[Tom Sawyer]

...should play Sylvia Plath. She resembles Plath more than Paltrow does.

Behold:

[Kevin Street]

There's certainly a resemblance. But sadly, Bertram's name on the marquee just wouldn't have drawn people in like Paltrow's.

Have you seen "Sylvia," Masked Coyote? I've heard that it's a so-so movie.

[Godeskian]

Kevin Street, on Sep 3 2005, 09:00 AM, said:

There's certainly a resemblance. But sadly, Bertram's name on the marquee just wouldn't have drawn people in like Paltrow's.

Have you seen "Sylvia," Masked Coyote? I've heard that it's a so-so movie.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It would draw some people

[Tom Sawyer]

Kevin Street, on Sep 3 2005, 02:00 AM, said:

There's certainly a resemblance. But sadly, Bertram's name on the marquee just wouldn't have drawn people in like Paltrow's.

Have you seen "Sylvia," Masked Coyote? I've heard that it's a so-so movie.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have not...though I am quite the student of Plath's work. I saw some clips from "Sylvia" and it just didn't grab me. Plus, I'm not into Ted Hughes bashing like so many are.

This post has been edited by The Masked Coyote: 03 September 2005 - 12:53 PM

[Kevin Street]

Ted Hughes was her husband, right? Isn't he the guy that got her work published posthumously?

[Tom Sawyer]

Yeah. Former Poet Laureate of the UK.

Basically, he screwed around on her with another female poet. Sylvia seperated from him, but went into the deep end of a bipolar attack during one of London's worst winters, and committed suicide.

That left him as executor of her estate, and he made some controversial decisions about publishing her work...not the least of which was destroying her last journal that detailed the last year or so of her life.

Having an affair was wrong, in my book, but it doesn't justify the absolute venom that's been heaped on him by feminists since Plath's death. He married the other poet...she also committed suicide as well as his stepdaughter. The man went through enough grief without getting it from people who weren't privy to the situation. Plath was, in many ways, extremely difficult to get along with, and it just boils down to a tragic situation. So, I cut the man a lot of slack, and that's not just because I'm a man too.

But back on the subject, I think Bertram could handle the role. The persona of Plath as a bipolar literary genius is well within her skills. The general resemblance doesn't hurt either.

This post has been edited by The Masked Coyote: 03 September 2005 - 02:29 PM

[Kevin Street]

The Masked Coyote said:

He married the other poet...she also committed suicide as well as his stepdaughter.

Good grief. That's terrible! Talk about a bad trend.

Quote

But back on the subject, I think Bertram could handle the role.  The persona of Plath as a bipolar literary genius is well within her skills.  The general resemblance doesn't hurt either.

Yep. Maybe someday there will be another Plath movie.

[Tom Sawyer]

There's a reasonable chance. Molly Ringwald, another actress who both bore an uncanny resemblance and had the skill, wanted to make a Plath biopic back in the 80s, but Hughes k.o.ed the idea. Now Hughes is dead, and I think the entire estate fell to Frieda Hughes...their daughter...so who knows.

[SilverNeonASH]

I just think it's odd that a lot of those around him committed suicide. If he did anything for Plath, it was that he got her to be less stilted, as thing were, back in the fifties. The trouble with Sylvia, is that she'd get a good flow going and then it would hit a cul de sac. Then, it was as if she were looking up words,things would get stilted, which gave some of her pieces a very artificial feel.

This post has been edited by SilverNeonASH: 07 September 2005 - 10:33 AM

[Tom Sawyer]

SilverNeonASH, on Sep 7 2005, 10:32 AM, said:

I just think it's odd that a lot of those around him committed suicide. If he did anything for Plath, it was that he got her to be less stilted, as thing were, back in the fifties. The trouble with Sylvia, is that she'd get a good flow going and then it would hit a cul de sac. Then, it was as if she were looking up words,things would get stilted, which gave some of her pieces a very artificial feel.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I dunno...I would say that's less influence from Hughes and due more to her being in college and grad school...heavy workload. She was a work-a-holic and all that. Once she and Hughes married, they taught for a while here in the States, then moved to the UK. Once there, she had more time to fully explore her voice.

Now...if you want to talk about Hughes and his effect on women, I think he served as a father figure for her, and when he abandoned her emotionally, she felt the whole scenario with her father was happening again, and that awakened the "Bitch Goddess."

[SilverNeonASH]

From her last letter, home to her mother, she complains about the german AuPair, who was "food-fussy" and "boy gaga". She had also gotten a reviewing program to be done in May. She was deeply disapointed, that the reviews for her book, the Belljar, were not more glowing. She had a bad episode and the doctor stuffed some pills down her throat. Psychotropics in those days, were nothing short of a lobotomy in a pill. I think she was upset that she was not going to make deadline, and decided to end it all, rather than not deliver.

This post has been edited by SilverNeonASH: 07 September 2005 - 10:57 PM

[Tom Sawyer]

I have never seen any evidence of that. In fact, the rabid pace of production in her last few weeks...sometimes two or three poems a day...leads me to think otherwise.

Plath was chronically depressed. The fact that she hung out with the neighbor downstairs until well into the morning leads me to believe her suicide was a snap decision and not driven by any real world pressures.

This post has been edited by CoyoteUgly: 07 September 2005 - 11:52 PM