Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Please don’t feed the bears.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Fight them, without becoming them!

American History and Black History can not be separated.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Gena Rowlands RIP

Gena Rowlands RIP

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Gena Rowlands RIP to a Post-Menopausal Woman

One of the greats, dead at 94.

This still is from one of her later films, Unhook the Stars, directed by her son Nick Cassavetes.  Rowland plays Mildred, who has just gotten rid of her pain in the ass grown daughter (Moira Kelly), and then comes to the aid of her neighbor (Marisa Tomei), who is kicking out her abusive husband.  The story is all over the place, but Rowlands turns in a great performance as her relationship with Tomei’s son grows.  This still from the point in the film where Mildred learns that Tomei’s character is reuniting with the husband, so her relationship with the boy is ending.  If there’s a more expressive face in cinema than Rowlands’, I don’t know whose it would be.

One of the turning points in the movie is when her douchebag son tries to get her to move to his place in San Francisco to help raise his soon-to-be-born child.  Mildred refuses, even though as we’ve all learned from JD Vance, the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female is to raise grandchildren.  Instead, Mildred decides to live her life on her terms.

Anyway, a movie worth watching if you want to see a more than one-dimensional portrayal of a post-menopausal female.

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    schrodingers_cat

    J D Vance sees women as live incubators. That’s their only purpose according to him. He needs a shrink to work out his mommy issues instead of inflicting himself on us.

  3. 3.

    gkoutnik

    Can you imagine directing your mother in a movie?  I mean, just think about that for a second.

    Although in this case it seemed to work out well.

  4. 4.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: Well they don’t want women to vote. And they are behaving as if it has already happened.

    Potato face must have been rejected by many women before Usha took  pity on him. That or he has some major mommy issues or both.

    Temu Trump is utterly charmless.

  5. 5.

    Eunicecycle

    @schrodingers_cat: oh he definitely has mommy issues! As well as abandonment issues. It may explain his attitudes towards women, especially the “stay in an abusive marriage for the children” position.

  8. 8.

    PJ

    I mostly don’t love John Cassavettes’ movies (I had enough screaming in my life growing up), but Gena always gave really good performances in them.

  9. 9.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    I love this line from her obit:

    Her co-star in Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991), Winona Ryder, said that the way Rowlands lit a cigarette was the best argument for smoking that she had ever seen.

  10. 10.

    Another Scott

    Sounds like a great movie.  Thanks for the pointer.  I’ll put it on The List.

    Meanwhile, …

    (((Tendar)))

    @Tendar
    2h

    The most insidious plan I have ever seen.

    Darth Putin

    @DarthPutinKGB
    7h

    If Ukraine starts installing first-world plumbing in the areas they’ve occupied, Russians will turn against me.

    Aug 15, 2024 · 2:00 PM UTC

    Make it so!

    Dictatorships are brittle.  Pushing back on the monster VVP is well worth it.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    PST

    @gkoutnik:

    Can you imagine directing your mother in a movie? I mean, just think about that for a second.

    This makes me think of the movie Mother, with Albert Brooks directing Debbie Reynolds playing his character’s mother. Reynolds was not, of course, Brooks’s mother, but after a few minutes you believe she could be.

  15. 15.

    Pappy G

    “The world is held together by the wind that blows through Gena Rowlands’ hair…”
    – Mark Eitzel

  18. 18.

    MomSense

    @PJ:
    She is one of those actors who makes movies better.  The movie Hope Floats was meh, but Rowlands was spectacular.  She had that magical quality.

  19. 19.

    KatKapCC

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Donald Trump beat Nikki Haley in the Republican primary by repeatedly calling her “birdbrain,” and even driving home the insult by sending a birdcage and bird food to her hotel room.

    How in the bloody hell did I never hear about that???

  21. 21.

    Captain C

    @KatKapCC: If Biden did that to an opponent we’d still be hearing about that, and probably nothing else, from the same papers who are demanding Kamala Harris bend a knee to them sit for an ‘interview’.

  22. 22.

    HumboldtBlue

    @KatKapCC:

    First time I have heard it as well.

    The front page of memeorandum is one headline after another about Trump’s flailing campaign and how he refuses to listen to advisers. Ya love to see it.

  23. 23.

    p.a.

    @HumboldtBlue: I used to think the leaders were oblivious to the fact that their policies are unpopular: the info bubble (corollary: US voters kinda dim, conservative voters real dim.)  But their emphasis on fed court takeover says to me that they did realize just how unpopular reinstituting the 19th century would be nowadays.

  24. 24.

    Lyrebird

    Thanks MisterMix.  and thanks:

     

    @HumboldtBlue: Love the ending: “They treated her as something between a punchline and a nonentity and now she’s the odds-on favorite, if only by a small margin, to be the next President. Why should she care [what these dismissive journalists think who now say they’ve gotta see policy details]?”

    I don’t know if this is just another part of the big-time media hijinx, but it seems to me like intentionally misleading readers, just like so many media outlets did to Biden with their goal post moving and their switching around.  “Biggest crisis is gas prices” – then poof, nothing.  For MVP, well yeah she’s been part and parcel of the Biden-Harris administration, breaking Senate ties on leg. she considers important,  negotiating with foreign leaders…  not like she’s been sitting in the dressing room with no communication with the outside world.

    And what was she doing before that?  In the Senate, she was advocating for fair treatment of domestic workers, forming pro-labor alliances.  I was a devoted and fired-up HRC volunteer in 2016, and I would NOT have predicted that back when she was a Senator making anti-flag-burning-amendment alliances, sigh.  But Sen.  Harris has years of commitment to principles, commitment to reform of crim. justice in her law career and in the Senate…  That individual voters have questions, not a surprise.  But the professional folks whose beat this is?  What earthly excuse can they muster for the ‘enigma’ BS that Josh skewers well.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    A Woman Under the Influence was shattering to watch, and very representative of the more daring fraction of ’70s American independent cinema (an era never to be repeated).

  27. 27.

    Hoodie

    @Lyrebird: It’s just the undead DC press corpse searching for a new narrative to feed on after losing “Joe Biden is old!”  Right now they’re exploring “Kamala is a lightweight with no he-man policy chops,” which is ludicrous given Trump, the man who gave us infrastructure week and the health care plan that’s always just two weeks away.

  28. 28.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Tennessee Williams had this to say about Gena Rowlands:

    “Some talents are simply volcanic; epic. Of course, nothing could possibly be simply volcanic or epic, but I will face the scorn of grammarians and continue to state this about Gena, because she possess a titanic talent, with its attendant extraordinary effects, but she is eminently approachable–she walks right up to you, lets you see, feel, and touch her talent, and then retreats. She is unerringly polite in offering volatility–she’s violent yet sweet; manic yet lucid; beautiful yet plain; accessible yet unknowable.

    “I think she is what we call great, although that word is bandied about much too often. I think she deserves it.

    “Well, she’s ours, all ours. There will come a time when we will not believe that we had access to what she can do. She arrives with talent, not a message, so she is overlooked in a way that is enraging. There is longevity in her talent and her beauty. There will be surprises. I would like to be the author of at least one. Failing that, I would like, at the very least, a good seat at the unveiling of this surprise–and the patience of one good friend who will sit with me while I watch it, over and over again.”

    Martin Scorsese had DiNiro. Spike Lee had Denzel Washington.

    John Cassavettes had Gena.

  30. 30.

    sdhays

    @HumboldtBlue: Say it again:

    They treated her as something between a punchline and a nonentity and now she’s the odds-on favorite, if only by a small margin, to be the next President. Why should she care?

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    UH HUH

    UH HUH

    Once again…will any of those brave journalists going to the Press Conference today bring this up?

    Lips so pursed.

    Joyce Alene

    @JoyceWhiteVance

    Wow. The hits just keep coming in Georgia, where unelected officials are willing to sell their states election in exchange for the prospect of jobs in a new Trump administration.

    https://x.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1824104415386816626

    Max Flugrath

    @MaxFlugrath

    UPDATE: More questions & ethical concerns are surfacing about a GA State Election Board member who floated himself for a job in a 2nd Trump admin. The un-elected board just changed GA election rules which can be used by MAGA to obstruct certification of 2024 election results.
    https://x.com/MaxFlugrath/status/1824102352342712611

  34. 34.

    sdhays

    Policy statements and papers are important for building a coalition. You need everyone in your coalition bought in. Harris has that. Her coalition knows what she wants to do and knows the broad contours of how she’s going to approach that, which is all the vast majority of us know about anyway. I honestly don’t know what more specifics we need.

    I want to see the detailed Harris policy booklet the day after we see Trump’s detailed policy proposal for the ACA. We’ve been waiting on that for 8 years.

  35. 35.

    rikyrah

    BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH A

     

    Acyn

    @Acyn

    Reporter: Trump says he wants to make America affordable again. Your response? Biden: He ought to get a job

  38. 38.

    Old School

    RIP Greg Kihn.

    Greg Kihn, known in the rock music world for his iconic songs “Jeopardy” and “The Break Up Song,” has passed away at the age of 75. His official website posted a statement, written by his friend Skylar Turtle, sharing the news of his passing with fans. Kihn was battling Alzheimer’s Disease and died on August 13.

  44. 44.

    Jackie

    @rikyrah:

    Reporter: Trump says he wants to make America affordable again. Your response?

    Biden: He ought to get a job.

    That’s the Joe I love! I guarantee we’ll see and hear a lot like this from him between now and Election Day!

  45. 45.

    TBone

    @CliosFanBoy: that was my introduction to her.  In 1980 I was still very young, and I wanted to be just like her, sticking it to “The Man” in every possible way.

  49. 49.

    scav

    @HumboldtBlue: Hadn’t really had inter-ethnic conflict before the dreaded immigration waves in these here united states?  oh.  Well, I ‘spose for those definitions of conflict that omit all first nations stuff, various melanin-based employment programs and the staff uprisings and skip merrily past the Ben Franklin not being so sure about those incoming Germans, blah blah blah

  53. 53.

    gene108

    From a 2008 article on the “grandmother” hypothesis. I know it made its way into non-academic settings via some reporting in general media sources.

    The origin of menopause has puzzled evolutionary biologists for the last half-century. Three new studies attempt illumination. The real question, though, is probably not: Why menopause? Rather, it is: Why do women long outlive their fertility?

    Human ovaries tend to shut down by age 50 or even younger, yet women commonly live on healthily for decades. This flies in the face of evolutionary theory that losing fertility should be the end of the line, because once breeding stops, evolution can no longer select for genes that promote survival.

    The most popular explanation, the “grandmother hypothesis,” argues that a generous post-reproductive life span makes sense if a grandmother improves the survival and reproduction of her grandchildren, thus ensuring continuation of her own genes—including genes that contribute to longevity. But skeptics say the math is askew. From an evolutionary perspective, it is hardly ever better for a woman to give up a chance to bear additional children of her own, and so pass on half her genes, for the sake of improving the survival of her grandchildren, who carry only a quarter of her genes.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-origin-of-menopause/

  54. 54.

    tobie

    The first movie I saw Gena Rowlands in was Woman under the Influence. I didn’t realize the director, John Cassavetes, was her spouse. She’s incredible in the film. Has spunk in spite of her asshole of a husband played by Peter Falk, who has her taken away to psychiatric hospital for shock therapy. I still remember her directing a group of children to perform for a neighbor. “Play dead for Mr. Jetson” (or whatever the name of the neighbor was). It was hard to process that an actor as lovable as Falk was cast as a brute.

  58. 58.

    gene108

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Trump has never paid his bills. If reporters gave a damn about prior business dealings of presidents in the last 30 years, besides Bill Clinton, they would have unearthed thousands of lawsuits and stories of suppliers who were stiffed by Trump for decades. Some of whom went out of business because they paid upfront for equipment and supplies thinking the second part of the payment that never came would make them whole.

    Trump thinks this makes him “smart”.

  67. 67.

    Lyrebird

    @Hoodie: Agreed.  If they would just feed on it (that new dismissive narrative) amongst themselves and not spread it in  their waste like birds all over the countryside, fine.  But.

    On We GOOOOOOO

    I did mail 4 more postcards yesterday, total: 35.

  68. 68.

    HumboldtBlue

    I come from a large family, and it’s a very diverse family, so the sight of two white men standing aside in full support of a black and South Asian woman is no surprise, but in the eyes of the nation, we’ve never seen anything like it.

    It’s an image that resonates with the decent among us and as well as with younger folks who have grown up in a far more diverse world than us old heads did.

  72. 72.

    scav

    And if they’re going to go all cheap-ass cut-rate evolutionary biology determines all behavior route, then all those “females” refusing to date their pastel assess are doing so because of the biological imperative to have nothing but the best genes for their offspring.  Sorry dudes, nothing personal, it’s just your biological package not being up to standards.

  73. 73.

    trollhattan

    @tobie: I’d rank Faulk’s performance in it  alongside Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. So vastly against type, which made his seem all the more horrid.

  75. 75.

    KatKapCC

    @scav: I saw a tweet or somesuch going around that said if we pronounced “females” like “tamales” then it would be okay to use the word.

  78. 78.

    wenchacha

    @trollhattan: For some reason, I convinced my fellow senior high school friends to see this when it came out. It was probably over our heads!

    Gena Rowlands was great! RIP

  79. 79.

    KatKapCC

    @Manyakitty: He deserves every single cheer. I hope he knows that no matter how all that stuff went down, there are so many people in this country who love and admire him.

  81. 81.

    Paul in KY

    @gene108: I would assume all primate females are this way, so it’s certainly not humans alone. Might be that the birth/rearing process is so hard on an aging primate body that it was better for primate species to have it shut down when age became a factor.

    Conversely, whales seem to be able to give birth even when 90 or more years old. They are related to entelodonts, with hippos being their closest relatives. Would assume a hippo female can still give birth deep into old age.

  84. 84.

    Jackie

    Five arrested, including two physicians, for the death of Matthew Perry. It’s Deja Vu Michael Jackson’s death all over again.

  86. 86.

    p.a.

    @scav: Hadn’t really had inter-ethnic conflict before the dreaded immigration waves in these here united states?  oh.  Well, I ‘spose for those definitions of conflict that omit all first nations stuff, various melanin-based employment programs and the staff uprisings and skip merrily past the Ben Franklin not being so sure about those incoming Germans, blah blah blah

     

     

    I believe the US was never more homogeneous than the period between, oh, 1850 to 1870.  Very low conflict anywhere in that timeframe.👍🏻😂🙄

  93. 93.

    gene108

    @Paul in KY:

    Certainly his financial wealth must have sealed the deal for her. Can you imagine marrying that creep if he worked at the local video store?!?

    They met during law school at Yale. I doubt Vance was particularly well to do at the time, compared to Usha whose parents are college educated professionals.

  96. 96.

    gene108

    @Paul in KY:

    I don’t think there have been many observations of other female primates living well past menopause, which is why evolutionary biologists were looking for an explanation on why human women do.

  98. 98.

    H.E.Wolf

    Anyway, a movie worth watching if you want to see a more than one-dimensional portrayal of a post-menopausal female. 

    I’ve got another one! “Strangers in Good Company” (US title), 1990. Seven elderly women of widely varying backgrounds/identities, plus one young woman.

    Gina Rowlands (RIP) would have fit right in, as herself or as one of her fictional characters.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Company_of_Strangers

  101. 101.

    Paul in KY

    @gene108: That could be skewed by just the general hardness/danger of living in the wild. For this purpose, studying captive female primates might be better to determine female life expectancy after menopause.

  102. 102.

    Scamp Dog

    @gene108: I think the best guess comes from the fact that the human birth process is fairly risky, because our big brains make it difficult to get through the birth canal.  That makes it worthwhile to outlive one’s own direct fertility. Having an elder (male or female!) around who remembers how to get through tough times that last showed up a long time ago is helpful in a small, closely related band of primates.
    What JD doesn’t get is that his MIL is there to help out her own grandchildren, not out of some duty a post-menopausal woman has to help him out. In fact, if his usefulness as a sperm donor/financial provider comes to an end, he could find himself getting the boot!

  103. 103.

    Ruckus

    @gkoutnik:

    If you actually respect each other I can see it working well. But that’s not how it always works out.

    She was a great actress, he’s a great director, if they wanted it to work, it would. And it did. The way it works is that both have to be actual grown up adults that actually fully respect each other. Which to me is rarer than many might think.

  104. 104.

    Ruckus

    @Manyakitty:

    They may actually never actually been that high up the scale of humanity, they just for some reason fit in that group. IOW they may not have had far to fall.

  105. 105.

    Ruckus

    @gene108:

    It’s possible there are many reasons.

    Better healthcare for pregnant women. Possibly that many woman do not have as many children as was once at least more normal, and in the lifetime of humans alive today.

    Better healthcare and foodstuffs is one reason that more people live longer than used to.

    Labor and workplace laws that make working safer. We have laws that affect many humans regardless of sex, making life better. Look at a car of today against a car of 50-60 yrs ago.

    Humanity is still humanity but life has changed a fair bit in the time of people alive today – and on this blog.

  106. 106.

    AnthroBabe

    All the evolutionary talk out there : cool! My take as a biological anthropologist:

    I agree with Ruckus that modern longevity (secular trend) is mostly due to better waste and water management, better nutrition, and better healthcare. *Many* people in prehistory didn’t live as long as the *average* person does today, especially in the West (status can change this, although sugar, meat, and alcohol were always bad for you!). But there *were* old people way back when (50+) but it can be difficult to find their remains as their bones are more brittle. Length of life after menopause may just be a side effect of this secular trend, or it may be a complex interplay between biology and social and cultural effects. It does indeed take a village to raise children!

  107. 107.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    They are aware but I believe they hate it. Even seemingly many of the women.

    They seem to want to live in the 17th century. They seemingly believe that would be better. Is it possible that insanity runs deep in conservative circles?

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @Eunicecycle:

    Unless one is full blooded Indian from one of the tribes here prior to this becoming a nation, if you are old (like me) your ancestors a generation or two ago are very possibly from another country/continent. In my case one grandfather was from Sicily. I’m not sure where the rest were from but England and Italy is likely. I’ve never paid a lot of attention, but some of my grandparents generation were not born here and I have zero idea how far back any prior generations births were here before that. My parents were both born in the US

    A lot of my elementary school mates were first or second generation. My ex of over 20 yrs  was first generation.

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