Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis, 1992).
Anna: How about a nice collagen buff?
Madeline: “A collagen buff”? You might as well ask me to wash with soap and water!
Anna: I could do your make-up myself…
Madeline: Make-up is pointless. It does nothing anymore! Are you even listening to me? Do you even care? You stand there with your 22-year-old skin and your tits like … like ROCKS and laugh at me…
Madeline: Wrinkled, wrinkled little star. Hope they never see the scars.
Helen: You? You couldn’t lift an eyebrow without major surgery.
Madeline Ashton: What’d she call this one. Forever Young?
Rose: I like that title.
Madeline Ashton: Pfft! “Forever young” — and eternally fat.
Madeline: Bottoms up! (drinks potion)
Lisle von Rhaden: Now, a warning —
Madeline: Now a warning?!
This is a noteworthy film for me because, besides being hilarious and featuring fun performances by some of my favorite actors, it’s the first movie in which I ever saw Isabella Rossellini.
When I found out that on top of being crazy-beautiful, she is Ingrid Bergman’s daughter (she and her twin resulted from a marriage whose scandalous origins nearly got the great Bergman blackballed), I was totally blown away.
However, today’s brief research turned up a surprising fact about what was, for me, one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, when Isabella in the role of Lisle von Rhaden, the sorceress who provides eternal youth to the materialistic L.A. clientele shown in the film, emerges naked from a pool in a rear view.
Come to find out all these years later, it was not Isabella. A body double was used in the scene. It was a chick named Catherine Bell. Even today, at 57, the lovely and talented Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini still makes annual lists of “Most beautiful women,” so I can only guess that either (a) Ms. Rossellini’s modesty forbade her to bare all and she requested the body double because she had enough clout between her talent and her lineage to demand that kind of thing, or, (b) her actual ass was so mind-meltingly terrific that the studio felt it would be irresponsible to expose it to the viewing public, fearing it might spark riots, mind control, and catatonia. Almost definitely (b), wouldn’t you say?
Helen: That was totally uncalled for.
Ernest: She’s dead!
Madeline: She is? Oh, these are the moments that make life worth living.
Madeline: I hurt you. And I’m sorry.
Helen: I hurt you, and I‘m sorry.
Helen: Do you remember where you parked the car?
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