HBO Acquires Jessica Lange Pic The Great Lillian Hall, Rushes to Air Ahead of Emmy Cutoff

I'm sick of dementia and Alzheimers movies! I get it that older actors jump on the opportunity to play anything but I'm frankly DONE with them unless they're very intelligently made like The Father, which most are not.

With Lily Rabe.

With Kathy Bates.

With Pierce Brosnan.

I like Lily Rabe, as far as nepo babies go.

How can she win a Grammy? She's a decent singer.

I'll be watching, thanks for the info OP.

I love her, but she's been giving the exact same performance for the past 25 years.

Zzzzzzzzz...

Is this loosely based on the great Helen Lawson's twilight years?

"I already fucking told ya, Broadway doesn't go for booze and ... and??? LINE!!!"

[quote]How can she win a Grammy? She's a decent singer.

She could get it for an audiobook.

Poor Jessica. This was supposed to be a film release. Now it’s being dumped on HBO last minute in hopes she gets an Emmy nomination. She really has bad luck.

If HBO can manage to release this simultaneously in at least one movie theatre in LA County, then Lange has a shot at an Oscar nom. That's what Netflix and Apple do these days.

Lange just announced that the Long Day’s Journey Into Night film adaptation she and Ed Harris star in will be released in theaters. She will likely add Emmy and Oscar nods to her Tony nod this year.

Pierce Brosnan? Wasn't Sam Neill available?

This play might be semi-autobiographical. Fun fact: Screenwriter Annacone is the niece of the late theater legend Marian Seldes, a performer who set a Guinness World Record for not missing a single performance during the four-year, 1799-show run of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap.

Hope it's good! Jessica could have one of the hottest years of hr career if this and LDJIN get great reviews and awards attention

R17 This year could turn out to be her most notable since 1982. Tony, Emmy, and Oscar nods—and wins?—within a 12-month span at 75 would be a fabulous capstone on an already legendary, iconoclastic career.

HBO hasn't got a trailer for this? Are they promoting it?

Mixed feelings about this, and god, her face. The trailer made me want to see it, but I didn’t finish it is too long snd reveals to much.

What about her face?

Jessica's look here is reminding me of Geraldine Page in her later years.

Jessica looks like crap. The movie also looks amateurish and maudlin. No wonder Meryl jumped ship.

Kathy Bates channeling Thelma Ritter was pretty awful. I did love Jessica but, yeah, the mannerisms are getting a bit much. And, this is really nitpicky, but why oh why did Lil have a framed poster of A Chorus Line on her apartment wall. Was she a replacement Cassie?

"The Chorus Line" poster may have been Michael Cristofer's nod to his longtime friend and colleague Robert LuPone, who died in 2022. Cristofer also acted in the 1977 Broadway production of "The Cherry Orchard," which starred Irene Worth, whom Marian Seldes replaced in "Ring Round the Moon" when Worth had a stroke.

Who watched it?

R27, Watched it last evening and enjoyed it.

A couple of direct steals from “All About Eve”, like when Kathy Bates used Thelma Ritter’s line, “You want an argument or an answer?”.

R28 not sure if you've watched much of Lange's work but how would you rate her performance here?

R29, I thought her performance was excellent.

She was okay. Nothing she hasn’t done before. It veers into sentimentality and corniness (Kathy Bates feeding her lines through a wireless headset). B+

R31, As if that has never been done before.

SPOILER

When she showed up for the opening night (after canceling previews!) and walked onstage after everyone thought the standby was going on I rolled my eyes so hard they're still stuck in the back of my head. I did think Lily Rabe was excellent and there were moments where I saw a lot of Jill Clayburgh in her. All in all it felt like a cheap production with some not so great performances.

That was my complaint. She goes into wild hallucination periods that can last an hour, but we are expected to believe that she could quickly snap out of it and perform a two hour play.

R34, She performed the play on opening night with substantial difficulty.

Jessica’s opening night performance reminded me of when I saw Waiting in the Wings in Boston in 1999 pre-Broadway.

Bacall went up on her lines several times and while she stood there frozen, her next line was shouted out to her from the wings.

Lange has received raves across the board.

Review thread: