Ordinary People (1980) Mother And Son

Tim always said MTM was a remarkably soulful human being between takes, and she was always patient with him as he sorted out how to react when she flipped the switch from sweet lady to icy character. He was able to think and act like "Mommy, why are you suddenly so mean?"

Redford kept him isolated on this set, and told everyone to be frosty or ambivalent with the young actor on his first real movie. It freaked him the fuck out, but it drew out an authentically lonely and lost performance.

He's so cute when he yells at her next to the Christmas tree.

"Goddamn SPAIN, and-and Goddamn PORTUGAL!"

You lied every time you came into this house at 6.30! If its starting all over again, the lying, the covering up, the disappearing for hours, I won't stand for it, I can't stand for it, I really can't!

They need to release this on Blu-Ray.

Too bad there was never a Buck naked shot.

Here's the obit for the actor who played Buck. Sounds like he was family IRL.

Watching these scenes 40 years after first seeing the movie, makes me realize how amazing MTM was in this role.

The child of alcoholics, MTM was an uptight control freak in real life whose own son killed himself.

I wouldn’t say she was so much “amazing,” performance wise, as she was simply well cast.

Wasn't Mary really just playing an exaggerated version of herself? Cold, distant, unapproachable. It's been said that she was much more like Beth Jarrett than Mary Richards.

Watching it many years later I am also impressed by how good Donald Sutherland is in it. MTM and Timothy got all the praise and publicity when it first came out. But Donald actually did a great job. His character is very loving and compassionate. And I love how he slowly begins to realize what a cold bitch Beth is, and kicks her snatchy ass to the curb.

She WAS a good actress for coming across so believably on the MTM show. I want to remember her as that lovable character, Mary Richards.

"Ordinary People" was beautifully produced.

The actor who played Buck wasn’t married and he doted on his nieces and nephews?

All I can say is it is and always has been my favorite movies - how I gauge a great movie is when I say there are no boring parts. for 41 years I have loved it. As a young gayling, I was enthralled by MTM's performance. And forgive me I wanted to be like Beth Jarrett. That perfectionism is what I have always striven for. From her look - 80's perfection, to the perfectly organized drawer with the napkins and napkin rings. The cinematography is hypnotizing.

Buck NEVER would've taken it up the butt!

(More than a few times and maybe occasionally when he was drunk or smoking pot...and only from really cute guys)

At the time and even now, I thought Judd Hirsch was the one casting mistake. He veers into tv movie territory in his scenes. Someone older and with more presence would have been better. Theodore Bikel, who wasn't getting a lot of film or stage parts in those days would have been better.

Sutherland is pretty remarkable. he seemed to take roles that went against type in those days (Midwestern suburban dad was not his brand). He actually would have been good as the psychiatrist of some one else had gotten the father roles.

R9: LIke most actors, she was playing a version of herself.

Ann-Marget should have been cast instead. She could act circles around MTM and didn’t have any emotional baggage.

[quote]Buck NEVER would've taken it up the butt!

Buck never would've TAKEN it up the butt!

Get the inflection right or stop posting, R14.

Thank you for your note, R17, (Mandy Patinkin)

After reading a Bewitched thread, I wonder how Elizabeth Montgomery would have been as Beth.

I grew up with the actor who played Jared as a kid—tge scene where they fight over the sweater. I believe that makes me DL royalty.

Didn’t know him well, but same age and attended same grammar school.

Saw this one for the first time recently. Judd Hirsch seemed great as the therapist to me. Most awkward/horrific scene to me was when the husband suggested a vacation in Europe, resulting in the mother's complete, total revulsion at the idea of having the son come along.

It's incredibly well done, R13, but once was enough for me - far too disturbing!

Well, not EVERY mother can be a warm, sunny matriarch.

Some of us have challenges in our lives. Health issues. Unruly children. Pint-sized harlots!

OP - really? Why?

Ooops, I’m R20. I meant young Connor. Actor’s name is Michael Creadon. We had a surprising number of kid actors in my town who got decent roles—including one who was in Bless the Beast and the Children.

A nd an entire family of child models that were heavily featured in the annual Sears catalog. The mom looked a lot like the DL’s own Patsy Ramsey….but without the taste for blood.

The kid community was pretty miserable to these children stars—primarily out of jealousy. The family of kid models were really nice and we were just awful to them.

A good thing about the movie is that it offs the Karen.

I was a kid when this movie came out. Loved it. For me it was all about the kids. Then my oldest brother died. After seeing what that did to all of us, but especially my mom, now I see the movie through Beth’s eyes. Finding whatever comfort there is to be found in order and isolation. Sad all around.

Survivor's guilt is a real and horrible thing.

R27- Like people who survived AIDS.

If you're ever in Houston come on over and see me in my one-woman show MY SON MADE ME A MOTHER - you'll love it. You WILL love it.

Free ticket if you can prove your name is Buck!

R28 and like the guys who survived Vietnam.

[quote]Too bad there was never a Buck naked shot.

Buck would NEVER have disrobed just so you crummy homosexuals could get your jollies.

Now the OTHER one...whats-his-name...BUCK'S brother, now he CERTAINLY would do THAT sort of thing.

[quote]Ooops, I’m [R20]. I meant young Connor.

Buck never would have typed "Conrad" wrong.

I know what you're talking about, [R20]! My royalty adjacent bona fides come from being at elementary school with Patty Duke. Bonus: this was when she was prepping for Miracle Worker. And her 'guardians' WERE some of the most evil miserable bastards I ever met.

Buck was all man and would never have played the submissive role with the Lazenby boy.

There were times when Conrad would stand wearing only a tight swimsuit in front of his pervy coach.

My mother was Beth Jarrett. I found my Mother’s Day card to her when I was 7 (hand drawn) thrown away the very same day, on the top of the kitchen trash. Stone cold. This movie is like a documentary.

This, more than any movie I have ever seen, shook me to the core. It really bothered me.

After seeing it, I called my mother to say how grateful I was that she was nothing like the mother in the movie.

It was only many years later that I realized that the reason the movie unnerved me so much was that she was.

r36, dotting your i's with hearts probably gave away the fact that you were a gayling, so it's understandable that she threw it in the trash after probably vomiting up the Swanson Chicken a la King she had eaten for dinner.

[quote]R18 Thank you for your note, [R17], (Mandy Patinkin) - —You'll Be Hearing from My Agent

Sorry to stop you, but can we hear it as, “Thank you for YOUR note”?

R38, when I did come out she said, “I let go a long time ago.” This movie is a classic for a reason.

So many of you had Beth Jarrett for a mother, it's no wonder you're all so damaged and bitter and found each other on this board. Damaged attracts damaged.

Thanks for chiming in with all that empathy, Beth r41

R41 yet here you are.

In 1981 Ordinary People won the award for best picture , I believe and some people to this day thought that Raging Bull was THE best movie of 1980.

Oooo it was filmed in black and white, oooo is was set in the Bronx, oooo it starred Robert DeNiro. I thought the movie was just- meh.

A far better movie filmed in black and white was The Elephant Man. That movie was far more deserving of an academy award than Raging Bull.

Ordinary People had far more impact on me than either Raging Bull or even The Elephant Man.

I never said I wasn't damaged, but it was my dad who did the damage.

[quote] I never said I wasn't damaged, but it was my dad who did the damage.

Hot!

In addition to the masterful direction, casting and acting , the obvious element that makes this movie so exceptional is that it is very successful in its attempt to peer into and reveal how fucked-up and deeply wounding family dynamics can be. For many people, these cruel intricacies leave lasting, incisive emotional wounds that never heal. Speaking for myself, I learned how to to calcify those feelings.

I relate to certain aspects of this film so much so that sometimes, it's difficult to watch, and if I'm around 10 or 20 years from now to watch it again, it won't be any less affecting.

You should all count yourselves lucky you had a Beth Jarrett mother.

I had the mom from Sybil.

We find out why Beth Jarrett is such a COLD BITCH , when we meet her mother who's a SUPER COLD BITCH.

Grandma was an antisemite.

The great Meg Mundy played Beth's mother. Her Doctors co-star Elizabeth Hubbard was also in the movie.

ARF! ARF ARF!!

Who did La Hubbard play, R51? I don't remember her in the film.

r53 She was a guest at the Christmas party Beth and Calvin went to early in the movie. I think she had one line.

the exchange between Beth and her mother is very brief but very telling; the way grandma asks if the therapist is a Jew and Beth brushes off the question like she doesn't know or care, but it's obvious she's just trying not to notice or care. I can't imagine there were (are?) many Jews living on the North Shore. Seems kind of like Darien or New Canaan in that regard.

It's hard to remember a time before feelings and mental health were the topic of seemingly every conversation, and now social media post. Families, even those not nearly as rich as the Jarretts, just did NOT talk about that stuff until Prozac became a household name sometime in the mid-late '90s.

R55- I don't think the Jarrett's were rich. They were Upper Middle Class which is not the same thing.

That’s an ongoing problem, where “upper middle class” people falsely claim not to be rich. They need their tax rates jacked up sky high.

What did Beth do all day besides shop and go to lunch?

North Shore communities are among the most affluent in the country, R56. Considering the size of their house and the fact that Beth didn't work, I don't think adjectives like "wealthy" or "rich" are out of place.

R55 The Jarretts had a nice house, a housekeeper (fired by Beth for poor dusting), a sailboat, and TWO tasteful Oldsmobiles. They were doing okay.

R58 Beth played a lot of golf during the day. At least, she did in the novel.

Would Beth Jarrett and Mary Richards have gotten along?

Beth would've quietly mocked Mary Richards' adorable incompetence. She can't keep a man. She can't pick apartments. And she DARES to tell her peers about her personal life.

"You drink too much at parties, Calvin."

R8 MTM's son's death was accidental, as an eyewitness and the coroner later confirmed. He was a gun collector and one of them discharged while he was cleaning the barrel. The two clearly had a strained relationship and he had been in rehab, but there's no evidence that he intentionally killed himself.

Redford nailed that particular North Shore setting perfectly. Even today it's more Volvo than Range Rover.

All the President’s Men was on TV (again) the other night and this exchange (I’m paraphrasing somewhat) always sticks out to me in light of this movie:

Hoffman/Bernstein: all these pretty perfect houses, it’s hard to believe all the problems inside them.

Redford/Woodward: no it’s not.

Did Redford have any input on that screenplay at all? I know he co-produced it.

In any event he was clearly fascinated with the behind closed doors of picture perfect WASP homes for a while.

[quote]I never said I wasn't damaged, but it was my dad who did the damage.

With me, it was the Swanson Chicken a la King dinners I had to eat that did the damage...

[quote]MTM's son's death was accidental, as an eyewitness and the coroner later confirmed. He was a gun collector and one of them discharged while he was cleaning the barrel. The two clearly had a strained relationship and he had been in rehab, but there's no evidence that he intentionally killed himself.

MTM also admitted that a lot of her pain over her son Richie's death came from her feeling that she had let him down - she acknowledged that when he became a difficult teenager she sent him to live with his father. She said she felt there were times she chose her career over Richie, and that she didn't try hard enough with him. Hearing her speak about it gave me the impression she had been spent a lot of time reflecting on it all - "doing her grief work" as the folks in Hospice say and had had the benefit of a lot of good therapy herself.

[quote]MTM's son's death was accidental, as an eyewitness and the coroner later confirmed.

MTM's much younger sister Elizabeth Ann, who was actually closer in age to Moore's son Richie, did die of a drug overdose in February 1978, and it was considered a suicide.

Valerie Harper talked about catching Elizabeth and Richie smoking in her dressing room on the set of the MTM show, and said she decided to play "Aunt Rhoda" and warn them off about the smoking rather than telling Mary about it.

R6, who wrote that obit Wayland Flowers or Madam?

"His death was presaged by a red fox dancing in the twilight outside his window."

[quote]With me, it was the Swanson Chicken a la King dinners I had to eat that did the damage...

