shelley
Originally uploaded by becklerg.
You know I am hard up when I am blogging about celebrities. I watched the Shining DVD and there is an extra little feature that Kubrick's daughter filmed that is mildly entertaining. What blew my mind is how beautiful Shelley Duvall looked in the interviews. She seriously had the most perfect peaches and cream complexion and these giant (OK, slightly buggy) hazel eyes. Kubrick fans may remember that she was a huge pain in his ass and the doc. shows her faking a panic attack or something and laying on the ground to get attention and claiming that her hair is getting ripped out in the scene where she tries to escape through the bathroom window. She claims it's "hunks of hair" and Kubrick holds two strands of hair up to the camera and smirks. I was not able to find any pictures on the internet that are that flattering, though. The End.
I've always thought Shelley Duvall was pretty, she kind of (kind of) reminds me of my mom in the 70s. I really reall like her in that Altman movie, 3 Women, she was sooooo good in that movie!!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, in case anyone thinks they are having a bad day at work...I'd like to top you by pointing out that I have to babysit my boss's kid for a couple of hours!!!!!!!!! At the end of the day! Friday!!! I can't say no, because it's during my scheduled work day, so he knows I don't have to be anywhere else! I'd be forced to say, "no, i just don't want to." And to make it even worse, he just mentioned to me causally that his kid is sick. "Oh, so by the way, he's a little sick. But, you know, kids always are...so..." Nice, really classy.
-michele
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.
ReplyDelete-michele
the sonic youth record label ecstatic peace has been using an old picture of shelley duval in their 'zine ads recently, and she looks sooooooo fine!
ReplyDeleteShe looks pretty fine here:
ReplyDeletehttp://sentstarr.tripod.com/beatgirls/shel3.jpg
-michele
Did anyone see her as Olive Oil in Popeye?--pretty fine there I guess (not the acting though) :(
ReplyDeleteThere was a girl at the hippy school my folks worked at in the very early 80s who had a crush on me who looked like Ms Duvall in the Shining. (Although her hair was more cared-for than Shelly's) Sadly, I spurned her advances. Not that I was ready for her (she was 16, I was 12) but it was a little shallow of me. Still, Shelly looked good for real and this one looked like Shelly in the Shining for real, so she creeped me out a little. The pic makes her look alluring.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be tough to get over that voice though.
Ed
She's pretty cute in Annie Hall.
ReplyDeleteAh, Shelly, one of the queens of the Golden Era of Altman, including the utterly absurd and great "Brewster McCloud," which is the one I haven't seen in a long, long time (it used to turn up on Channel 40 quite a bit 25 years ago, back when they were fond of running things like uncut versions of "Network" and "The Deer Hunter" without much explanation or promotion.)
ReplyDeleteBut mostly, she'll have a place in my heart for singing "He's Large" in "Popeye," the film that answered the question, "Hey suppose Altman tried to make a kids' film?" although I'm not sure anyone really came up with that query in the first place.
Shelley Duvall is the creepiest looking lady who's roamed the earth.
ReplyDeletethe best scene in vivian kubrick's THE SHINING doc is when kubrick chews shelley out because she wasn't on cue during the front door snowstorm sequence. his brooklyn accent really comes out during this moment and i always remember it when i think of kubrick. in michael ciment's book, he discusses how kubrick gave shelley a hard time on the set so as to put her in the right frame of mind; woody allen, evidently, uses similar tactics with his actors. "sex with you is very kafkaesque" is probably her best line.
ReplyDeletehey michele-
ReplyDeletedid i ever tell you about the time that i took my boss's friends kid and grandma to a soccer game? after work? but to be fair, i agreed to it in exchange for an afternoon off.
another fun shelley duvall tidbit is that altman discovered her working in a store in houston.
>>another fun shelley duvall tidbit is that altman discovered her working in a store in houston
ReplyDeleteKinda like John Waters' "discovery" of Edith Massey, eh? favorite of her non-lines, "Edith hands money to cop!"
naked!
ReplyDeletehttp://members.fortunecity.com/johnrobinson8/scansd/duvall/duv-s2.jpg
I thought the Altman story sounded fishey, as I had believed her to be Robert Duval's daughter. Her daddy is Robert Duval, but not the actor Rober Duval. Ha! So I learned something today, and I saw Shelley Duval naked.
ReplyDeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteI know you know you have a great many more readers than posters on this blog. But the comments seem to come from a small coterie of friends...so apologies in advance if I'm stepping on anyone's toes, acting out of turn, crashing a party...or any other metaphor along those lines that vaguely applies.
But I feel compelled to write a short note, because it did my heart good to see a blog post about Shelley Duvall -- one of my favorite actresses (I'm a huge Altman fan, and obviously HE was a huge Duvall fan) and also a rare celebrity who I had the pleasure to meet.
