Ordinary People- She Hates Me!

Beth, you really were a class A cunt.

The temperature dropped 40 degrees when that ice cold bitch entered the room.

God DAMN, the three of them were so good in that movie!

She might have been an ice cold bitch but Beth was also a stone cold fox!

Everyone wore so much brown in the late 70s/early 80s.

The stand-in for the mothers of 90% of the bitches on DL.

Your cunt mothers really have a lot to answer for.

90%? Wow. Glad my mom was in the other 10%.

OP, this may shock you, but DL is somewhat familiar with that film.

R8- I AM the DL. We know we are familiar with THAT movie but I enjoy posting a new thread about it every so often.

I wonder if Beth wore a strap-on in bed?

Really? Ordinary People again?

Whatever happened to Mary Richards?

Best line in the movie. Conrad Jarrett to Dr. Berger, "I jack off a lot".

“ A then-unknown Michael J. Fox, who had just moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, auditioned for the role of Conrad Jarrett but reportedly did not impress Redford, who flossed his teeth during Fox's audition.”

R13 I wish Dr Berger had told Carol Lazenby

^ 🥴 😂

Timothy Hutun never had much of a career.

Compared to Michael J. Fox, for example.

“You can’t SAVE French Toast.”

*Neither did Timothy Hutton.

I would like to see this film reinterpreted by John Waters.

I’m awaiting the 50th Anniversary Limited Blue Ray DVD Edition

Carol Lazenby is akin to Roz Keith in "9 to 5". She was the eyes, ears, nose and throat of Beth Jarrett. She loved carrying the news, especially if it was bad.

Thanks, OP. All this time I thought "Buck would have never" was a "Golden Girls" reference.

r23, "Buck never would have..."

Watching it now. My partner actually put his phone down he was engaged enough. Great movie.

R14 And he actually took them out to floss them.

Hutton was a snack.

Hutton totally nails the adolescent angst. He's underweight, nervous and looks like he hasn't showered in a couple days. He cowers in her castrating presence. He's like a candle the viewer is trying to keep lit in a breeze.

DL is obsessed with not showering.

[quote]I would like to see this film reinterpreted by John Waters.

Divine IS Beth Jarrett!

Edith Massey IS Carol Lazenby.

"Oh Beth, honey, I was so sad to hear Connie quit the track..er... swim team! Purr Beth, purr purr Beth!"

Have had this in my Plex library for years, and finally watched it this week! Very depressing!

My mother WAS Beth Jarrett — without any of the money.

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

Everything was about her, her, her.

The great thing about Mary Tyler Moore’s performance is that she’s not playing an ice queen. She rarely scowls or glares at Conrad. She’s impatient and wounded when he won’t accept her love in the form of French Toast. She loses her temper at Conrad for appropriate situations, like his lying. She’s tries superficially pleasant which for a son of the most distancing thing of all.

She really dislikes the heart of who he is because he reminds her of himself. Someone emotional and fragile and sensitive who gets through the day by lacquering on respectability. He’s not a big blonde, sexy sweetie like Calvin or Buck. So when he doesn’t pull himself together (lying about quitting the team, attempting suicide) it reinforces to herself how much she has to control and how resentful she is that he don’t make the same effort.

I just googled

[quote] Did you know we've made love 113 times? I figured that out on my Bowmar calculator

And Same Time, Next Year was made into a movie with Alan Alda. Which makes the play so perfect for the Jarrett milieu.

In one of her autobiographies, MTM said she had an affair with a co-worker during OP filming, and he basically made her cum her brains out.

"When he touched me, I thought I'd die from pleasure," she wrote.

She did a good job of hiding it on-screen, because Beth Jarrett did NOT seem well-fucked.

They broke it off because both had long-term commitments. It's been speculated that the guy was Redford.

Tell me he didn’t eat pussy like a champ.

In late 1980 my English teacher wanted to take our motley class to see this movie in a theatre. I did not want to go because it sounded like a depressing movie and the upper middle class town in the movie reminded me of my own.

I did not watch the movie until many years later and I like it very much but I'm glad my 15 year old self did not see it back in late 1980 - it is a good but depressing movie.

Has a one read the novel?

R38- Yes, I own it! Its good- Pretty much like the film.. In some ways Beth comes across worse in the film..

[Quote] Timothy Hutun

Is this the BBC News Pidgin translation of “Timothy Hutton?”

R39, thanks, I’m glad you liked it. I’m planning on reading it soon.

So many gorgeous sweaters.

I never thought Beth was an ice queen. She's a perfectionist. She sees emotionalism as a flaw. She's been raised in a certain environment. Maintaining a perfect image leads her to suppress grief, and being out of control in any way. She thinks everyone in her family should cope the way she copes. She also has a lot of prejudices having to do with how and where one should live, be educated, socialize, etc.

I read the book too. I was surprised that Beth was only 39 and Calvin was 41 or 42. MTM and Donald Sutherland appear older and I think more age appropriate .

More age appropriate for what? The author of the book created the characters.

The scene really signifies just how self centered Beth is. They’re trying to decorate a Christmas tree, and trying to get on with life, and Beth just drops this bomb which she acts like is one of the most devastating things that could happen. Yes he lied to his parents, but Beth just doesn’t want to deal with the underlying causes of it. Masterful scene and brilliant performances Redford got out of them.

R43- I agree, but not until I watched some interviews with David Tyler Muir - I am sorry- Mary Tyler Moore- and I really thought about what she said about Beth, and it let me watch the film with new eyes.. (And I already read and own the book- I may re-read it) and like I mentioned above, Beth does not come across evil in the book either, and even SLIGHTLY more likable than MTM)

I think the scenes that show you who Beth REALLY is are the golfing scene towards the end, and then of course the final "private moment" scene...

The attached is a two-minute clip of MTM discussing her role as Beth. She saw her as a victim and drew from her own life for the role. MTM was a lot like her father and did her best not to be like her mother (who was an alcoholic during MTM's childhood ). Her sister, Elizabeth Moore, died of an overdose in 1978 at age 21, so it's possible she saw one or both parents deal with their grief in a similar way.

In another interview, she said that she was never allowed to express her emotions growing up. She was expected to keep things to herself.

You lied every time you came into this house at 6:30!

Actually, I discovered this year that you actually can save French Toast. Freeze it in a single layer on a sheet pan, then transfer it to a plastic bag and store it in the freezer. You can reheat it in the standard oven, toaster oven, or, I imagine, an air fryer.

Buck would have adored leftover French Toast.

Beth probably knew that R50. She was just being difficult.

"... her role as Beth. She saw her as a victim"

A victim who became a victimizer- instead of an empathizer.

'Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable'- Blanche Dubois

Robert Redford said the character he most related to was Beth.

It’s no coincidence he looked that good.

R53 Well, when did Redford ever show much overt emotion in a film (when did MTM, as an actress, for that matter)?

In Elia Kazan's autobiography he mentions how he wanted Gregory Peck to smash his fist into a wall in frustration (in Gentleman's Agreement), and Peck couldn't or wouldn't do it. There are certain actors who just don't deal much in outward shows of emotion, and it's probably because of who they are as people. I would think that would limit them as actors, and it probably does, to some extent. But people like the type, sometimes.

MTM captured a kind of Midwestern Protestant (usually Presbyterian) that I knew very well—aunts, cousins, parents of people I knew). Perfectionism captures this type more than cold orbit hy.i can see why MTM thought of her as a victim—that kind of behavior can be isolating and,in some ways, self-defeating. People like this are admired more than liked or loved.

[quote] There are certain actors who just don't deal much in outward shows of emotion, and it's probably because of who they are as people. I would think that would limit them as actors, and it probably does, to some extent. But people like the type, sometimes.

That’s true.

It’s not that I don’t believe any actor can play anything, or that actors should stay in their lane… but I do think that the most successful movie actors have qualities that make them express certain types of characteristics or values or ideas.

My guess is for actors like Robert Redford and Mary Tyler Moore, their best roles were ones that played with the surface of how their own considerable charm and beauty was meshed with a level of public performance and effort and reserve. I haven’t seen Jeremiah Johnson and McCabe and Mrs Miller since childhood. But In The Great Gatsby, Butch And Sundance, The Natural, All The President’s Men, especially in The Way We Were and even with Indecent Proposal, it showed how his looks and his cool were leveraged to explore ambition, identity and idealism.

One of the saddest moments in Ordinary People to me was after Conrad startled Beth sitting in Buck’s room. They’re both fronting, both speaking generally without speaking openly. Like any mother, she corrects him for slouching on the furniture and is genuinely impressed by his results in Trig. They almost manage to have an actual conversation about it and then she realises who she is talking to. The resentment that he is not Buck returns, and she flashes that dazzling Mary Richards smile while turning her back and says she put the two new shirts she bought him on his bed. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, shelter, sleep, clothing. Message received.

Does anyone else relate to Beth? 👀

I think you have to relate to her to some extent for her to work as a character. Otherwise she'd be like Constance Ford in A Summer Place, a mother who is just a self-absorbed lunatic. But it's been a while and I forget if I related to her a lot, or not.

I feel sorry for her.

If you read her memoir After All, you'd realize that she's more like Beth than people ever realized.

She wasn't a nasty person, or mean spirited, just very closed off emotionally and distant. And there was a tinge of sadness that lingered over her life until she found the doctor whom she would remain married to for the rest of her life. So at least she was able to find some pleasure.

When Beth’s initial attempt at reaching out to Conrad with French toast was rebuffed and she binned the whole plate, I felt that. I’m hypersensitive that way too.

Buck would never have been in this movie with a brittle TV star as his mother!