Tucker Carlson's stepmother Patricia Swanson, who married Tucker Carlson's father when Tucker was 10 years old, is an heiress to the wealth generated by the Swanson TV dinner company...

Buck would have NEVER watched the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

R71, Mandy Patinkin at R17 has some notes for you on your line reading...

[quote]Buck never would've TAKEN it up the butt!. Get the inflection right or stop posting...

Thanks, Mandy! Love your "Younger Than Springtime" Neely O'Hara impression.

My mother was definitely Beth. Not ironically I turned out the same, cold and unfeeling and definitely not able to handle mess. That movie struck too close to home.

[quote]My mother was definitely Beth. Not ironically I turned out the same, cold and unfeeling and definitely not able to handle mess. That movie struck too close to home.

Really, R74, how sad!

(Confidentially, she has crumbs in her silverware drawers and her cheap china is chipped and dirty. She doesn't even have a clue how to make French Toast!)

The scene where Beth is remembering Buck is creepy. They seemed like lovers instead of mother and son. She was flirting with him while sat there in a mini skirt and full make up. What a whore.

Beth would have masturbated in Buck's room had Conrad not appeared.

[quote]The scene where Beth is remembering Buck is creepy. They seemed like lovers instead of mother and son. She was flirting with him while sat there in a mini skirt and full make up. What a whore.

Eh, Some parents have a 'conflicted' relationship with their children...

[quote]Some parents have a 'conflicted' relationship with their children...

And some children are fat little whores who can't even stick to a Pageant Diet!

It is very possible. Beth seemed to love Buck more than her own husband. She really really really loved Buck.

R14, R31 and R71: You pussies. You're no better than Conrad.

👏🏻 GET.

👏🏻 THE.

👏🏻 INFLECTION.

👏🏻 RIGHT.

I grew up in the area this movie takes place in - not Lake Forest, specifically, but a small North Shore neighborhood about a half hour out from Chicago. Incredible portrayal of that culture. My family was solidly middle class (townhome living), but it seemed like crumbs compared to how rich some of my friends and classmates were - having pools, buying their kids brand new cars for their 16th birthday, home movie theaters. My mom was not a Beth, but the town was full of them, at the school board meetings or chaperoning school field trips. Cold, cold ladies with the specific veneer of Midwestern optimism.

R81,

"It's really important to try and hurt me isn't it?"

"His death was presaged by a red fox dancing in the twilight outside his window."

Wayland Flowers and Madam would have written an obscenity-laced rant for an obituary. "His death was presaged by an empty case of gin in the hallway and terminal syphilis. He was found in a fox-skin hat and a Dale Evans one-piece swimsuit."

R82, Glencoe? North field? Lake Bluff?

It's good that Buck died. Beth would have been a fucking monster to her daughter in law.

R6-, He looks a lot like Christopher Atkins ca. 1980.

Apparently Sutherland was originally offered the psychiatrist role by Redford but asked to play the father because it went 'against type' for him. I always thought that Beth was a villain when I read the book (I think we had to read it in junior high) and saw the film as a kid; but after watching it as an adult I think she's just absolutely terrified of unpleasant feelings, hers or anyone else's (namely Conrad's). I think the scene where she goes outside to try to speak with Conrad and he starts barking, demonstrates that she's trying because she loves Conrad (same with the French Toast, buying the sweaters) but just cannot 'go there' and as the story progresses she gets more and more frustrated with her inability to grieve and takes it out on Conrad, who can and is grieving.

I think MTM was wonderful in the part, and the received mythology of the DL that she was more 'Beth Jarrett' than 'Mary Richards' is probably not true, the reality being that she was both which is why she played both characters so convincingly. I've been watching a lot of reruns of the MTM show lately and I have to say she's really impressed me with what a good actress she was.

WASPy families are so.. interesting.

And you don't think this sort of thing goes on within black or other "POC or other minority" type families? Right... wait until that shit starts coming out.

And this is one of a few films/books that does live up to the hype. It's not blockbuster good, it's more along the lines of something you can't quite look away from. You know you should, but just keep watching.

1980 was such a great year for film. So many of my favourite films and performances come from that year. Tess, Raging Bull, Resurrection, Coal Miner's Daughter, Fame, Melvin & Howard, Somewhere in Time, Empire Strikes Back. And, of course, Ordinary People.

Raging Bull is a great film, but I also love Ordinary People and I don't begrudge it winning Best Picture. It was deserving. I still think about many of the scenes today. We watched this in my Religion class in high school and can still remember the room, the walls, the weather. A sign of a great film is when you remember where you were and what was happening when you watched it.

[quote] I think the scene where she goes outside to try to speak with Conrad and he starts barking, demonstrates that she's trying because she loves Conrad

I think Beth's love drowned with Buck, and her attempt to bring some normalcy to her relationship with Conrad fails miserably, because it's superficial at best, and when Conrad tries to take it deeper by casually bringing up a memory of Buck, she "can't go there" and immediately drops down that massive, invisible wall that loomed above them like a cleaver.

The hostility and rejection that Conrad has to deal with almost daily with becomes so painfully obvious in a later scene when he asks her if she needs help setting the table, and she's deliberately rigid and disconnected as she can be. The icy cold emanates from her towards Conrad like a massive block of arctic ice.

Conrad realizes how hopeless the void between them is when she takes a call and becomes warmly and laughingly engaged in the phone conversation, triggering flashbacks in Conrad to a time forever lost in which she was that way with Buck. That scene so effectively conveys Conrad's profound sense of rejection.

It's so rare to experience the level of chemistry that existed between Hutton, MTM, Sutherland and Hirsch. I can't think of any other combo of actors that would've meshed so superbly well as they had. A timeless masterpiece of a movie.

I was always left wondering why no one in the family made a bigger deal of GIVE HER THE GODDAMNED CAMERA!

Did Beth's pussy stink?

[quote]Did Beth's pussy stink?

It tasted like Lysol.

Beth sees herself as a victim whom Conrad deliberately is trying to hurt. She’s always trying to cope with what he does. When he brings up the memory of Buck wanting the dog, she sees it as Conrad trying to hurt her by reminding her she wouldn’t let Buck have a dog. When Conrad surprises her in Buck’s room, or asks her if she took Trig after she just said she did, she interprets it as him messing with her. She takes comfort in that she believes herself to be strong enough to withstand it and still tolerate/love him, although he can cause her to break, like when he quit the swim team. She thinks her husband doesn’t give her any support when Conrad hurts her. She needs a break from Conrad every so often, and a vacation is her escape. Calvin ruins her escape by mentioning Conrad and suggesting he come along time next time and so doesn’t let her have her Conrad-free time. When he gives her the final embrace, she shows that he is indeed too much for her to deal with and she can’t tolerate him any longer. The tragedy, of course, is that Conrad sees himself as her victim. As Calvin pointed out, Conrad and Beth are a lot alike. It’s a doomed relationship because of their similarity.

Why was it SO important that Conrad be on the swim team?

[quote]Why was it SO important that Conrad be on the swim team?

It isn't. What's important is that Beth found out about it from another swim team member's mother, Carole Lazenby, instead of from Conrad.

I still don't understand Beth. Or maybe I do.

When I first saw the movie as a preteen in the mid-'80s, I thought my mother was EXACTLY Beth, sans the death of a child.

My parents were both working-class people who strove mightily to become upper-middle-class, and having a gay oldest son was not part of their plan.

But my father was very much the peacemaker/nurturer, while my mother was the taskmaster - cold as ice. Hugging/touching, never. Her standards were never achievable, because the bar was always being raised. For me - not my younger sisters; they were victimized by my being older and doing things first and well.

I could never understand how someone could literally carry you inside them and give birth to you, yet reject you repeatedly.

But maybe it's that closeness that triggers narcissists - how dare someone I created and carried not be exactly what I want them to be.

Beth explained that the thing that hurt her was being embarrassed from not knowing what her son had done and being told about it by a friend. That it was quitting the swim team was not the important element. Beth believes that Conrad knows that being embarrassed like that is something particularly painful to her and that he did it deliberately or at least callously. Beth had admitted that she sees things in terms of how they affect her. So when this situation occurred, her mind didn’t go to trying to understand how Conrad was feeling and how that led to his decision, but rather she immediately focused on herself and how it impacted her. Conrad is similar, as in the final scene when Dad says Beth left and Conrad immediately focuses on himself by suggesting he was the cause. They both see themselves as central characters in other people’s stories, even when they are not. For example, Conrad blaming himself for not preventing Karen’s death. The doctor had to explain to him that, no, he was not relevant to her story at all, and he should stop inflating his role. If the doctor had counseled Beth, he would have similarly tried to get Beth to see that she was only a minor character in Conrad’s quitting the swim team story.

I feel like Donald Sutherland is always weirdly ignored and underpraised, R10. He’s consistently good to great in everything he’s done. Even if he’s miscast, like the recent Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley, he manages to make his role soulful and interesting.

I should add that my mother, like Beth, was 100% a homemaker, so everything that happened to "the kids," and what they turned out to be, she likely felt was a reflection on her.

My dad, like Calvin, had a career that paid for everything—and golf to distract him from shitstorms at home.

I'd ask if we were brothers, R102, but I only had sisters. Very much my family dynamic.

Because everyone is shocked by the amount of rage R93. What is there to say? The kid just came back from a hospital after trying to off himself. The amount of daily walking on eggshells must have been extraordinary.

In this fictional world, do you think there was ever a time that Conrad and his mother might have come to some understanding of each other in his adulthood?

[quote]In this fictional world, do you think there was ever a time that Conrad and his mother might have come to some understanding of each other in his adulthood?

No, and that's because my mother had a Master's degree in education and still acted like Beth. She was a beloved elementary school teacher before she left to have kids. And she acted like the opposite of a beloved teacher to her own children.

When it comes to their family, narcissists gonna narcissist.

My mother died when I was 25, so there was no time to "get to know each other as adults." But I honestly can't envision it being possible.

My mother has only gotten worse as she’s aged.

I think I might have really liked Ken Howard as the husband. He was so good in his tv series as a basketball coach.....

I wish they had continued with Ordinary People 2: Rebuilding Normalcy where Conrad explores "alternative lifestyles" and Beth finally finds warmth and compassion in the arms of a black man.

But I suppose America just wasn't quite ready to see MTM in corn rows and a dashiki.

[quote]In this fictional world, do you think there was ever a time that Conrad and his mother might have come to some understanding of each other in his adulthood?

No. Conrad left home and came to accept he was gay. He never really heard from Beth, just Calvin. By the time Beth came to visit him at SF General as he lay dying of AIDS, it fell to me to explain to her both that Connie had AIDS and that he was gay.

"Buck never would have GOT AIDS" was her only response.

How does the book compare to the movie?

R111 I read the book when it first came out (yes, I’m old) and loved it. Was wary about the movie but I thought it was brilliant.

The movie played up the Jarretts’ wealth more than the book (that shot of the house - it drew comments from the audience in the cinema) otherwise I thought it was a very clever adaptation of the book with brilliant casting. I especially liked the casting of Elizabeth McGovern as Jeanine. She wasn’t some stereotypical high school babe but kind of geeky, which worked well.

[quote] The movie played up the Jarretts’ wealth more than the book (that shot of the house - it drew comments from the audience in the cinema)

It drew comments from the audience? Was there a comments session after the film or did people express their views to the rest of the audience throughout the film?

[quote] Conrad left home and came to accept he was gay.

Was it Lady Grantham that made him that way?

[quote]I could never understand how someone could literally carry you inside them and give birth to you, yet reject you repeatedly. But maybe it's that closeness that triggers narcissists - how dare someone I created and carried not be exactly what I want them to be.

I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it.

R113 were you there? People laughed a little - not sure how I can best represent the experience to satisfy you on my experience in a cinema forty years ago.

r116, if I had been there, I wouldn’t be asking. There were comments from the audience but you don’t remember how they there made? I think I would remember an experience like that.

Yeah sure R117 - whatever floats your boat.

Was Faye Dunaway considered for the part of Beth?

