The obvious answer would be that the two Edies are characters that no novelist would ever dare to invent. But a few want to know, “What’s the deal with all these ‘Edie’ fans?” or “Why do you even care so much about these ‘crazy’ women?” Most of them want to know what happened to Little Edie’s hair or ask if she eventually made any money from the documentary. You will find a bit of everything here: from the latest news to answers to some of the questions you have always wanted to ask.Ī special thank you to David Maysles, Al Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer, and Susan Froemke for creating the magnificent documentary that has touched and inspired us all.Īs you might imagine, I get a lot of emails regarding Grey Gardens. This site is an informal database of all things related to the singular world of “Big” Edith and “Little” Edie Beale. Most importantly, Grey Gardens is a breathtaking and alluring portrait of Edith Beale and her daughter Edie.
THE GRAY GARDEN STORY MOVIE
Of course, Grey Gardens is also a landmark documentary, a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and an HBO movie starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. Me for you, and you for me, can't you see, how happy we will be.…a fabled home located in the elite seaside Village of East Hampton, Long Island. The two women at night, alone in their room, the crumbling mansion extending around them, listening to old songs and replaying old memories. Edith confessing that she can't turn around just at the moment because her bathing suit has no back. Edie, nearsighted, standing on a scales and reading her weight with binoculars. Edith placidly observing that a cat is defecating behind her portrait. Moments: Edie feeding the raccoons a loaf of Wonder Bread. It's hard not to find these two odd women likable. And out of this existence comes a movie that, curiously enough, is comic and bright, as well as sobering. She and her mother talk all the time, sometimes at the same time - they both know all the words. She dresses in lace curtains, in bedspreads, in bathing suits that were last seen on the cover of Life, circa 1948. Old phonograph records are played once again, and on Sunday night the girls tune in Norman Vincent Peale from New York. Inside, plaster is crumbling from the walls, and raccoons coexist amicably with the Beales and a large family of cats. "I lost a lovely blue scarf in there one day and never found it again," she muses. "France fell," her mother says, "but Edie didn't." The house is surrounded, as Edie observes, by a "sea of green." The grounds have grown wild. "That was just after the fall of France," Edie says at one time, dating a memory. She brought a few boys home, but her mother didn't like them. It is here that the film has its fascinating, mysterious center, We gradually realize that these two women are absolutely dependent on one another that they form a composite personality (or, as the Maysles put it, a "closed system"), Edie never married. And the two women, in ways that have been exquisitely refined over the years, fight a little among themselves. Edie, who'd always dreamed of a career as a dancer, improvises a soft shoe to the Virginia Military Institute fight song. Beale, once a highly regarded concert singer, sings several songs for them. Many of the routines seem intended for the stage, Mrs.
THE GRAY GARDEN STORY PORTABLE
They went back to Grey Gardens and all but moved in for two months, using portable cameras to follow the Beales in their daily routines. Then they reviewed their footage and decided there wasn't a movie in Jackie and Lee - but there seemed to be one in Edith and Edie. Jackie and Lee supplied them with information about the family, including their two reclusive cousins in East Hampton, NY The Maysles shot, on and off, for several months. Would the Maysles like to make a movie about the Bouviers? They might.
Albert and David Maysles, the directors of such documentaries as "Salesman" and "Gimme Shelter," were approached, by the two Bouvier sisters, Jacqueline Onassis and Lee Radziwell. It's about two classic eccentrics, two people who refuse to live the way they're supposed to, but by the film's end we see that they live fully, in ways of their own choosing. It expands our notions of the possibilities. "Grey Gardens," one of the most haunting documentaries in a long time, preserves their strange existence, and we're pleased that it does. They still have wit, style and what I would define as sanity.
Still, they've preserved a few things, while abandoning so much.
0 kommentar(er)
