Bette Midler (55 page)

One of the best sequences is a episode set at the wacky Mansfield household. Jackie’s prissy editor (David Hyde Pierce) shows up to suggest some rewrites to her manuscript. Bette, as Jackie, cannot figure out which loud and colorful Pucci print outfit to wear to edit in, so she presents a dramatic in-home fashion show. Lane prattles on about what to order them for breakfast, and Channing’s biggest concern seems to be what liquor to start the day with. It provides the film with its one wonderfully loony,
Absolutely Fabulous
–styled scene. If this whole film had only been equally as irreverent and crazy throughout, it could have been a hit. In fact, it should have been done as Bette Midler playing Jacqueline Susann, who was in turn playing Edina Monsoon in
Absolutely Fabulous
. As an
AbFab-like
best buddy, Channing does her best Patsy to Midler’s Edina/Jackie. Supposedly, Susann had a tree in Central Park she spoke to, whenever she wanted to address God. Bette’s tree-conversing scenes here seem uncomfortable and forced. Played neither for drama nor for out-and-out comedy, they fall somewhere in-between and somehow miss the target in both arenas.

According to the film’s producer, Mike Lobell, “I don’t think we’ve veered away from the actual facts of Jackie’s life, as much as we wanted to make the movie funny” (
180
). Unfortunately, though,
Isn’t She Great?
rarely seems to get laugh-out-loud funny.

There a lot of pieces missing from this puzzle of a film. For instance, it sets up the legendary Truman Capote feud on television, then it fails to show us Jackie’s famous TV retort. Some of the more dramatic moments are homogenized here as well. Unable to figure out how to present the drama of son Guy’s condition,
Isn’t She Great?
simply delivers the facts and then moves on uncomfortably.

According to the film’s director, Andrew Bregman, Susann was a unique and fascinating character. “The fact of her life is that she was desperate to be famous,” he claimed at the time. “So whether or not she’s admirable depends on how you see that ambition. I admire the bravery of it. People have children, among other reasons to live forever. But a child who is affectless and doesn’t know who you are—it’s like she couldn’t even get that right, and she just had this incredible desire
to be immortal, knowing that she was on a very short string in terms of her life span” (
181
).

When husband Irving Mansfield suggests that her path to fame might lie in writing about her bigger-than-life knowledge of sex and drugs and show business than in acting, the film finally picks up steam. Talking trash seemed to give Jacqueline Susann a titillating sparkle and a reason to live—whether she was chatting about herself on a TV talk show or turning true stories of show business into blockbuster novels.

Since Dionne Warwick sang all of the theme songs for the original three Susann films, it is fitting that she also sings the newly written theme song—“I’m on My Way”—with music by her old musical director Burt Bacharach. However, instead of using a Vanessa Williams tune at the end of the film, it would have been much more fun to have Midler do her own version of the old Dionne hit “(The Theme from) Valley of the Dolls” to run over the final credits.

Some critics liked the film. According to Karen Durbin in the
New York Times, “Isn’t She Great?
captures the fabulosity of Jacqueline Susann, a gutbucket feminist who yearned for fame, and found it. . . . Mr. Rudnick’s best lines cannot be repeated in a daily newspaper. It’s worth a ticket just to hear Ms. Midler and Ms. Channing’s scabrous exchange about
Ozzie and Harriet
(
181
).

Others did not. In the
Chicago Sun Times
, Roger Ebert recalled, in his review, having met the real Susann when he was just twenty-three. According to him, “Bette Midler would seem to be the right casting choice for Jackie, but not for this Jackie, who is not bright enough, vicious enough, ambitious enough or complicated enough to be the woman who became world famous through sheer exercise of will. Stockard Channing, who plays Jackie’s boozy best friend, does a better job of suggesting the Susann spirit. . . . Jackie Susann deserved better than
Isn’t She Great?
 . . . Here is a movie that needed great trash, great sex and great gossip, and at all the crucial moments Susann is talking to a tree” (
182
).

Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide 2002
called it an “ill-conceived film about [a] highly-driven actress-turned-authoress . . . Not funny enough to succeed as a comedy, nor serious enough to work as a biography” (
178
).
The Video Movie Guide 2002
by Mick Martin and Marsha Porter was equally as scalding: “Bette Midler, as Susann, goes through an endless parade of flamboyant costumes which are supposed to define her character. Also there is the uncomfortable blending of
comedy and tragedy as she deals with her autistic son and breast cancer . . . could have been a better film” (
179
).

Isn’t She Great?
appeared and disappeared in movie theaters at a lightening-fast pace. The year was barely half over, and Midler had already had two year 2000 box-office “bombs.”

As she had done with
Get Shorty
in the year 2000, Bette Midler chose to make a brief but high-profile appearance in an all-star film—totally unbilled in the credits. The film was the Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei comedy
What Women Want
. Co-starring in the film are Alan Alda, Delta Burke, Valerie Perrine, Ana Gasteyer, Loretta Divine, and Lauren Holly.

The plot of the film deals with a womanizing man, Nick Marshall (Gibson), who falls into a water-filled bathtub with a plugged-in hairdryer in his hand and is knocked out. When he regains consciousness, he finds that he now has an extrasensory power—he can hear what women are thinking.

Bette portrays the role of Dr. J. M. Perkins, Gibson’s marriage- and family-counseling psychologist. With her hair red and slicked down in a stylish shoulder-length bob, wearing a tastefully tailored pants suit, Midler turns in a constrained and comically sarcastic portrayal. Although hers is only a one-scene role, she is brilliantly funny here.