You’re absolutely right, R117. In 1981 while watching Ordinary People in a suburban Sydney cinema I decided to mislead the as yet unknown Datalounge membership with the response of the audience to the tracking shot of the Jarretts’ palatial Lake Forest home, forty years later.

I didn’t anticipate that I would be found out in 2021. Silly me! Well done you! You must feel great about yourself right now.

Dinah Manoff is also great in a small role.

No, r120, I’m just wondering why you became so agitated instead of just answering the question. It shouldn’t be difficult. You already had the memory in your mind.

Carole Lazenby made Conrad gay.

r122 must be a scream at parties....

R122 You’re a fuckwit. I assume that this isn’t the first time that this has been pointed out.

r124, r125, if a question makes you agitated, as it appears to, take some pills from your medicine cabinet. I don’t care what.

Clever, R125! Is that all that you have?

R35- In many schools across the country up until the 1970's he would have been standing in front of his coach COMPLETELY NAKED because boys had to swim naked up until then at school and at the Y.

[quote] Clever, [R125]! Is that all that you have?

You are r125. You’ve gotten yourself so agitated that you can’t keep the numbers straight. You need rest.

[quote] In many schools across the country up until the 1970's he would have been standing in front of his coach COMPLETELY NAKED because boys had to swim naked up until then at school and at the Y.

I wonder if he was naked when he got electroshock.

Yep R129 - I fucked that up. Care to answer my original question, rather than taking inconsequential potshots?

Mary Tyler Moore says she had an affair with someone during this movie. Her marriage was crumbling at the time.

Loved the movie. Finally read the book over the weekend.

This is one of those times where movie first, book second really works the best. The cast could not have been better and having them in my head as I read the book, made it so much better. It's like watching, well, reading, an extended director's cut of the film. HIGHLY recommend. it.

My mother had the story in one of her Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, but even that was too long. Thank goodness for film adaptations.

"In our lucid moments, we reminded ourselves that this was the heartfelt yet temporary phenomenon of location shooting. He had a longtime commitment and wasn't interested in changing that life."

MTM on her on set affair

[quote] Mary Tyler Moore says she had an affair with someone during this movie.

Timothy was legal by then.

Was Buck?

Oh god, did Mary fuck Judd Hirsch? He's Jewish.

Please don’t let it be M. Emmet Walsh.

Buck would never have fucked MTM.

Films about psychiatry NEVER age well. Ordinary People feels about as fresh as The Snake Pit with Olivia de Havilland.

We all know MTM had an affair with RR.

OH ROB!!!!

[quote]n 1981 Ordinary People won the award for best picture , I believe and some people to this day thought that Raging Bull was THE best movie of 1980.

No. Ordinary People, Best Picture. Martin Scorsese should have been BEST DIRECTOR for Raging Bull over that bleached blond Redford.

BUCK? Who names their kid Buck? Yeah, Buck and Conrad.

Buck’s real name was Jordan.

I always assumed she had the affair with Sutherland.

[quote]The scene where Beth is remembering Buck is creepy. They seemed like lovers instead of mother and son. She was flirting with him while sat there in a mini skirt and full make up. What a whore.

Pauline Kael made mention of the creepy incestuous like vibe in it that scene and thought it odd that that Redford put it in there and didn't explore it any further.

I like the movie, but I thought Kael (who trashed it) did make some good points. That it was a prestigious made for TV movie. She also thought the ending was wrong, and that it would have been Conrad and Buck who left the house, and not Beth. The house is more Beth's than it is theirs, it was her showplace and basically an extension of herself. I too felt that the ending was a bit of a copout.

R145 his name was Jordan Buckman Jarrett and we called him "Buck" or “Bucky”.

Buckman was my mother’s maiden name and in the social circles in which I grew up, and am still a part of, it is very common to use a distinctive family last name as a child’s first or middle name and then derive an affectionate nick name from it.

Oh never mind, you would never understand... you probably grew up in Naperville for gods sake!

Another quitting the swim team issue was the fact that Beth wanted to keep up appearances. The party was a perfect example of that. When Calvin lets Carole know Conrad is seeing a shrink, Beth looks at him like WTF. By all means, our friends and neighbors must know everything is fine, when the Jarretts are dying a little more everyday without working through their grief. I really cringe in all the scenes in their home, and you know that they aren’t dealing with the elephant in the room-Bucks death. Beth’s inability to deal with her feelings of grief, and her son suffering a little more every day, with Calvin attempting to do the heavy lifting for both of them is riveting. True masterpiece.

Buck sounds like a horse

R150 "You drink too much at parties, Calvin."

Buck was hung like a horse.

Kael was beginning her descent into unreadable muddled reviews that were leaden with he purple prose which no longer seemed novel. She was no longer the only major critic to make it ok to hate Oscar bait, foreign films, etc. and extoll quirky independent film makers.

I read the book just before the film was made---MTM and Sutherland were pleasant surprises, Hutton was good, but Hirsch just seemed off and the other adolescents were a mixed bag. The setting seemed very authentic--I lived in Chicago a number of years later but knew people like her in Ohio (where I grew-up) by the time of the film.

R154- I'm not impressed with Kael. She gave bad reviews to good movies ( just to show her independence - a lot of movie/theater critics do this) and she adored SHITTY movies.

I loathe ‘Canon in D’ but I liked its usage in ‘Ordinary People’

I've never seen Ordinary People. How does it compare to my all-time faves Valley of the Dolls and Imitation of Life (the Lana Turner version)? Which had the better acting? Directing?

On a previous Ordinary People thread, people talked about how much Beth would care what the neighbors thought about her "perfect life" facade shattering, and how it would make sense that Beth's impulse would be to flee... The ending felt right to me.

R157- We need another thread about Imitation Of Life (1959).

R159 I'd prefer another thread about "Last Action Hero" (1993).

R65 - Redford most definitely worked on the screenplay for ATPM, in face he and Goldman had a falling out over it. Redford was very much interested in the phony veneers of the American middle class, so that line in ATPM might have well been his. It's a good point you make! I think QUIZ SHOW gets at this theme as well, and THE NATURAL definitely does, too. A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT less so. I love Redford so much, as both and actor and a director, even though he's supposed to be insufferable.

R20, I think the other poster was puzzled because the house is handsome and substantial but not particularly grand by the standards of the neighborhood. I assume by "comments" you mean dismissive laughter or something similar.

Oops, meant for R120. Sorry!

It's not a conventional weepie like "Imitation of Life" and it wasn't camp asking to be made like "Valley of the Dolls". It's very much a product of it's time, whereas "Imitation" was a remade 30s melodrama and "Valley" was a 60s film that was really about the 40s and 50s, but seemed almost to be about neither.

The house was what you'd expect from a "Loop lawyer", corporate executive, or prosperous small business owner. People didn't build mini-mansions or super overdone stuff in the first couple decades after WWII and that was even more true before the war.

I was in high school on the North Shore when this came out. Everybody’s parents wen to go see it, usually without the kids and often without telling them. A whole lot of North Shire mothers chilled the fuck it for weeks afterwards.

I haven't seen this movie since it first came out I'm shocked at how much Timothy Hutton doesnt look like the Timothy Hutton I have in my head.

Is Timothy Hutton related to the great Betty Hutton?

One of the most devastating movies I've ever seen.

[quote]We watched this in my Religion class in high school

r91, we watched it in my religion class in high school, too! Are you from Ohio by any chance?

r170 no, I live in Canada! Ha!

Must be a trend of watching Ordinary People in Religion class!

My school made us watch it in trig class.

I love the awkward conversations.

Beth: I didn't think you were here.

Conrad: I'm sorry, I just got in, I didn't know you were here.

Beth: I didn't play golf today, it's too cold.

Conrad: How was your golf game?

Beth: I didn't play!

I love the irony of Beth singing “What I did for Love” at the Lazenby’s Christmas party, cut to her swooping in on her husband’s conversation about how Connie was doing with her friend. That was a fabulous contrast.

The movie sounds like high camp.

[quote]Mary Tyler Moore says she had an affair with someone during this movie. Her marriage was crumbling at the time.

Adam Baldwin

MTM claimed he was reasonably well hung but came too quickly.

The costumes don't get a ton of love, but I thought they were perfection.

Loved all of Conrad's straight-leg cords and crewneck sweaters. They're basically fetish material for me.

And Beth let no beige slacks-and-sweater ensemble in Neiman-Marcus go unbought.

[quote] The costumes don't get a ton of love, but I thought they were perfection.

It couldn’t have been too hard for the costume designer since the “costumes” looked just like what people were wearing in 1980.

[quote]It couldn’t have been too hard for the costume designer since the “costumes” looked just like what people were wearing in 1980.

Such a layperson's response. "What people were wearing in 1980" has a ton of possibilities. It takes research - period, mood, characters (and their growth, if any) - it's not nearly as easy as you think it is.

"Tim always said MTM was a remarkably soulful human being between takes"

Not the interview I read years ago. He said she was always curt and frosty to him. And I hardly think our Mare was a Method actress.

Which matches what her co-workers said about her: professional but aloof.

CONRAD: Do you love me? Do you really love me?

BETH: [pauses, as if searching for the answer] I feel the way I've always felt about you.

Then the very subtle and brief change in his facial expression as Conrad finally looks away, realizing she's not going to say anything more.

This scene is so damn good. Beth actually thinks she's giving the right answer, utterly unaware that it's anything but. And Conrad just gets more confirmation, which he didn't really need, that his wife is a complete and total stranger to him. This is fucking good acting.

I meant CALVIN, not CONRAD! Fuck.

The movie really is a masterpiece. The screenplay is remarkable. So economical, every word carefully chosen for maximum impact.

That profound scene at R181 is a good example. (Interestingly, it was a reshoot—Sutherland saw an early screening and thought he was crying too much, so Redford threw up a window and plunked him in front of it and reshot. The cuts to MTM were from the original takes.)

If you think the costumes required no artistry, compare what was worn in Ordinary People to the costumes in season 4 of Family, which was shot at the same time ca.1979.

Family was all L.A. ease and cheese, while OP was conservative Midwestern proto-preppy, layered and tailored.

r184, Ordinary People wasn’t set in L.A. so the characters wouldn’t have dressed that way. The clothes worn in Ordinary People look like the clothes the students (and their families, some of whom were from Lake Forest) wore at my conservative Midwestern preppy college campus in 1980. That’s how people dressed in real life.

That's the point I'm making, R185.

The film was a Hollywood production, created by people who lived in L.A.

But the costumer nailed the Midwestern preppy upper-crust milieu of 1979.

I'm particularly a fan of Beth's double-breasted beige coat, rust blouse and scarf combo she wears in the scene that contains the immortal DL line about Buck and his theoretical hospital status. Her fox hunting jacket when she meets Calvin for lunch at the mall is also great.

Have they ever released deleted scenes on a DVD or Blu-Ray? It seems like Redford shot a good amount of material that wasn't used in the final edit.

MTM talked in a few interviews about doing dozens of takes of Beth opening the refrigerator to adjust a cherry on top of a cake, but that scene is not in the film.

Nor is this, whatever it is. I don't remember Beth being in a negligee at any point:

[quote](Pauline Kael) was no longer the only major critic to make it ok to hate Oscar bait, foreign films, etc. and extoll quirky independent film makers.

That's because others were emulating her.

I LOVED Pauline. Didn't agree with her 65% of the time, didn't read her to find out if a movie was good. I loved her insights, she made me think about things I never would have without reading her.

[quote]I LOVED Pauline.

Pauline was barely competent as a critic

And she had a bad habit of farting at my dinner parties

My two most vivid recollections from this movie were- my love of the stained paneling in the grandparent's library and my bewilderment as to why the family drove Oldsmobiles.

Did Beth end up saving the plate?

It was a clean break after all.

