I was out for dinner two years ago with a friend when he announced, out of nowhere, that HBO were turning Grey Gardens (1975) into a made-for-TV movie, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Seething into my soup, I unleashed a barrage of questions – for starters, who would have the bravado to commit such a celluloid atrocity? Like all significant moments in one’s life, I’ll never forget where I was when I heard this news.
Grey Gardens has earned its cult status because of the eccentric, fascinating and often hilarious central characters of Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, known as the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Onassis. This mother and daughter duo first came to light after stories of their ramshackle house hit the news and it was revealed that these blue blooded women were living in squalor. On reading these stories, Albert and David Maysles (who at this point had made the seminal Salesman (1968) and Gimme Shelter (1970) approached the Beales, asking to make a documentary on their life at Grey Gardens, a crumbling East Hampton estate. With delusions of becoming film stars, the women agreed.
But why take two remarkable characters and turn them into fiction? Writer and director of the remake, Michael Sucsy, has explained how he wanted to further explore their lives. Admittedly, Sucsy has a point; anyone who’s watched the 1975 film will no doubt wonder how these women went from debutante balls and lobster dinners, to pet racoons and home-made couture. In their youth both women were handsome, with charmed lives and aristocratic suitors. But Big Edie’s failed marriage left her lonely and she turned to her daughter for solace and companionship.
With hints to their past, I can understand why Sucsy wanted to investigate the Beale myth. But isn’t it the mystery that makes them so alluring? Is it not more satisfying to sit back and wonder how people grow into those they become? What often splits an audience is their preference for storytelling; some want explanatory endings, others prefer the Raymond Carver approach – a snapshot of a moment which allows your imagination to fill the gaps. Surely Sucsy’s account would be full of subjective presumptions?
No more than the Maysles’. It is widely acknowledged amongst filmmakers that documentaries can, and never will be, objective. The act of editing or selecting a shot reveals the director’s narrative direction. However, of all the styles of documentary filmmaking, cinéma vérité has often been regarded as the most “truthful”. With its fly-on-the-wall sensibility, the technique prides itself on honesty. In Peter Wintonick’s documentary Cinema Vérité: Defining the Moment (1999), the director claims, ‘The cinéma vérité revolution opened a window onto real life and real issues. It freed the documentary from stilted, staged shots’. With this in mind, Grey Gardens seemed like an odd candidate for a fictional make-over.
The HBO movie received rave reviews after it aired on 18 April 2009, and from what I’ve seen, Barrymore and Lange give well-studied performances. However, I am less interested in comparing the two in terms of superiority and more concerned with how this example highlights the idea of an essential truth in documentaries. There has often been this notion of documentaries being of a higher calibre of filmmaking than fiction film because they somehow bypass falsity. This debate is deftly illustrated in a scene from Alexander Payne’s film Sideways (2004) where Miles, the lead, is talking to his friend’s wedding guest about a novel’s he’s just finished.
Mike: What is the subject of your book? Non-fiction?
Miles: Uh, no. It’s… it’s a novel. Fiction. Yes. Although there is quite a bit from my own life… so I suppose that, technically some of it is nonfiction.
Mike: Good I like non-fiction. There is so much to know about this world. I think you read something somebody just invented, waste of time.
Miles: That’s an interesting perspective.
This scene is anecdotal, but reveals a common snobbery surrounding documentaries. If our existential longing stems from a need for an absolute truth, then it’s no surprise that documentaries are often heralded as a higher art form. Werner Herzog talks about searching for an ‘Ecstatic Truth’ in his films. This has nothing to do with facts, but a profound truth experienced on a fundamental level. Herzog admits to constructing scenes in his documentaries in order to try and reach this Ecstatic Truth, arguing that such manipulation is not a betrayal to the form. With this in mind, I consider my own preconceptions of the Grey Gardens remake. Did I dismiss it too readily? Perhaps Sucsy reveals more about these characters and the human condition than the Maysles. Until I watch Grey Gardens (2009) I can’t be sure, but one thing’s for certain, it made me sit up and think – for that alone, it should be commended.
