sally field's memoir in pieces +

I bought the Sally Field book because I thought it would give me some insight into television in the 60s and 70s and it was more engaging and entertaining than I had imagined it would be. Field is a woman who grew up in the 60s, was not educated, is very smart - sorry to say those four things are likely to make a particular outcome but the last thing, and a certain je ne sais quoi (sorry I know that's a copout) allows In Pieces to rise above the miasma of movie star memoirs. One thing I find particularly fascinating is what's not in there that everyone knows, so she does not map out her memories or her own story on touchpoints that the fans expect - best example being the 1984 'you like me' speech which came after her second Oscar, for Places in the Heart. Not even countenanced, not important, and it's not modesty or false modesty - she has no trouble going deep into discussing herself or her achievements or triumphs - it's just not relevant to the narrative here. Perhaps even more interesting is that unless I missed it I am pretty sure she mentions Forrest Gump once, in a list of movies she was in, and possibly does not even mention Places in the Heart at all. People like Pete Duel, who was her costar in Gidget (Moondoggie) who killed himself in the early 70s (after watching his own performance in some tv show, but apparently because he was so miserable about being an alcoholic) does not even get a mention (I only know about this story because I watched a youtube clip of her on The View talking briefly about him). She puts quite a bit of work into discussing Don Porter, who played her father on the show, so it's not like she doesn't want to discuss the era or the backstage politics or related things (eg that the Monkees, who were shooting on the adjoining lot, were a bunch of patronising, sexist, insecure dicks). Other odd things relating to Gidget which I noted both in this book and in the surrounding publicity - she mentions that she came up with Gidget's catchphrase 'toodles' (I mean, genius move right) but does not make the connection that her evil stepfather Jock Moloney called her 'Doodle'. I mean, different uses obviously but not a million miles from the same word.* 

I can't remember when I first watched Gidget. It was being repeated in April 1977 and I do vaguely recall a Gidget-Get Smart double bill at that time, but it was also being shown when I was in my late teens (Channel 7 started showing it at 5:30 in the afternoon very late - like, 30 December late - in 1982, and kept that going into the summer of '83).** The show had a lot of vigour and I suppose the weirdest thing looking back is that I was indulging in the same kind of nostalgia for a time I had existed in but not been sentient for: the last episode of the original Gidget series screened in the states on the day after my 1st birthday. In the early 80s, so when I was 17 - early 20s, and really enthused about alt-60s things most obviously the Velvet Underground, I remember people talking about bands I liked which are now seen as consummately 80s as being 'sixties' bands - The Church, The Go-Betweens, The Triffids, Huxton Creepers, Hoodoo Gurus. I think this might have been more to do with instrumentation than anything, though I guess it might also have related to hairstyles (long or short, it was usually 'natural', not sculpted and bizarre like 'modern' groups had). I also engaged with the 60s as a wellspring of cool via for instance Ciao Manhattan, which I went to see (I think) at the Valhalla in Richmond, or the various rock film marathons at the Valhalla (seeing Let it Be, Monterey Pop, fucking Woodstock etc). I could not hack The Flying Nun and unsurprisingly SF was repelled by the whole shebang (although once again, experiences during the making of that show make part of a revelatory narrative and it is during her Flying Nun time that she starts to attend Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio West, at the invitation of her FN costar Madeleine Sherwood). 

Such a horrible show.

So I am not sure whether I was introduced to Gidget in 1977 (I'm leaning towards that, tbh) or 1982. If it was 1977 that was probably my introduction to Sally Field because I know I not only saw Sybil in the cinema but also read the book (!!!). SF talks about this as a 4-hour two part TV series but I remembered a movie, and looking through the newspapers I see that yes, it was screening at the Rivoli in Camberwell (that was probably where I saw it, though who knows) in early 1978. (It also screened at the Valhalla in July 1979 on a double bill with Bergman's Face to Face though I definitely didn't see that, or at least, I've never seen Face to Face). I also saw Norma Rae when it was released, probably 1979. As I formulated a canon of 'stars' and made the subset of actors I liked, she was a part of that subset, not that I have followed her later career extraordinarily closely I have to say (going by her memoir, it hasn't meant much to her either). 

In her interview on The View, SF said the book was really more about, and a tribute to, her mother. Margaret Field comes across (not unnaturally) as a complex person with an acting background and a drinking problem, somewhat detached but more damaged than cruel: reading between the lines (and sometimes, reading the actual lines) you come to see that Margaret's inability to emotionally connect with her children is most likely more to do with her own mother's emotional failures than anything else (and her mother was poorly parented as well). Still, it's a failing. I think SF runs a nice line between not letting Margaret off the hook, and showing that the hook was really the culprit (if that's what letting someone off the hook means). SF's stepfather was sexually and emotionally abusive, to an extent she only reveals to her mother very late in life (although Margaret was somewhat aware and claimed that a partial admission from the man in question ended the marriage). Not to be glib but he also sounds like a really tiresome person to be around, although I admire SF's tentative steps into fudging territory whereby she makes many references to him as a motivating and inspirational force. She also suggests in one passage which is the kind of thing Chrissie Hynde got a lot of stick for that she was (within the parameters of an understanding that she was not equipped to give consent) a participant in some of the sexual abuse, though she does also, and I get this, necessarily articulate how difficult it is for her to completely own her memories. 

Most intriguingly, she talks a lot about her tendency to retain archives of her own life - letters, scrapbooks, diaries (her own and others') - but to only partially examine them. Indeed, that she kept diaries is only revealed once, way late in the text, and she seems to have trouble negotiating between the unreliability of her own memory and her own knowledge that she was not necessarily entirely truthful to herself in her diary keeping. 

It is also often difficult to be entirely sure what she wants us to understand about her relationship with the various men she's been involved with over time, and this does take up a lot of the book, but is not entirely resolved I'd say, particularly as she talks a lot about the beginnings and only summarily about the endings. Burt Reynolds sounds like a complete dick, and SF doesn't distinguish herself there either, being apparently a real enabler. Her first marriage, to a childhood sweetheart, is described with greater complexity and some wistfulness. Her second marriage is painted as dreary, and I'm not sure what we're meant to make of this, although I will note that she didn't publish her book until after Reynolds died and I think both the ex-husbands are still alive, so maybe she is just being politick. 

I also suspect, once again reading between the lines, that she was a better mother herself than she gives herself credit for, with all the necessary problems inherent in the stop-start world of the entertainment industry.

OK so I'm not writing a review just rambling and I have a day ahead of me in which things have to be done, Nancy and Helmi are genuinely playing/sniffing each other/enjoying the sunlight, so like them I feel optimistic about our little family here, also some of my houseplants seem to have revived and, while I have shitty work commitments next week, that's next week, not today or tomorrow, so... into the day peeps.

* Blogger won't allow me to left-justify this paragraph for some reason 

**By the way looking at the TV listings for Channel 7 in 82/83 I was shocked to see that Class of '74, of all things, was being rerun at 9am at this time. Did these people have no pride?! I guess not. Why even expect them to.