I love Kael, too, but not blindly. If memory serves, her main complaint was that the movie purported to expose/break down codes of WASP repression but didn’t go far enough; in other words the movie was like Beth, more concerned with solemnity and taste than truth because it studiously avoided sex and drugs, not terribly convincing after the permissive ethos of the Me Decade. Conrad met his girlfriend in choir practice after all, which seems very ‘50s. For Kael, MTM’s character was “doomed” because she wouldn’t accept psychiatry.

This isn’t surprising since Kael hated all things WASP or WASP-aspirational (hence her love for Debra Winger and lack of enthusiasm for Meryl Streep and most Woody Allen movies from Interiors onward). In 2021 of course the movie is dated and has a prestige TV aspect to it, but I guess for the hordes of us who grew up with a similar family dynamic it really hit home.

[quote]My two most vivid recollections from this movie were- my love of the stained paneling in the grandparent's library and my bewilderment as to why the family drove Oldsmobiles.

Not to mention, the cheap fake paneling visible in the Jarrett's breakfast room scenes...

I see you trying to save money, Robert Redford

[quote] My school made us watch it in trig class

Really? The movie is hardly a love triangle.

Kael was influential but after influencing others, her writing and influence waned. It became obvious that her purple prose increasingly was irritating and she often had nothing really coherent to say.

I disagreed with Kael about 70% of the time (though I will always love her championing of early Scorsese and Robert Altman, her Nashville review is one of my favorites ever) but she clearly loved movies. She cared about what she was watching, and saw film as an art form, an intellectual avenue to aspire to. This quality in a film critic totally died with Roger Ebert.

Agreed R196 but in all fairness Hollywood is hardly churning out masses of films that require thoughtful analysis.

I disagree, r197. For example, I find Chris Pratt's films intriguing and thought-provoking.

I’m sure they’ll be studied for their deep themes and layers of nuance for generations R198!

I don't think Kael necessarily saw movies as an art form, which is why she avoided using terms like "cinema" or "film" and why she had such an issue with pretentious European art-house stuff that people tended to praise just because it was French or Italian. She certainly thought movies could reach the realm of "art," but that wasn't necessary for a movie to be good/entertaining. She was a populist.

Buck NEVER would have read a Pauline Kael review.

I wish Redford had thrown in a few nods and winks to the MTM Show. For example, Beth could've stumbled upon Conrad's cum-stained briefs in the hamper and icily stated, "I hate spunk." Or maybe when her anti-semitic mother made a crack about Conrad's therapist being Jewish, Beth could've stated, again icily, "Oh come now, mother, they're not all bad. There's this one I used to know when I briefly lived in Minneapolis." Wouldn't that have been fun"

What is it about this movie and DL? All someone has to do is post Ordinary People in the subject line and within an hour there are hundreds of replies.

R203. If, after 202 replies, you don't know then you'll never know.

R203 Go bump an MCU thread. Or something.

R109: Todd Haynes would have to make the sequel you describe although he's have to deal with less than Sirk-y source material..

If they did a remake, how would y'all feel about Deb Messing as Beth, Jon Hamm as Calvin, and the fat son from La Brea as Conrad?

^^ That sounds perfect for the likes of Apple TV Plus. It could be a black comedy.

R200 Kael really loved and championed French New Wave from what I remember, especially Breathless.

A gorgeous, very moving movie. Saw it as a pre-teen and found it boring, but a screening about a decade later had me sobbing in the back row. Strange how our reactions to certain movies can change over time with more life experience.

This entire thread needs a collective MARY!!!

This would've make a splendid TV movie at the time with Ike Eisenmann, Dennis Cole, and Marcia Rodd.

[quote]I wish Redford had thrown in a few nods and winks to the MTM Show.

At the end, when Calvin asks Beth if she really loves him, and she clearly does not want to give him the answer he’s looking for, she could just say “Presbyterian”.

When she gets angry at Calvin at the neighbor’s holiday party, on the way out she should have angrily announced to the crowd “And next time make sure the shrimp is fresh!”

I think Kael disliked it, because the movie gives the illusion that everything would have been fine had Buck survived. There was another scene where Judd Hirsch's character asked Conrad a question, and the movie cuts away before he answers. She felt the movie played it too safe.

And Mary's performance was good, but it just didn't compare with Sissy Spacek's, which was nothing short of a tour de force. Had Mary been nominated the following year, she would have easily won.

[quote] . I can't imagine there were (are?) many Jews living on the North Shore.

Are you kidding? I went to high school on the North Shore (Highland Park) and every fall the school would empty out on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There would be like 20 students in the whole achool on those days. It’s ALL Jewish.

^^ school ^^

Lee Remick and Natalie Wood campaigned the Beth role. Natalie Wood and Robert Redford were friends. They were in a few movies together. She was angry at him for not choosing her for the part. I think their friendship was strained thereafter.

Lee Remick, yes. Natalie Wood, No.

[quote]when Calvin asks Beth if she really loves him, and she clearly does not want to give him the answer he’s looking for, she could just say “Presbyterian”.

"Presbyterian" and "Calvin." Makes sense to me.

Perfect facial expressions as she receives an unexpected hug.

r220, it looks like she’s hoping that he’s going for her jugs.

R183, I heard that was the other way around. REDFORD didn't want him crying so much. Figures.

R214 = the Sissy Spacek troll. Mary could easily have won - most were pulling for her - over Sissy Spacek then or any day. Really.

[quote] I love Redford so much, as both and actor and a director,

I've NEVER heard anything close to that at the Datalounge.

Hey Beth, lighten up! How about a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.

Paramount has been releasing a number of their films on Blu-Ray recently. They had been quite frugal about issuing their films. Ragtime and Reds are being issued on Blu-Ray. As is Heaven Can Wait. So the late 70s, early 80s films are getting attention. So hopefully Ordinary People is issued soon. Crazy to think it has never been released in HD. I wish Criterion would issue it.

Do you think anyone but a bunch of damaged gay men who had Beth Jarrett for a mother and with they have Calvin Jarrett as their father has any interest in seeing this relic?

[quote]- most were pulling for her

Sissy won the Golden Globe and swept all the major critics awards. She even earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Coal Miners Daughter was also one of the top ten grossing films of 1980.

Mary got the Golden Globe for Drama as well as raves by critics, but she was never in any serious contention for the Oscar. It was Sissy's to lose that year.

Coal Miners Daughter was entered into the National Film Registry a couple of years back. Ordinary People has yet to be inducted.

Does anybody else remember that scene in Coal Miner's Daughter where Loretta found Doo making out with that woman in the back of the car? When they're arguing outside the car Loretta swings her purse at him and she hits his hand. The way he reacts I always wondered if she broke his finger for real.

And, R226? What's your point?

R226, ask again when you have finally gained a bare grasp of the English language.

R217 not for long though.

[quote] Saw this one for the first time recently. Judd Hirsch seemed great as the therapist to me

I loved Judd Hirschhorn too. He saved Conrad because he was exactly the kind of person he needed.

The finalists for Beth were Lee Remick, Ann-Margret, Natalie Wood and MTM.

Timothy Hutton said he auditioned with Ann-Margret as Beth.

Lee Remick was so depressed that she lost the role—she had told friends she'd finally found a part that would get her an Oscar—that she fled L.A. and moved to Europe for a while.

As perfect as MTM was, Lee would have done great work in that part. I wish the auditions were filmed; I'd kill to see that footage.

What is not often discussed is that Beth clearly resents Conrad for his suicide attempt.

She thinks, he saw what Buck's death has done, and now he wants to intentionally inflict this on me again.

She creates distance between them to shield herself from that potential pain.

Mary’s performance wasn’t really the lead, though, which hurt her chances regardless of the competition. Timothy Hutton was the actual lead but he would have only won in supporting.

As much as I love this movie and it resonated with me back when it was released, I never felt Hutton’s or MTM’s performances were award worthy.

MTM, as well as Sutherland, was "against type" which is pure Oscar consideration. Think of all the nice girls who win for playing whores. Hutton is a legacy who didn't suck as an actor, which Hollywood also likes.

[quote]Natalie Wood and Robert Redford were friends.

They hadn't spoken for almost ten years before Ordinary People.

[quote] Mary’s performance wasn’t really the lead, though, which hurt her chances regardless of the competition. Timothy Hutton was the actual lead but he would have only won in supporting.

You know that there can be more than one lead in a movie, don’t you?

Don’t be a dick R239, I’m aware that there can be multiple leads in a movie, but Mary was not a lead. The story was about Timothy Hutton’s character; if anything he and Sutherland were the two leads.

Mary would’ve certainly beat Mary Steenburgeb if she had angled for supporting rather than lead.

Steenburgen might have been good, although she probably seemed a little too Southern in those days.

r240, don’t blame me for your ignorance, or your use of “the lead” and “the actual lead” and not “a lead”.

With regards to several comments upthread:

The Oldsmobile is exactly what the Jarretts would be driving at the time. Or a Buick Estate Wagon. From local dealer Wenban. These were all over Lake Forest in that time period. Cadillacs were way too nouveau riche. Lincolns somewhat less so. A C class Benz might do, but not an S, too showy. A BMW 5 series, from Knauz Continental Motors on Western. (They’re out in 41 now) would have worked. With regards to Jews on the North Shore, yes Highland Park and Glencoe, and west Wilmette, but certainly not Lake Forest of 1980, and especially not in 1974 when the book was written. Of note, Lake Forest HS had a Black homecoming queen in 1974.

[quote]Mary was not a lead. The story was about Timothy Hutton’s character; if anything he and Sutherland were the two leads.

Hell no. Moore and Hutton were most definitely the leads. Sutherland was supporting (how in the hell can you think he was a lead? ) Hutton probably had the most screen time, but Moore carried the film every bit as much as he did. They were the two pivotal characters in the story. But they chose to promote Hutton as Supporting.

[quote] What is not often discussed is that Beth clearly resents Conrad for his suicide attempt

Yes, Beth does resent Conrad’s suicide attempt, which of course, is a cry for help, because she feels he doesn’t deserve any of the attention he’s getting in her self-absorbed worldview. In her distorted thinking, he’s entitled to nothing. Every time she sees Conrad standing there, she longs for Buck, and can’t cope with the subsequent internal tempest that’s tearing her apart.

She also resents what Conrad did to the bathroom and its grout.

R238, how do you know if Natalie Wood and Robert Redford haven’t spoken, in 10 years, before “Ordinary People”?

Natalie did a cameo role in “The Candidate”, which starred Robert Redford. This was in 1972. Furthermore, a Natalie Wood biographer, Suzanne Findsad, wrote that Natalie wanted the “Beth” role, but Robert Redford didn’t think she was the right choice, for the part.

Natalie Wood (at least to me) always had a warm, endearing screen presence and it's difficult to imagine her in the role of Beth.

But, then again, MTM had a similar screen presence and reputation, so who knows, maybe she could've pulled it off. When this movie was first released, I vaguely recall being somewhat surprised at her being chosen to play the mother.

Natalie always seemed cloyingly sweet, so I can't see her as Beth. Even though Mary also had a rep as little miss sunshine due to her Mary Richards role, if you watch the The MTM Show progress through its 7 seasons, you can see little hints of MTM's hardness and coldness that characterized Beth Jarrett creeping into Mary Richards by season 4 or so.

[quote]if you watch the The MTM Show progress through its 7 seasons, you can see little hints of MTM's hardness and coldness that characterized Beth Jarrett creeping into Mary Richards by season 4 or so.

Absolutely! For example, she callously laughed throughout the funeral for Chuckles the Clown. Her insensitivity, nay, her [italic]mockery[/italic] of the somber event was shocking.

The film was brilliant. The only time you see Beth really happy is through flashbacks, when Buck was alive.

Timothy Hutton was really cute in this. He was never as good looking a man as he was as a twink. It's as if the entire shape of his head changed and lengthened just in a few short years.

Also, WHET happened to Tim's career in the 90's? He was everywhere for a while and then not so much. Was he mostly a stage actor? Was it the scandal of the toilet paper stuck in his ass? I don't think that L.A. hooker book came out until the early 2000s but I could be wrong.