To qualify: I worked in the L.A. film industry for about five years in the early/mid 90s, and met a number of "movie stars." But meeting Shelley Duvall was a genuine pleasure. She was sweet and very earnest about making film/television. She was also, I must say, stunningly beautiful in person. Her detractors, be damned!
I was working at a special effects studio when I met her. I was the Director of Purchasing -- a department head, but a decidely unglamorous job; I dealt with purchase orders, pick-ups and deliveries, and such. But it had fallen on our department, in typical L.A. fashion, to make "fruit and cheese" trays whenever a director or actor would come through with a project that we might bid on. At the time, Ms. Duvall was still producing her fairytale series for HBO, and was looking for a new outfit to produce some of the effects. Normally, such work -- on video! The shame! -- would have been beneath us, but our CEO (who won several Oscars for his work on the original STAR WARS trilogy; you can look up his name) was a horrible businessman, and a prominent member of the John Birch Society to boot. The studio was living on borrowed time, but they were hoping that effects work on a series like Ms. Duvall's might keep the doors open a bit longer. (This was late '93/early '94.)
Despite the fact that we'd earned a reputation as a "diificult company to work with," at the time digital effects were so new and so demanding that we often found ourselves losing bids, but picking up the same work later on that was farmed out to us by other FX companies who were unable to make deadlines with their in house artists. As a result, our drivers were on the road non-stop, and it often fell to me to do the in-house tasks that they'd normally have been responsible for, per the plantation-like Hollywood hierarchy. Stuff like...delivering fruit and cheese platters.
Well, this was one time I didn't mind doing grunt work. NASHVILLE, one of my top ten movies, had just played at the New Beverly Cinema -- and of course I'd been there for the screening -- so Ms. Duvall was fresh in my mind. I was very excited that I might get a chance to meet her. And sure enough, after dropping off the platter in the conference room, I bumped into her. She was lost, and looking for the ladies' room...
As I led her down the hallway, I told her I had just seen NASHVILLE again, and was bowled over by it, as always. She stopped and told me what an amazing experience it was working on the film, how everybody in the cast and crew felt like they weren't just making a movie: they were doing a public service because the Presidential election was the following year, and they all thought the film might make a real difference. And she was obviously glad that the message of the film still resonated...
Anyhoo...sorry for crashing the party, but that's my little Shelley Duvall story. People I know in Massachusetts, where I grew up, always ask me if I met any celebrities when I lived in L.A., and who was my favorite. When I tell them "Shelley Duvall," they're always disappointed. Sure, she's not a "name" these days. But she was a genuinely nice person, she made some amnazing films with one of the greatest American directors, and she produced a ground-breaking cable series for several years.
Oh, and for those with a semi-prurient interest in Ms. Duvall, you might want to check out Altman's THIEVES LIKE US. It's been a long time since I saw it, but I seem to remember her washing herself in a little metal bathtub at some point in the film.
Take care,
J.
P.S. We screen rare/foreign/art films every Sunday at Kabinet: 25th and R in Midtown. NASHVILLE isn't scheduled yet, but it's on my list.
It's funny, knowing nothing off Shelley Duvall other than as a performer in movies, it doesn't surprise me much that she'd be like that in person. Just seems as though she might be that way.
ReplyDeleteOddly, "Nashville" will also make me think of presidential elections -- it's my favorite of all Altman's films, and one of my four of five favorite movies of all time, although for some reason I never had a chance to see it until my early 20s (I've never, ever seen it air on broadcast, pay or cable TV in decades unless I'm just a moron; I have no idea if there's a rights problem or if Altman controls it to an extent that he's kept it that way) and by sheer somethin-or-other it played at the then-art house theatre where I worked (in a faded, horridly aged original print, but who cares) about two weeks before the '92 election, smack in an era in which the "Replacement Party's" Hal Phillip Walker in the film could've had half of his lines written by Ross Perot. It was sort of uncanny. Anyhow, anyone who's never seen that film is doing themselves a disservice -- I don't think I've ever stumbled across a movie that hits right on the head the idea of how celebrity, politics, voyerurism, violence and the longing for fame can intersect in America. And like "Network," from the same era, it can say it was pretty prescient about a lot of things. Catchier songs than "Network," however..
I think she's pretty.. but not in a normal way... check this--->
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fawngehweiler.com/blog/uploaded_images/shelley5.jpg
C-you..-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Pretty or ugly ? .. Well, ya know, there's actually a little truth to both in her case, cause she's that rare kind of woman who's sort of a combination of both! The ugliest thing about her was her teeth. So then she was really pretty when she had her mouth closed,.. but when her mouth was opend she'd look like Nosferatue the vampire! I think that pretty well sums it up.
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