she rebuffs him gently by asking, "But why would I want that? I like what I do." She is actually what he wants, what he needs -- but that is precisely why he can't have her…on his unconsciously atavistic terms. Shaken, he realizes that he is trapped in a world of his own making by simply allowing the women in his life to have the emotional overrun of his psyche.

After a dizzying, frightful tumble within a tornado (seriously) -- Dr. T arrives at a satisfying punch line ending. A lot of details and a lot of fun -- if only more films could be this complex and this simple at the same time.

My rating:

I want to go on record as agreeing completely with Em's "manifesto" regarding online journals.

I believe that most online journals can be put into either of two basic categories: 1) Self-aggrandizement, ego (and possibly profit) and 2) I'm Writing This Just For the Hell of It. I fall into the latter category (along with Em, Becca, SecraTerri, Jen, my fellow Web Rats and hopefully many others). Basically, we don't give a shit if only two people or two hundred people are reading us -- we do it because we LIKE putting together an online journal with our own musings. It's simply a new way of storing our ideas -- a medium apart from scribbling in a paper journal (which most of us still do).

Now, I have nothing against the first category at all -- your online journal should fit the purpose to which it's put, whatever your desires or needs should happen to be. I really don't care. I really don't. If you consistently write stuff that doesn't interest me, I will stop reading. It's my right to ignore that which I find uninteresting -- but I will never tell you to write "something else." Why? Because it's not MY journal. Simple enough. But what pisses me off is when others try to dictate what others should or should not write. Excuse me, but just who named WHO Grand Supreme Editor of Online Journals? Certainly everyone is entitled to send an email to a journaller regarding something they did/didn't like about a particular entry. No question about it -- free speech is Free Speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But when someone says something akin to "Well, you shouldn't be writing that…" -- well, that's where I absolutely MUST draw the line. No one has the right to dictate content to another journaller -- if you don't like or appreciate the general tone or style of the prose, for crissakes GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!

I also feel that before one criticizes something written in a journal, that they READ THE ENTIRE ENTRY and not merely skim through it. Jeez! I also think the "Hottie Award" thingie was drawn waaaaay out of proportion -- and presumably to create a lot of quickie journal entries. I have read some entries (and the "About" page) on this site, and have found the author to be a loving father and talented artist. He has even acquiesced to "political correctness" by removing the Hottie Award from his Crush page. And that's really sad. If anyone had truly read that page, they would have realized it was all in good fun -- that there was nothing mean-spirited or misogynistic about it. I just think there are people who take such things way too seriously (and without seeing the "big picture", i.e. Not reading the whole damn entry) -- and also want to see how easily they can wield power over someone else. Personally, if it were me, I would have left the page just as it was. F**k 'em! But Mr. Carter is obviously a much nicer person than his critics are -- and more considerate. Now who looks like the a**hole?

So, Em - I am definitely with ya on this. So what if we're not online "superstars" -- we get to write whatever we want. Don't change your writing style or your content -- it's fine just the way it is. It keeps me reading. It keeps a lot of us reading.