Are there other Tim Hutton scandals I don't know about?

Remember The Falcon and the Snowman? Tim playing straight man to Jeff Spucoli.

Buck's entire shape of head would never have changed and lengthened in just a few short years.

🤣🤣🤣

[quote] When Conrad surprises her in Buck’s room, or asks her if she took Trig after she just said she did, she interprets it as him messing with her.

Both of these moments have little to do, if at all, with Beth thinking that Conrad is “messing with her.” (That comes later.) The sequence in Buck’s bedroom is centered on Beth’s internal landscape, how protective she is over it, and the lengths she will go to, even subconsciously, to guard it.

When she gasps after Conrad appears and says, “Don’t do that!”, she does so because she’s been caught being vulnerable and can’t bare to have her own fragility reflected back to her, especially through the eyes of her grieving son.

Moments later, the following exchange between the two is probably the most telling sequence regarding Beth’s internal state:

Conrad: I got 74 on a trig quiz.

Beth: 74? Gee, I was awful at trig.

Conrad: You took trig?

Beth: Wait a minute... Did I take trig?

(a perplexed beat, followed by sudden perkiness and a smile)

Beth: I bought you two shirts. They're on your bed.

Beth, mostly preoccupied with surface appearances and keeping things, including emotions, “neat and tidy,” was on autopilot most of the time. When thrust into uncomfortable or unfamiliar circumstances, especially with people from which she felt the need to guard herself - i.e., namely everyone, save for Calvin - she morphed into whatever she felt was necessary to get through and out of the situation. In the scene above (clip below), this propensity manifests as a subconscious lie, i.e., she isn’t even aware that she’s doing it, so on edge is she about having her fallibility exposed.

The real revelation of the film is that, while most people are prone to side with or claim to relate to either Conrad and/or Calvin, most people, even the messiest and most disorganized people, are really more like Beth than they’d care to admit. Similarly to Beth, most of us are more concerned with how we appear, both the impressions we make and how we physically look, than how we truly feel. Like her, we fear being caught at our most human, and we mask our vulnerabilities with frivolities and superficialities.

I find “Ordinary People” and, in particular, Beth Jarrett endlessly revealing and fascinating. Both are elegant, heartbreaking, and achingly relatable.

I am Beth Jarrett.

“You know, I think this can be saved. It’s a nice, clean break.” 🤌🏼

[quote] MTM talked in a few interviews about doing dozens of takes of Beth opening the refrigerator to adjust a cherry on top of a cake, but that scene is not in the film.

After reading her biography as a teen, I remember wishing to see and repeatedly imagining this scene play out. I was a true baby Beth Queen.

I guess Redford decided to go full on with the French toast massacre instead.

[quote] What is it about this movie and DL? All someone has to do is post Ordinary People in the subject line and within an hour there are hundreds of replies.

Maybe this is how they sit around and talk at the hospital, but we're not at the hospital.

[quote] how do you know if Natalie Wood and Robert Redford haven’t spoken, in 10 years, before “Ordinary People”?

Redford said they lost touch in that tribute to her on TCM.

Beth would have made one hell of a Spider-Man villain!

Speaking of sexual tension in this story, the novel featured several scenes of Conrad and Jeannine exploring their bodies and losing virginity to each other. Conrad also masturbates a lot in the novel, and has conflicting feelings about it.

R244 No the car they should have driven was a Volvo. That’s always been the “we have money but don’t like to show off car.” Oldsmobiles and Buicks are not for families with money. And I’m sure you realize C and S class were about 20 years away from 1980.

Jeez, so many OP threads... I just asked this on another one...... did they ever touch upon Conrad and Beth’s relationship before Buck died? Like in the book even?

Volvos were just tarting to be the car of choice for that crowd. they lasted forever but needed a lot of visits to the garage along the way. A successful middle aged professional would have owned an Olds or possibly a Buick, which was somewhat redundant in those days. A Caddy or Lincoln would have been seen as too showy, a Chevy or Ford, a bit ordinary.

Tim was so adorable

Timothy Hutton in OP was my dream boyfriend from the first time I saw the movie around age 14.

So vulnerable and sensitive! I could fix him with my love!

Unfortunately, this became a pattern IRL, which is largely why I'm single at 45.

[quote]how do you know if Natalie Wood and Robert Redford haven’t spoken, in 10 years, before “Ordinary People”?

Not only did Redford say they "lost touch" for years after The Candidate in 1971, he has trouble maintaining friendships and relationships. Director Sydney Pollack stopped speaking to Redford for years, Redford neglected his marriage and family so much it led to divorce. He's famous for not returning calls, showing up late or not at all. He had a drinking problem that got him kicked out of college and extended into adulthood. Most of this is contained in the authorized biography of Redford.

R267- ANY car will last a long time if you throw enough money at it.

We should start a thread Mommie Dearest style but from the movie Ordinary People

- BUCK would have know where to find the boys AND the booze

R272: there's already a thread like that which has died.

[quote]there's already a thread like that which has died.

Much like your precious Buck!

[quote]Speaking of sexual tension in this story, the novel featured several scenes of Conrad and Jeannine exploring their bodies and losing virginity to each other.

I preferred the sweetness of Jeannine inviting Conrad into the house for breakfast.

[quote]Conrad also masturbates a lot in the novel, and has conflicting feelings about it.

In the film, he did tell his shrink he jerks off a lot.

R275 "Jesus, you're really weird! What about you? What do you feel, huh? Do you jack off or jerk off or whatever you call it?"

"What do you think?"

"What do I think? I think you're married to a fat lady, and you go home and you FUCK THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF HER!"

I’m glad they didn’t insert sex into the movie. It would have ruined how the audience felt about the character and his innocence. In the movie, Conrad is just beginning to bud, as it should be.

R244. Yes I goofed on the Benz. It would have been the 300 series, not C series. See attached. There most definitely was an S class at the time. Volvos were making inroads for sure, but mainly in Evanston, Wilmette and Highland Park. R267 a Ford was acceptable as long as it was a Country Squire wagon. But by 1980 the Buick Estate Wagon was the one to have. But that was mom’s car. I knew people whose dad drove a Pinto to the train station, and then boarded the private parlor car “Deerpath”. Now known as Car 553

R276, that, along with the scene where he sings, starting with him singing that stupid "Ah! You're Just Saying That!" to Jeannine are unwatchable.

I just looked at the IMDB entry for it because I thought that someone like a Brad Pitt or someone along those lines was an extra. Instead it was Michael T. Weiss.

Was it after the dailies from OP that MTM decided to get a facelift?

R278 yes that was one, along with the SELs (450, 280, etc) I guess the 450 would have been slightly too “showy” - maybe. A lot of thats bullshit though.

R279 I totally agree. Along with the “fuzzy” Buck flashback.

R277, Redford has trouble with topics like sexual expression. So be it.

I've never read the book, but I remember how much attention it got, because it was an unsolicited manuscript that got read, published, and became a hit for a first-time author, IIRC.

Someone told me that Calvin's drinking is a much bigger issue in the book than the movie.

Anyone remember if that was the case?

Here is an interesting interview with Timothy Hutton about Ordinary People.

I really liked Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People but he peaked in that movie. Nothing he did after Ordinary People was memorable.

Basically he was a one hit wonder.

TAPS (1981) was a good movie, R285 - I saw it again last night - and Hutton is remarkably good. So is Tom Cruise for a change (he was 19), and Sean Penn.

He was in several bad movies and their stench clung to him.

TH was in two very popular and well received movies by both audiences and critics. He was initially seen as the next rising superstar, but, like a thief in the night, he disappeared from that arc almost as quickly as he was launched into it.

I watched OP and Taps when they were first released and wondered why, many years later, why hadn't Hutton made it into established A-listdom like Cruise and Penn had? He had the acting chops and screen presence easily comparable to them.

Some people say his ego gave him a bad rap and that mostly bad role choices helped to seal his fate, and, that may be true. Hollywood has an insatiable appetite for the next big thing and waits for no one, so maybe ego and lack of career foresight destined him to third string status.

R288 Part of the reason was a crowded field at the time. He was as handsome as Cruise (and more handsome than Sean Penn - don't deny it!), but he was less willing to stretch himself in roles that would please audiences but displease him as an artist. He was offered "Risky Business," but felt it was too juvenile and Brat Pack-ish. He chose to go work with Sidney Lumet, one of his creative idols, instead. The movie they made together kinda stunk, but he wanted to do a Lumet picture.

But a HUGE part of why he wasn't in too many movies right after this peak - a reason that rarely gets reported, thanks to NDAs and legal rules - was his lengthy lawsuit against MGM. Right after "Taps" was a hit, he signed to do a movie for MGM called "Roadshow." It was supposed to be this grand Western, co-starring Mary Steenburgen (who won an Oscar the same night he did) and a few other stars. The studio paid the main actors for a holding deal, which meant they couldn't take other projects while waiting for "Roadshow" to start filming. But the movie never got started, and Tim and Mary sat around NOT acting for a while. They were allowed to do short projects, but nothing big and nothing else for MGM while this deal was locked-in. Both eventually sued MGM for lost wages and lost opportunities. Mary S settled quietly, but Tim took it all the way to court and got about $10 million in the late 80s. By then, the peak of his bankability had passed, and he had been eclipsed by Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, a reformed Tom Hanks, and a looming Denzel Washington. This lengthy waiting period, combined with a string of weird creative choices he made while waiting and the way he kicked a major studio in the balls with a $10 million lawsuit, basically sank his career before he turned 30.

He's still acting, and has had less of an ego over the years than those other studs of his peer group, but he will always be one of those "What Ever Happened to..." examples. People know him for his baffling marriage to Debra Winger, his TV-movie dad, and now his sex-assault accusation. And they also know him for making one great movie for every five stinkers he's in.

Check him out in A&E's Nero Wolfe Mysteries. You can find them on YouTube. They're outstanding little TV movies about a master detective and his wisecracking stud of an assistant (Hutton). Period costumes, great production values, and all the stuff that should excite a cultured homosexual. He says that period was the most fun he ever had on a set, and you can tell he loved it while it lasted.

I liked a lot of Sidney Lumet's Daniel (1983), John Schlesinger's Falcon and the Snowman (1985), again with Penn, and Hutton in them.

Hutton didn't succeed in becoming a full fledged box office name because of what R289 said, and because he was NOT as handsome as the other guys like Cruise, even Penn. Timothy Hutton always looked like a gawky teenager, like he had trouble transitioning to an adult. Cruise can be boyish his entire career because he's better looking. That said, Hutton is a character actor who plays an array of different kinds of roles and not necessarily the lead. Character actors usually have a longer shelf life than leads. But there's something about him that doesn't fit, his aged boyishness and young man's voice.

R290 Tom Cruise is also as short as a boy, and probably sleeps in a magic box that zaps him with magical Xenu waves.

Hutton probably spends his nights at his farmhouse, pouring scotch and watching basketball games. That'll age a person.

Cruise is a horrible actor--limited range and basically a male ingenue. He visibly tried hard in roles that were beyond him, but wasn't great. Nonetheless, he was a "star". Hutton tried to be more of an actor--more range but less star charisma.

R292, Cruise has a magnetism on screen . He’s very good looking and has done so many memorable characters in HUGE hits . Me thinks you’re jealous. Most bitchy queens are just envious assholes who love to stir the pot.

Just saw Jerry Maguire this afternoon, R293 is correct. I also like Cruise in the first Mission Impossible, The Color of Money, Taps and A Few Good Men. Cruise was made for the big screen, and considering his limited acting talent, that's a good thing.

Btw, R293, having a HUGE hit does not make one a good actor.

Tim Hutton should have made a movie with Paula Prentiss playing his mother.

I loved his father Jim in all of his movies....and I love Tim in all of his......

Also, Andrew McCarthy came along a few years later and was a similar type to Hutton and wound up replacing him.

Hutton is way more talented than McCarthy . Andrew was very wooden .

Hasn't Timmy been cancelled?