When she discovers that Gibson’s character actually can read her thoughts, she says, “Mr. Marshall, you might find this a little unorthodox, but would you mind awfully if I smoked?”

When he says, “No, no, no, I understand,” she goes over to a sidetable in her office, opens up a fancy wood-and-metal cigarette box, lights up a marijuana joint, and takes several deep “tokes”—intent on getting stoned. Looking on, Gibson does a comic double-take.

Although she has only that one brief scene in the whole movie, it is one of the most memorable in the whole film—which became a huge box-office hit. It proved once again that when the material is right, there is no one like Bette Midler.

“There are no movie roles. But I still have a lot to offer,” proclaimed Midler in complete frustration (
173
).

In the year 2000, Bette was completely reviewing her options: “They thought my work in that movie [
The Rose
] was a fluke. At the time, I was devastated. It was staggering. And it just happened to me again with the
First Wives Club
. The movie made a hundred million dollars, and the studio couldn’t get a sequel together. They thought it was a
fluke. At least now my attitude has gotten better, you always worry that they are going to find out that you’re a fraud. But now I’m so old, I don’t care. Let them take it” (
22
).

She was also frustrated with her once-glorious association with the Disney film corporation. According to her, “Even though I was their favorite girl at Disney, I was never the comic lead in one of their movies. I was always the support. Or the co-girls. I was, at the time, I was the highest-paid female in town, and I never even said anything about it because I thought that would be in poor taste. Now I’m ticked off that I didn’t say anything. These days, everyone tells their damn salaries, and I never said a word. That’s what comes from being a lady” (
22
).

What she did take the largest amount of pride in was how her daughter was growing up. Said Bette at the time, “Sophie doesn’t watch teen shows. She chooses what she wants to watch, and we watch it with her. I make a big fuss. My motherly instinct has told me that this is a good way to train my daughter. There are some things that are completely off the table. Really terrible language, and drugs. And behavior that is uncivilized. Violence. Sex before you’re ready for it. Violent sex. Grossness—there are other ways to behave. You just shouldn’t let that become part of your soul. They’re grotesque. I mean,
There’s Something about Mary
—that stuff used to be private. What happened?” (
1
).

Was teenage Sophie curious about Bette telling tales of her old days at the Continental Baths? Claimed Bette, “She’s not even a little bit curious. I think that’s better. Let her get her own dirty jokes. She doesn’t need any of mine. She wants to know what it was like at Studio 54 and she wants to know all that smarmy stuff that we lived through. Fortunately, there are enormous blank spots. But what I do remember I tell her about. And she’s just, ‘Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.’ . . . Sophie knows the difference between right and wrong, and she knows what’s not good for her. She’s not judgmental, she’s not scandalized by other people’s behavior, but she knows it’s not for her” (
1
).

She was also very happy about her marriage to Martin. “The last couple of years have been really great. We don’t fight anymore,” she explains. “I think you get to a point where you realize, ‘I’m never going to change this person. I’d just better accept this person and enjoy what they have to offer. I think I’ll just relax.’ I don’t think anyone who’s lived with a person for a long time hasn’t wanted to reach over and strangle that person. Fortunately, those things pass. Our life hasn’t been a bed
of roses by any means, but we stuck it out, and we came through at the other end. All of a sudden things fall into place” (
1
).

Looking at the way her career has progressed, Bette Midler was satisfied with the choices she had made up to this point. “With age comes wisdom, and that’s one of the things that I learned,” she claimed. “I can’t drink more than two drinks—I’m the cheapest date on earth. I can’t smoke reefer. I can’t do blow. I cannot do that stuff. I don’t have the physical mechanism that allows me to do it. So I don’t do it. And I think it’s been good for me. Because I’m still here. And if you watch enough
Behind the Music
, you’ll see that everybody took a turn from the left. Everybody. And they all wound up in rehab and losing years of momentum and creativity, and that for me is the most boring thing” (
120
).

Her own sense of independence was something that she had long relied upon. “I have always been on my own,” said Midler. “My mom and my dad, who were children of the Depression and World War II, always said, ‘It’s best not to count on men.’ They never told me I wouldn’t get married, but they told me I must learn to be independent, that I must support myself, that I must not think that anyone would support me. Maybe they thought I was so unappealing that I would never get married, but for whatever reason, that was their message: You can only count on yourself. And it took” (
22
).

In 1996 Bette Midler starred in the most successful film of her career:
First Wives Club
. Since that time, she had come up to bat with three new starring projects:
That Old Feeling, Drowning Mona
, and now
Isn’t She Great?
Each one of them was less successful that its predecessor. What was she going to do next?

“I’ve been making movies for many years,” she claimed, “and I was always frustrated by the fact that it was a very, very slow process—very slow to develop, very slow to get a green light, very slow to make, very slow to edit. Then if you don’t do well that first weekend, all that work is for nothing” (
1
).

Suddenly, there were no new movies being offered to her. However, while all of this was going on, she was being courted by CBS-TV about launching a new project: her own weekly television show. For years she had insisted that TV was the last thing she would ever get involved in. However, she needed a new outlet for her creativity. Eventually, the idea of doing a television show didn’t sound as repugnant as once it had.

According to her, “I never wanted to get out of the movie business.
My way is to find another route. When I’m blocked by people who are not interested, not creative, and want to preserve the status quo, I go around them. They see me in a certain way, and they push me aside. That happens everywhere, not just in the movie business. CBS really listens to me. They seem to value what I have to say” (
22
).

Bette was tired of beating herself up looking for the right movie role. It was time to concentrate on something new. In the year 2000, she was about to embark on a whole new chapter of her career: on television.