Shelley Duvall

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mfunk9786
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Shelley Duvall

#1 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:58 am

Couldn't think of anywhere that it would be more appropriate to post this, but it sadly seems that Shelley Duvall is in the throes of some pretty serious mental illness.

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Feego
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Re: 230 3 Women

#2 Post by Feego » Thu Nov 17, 2016 2:33 pm

Rumors of Duvall's declining mental health have circulated for years in the tabloids, but I held out hope that it was just typical National Inquirer bullshit. It's very sad to see it confirmed here and even worse that it's fodder for Dr. Phil. I agree with the author of that article in hoping a real medical team will help Duvall after this airs. She was such a quintessential part of my childhood with her Faerie Tale Theatre and the must-be-seen-to-be-believed Mother Goose Rock 'n Rhymeland TV special, so this is particularly heartbreaking.

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Magic Hate Ball
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Re: 230 3 Women

#3 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Sun Nov 20, 2016 4:59 pm

I'm glad that the overwhelming response to this seems to be that Dr Phil is exploiting her, rather than mocking her illness.

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Re: 230 3 Women

#4 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Tue Nov 22, 2016 3:36 am

I think this was shown on the Disney Channel. I remember seeing it a few times as a kid. Guy who directed this did the Who documentary The Kids Are All Right, and would go on in the 80's to direct music videos, including Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More" and Warrant's "Cherry Pie".

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Feego
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Re: 230 3 Women

#5 Post by Feego » Tue Nov 22, 2016 10:20 am

Yes, this aired on the Disney Channel around 1989-1990. It's fun to note that Little Richard's royal court in this special looks mighty similar to the chess board tea party set in the "Don't Come Around Here No More" video. Duvall showed a real knack for eclectic casting and crew assembly on her shows, so I wouldn't be surprised if she picked the director based solely on that Tom Petty video. It really was right up her alley with its blend of fairy tale and contemporary MTV style.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#6 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Nov 22, 2016 11:16 am

I'm heartened that a conversation that began in the context of Duvall's recent exploitation has naturally evolved into an appreciation of her most personal works.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#7 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Nov 22, 2016 11:36 am

Has Faerie Tale Theatre ever gotten a satisfactory DVD/Blu release?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#8 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Nov 22, 2016 11:39 am

Looks like several DVD sets that keep going out of print in favor of new editions: this is the current one, and the price is right. No indication from the reviews that there are issues with it.

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solaris72
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#9 Post by solaris72 » Thu Nov 24, 2016 7:27 pm

I think it was shot on video so SD is as good as it'd get.

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ianthemovie
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#10 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Nov 24, 2016 10:33 pm

That's right, it was shot on video. The one exception is the Roger Vadim-directed episode of Beauty and the Beast (basically a remake of Cocteau's version, with Susan Sarandon as Beauty and Klaus Kinski as the beast!), in which the scenes at the beast's castle were shot on video and everything else was shot on film. I've never understood why.

Faerie Tale Theatre was a staple of my childhood, when my family would rent the episodes on VHS. Because of that Shelley Duvall has been a part of my film-watching life for a long time. (She stars in several of the episodes herself, and also introduces each one with her memorable sing-song: "Hello! I'm Shelley Duvall. Welcome to Faerie Tale Theatre...") In later years I went on to see her in such great films as The Shining, Nashville, and 3 Women, but I will always cherish Faerie Tale Theatre. It was obviously made with such love by Duvall, and it has a charm and a lightness of touch that so many present-day children's films and TV shows lack. In terms of bringing out the basic emotional power of the source material, the FTT versions of "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Rapunzel" are arguably better than the Disney versions (which are masterpieces of animation but which often miss the mark in capturing the essence of the stories on which they are based).

All of this is to say that I'm heartbroken to see Duvall's mental deterioration. She's such a sui generis figure in cinema--a cult figure, really--and it would be a shame to see her life end on this note.

It's also worth remembering that Duvall won the Best Actress award at Cannes for 3 Women.

onedimension
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#11 Post by onedimension » Fri Nov 25, 2016 6:13 am

Just adding my voice to the chorus here, Shelley Duvall was a wonderful performer, and I hope she finds her way to a place of robust mental health- a challenge I know well.

And I grew up watching Faerie Tale Theatre, too, it has such a great sensibility, smart, light, low-maintenance. And the actors are all clearly having tremendous fun, but in a way that takes the project, and the audience, seriously.

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Feego
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#12 Post by Feego » Fri Nov 25, 2016 12:29 pm

I actually own two editions of Faerie Tale Theatre (the original Starmaker II set and the more elaborately packaged Koch Vision set, both now OOP). Both sets seem to have come from different masters. I think the Starmaker II has better image quality overall, although probably no edition will ever be optimal considering the source. All episodes on the Koch Vision edition open with the theme music and montage that was used for syndication on the Disney Channel; the earlier set does not have this. The Koch edition also came with a soft-cover book beautifully illustrated with production photos and a deck of playing cards featuring characters from the series (Shelley Duvall is the joker!).

The big plus with the Koch set was that it features as a supplement a long-lost episode that has come to be known as "Grimm Party." You can see it in its entirety on YouTube here. It's basically just a Greatest Moments package, with scripted scenes of Duvall "making a case" for her show to the Grimm brothers, played by Ed Begley Jr. and Richard Libertini, with memorable clips from the series shown throughout. The best part, though, is that interspersed with the scripted scenes is footage from Duvall's wrap party, with various celebrity guests talking directly to the camera paying tribute to Duvall and saying how much fun they had doing the show. Howie Mandell, Brock Peters, Karen Black, Pam Dawber, and many others appear. And in appropriate fairy tale fashion, it's a costume party!