I watched OP last night. I’ve seen it countless times, but the final scene between Calvin and Conrad always makes me cry.

Cruise was amazing in Born on the Fourth of July. I think we can all admit that.

Cruise is very similar to Joan Crawford in that they both work very hard at 'acting' and it is usually very noticeable. Sometimes its works, oftentimes it doesn't, but there is never any ease to what they do.

Don't get me started on Tom Hanks!

Crawford was a better actor. Cruise's earnestness get more annoying as he gets older.

So, he was cleared of the rape charges, but the show he was in had been cancelled.

That shows the real consequences people experience when a false accusation is made against them.

Matthew Modine was offered Top Gun and turned it down to to his personal beliefs! Tim Cruise was always very career driven and shrewd. I prefer his earlier films to all the action stuff he does now.

R300, that film sucked, so no "amazing" for Tom.

Modine is a woke wuss

Andrew McCarthy and Timothy Hutton = two adolescent-like boys who never grew up enough to manhood to play adult roles.

Oops, typo city... Tom Cruise... and due to his political beliefs.

R309, he really blew it giving up that role. He’s all but forgotten now.

I've heard from someone who does costumes on Toronto film sets that she worked with Hutton on a TV series that was filmed here in Toronto and she said Timothy Hutton was a complete asshole. She said the same of Russell Crowe.

R311 was that Nero Wolfe? That's the only series he ever filmed in Toronto, and it was 21 years ago. Your friend has a good memory.

R300 he was also great in Rain Man - I think that’s his best actually.

Agree Hutton and McCarthy are the same type - that’s a good call, it doesn’t mean they’re of equal talent like someone was saying above.

R225, wow I never even thought of a Criterion ORDINARY PEOPLE. What a great idea! They should grab a new commentary from Redford while he's still alive!

I think Buck was fucking the Lazenboy boy. They were both cute.

[quote]They should grab a new commentary from Redford while he's still alive!

That just made me feel sad!

Blu Ray coming next March!!

The power of DL.

I just saw a picture of him taken last month, R316. He was gaunt and holding on to his German wife. And I mean HOLDING ON like he needed to hold on to stay upright. His "hair" was partially combed, not flat across his forehead as usual like he thinks he's 40. Somethin's up.

[quote] Somethin's up

Not at his age.

Why DLers are so obsessed with this performance I will never understand. You all must have had icy disapproving mothers.

Mine was an icy, disapproving father, r320. Happy now?

Overjoyed, r321!

I'd like to have seen what Jill Clayburgh could've done with the role of Beth. Mary excelled as a comic actress, not so much as a dramatic actress. Ordinary People was her Friendly Fire.

[quote]Why DLers are so obsessed with this performance I will never understand. You all must have had icy disapproving mothers.

Did we all have to be locked in an institution and sexually abused in order to enjoy Jessica Lange's performance in "Frances"?

Did we all have to have been forced to choose which of our children to turn over to the Nazis to be exterminated in order to enjoy Meryl Streep's performance in "Sophie's choice"?

Did we all need to have had a mother or sister who was a lesbian serial killer in order to enjoy Charlize Theron's performance in "Monster"?

In other words, Happy Monday, cunt!

[quote] Cruise was amazing in Born on the Fourth of July. I think we can all admit that.

No we cannot, but this thread isn't about him or that movie.

I wonder what Faye Dunaway would have done to OP if she had played the part of Beth

The only other actress I can visualize doing justice to the role of Beth is Lee Remick.

That was in the 30s. It didn't mean they were close in the 60s or 70s. If she was close to Joan, she probably would have gotten her on her anthology show or The Big Valley.

R328, are you talking about Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford in the wrong thread?

If so, -

[quote]I'd like to have seen what Jill Clayburgh could've done with the role of Beth.

Would Jill have done justice to "Buck never would have BEEN in the hospital" the way she did to "You tell Patty! You tell Patty you're sorry!"

I think so.

I just rewatched this movie and a scene that I paid no attention to the first time I saw it I found really endearing this time. The scene when Calvin and Conrad are seated at the breakfast table and Calvin is having a conversation with Beth who is off in another room.

Calvin: "I saw Mort Swain. His sister died."

Beth: "The one from Idaho?"

Calvin: "The one with the restaurant."

Beth: "Did she die in Idaho?"

Calvin: "I guess so. Why?"

Beth: "You said she was always traveling. I just... wondered if she died in Idaho."

Calvin: "I don't know. Maybe she died in Idaho. Maybe Kansas City."

The conversation is amusingly insipid. And the way Conrad turns to his father and laughs and the way his father laughs back at him is so cute.

I think many WASP women were raised to suppress their personalities. They were judged by how well they lived up to certain insanely high standards of superficial social and domestic perfection. What you present is all that matters, not who you are inside. There’s something almost Prussian or samurai-like about the level of commitment and self-abnegation required. MTM embodies that really well in Beth.

From everything I've read about Mary (and Grant), she was just incredibly ambitious and career-driven. People like that tend to be cold and calculating, and overly concerned with appearances. I don't think Beth was exactly a stretch for Mary.

Shut up, Conrad! r320

It was interesting that they got Conrad a Jewish therapist. Beth's mother was anti-semitic, and it was hard to believe Beth wasn't of that mindset as well. Wouldn't have made more sense for them to get a therapist who was a WASP like them? I'm sure whatever country club she and Calvin belonged to had some sort of gentleman's agreement about not admitting Jews and blacks.

r335, I got the impression Beth thought all therapists were equally silly, so choosing one wasn't anything she wanted to be involved with.

Beth's mother- What's this doctor's name? Beth- Berger Beth's mother- A JEWish doctor? Beth-I don't know I suppose hes Jewish, maybe just German.

Great dialogue between two bitches.

[quote]I think many WASP women were raised to suppress their personalities.

Oh, please, R332. What's in you is in you, a person is not "trained" to think/behave in a certain way except at the dinner table. And very few WASPS are a part of "high standards of superficial social and domestic perfection."

[quote]It was interesting that they got Conrad a Jewish therapist

That was a stereotype too. Not that I didn't like the character.

R323 Oh sweet Jesus, that movie sucked! Carol Burnett is a national treasure, but the way she played that obsessed nutjob Gold Star Mother was just too far.

But funny you should mention it. That was Timmy's first film role, and he did great as a sad teenager mainly frustrated that his parents are being consumed with rage over how their other son died in Vietnam.

"Are you leaving because Patti is so fucking annoying?"

Interesting that smug Redford was that actor who couldn't/wouldn't rehearse, who insisted that movie actors should "just do it," much to the dismay of co-stars like Newman, Hoffman, Streisand and others. Then as a director, he rehearsed his actors to death looking for development and the Great Performance. What a self serving asshole.

R341 he won the Oscar for directing it I think that’s the ultimate last laugh.

Or maybe Redford realized that Streisand and Newman et al were right in the end and tried it their way?

Or maybe Redford realized what a dumb dick he'd been for thirty years?

MTM likely got the best actress Oscar nom because of the contrast of playing Mary Richards, typecast as a sweet, caring person to Beth Jarrett, a cold and calculating woman. It was a shock back in the day.

Playing against type is often a successful Oscar stratgey.

Timothy Hutton and Debra Winger must have had some good fights.

Timothy Hutton and Debra Winger must have had some good coke.

[quote]MTM likely got the best actress Oscar nom because of the contrast of playing Mary Richards

FFS, people! Whether she played against type or not, she got a nomination because her performance was just fucking great. And if not for Sissy Spacek that same year, she would have won.

[quote]R135 “In our lucid moments, we reminded ourselves that this was the heartfelt yet temporary phenomenon of location shooting. He had a longtime commitment and wasn't interested in changing that life." (MTM on her on set affair)

Translation: Your pussy stinks.

Bev Walsh was wonderful.

[quote] Did we all have to be locked in an institution and sexually abused in order to enjoy Jessica Lange's performance in "Frances"? Did we all have to have been forced to choose which of our children to turn over to the Nazis to be exterminated in order to enjoy Meryl Streep's performance in "Sophie's choice"? Did we all need to have had a mother or sister who was a lesbian serial killer in order to enjoy Charlize Theron's performance in "Monster"?

Dataloungers are not obsessed with those performances. Those performances get acclaim here, but they're not discussed constantly the way MTM's performance in "Ordinary People" was.

And, those performances were quite a bit better than MTM's.

Let's get real. MTM was hardly great in the role, merely serviceable, mostly because she was playing herself, was elevated by the dynamic performance around her, and had Redford to probably rein in her bag of sitcom acting tricks. I thought Sutherland and Hutton gave much more nuanced performances, especially Sutherland.

YOU get real, motherfucker!

"Wasn't Mary really just playing an exaggerated version of herself?"

That's tough to do. DL loves to dismiss performers as "playing themselves" but it's tough, in some cases more so than a from-whole-cloth role. "Being" oneself isn't hard, but "playing" oneself on screen isn't just being oneself in front of a camera.

I think someone more known for dramatic acting, like Linda Evans or Joan Van Ark, would've done more with the role.

Hell, maybe they should have just cast Valerie Harper instead of MTM.

Conrad, I made you French toast. You can either eat it, or just apply it directly to your hips.

Yeah ma, his doctor is Jewish. You always wanted me to marry one, but suddenly he can't shrink my kid's head?

Whaddya tokkin' about here? Buck wouldn'ta BEEN in that damn hospital!

I hated trig. First day of class the teacher looks at me and says "Looks like we'll need a lot more fabric to make YOUR dress!" Come to think of it, I guess that was home economics, not trig.

Calvin, do ya do that on purpose? Hey Brenda, come 'ere! I wanna go to Europe and first thing Calvin says is "Sure, let's take the kid along! Can you beat that!"

It's really important for you to hurt me, isn't it? Is it because I'm fat?

Georgia Engel as Beth!

I see Louise Lasser.

R337 next thing you know they’ll have black players in the NBA.

A Jewish Doctah?? Who’s ever heard of such a thing?

Linda Lavin or Bonnie Franklin as Beth. Thoughts?

R361 Bonnie Franklin as Beth Jarret

Dammit Conrad !

SLAP

Buck would have never made me hit him!

Conrad goes running out of the room

Beth slow jogs braless and titties flopping in a green cowl neck sweater over to Calvin

And demands “Hold me Calvin, I’m scared!”

R353 agree somewhat. Mary was perfect in the part and a revelation playing against Mary Richards, but Sissy blew her out of the water in terms of performance. I think Sutherland and his low key style worked against him getting a nomination. He was truly robbed though. I would’ve taken John Hurt out, who’s makeup did most of the work and gave a nomination to DS.

Linda Lavin? Never.

After all there are no lyrics to Pachelbel's Canon in D.

R345, right, but it wasn't much of a shock because that's the way her performance was promoted - to DEATH.

Someone should do an all gay version. Jim Parsons as "Seth", Matt Bomer as Calvin, and some Helix twink as Conrad.

I'm actually surprised Ryan Murphy hasn't done a Beth Jarrett prequel yet starring you-know-who.

A Beth Jarrett sequel would be amazing.

Beth filed for divorce BEFORE Calvin did, of course. Her pride couldn’t fathom being served with divorce papers first. She received ample alimony, because she wanted to maintain the lifestyle of which she was accustomed. She relocated to Houston to be near Ward, her brother. He has that swimming pool he’s so proud of.

She married a man she does not love. He’ll be richer than Calvin, of course. She had to marry up, for appearances. Her second husband was a doormat. She controlled him with her emotional warfare until he died. He adored her, of course. He did NOT to buy a Scotch Pine Christmas tree for the holidays. Buck would’ve never bought a Scotch Pine Christmas tree.

Conrad was the next of kin. They hadn’t spoken in 35 years. She hadn’t mellowed over the years. She was more angry, more hardened and colder.

With ample money, her last years were comfortable, though she was tough on the home care nurses. She fired them and hired other ones. (Remember, she fired the maid for not dusting the living room properly.)

She did not reach out to Conrad during her final days. She died alone and disinherited Conrad. She hated his wife anyway and refused to see her grandchildren.

She had a grand funeral. Conrad and his family were not in attendance. Her body was transported back to Lake Forest, IL. She was interred next to Buck. Ever the efficient planner, she bought the cemetery plot next to his. Her headstone was inscribed as “beloved wife and mother.” Conrad and his family were omitted from her obituary. Buck was mentioned. Buck would’ve never been omitted from her obituary.

Did I ever tell you about the time back in St. Olaf when we attempted to launch an all-chicken production of Ordinary People?

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but this movie FINALLY has a blu ray scheduled, for March. Hard to believe a film of its stature would be neglected on HD disc for so long. Glad they’re rectifying that.

This is my boyfriend’s favorite film and he watches it once a year. I’ll be happy to upgrade it for him. (I don’t particularly care for it.)

Wow, a sequel would be a great vehicle for Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni. Dick Wolf could produce it. Someone needs to make this happen.

I find this film dreary. And too slowly paced.

me too, r372. Me and my bf would pick a good Chris Pratt movie or even a Adam Sandler movie any day a the week over Ordinary People. Sounds like it id be pretty boring.

It’s just not a very creative film - very pedantic.

[quote]She died alone and disinherited Conrad. She hated his wife anyway and refused to see her grandchildren.

Very good, R368, but I didn't believe the part above.

[quote]Did we all have to be locked in an institution and sexually abused in order to enjoy Jessica Lange's performance in "Frances"?

That was just one Circuit Party that happened over 10 years ago!

Great film- as they say- don’t make ‘em like they used to- My mother was a lot like Beth although Mom was tough as nails- not Beth- she’s cold and she’s weak. My Mom would hold all manner of dysfunction together to put on a show- to cover.

[quote]Me and my bf would pick a good Chris Pratt movie or even a Adam Sandler movie

Perhaps you should instead pick an instructional video on grammar.

r378=pretentious queen, you should mind you're own business.

[quote]pretentious queen, you should mind you're own business.

Oh, honey.

^F off, looser.

R368, what do you propose? I’d be interested because I might have misinterpreted it.

I can only see Beth dying alone. She alienated her relatives. I think she’d disinherit Conrad because he ceased taking her abuse. She would refuse to see Conrad during her final days.

As for Conrad’s wife, I’ll assume he married his girlfriend, Jeanine. She came from a lower middle class background. Beth expected her sons to marry within their class, or higher. Jeanine wouldn’t properly dust the living room, wouldn’t set a perfect dinner table, or wouldn’t wear the right clothes.

Regarding the grandchildren, Beth might have had a relationship with them, but she’d be cold and distant. Yet, if Conrad had a son that resembled Buck, she might dote on him. She buried all the love she had with Buck.

R361- What about Beatrice Arthur as Beth Jarrett.

God'll get you for that Conrad!

Beth reminds me a lot of my grandmother. Cold and icy, overly concerned with appearances, with not a single maternal bone in her body. The maid basically raised my father and his two brothers. She and my grandfather made a striking couple, but beneath the surface there was so much dysfunction that they refused to let the world see. It was masked by good looks, expensive clothes and cars, perfect children, and a tastefully decorated home. I think she tried to show love to we grandkids later in life, but it was very forced. Even at a young age, it never felt authentic. I don't think she was capable of love. My dad was the same way, and I too have issues in that area, but unlike my grandmother and father, I am very self-aware of the fact that I tend to be narcissistic and egocentric.

A lot of these old grandparents are of the school 'you shouldn't hold them' when they scream because you'll spoil them.

Michelle Lee could’ve done it.

Deb Messing would be perfection in a remake. I love her. An underrated gem of a dramatic actress, aside from a brilliant comic actress. Very much in the tradition of MTM.

If they really wanted to make it interesting, BETTE MIDLER! Every time someone mentioned Buck, she would go all bug eyed and then squint her eyes. "How DARE you mention his name."

Streisand could’ve done it.

Beth never enjoyed sex. In fact, Beth and Calvin stopped having sex soon after Conrad was born. She was so distant and cold that Calvin slept in the guest bedroom nearly every night, he'd usually wait until everyone in the house had gone to bed to try to keep the illusion that he was in a loving marriage. However, the boys had known for some time. She could be warm and caring when the occasion called for it but those episodes were so brief one usually thought they had imagined it. If you thought it through, you'd conclude that she could be Medea. It wasn't hard to imagine her spiking her meals with slow acting, hard to detect poisons and finely ground glass.

Beth came back to the house, but dreamed for the day when she would be alone. She would pass the time imagining her being the sole occupant of that enormous house, not having to speak to anyone, not having to smile, and not having to pretend to love.

[quote]Streisand could’ve done it.

CALVIN: Tell me something. Do you love me? Do you really love me?

Beth pauses, formulating her response.

BETH: I get four-hundred dollars for a straight lay, three-hundred for a hand job, and five-hundred for head. If you want to wear my panties, that's another hundred.

Few people know that after divorcing Calvin, Beth changed her name and “Flirted With Disaster” by moving to New York, converting to Judaism, marrying again, and adopting a son named Mel.

All the while maintaining her control freak impulses but under the new guise of being overly emotive and high strung... with the help of a good bra.

Beth would never converted to Judaism. Carole Lazenby would've had a coronary on the spot.

Her screeching on the golf course was hilarious.

Actually, several weeks after supposedly flying that morning to Houston, Beth was found riding up and down the escalators for hours on end at Neiman Marcus on North Michigan Avenue wearing the same clothes she had on when she left the house and yelling “isn’t this crazy?” to all the other shoppers.

R393- I have some further news for you-

Conrad NEVER would have converted to Judaism.

R392 I still think that’s her best performance but maybe that’s just me.

I think she’s great in the performance but suspect that so much of the noise about it was because she was playing against type - the brittle antithesis of chirpy Mary Richards. In the same way that beautiful actresses get lauded for uglying up (ref C. Theron).

I'm just wondering if anyone here thinks that MTM received so much acclaim for her performance in OP because she was playing against type. I mean, Beth was quite different from Mary Richards, so she was playing against type. Has anyone thought of that, i.e., that she was playing against type? I'm asking because no one in this thread seems to have mentioned that she played against type. So that's why I'm wondering if anyone has given any thought as to her playing against type. So what are your thoughts? Was she good because she was playing against type? Or was she good in her own right, regardless of whether she was playing against type? Playing against type? Playing against type. Playing against type.

R399- It's so TEDIOUS when people discuss the same topic OVER AND OVER.

Not so tedious that you didn’t read through 399 replies before posting, R400.

And here you are.

She probably would have won the Oscar if she hadn’t tried so hard to play against type.

That's an interesting point, R402. I hadn't thought about the "playing against type" angle. Hmmm....

Buck never would've played against type.

Edith Bunker ( Jean Stapleton) as Beth Jarrett would have been an interesting choice.

Buck would NEVER live in Astoria , Queens.

I’ve been watching MTM in Dick Van Dyke. Feel like most people don’t mention that show. She was beautiful in that, by MTM she looked very haggard.

She still looked pretty attractive through about the 4th season of MTM. She seemed to age a lot between seasons 4 and 5. Her face looked really tired and drawn by season 6, and that bird's next of a wig they had on her was not flattering.

[quote]Deb Messing would be perfection in a remake. I love her. An underrated gem of a dramatic actress, aside from a brilliant comic actress.

Um...I'm going to assume you're being sarcastic...

Or you've forgotten to take your meds

^ Susan Sarandon

Gay men of a certain type (emotional tenors who love show tunes and Disney) really bond with Conrad and this film...which, is, frankly, a big budget TV movie that very wisely cast MTM as Beth. Her casting really got the film a ton of press and then because she was cast against type and did a good job, it sealed the deal.

I think Lee Remick, Ann-Margrock, Natalie Wood, Jill Clayburgh could have all played that role but only MTM would have brought all that other attention by her casting. Though to be honest, I think Remick would have been fine in the role, just a bit obvious. Ann-Margret is too sexy for the part...big tits and voluptious doesn't play well on the North Shore. Wood would have too....quirky. Clayburgh would have been ok, though maybe a bit too young and waifish for Beth.

Hutton got the career he deserved. He was good here but his problem was, he didn't really read very well on the big screen. He had a "supporting actor" level of charisma. He was nice looking but not hot enough to be sexy. He was boyish for a very long time then just old.

Redford's Oscar win for direction was ridiculous. It was the start of that annoying trend of Hollywood giving actors who were unlikely to win Oscars for their wooden acting some kudos for their wooden direction.

And, Pauline Kael was right about this movie.

God daaamn:

Alcoholism, R406. Also she briefly split with Grant Tinker in 1973 before formally separating in '79 while Ordinary People was filming.

I love when Conrad hugs Beth and she freezes and stiffens.

Can't tell if she is either disgusted or just simply cannot process raw emotion. It is a case of the cooties is latching onto her.

If she played it as Mary Richards or Laura Petry, it would have been sheer camp---"Ohhhh Cal-vinnnn" and they would need to cast someone like Ann Morgan Guilbert or Valerie Harper as the neighbor.

Beth never would have FROZE if Buck had hugged her R413!

[quote]Ann-Margrock

r410 = Wilma Flintstone

Mabel King from What's Happening !! as Beth Jarrett-

Conrad give your Mama some SUGAR.

Conrad- Mama I can't breath!

Florence Henderson ?

What was the deal with ARF! ARF! ARF???

Trying to off put Beth?

Before he met MTM, Robert Redford saw her walking on the beach in Malibu. She was alone, and quiet. She differed from her Mary Richards character. She seemed somber and withdrawn. He envisioned MTM while reading the novel “Ordinary People.”

[quote]Her casting really got the film a ton of press and then because she was cast against type

Oh really, you think she was cast against type? That’s an interesting perspective that hasn’t been discussed yet. Thanks for mentioning it!

r419, Conrad was frustrated at Beth trying to change the topic when he brought up Buck.

But I don't get why she went out to speak to him in the first place. Most of the film she spends trying to avoid him, but here she looks at him tenderly from the door then goes out and asks him what he's doing/thinking. Was this a glimpse of how she used to be?

R422, I think Beth was attempting to do something that was “against type” for her character. Just like MTM was cast “against type” for this movie. It’s a topic that really hasn’t been discussed yet in this thread.

R422, I think Beth was trying to 'connect' with him. Contrary to what others seem to suggest, Beth was not a monster, she loved her son, but was incapable of 'going deep'. She had lost one son and her other son tried to kill himself, she was not equipped emotionally to deal with that. There are moments throughout the film where she attempts to 'reach out' to Conrad and then realizes that she has gotten in emotionally 'over her head'. Just because she was not capable of being there for Conrad the way he needed her to be, doesn't mean that she didn't love him. She was limited and weak, but not a monster.

What about Shirley Jones as Beth Jarrett

What about Dunaway as Beth?

This was the time around Mommie, no?

Connie knows why you all never came to the hospital. You were too busy arguing about goddamn Mary Tyler Moore and… and goddamn casting against type!

Beth and Buck were fucking. I accidentally walked in on them that one time.

Esther Rolle as Beth?

Maybe when Conrad was born he really hurt her oonie. That’s something a mom remembers.

If Conrad didn’t want to resume golfing, and he wasn’t interested in staying on the swim team, why did he join Choir? It seems like in every other respect he didn’t want to be with people.

Who names their child Conrad? That's practically a guarantee of dysfunction and years in therapy.

An Ordinary Black People version would be interesting.

[quote]An Ordinary Black People version would be interesting.

But since Beth doesn't get emotional, not sure how Viola could work her snot drool into a scene.

R424 In the book, she's a monster. It is a slow reveal, but in the end, pretty much an unfeeling bitch to everyone. You don't even really get a depth of feeling from her toward Buck. More that his death was a great disturbance, and Conrad's suicide attempt, a horrible embarrassment. Beth didn't like disturbances, and she sure as hell hated embarrassment.

