That god-awful movie where Mare Winningham is on welfare..

God Bless the Child

File under DRAMA

MARY!

That's funny because in St. Elmo's Fire, Mare plays a social worker handing out welfare checks. One client advises Mare to get some hot clothes so she can get a man.

Wow, I didn't know Mos Def was in this.

MARE-Y!

I never liked Mare Winningham. There's just something about her.

Looking back, TV movies could be pretty grim. I think Christine Lahti did a similar film a few years later, but this time it was the entire family on the streets.

Mare was excellent in this and I remember even back in the late '80s, I was surprised she didn't receive an Emmy nomination.

She went on to do a movie where she's accused of making child porn simply because she took pictures of her kids in the tub.

Mare's career is very interesting. She didn't look very young in St. Elmo's Fire.

One of her earlier TV movies (1981) was written by Barbara Turner (Jennifer Jason Leigh's mom) and had her legally emancipating herself from her family and then hooking up with a carny. It was called "Freedom" and was pretty heavy, but the first half was well done. Turner later wrote the script for "Georgia", which had great roles for Leigh and Winningham.

She was last seen in Mildred Pierce with that horrible Winslet woman.

She looks like their mother.

R12 Uhm no she’s done other shit in the 10yrs since then.

She spent the welfare money on new clothes to go man hunting?! Lol. Well that’s a little better than using it on drugs or selling the food stamps/WIC for drugs then getting a food box.

What the fuck is a food box?

She mentions to her daughter that she is tired of hustling and tired of being alone. Welfare queens need love too.

In one particularly disturbing scene, the daughter is at a neighbor's house during dinner time. The neighbor has several kids of her own and serves each one except Mare's daughter. She tells Mare's daughter that she is sorry but her own mother needs to feed her when she goes back home. The daughter sits there watching them eat with sorrow in her eyes. These tv movies were brutal.

The most heartbreaking two and a half minutes of television I’ve ever seen.

Mare is the Meryl of tv movies.

I want to see her play Linda Ronstadt with Parkinson’s.

Is her name pronounced “Mary” or “Mare” like the female horse?

Speaking one of horses, she was pretty good as Joshua Jackson’s mom, Sherry, a horse farm owner, in The Affair. But yeah, she could have been playing middle aged moms in her 20s.

Speaking of grim made-for-TV movies, I vaguely remember another one with Linda Hamilton playing a woman with AIDS who may or may not have a child and may or may not be homeless at some point.

No love for Mare as a teen prostitute in Off the Minnesota Strip?

A teen whore? I am in awe of Mare's career. She really has done it all.

R21 "Mare" like the female horse.

R16 Charity food box. Family cupboard pantry. You know... where your family ate from the second half of the month every month.

[quote]What the fuck is a food box?

It's the poor girl's version of a snack purse.

Saw this as a kid. We never had money for luxuries like clothes, or a nice TV or trips or toys, but we always had a roof over our heads and plenty to eat. I never understood real poverty until I saw this movie.