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#13 Post by swo17 » Fri Nov 25, 2016 1:31 pm

I have vague memories of watching Faerie Tale Theatre as a child, but it might have just been the "Three Little Pigs" episode over and over. Jeff Goldblum as the Big Bad Wolf haunts my dreams.

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#14 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:58 pm

This is a beautifully written piece and a welcome corrective to Dr. Phil's exploitative image of Duvall from a couple of years ago.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#15 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Feb 11, 2021 4:39 pm

ianthemovie wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:58 pm
This is a beautifully written piece and a welcome corrective to Dr. Phil's exploitative image of Duvall from a couple of years ago.
Dr. Phil is a sack of shit. The same goes for Dr. Oz, who's arguably worse - I actually like Oprah, but Jesus, why did she have to foist them on to the public.

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#16 Post by feihong » Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:13 pm

It's fascinating to learn so much about her. There is a pretty clear ellipsis in the article-–which is so well-written––after talking about The Shining, they go straight to the modern day, without any stop-in for Faerie Tale Theater, or for any of a lot of later roles. The article seems to claim that the Northridge earthquake in 1994 marks the end of her career, but she has credits on IMDB through 2002. I remember her striking performance in Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady in 1996 with fondness. I think there is the tendency to value her performance in The Shining above all else, but her performance in Three Women is, I think several degrees greater.

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#17 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:08 pm

I'd love one of those long oral-history articles about Faerie Tale Theatre where they assemble interviews with a bunch of the cast and crew: Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, Eric Idle, Susan Sarandon, Mary Steenburgen, Elliott Gould, Mick Jagger, Jeff Goldblum, Vanessa Redgrave, Teri Garr, Peter Medak, Alfre Woodard, Bernadette Peters... That would be fascinating.

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#18 Post by feihong » Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:36 pm

There's a project that she was at the forefront of, where her vision for the what the show should be had a considerable effect upon what it was. But the main memory the article evinces is of her shrieking victim character in The Shining. Of course, that remains her most highly visible project, so I get it. It looks to me like the article might have been shortened right at that ellipsis point, because it seems so strange that the article doesn't even properly introduce Faerie Tale Theater. In this form, the article makes it seem like she was discovered by Robert Altman, She got the role of a lifetime in The Shining, it was horribly intense, and then the Northridge earthquake hit, and she moved back to Texas, and Dr. Phil ran a piece smearing her. I don't know. I would have liked to hear more about what she did in the 80s and 90s. It wasn't nothing.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#19 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:50 pm

ianthemovie wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:08 pm
I'd love one of those long oral-history articles about Faerie Tale Theatre where they assemble interviews with a bunch of the cast and crew: Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, Eric Idle, Susan Sarandon, Mary Steenburgen, Elliott Gould, Mick Jagger, Jeff Goldblum, Vanessa Redgrave, Teri Garr, Peter Medak, Alfre Woodard, Bernadette Peters... That would be fascinating.
Turns out, the WHOLE series is up on Facebook. The one I linked to was directed by Ivan Passer, who died last year (best known for Cutter's Way and his close collaborations with longtime friend Milos Forman). Based on the Danish fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, you'll notice key Chinese characters are played by Caucasians, back when it was still a widely accepted practice. Mick Jagger and Barbara Hershey play the main characters.

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#20 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:58 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:50 pm
Turns out, the WHOLE series is up on Facebook.
Last I checked they're all up on YouTube as well! And I own them on DVD. I used to love renting The Nightingale as a kid. It's actually quite evocative and haunting in places. But the largely white cast in "yellow-face" would certainly not fly today!

feihong: Indeed. She is deserving of a book-length biography, something more in-depth than what a single article like this one is able to do. Its primary aim seems to be to correct the sad and disturbing image of her that went viral after Dr. Phil, to re-humanize her, and to frame some of her current challenges in a less sensational perspective. I appreciated the kindness and respect with which this piece treats her. It seems clear that she is not completely well, but she has a community (and a loyal fan base) that is looking out for her. Until we get a proper biography I'll take this!

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Re: Shelley Duvall

#21 Post by Aunt Peg » Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:16 am

The article in The Hollywood Report is great.

Though it also doesn't mentioned that she was inducted into the Texas Hall of Fame earlier this year and her brother Stewart accepted the award on her behalf.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Shelley Duvall

#22 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Feb 12, 2021 8:01 pm

ianthemovie wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:58 pm
hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:50 pm
Turns out, the WHOLE series is up on Facebook.
Last I checked they're all up on YouTube as well! And I own them on DVD. I used to love renting The Nightingale as a kid. It's actually quite evocative and haunting in places. But the largely white cast in "yellow-face" would certainly not fly today!
I didn't realize they were on DVD, and the packages are very impressive! I guess like so many of the television box sets from ten years back, they're unlikely to come back into print. I was surprised to see that Joan Micklin Silver wrote the script for The Nightingale and Van Dyke Parks is credited with the music! I've never read the story, but it felt like it was fleshed out with a lot of personal touches on the part of Passer, Silver and everyone else involved, particularly the humor.

I forgot that Duvall was in Burton's original Frankenweenie short - it looks like that experience led her to ask Burton to direct a later episode of this series.

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