Ordinary Peeples, starring Bea Arthur as Cindy Lou Peeples, a cold, icy woman whose golden boy son died in a tar pit accident.

Here's the opening theme music to OP

That's not the usual Hamlish song. He was composing against type.

R431 because he was a fucking fruit!!

[quote]She was beautiful in that, by MTM she looked very haggard.

R406, the main thing is that Mary's woefully underweight. I cringe when I see the MTM Show today, she's a walking skeleton, and it affected her face. Most likely it was a result of having Type 1 Diabetes, diagnosed three years earlier.

Am I alone in thinking Mary was better in Dick Van Dyke than her own show? Her performances was much more that the over publicized "Oh, Rob!" line.

I don't remember in the movie OR the book that Beth ever sat at her desk to type.

But I may have missed it.

R435, interesting. Someone gave me the book, but I never read it. I think I will read it now. I was the poster who asked about Beth and Conrad’s relationship before Buck died. Your comment makes me wonder if Beth’s relationship with Buck was all that it was cracked up to be. Maybe she was someone of her time who just wasn’t maternal, but societal norms dictate women having a family.

Beth always wrote her correspondence. The film established that from an early age, Beth refused to use a typewriter for obvious reasons. It was a matter of principle with her. She was always against type.

Beth loved Buck.

He brought her so much joy like when she was laying on the ground in her tennis outfit nearly flashing him her no-no hole.

R444, she loved him, but when things got messy she couldn’t handle it. I think the film missed the mark when they didn’t fully portray the family dynamics prior to Buck’s death.

Beth married Calvin even though she knew he was completely wrong for her. That’s because she wanted someone who wasn’t her type. She liked going against type.

MTM was AB negative. Even her blood type was against type.

[quote] I think the film missed the mark when they didn’t fully portray the family dynamics prior to Buck’s death.

It’s a movie, not a miniseries. There’s not time to portray the family’s whole history. The flashbacks were sufficient to convey what the dynamics were.

I thought the family flashbacks worked well in that regard, while the boating accident flashbacks were completely unnecessary and heavy handed.

Would Beth have voted for Trump?

Calvin?

Definitely Carol Lazenby, that meddling gossip monger bitch.

r450, maybe Dr. Berger could help you get over your obsession with Trump.

R450 you might be surprised to learn that I’m not very enamoured of today’s GOP and I loathe Trump.

However, it’s also true I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hillary either. I played golf on Nov 7, 2016 and didn’t vote at all.

My dream candidate would have been another run by Romney in 2016 but that wasn’t meant to be. It’s a shame because I adore Ann and think she would have made a wonderful First Lady. Also my father Howard knew Mitt’s dad George growing up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

I’m actually a very well connected woman even outside Lake Forest, but don’t like to talk about that very much because I consider it a PRIVATE matter!

[quote]She was limited and weak

R424 = Barbara Thorndyke, famous Miami author.

I wish someone would start a separate thread about whether MTM was cast against type in "Ordinary People".

R453- May I make a suggestion-

Barbara Thorndyke as Beth Jarrett

[quote]Barbara Thorndyke as Beth Jarrett

Ok R455, but we'll have to film the golfing scenes at a Restricted Club

Great idea R455

Barbara’s novel SO DARK THE WAVES ON BISCAYNE BAY could be rewritten as SO DARK THE WAVES ON LAKE MICHIGAN… and have a whole new meaning!

Berger? That’s a Jewish name isn’t it… Calvin, could I see you in the kitchen for a minute?

Barbara Thorndyke would continually call Conrad, Madge...

Must EVERY interesting thread degenerate into a Golden Girls discussion?

After 450 odd replies this thread was played out, so yes R460 it was necessary.

Datalounge threads usually become caricatures of themselves in the 400 to 600 reply range. Just like Seasons 4 to 7 of The Golden Girls… or Seasons 2 to 1000 of Will & Grace.

Buck never would have WATCHED The Golden Girls!

R462- That's because Buck was not a HOMOSEXUAL.

R460- I must correct you. This thread has not degenerated into a Golden Girls discussion it has degenerated into a-

BARBARA THORDIKE discussion

It shows how amazing MTM’s performance was that people can see Beth as a real person, and one that people are still discussing 40 years later. No one is discussing Coal Miner’s Daughter.

R465, that's because Beth Jarrett is a gay icon.

That's because Sissy Spacek wasn't playing against type.

Your mama's a dad burned songwriter.

Wasn't Playing Against Type a TV movie with Vanessa Redgrave?

MTM was a typographer in a past life. She was set against it in this one.

I heard that a bunch of homosexuals have been talking about me.

Sorry, Babs, I knew Beth first...and that Jew who used to hang around her.

Barbara Stanwyck as Beth. Tab Hunter as Conrad Fred Astaire as Calvin. Ed Ames as Dr. Berger.

Fred Astaire as Calvin??? HA HA, no. Fred MacMurray as Calvin.

Ed Ames? As Berger? Where in the hell do you get that?

I'd like to see Robert Ryan as Berger, that character actor with a large range and leading man good looks.

There is a new thread on Doing Time On Maple Drive.

Which mother would you rather have had - the one played by Bibi Besch or by Mary Tyler Moore?

You know, a little of that goes a very long way.

Let us never forget Beth’s mother played the first victim in EYES OF LAURA MARS:

She also played Kathleen Turner’s mother in law on “The Doctors” (4:50 mark)

I did, R479. And they launched the pregnancy storyline because Kathleen Turner couldn't keep her weight down. (The same reason she was ultimately fired.)

One more thing - I played Anne “$cientologist” Archer’s mom in Fatal Attraction. And one more thing, I started out as a model.

More as it occurs to me…

Me again!

Meg Mundy was also Isabel Alden #1 in the "Loving" pilot. She was replaced by Augusta Dabney.

R480 damn! People don’t realize how much progress the entertainment industry has made in that regard. How did Cybill Shepherd manage to avoid that kind of scrutiny/criticism throughout her career?

A scene that could have brought a ray of light to "Ordinary People":

Calvin and Beth (as played by Barbara Thorndyke) sit on the sofa, enjoying their after dinner drinks and discussing Conrad:

Beth: Face it, Calvin. Conrad is limited.

Calvin: Well, I have to admit I get tired of his "poor me" attitude; his big sad racoon eyes; and his waving those razor blades around whenever he doesn't get his way. Still, we did so well with Buck - I can't help but think there must be something more there.

Beth: You know, Calvin, if you like him, I must have overlooked something in that loser. I have an idea. Why don't I invite Conrad and his date for dinner at the Mortimer Club? Ha, listen to me...as if he could find a date with his wrists always bandaged up. I'll just make a reservation for the three of us.

Calvin: That sounds like a great plan, Beth, even that Jew doctor of his would approve. Whoa, we better not invite him to the Mortimer Club, eh? What do you say we go out on the Lanai and smoke a doobie while the loser is moping around up in his room.

[quote]Ed Ames as Dr. Berger.

Ed Ames? Then we'll have to make it a musical!

And if it's a musical, there's only one gal in town who can play Beth Jarrett...and her bright red hair and comedic genius will liven up this entire sad sack production too!

Ed Ames also could do his tomahawk throwing act that he did on the Tonight Show.

R485- When we discuss Barbara Thorndike in OP , we are not saying that Bonnie Bartlett would be good as Beth, we are saying that Bonnie Bartlett as Barbara Thorndike would have been good as Beth Jarrett.

It's so DL and so GAY that no one cares that Bonnie Bartlett played Mrs. Craig on St. Elsewhere for SIX seasons but she makes ONE appearance as a SNOB/BIGOT/BITCH on The Golden Girls there are endless discussions and reverence for Barbara Thorndike ( although she's still NOT in the same league as that other broad - Helen Lawson)

R488, when I discuss the possibility of your being neuroatypical

I'm not saying you have Asperger's

I'm saying you are annoying

Bonnie who?

I don't know her.

Some of you are so fucking weird.

Shit you people really ARE limited… it’s ThorndYke with a Y… not an I.

ThorndYke, dYke, dYke!

What is it about this movie that it fills up DL threads so quickly when it's brought up? So many middle-aged, middle-class- raised, gay men who saw their lives in this picture post here. It seems to fit the disproved trope of dominant/cold mothers and distant fathers raising gay (or emotionally troubled) kids. The irony is that the bravery of those white, upper middle-class outsiders did more for gay rights than any other group of similar-aged kids by having the guts to come out to people like Beth J. The scene that got me was when Beth tries to relate to Conrad while he's laying outside in the cold weather. She gives us hope that there's a warm, comforting Mom under the cool personality. I remember my mother having a similar conversation with me where she really broke through and we had a truly warm mother/son moment. At the end of it, since it had gone so well, she asked me if there was anything else I wanted to talk about with her and I figured, she knows, this is my big chance, so I told her I was "bisexual" -- a lie meant to gauge her reaction. Her face fell, I watched her features lock down, and the first words out of her mouth were "Let me get a drink." I was crushed and when the movie came out I told her to go see it. "It's you." She went and saw it and was pissed. "That's not me!" But like most people on this thread, it was her and I think she knew it and, like Beth, couldn't do anything about it.

Buck NEVER would have been bisexual!

R233 a woman here or on some other board said they were a trying to be a teen actress and got to the last 2 as Jeannine. She did a screen test with Eric Robert’s then Redford decided to cast the other actor as Conrad, because he decided to go with the kid who looked like Mary Tyler Moore and not Donald Sutherland.

God it would have been a laugh if Buck hadn't died but did come out.

[quote]Buck NEVER would have been bisexual!

Buck never would have BEEN bisexual!

[quote]God it would have been a laugh if Buck hadn't died but did come out.

Not for Buck.

If not playing Beth Jarrett herself Barbara Thorndyke would have been BEST pals with Beth Jarrett. They would both belong to that RESTRICTED club- The Mortimer Club.

Barbara Thorndyke I mean Bonnie Bartlett grew up in Illinois. Wow she , I mean her Barbara Thorndyke persona could have BEEN Beth Jarrett.

Look, I've told you before,

I've never even of this "Madge" person!

Or "Bonnie" or whatever!

The commercial for Ordinary People in 1980 would go like this-

Ordinary People starring Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Timothy Hutton and a special guest appearance by

BARBARA THORNDYKE as herself.

Rated R. Now playing at a theater near you.

The movie is an artistic failure because it didn't include a nude gang shower scene with a long glimpse of Lazenby's tight ass.

What kills Beth is her Golden Child is a mama’s boy yet delicate Conrad, the one she would expect to be gay, is straight.

Were Conrad's buddies gay?

When he catches a ride to school there is a rainbow window sticker prominently on display.

R506 It was more common in the 1970s (this was filmed in '79) for young people to be comfortable with rainbow imagery. It hadn't yet been fully claimed as the symbol of the gays.

The film's version of Conrad was a bit more reserved about girls and sex, and it makes him seem a little closeted. The novel's Conrad jerked off a lot (and even felt a little icky/wet afterward), and happily lost his virginity to Jeannine.

Bonnie Bartlett, who portrayed Barbara Thorndyke, is an excellent character actress. She won an Emmy award for playing Ellen Craig, in St. Elsewhere. She was superb. Ellen Craig is her best and most memorable role.

Our Mary....she wasn't the warmest.

[quote]Beth slow jogs braless and titties flopping in a green cowl neck sweater over to Calvin and demands “Hold me Calvin, I’m scared!”

Nay, R362! A Bonnie Franklin Beth would go to Buck's grave, curl up on top of the plot and whimper "Hold me, Buck! I'm afraid!"

4 billion Golden Girls fans might disagree with you about Bonnie's 'best' and 'most memorable' role, R508

Rainbows and "gay" really weren't closely associated until the 90s. Don't forget Jesse Jackson and the rainbow coalition before that. During the late 70s, they were associated with find joy or happiness.

He is quite the wanker in the book.

"They need to release this on Blu-Ray."

Your wish has come true.

On March 29, 2022, they will.

I didn’t know MTM did soaps.