WHIT STILLMAN (& CHRIS EIGEMAN)
Like caviar or triple-malt scotch, the films of Whit Stillman are rarified, WASPy treats best savored while the rest of the world noshes on Big Macs and beer. Around the time Richard Linklater was eavesdropping on his beloved Austin eccentrics in Slacker and Kevin Smith was chronicling the lives of hyper-articulate, dirty-minded New Jersey wage slaves in Clerks, Stillman’s indie debut, Metropolitan, focused on yet another chatty, self-contained subculture: the privileged debutantes and awkward urban haute bourgeoisie of the Upper East Side twentysomething social circuit. Dry, sardonic Chris Eigeman and nervous, schleppy Taylor Nichols were Metropolitan’s standouts, and Stillman wisely paired the sweet-and-sour comic duo as brothers in his follow-up, Barcelona, a witty, extremely low-concept picaresque about boorish Americans abroad in 1980s Spain. Eigeman also starred in The Last Days of Disco, the final installment of the director’s overeducated white people trilogy (and also his last film to date). For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, given its thematic and tonal similarity to its predecessors, Disco (which also features Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard) was considered a disappointment by most fans and critics (if not by Stillman himself, who enjoyed the tale of bed and club-hopping yuppies enough to retell the story again a few years later as a fake roman-a-clef in the voice of one of the film’s characters). Sadly, Stillman’s vision was too wordy, insular and quirky even for art house audiences, making it impossible in recent years for him to finance subsequent projects, the worst result of which (to my way of thinking) is the resultant lack of good roles for the hilarious (and criminally underused) Eigeman. Yet the Internet Movie Database says that Stillman is currently adapting Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and though no cast is listed yet, with luck maybe it’s a good sign that Eigeman (recently Spirit Award-nominated for his directorial debut, Turn the River) will someday appear in front of the camera again and not just behind it.
BROOKE ADAMS
In the late '70s and early '80s, Adams' dark-haired beauty, sense of fun, and tantalizing hint of neurosis (in such films as Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Tell Me a Riddle, The Dead Zone, and Almost You) made her the thinking horndog's indie movie star of choice, but then she drifted out of sight. She only turned up in movies a couple of times during the '90s, most notably in Alison Anders's 1992 Gas Food Lodging. That same year, she married Tony Shalhoub, with whom she had a daughter the next year. In 2002, she had her only big movie role of recent years in Made-Up, a charming but barely seen comedy that Shalhoub co-starred in and directed, from a script by her sister, Lynne Adams. About the only other way to have gazed on her in recent years would be to monitor Shalhoub's TV series; she's made guest appearances on both Wings and Monk. So long as they're happy, I'm happy. I miss her, though.
MARE WINNINGHAM
In 1985, Winningham co-starred in the prototypical Brat Pack movie St. Elmo's Fire, when she was 26. Dramatically, she was at a disadvantage for being cast as the least emotional, mildest mannered of the seven lead characters, though she also had an edge in that she was the only one of the movie's stars, besides Ally Sheedy, who could act a lick. (At the time, anyway: Rob Lowe had his moments fifteen years later on The West Wing.) Winningham has the kind of virtues that can easily be cast as negatives, but she's such a capable, talented actress that her honesty and decency can seem radiant and illuminating rather than starchy and prim; to fully appreciate her, check out the 1995 Georgia, where her superb performance as a hard-working, mess-cleaning musician can be viewed aside Jennifer Jason Leigh's gruesomely self-immolating, exhibitionistic display as her self-immolating sister. The worst thing that could ever be said of Winningham is that her honorable acting style has sometimes failed to make the dull, underwritten roles she's been stuck with seem livelier than they are, but anyone who saw her as the unconventional love of Anthony Edwards' life in Miracle Mile (1989) or the blubbering girlfriend who's quick to dump the jobless Timothy Hutton in Made in Heaven (1987) knows that her gifts include a wild streak. As she enters her middle years -- she turns fifty next year -- it sure would be something to get to see the nice girl be given the chance to cut the hell loose.
PAMELA REED
It's easy to imagine aspiring directors in Hollywood being sent forth into the valley armed with one basic, flawless piece of no-brainer advice: if you have a scene that you want the audience to stay awake for, stick Pamela Reed onscreen. Since 1980, her first year in movies, inviting David Carradine and Sonny Landham to have a knife fight for her honor (Carradine: "What does the winner get?" Reed: "Nothin' you ain't both already had.") in The Long Riders and presenting Paul La Mat with a marriage proposal that should have come with a free toaster in Melvin and Howard, she's been practically storming off the screen and slapping the cell phones out of people's hands. Why has this woman never been offered the chance to carry a movie? Is it thought that a woman with her energy and internal strength would alienate audiences if they had to put up with her for more than a few scenes at a time? Sure, that makes sense: it's not as if Bette Davis had a career. But I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be grateful for what we get of her, especially given that she's spent most of the past decade hanging around TV sets. This did give her the chance to revive one of her greatest roles, the fully caffeinated political campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh of Robert Alman's Tanner '88 and its 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. On the other hand, that Jericho thing didn't do anybody any good. She belongs on the big screen, where she can take on dragons big enough to make it seem like a fair fight (as does her co-star from Tanner and The Right Stuff, Veronica Cartwright, and Amy Madigan, another actress who doesn't need to chug kerosene before she arrives on the set to breathe fire).
PIPER PERABO
Can it really be called a comeback if a star never quite hit it big in the first place? Consider the sad case of Piper Perabo. In 2000, she was being called Hollywood's It Girl, with two high-profile projects on the horizon. Unfortunately for her, those projects were The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Coyote Ugly. The former was a notorious stinker in which Perabo's performance got lost amid the second-rate animation and hammy turns from Robert DeNiro and Rene Russo. The latter was a modest success, but one that had less to do with its nominal lead than audiences flocking to see scantily-clad dancing female bartenders. Having gained no momentum whatsoever from her alleged star-making vehicles, Perabo's career quickly hit the skids, with the actress appearing in a string of lame-brained thrillers and forgettable comedies, with the occasional supporting role in the Steve Martin-headed Cheaper By the Dozen franchise. Eight years after being declared the Next Big Thing, Perabo was last seen playing second banana to a cast of talking Chihuahuas. Frankly, that's a shame, because despite the disappointing trajectory of her career, Perabo remains a vibrant, fetching actress with an infectious smile and a surprisingly soulful side. Just look at her brief appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige -- as Hugh Jackman's ill-fated lover, Perabo brings more genuine spark and feeling to her role than her more tabloid-friendly costar Scarlett Johansson could hope to muster. Even better is 2001's Lost and Delirious, a mostly forgotten Canadian film about teenage sexuality in an ivy-covered boarding school. Perabo steals the show as Paulie, a rebellious young woman nursing a hopeless love for her reluctant classmate. It's a performance that's so white-hot with intensity and charged with eroticism that she eventually becomes more than the film can really take. So why exactly was she last seen in a movie that called for her to bark into a telephone? Your guess is as good as ours.
Click Here For Part One, Three & Four
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark